Darkly Devoted (Book 1, 2, 3)

LOMD Chapter 13 - Night at the Sunny Side

Chapter 13

FOR WHAT seemed like forever, Vivienne laid flat on the ground with Blake over her. She felt the heavy pant of his breath and the solid weight of his body. His jacket smelled vaguely of the woodsy forest and worn leather. As Vivienne laid under him, she didn't know how to explain it, but she didn't feel completely disgusted by him, not even by his breath that smelled vaguely of cheap liquor.

The seconds that followed the attack seemed to drag on and on. Blake had thrown himself over her when the glass windows shattered. From her vantage point on the ground, Vivienne noticed that there had been several bricks that had been thrown through the Sunny Side Diner windows. There were people cowering under the booths and crying. No one seemed to be seriously injured, though Vivienne saw several people with cuts on their hands and faces.

"Those bastards!" Ashlar was growling. He was already on his feet holding a wooden chair in his hands. Despite sporting several cuts over his arms, Ashlar broke the chair over his leg and picked up a make-shift bat from the wooden pieces. He marched to the door of the diner.

Vivienne looked up at Blake who finally removed his hands from the back of her head. For a second she laid there in still shock on the sticky tiled floor which was now covered in spilled drinks and glittering glass shrapnels. Blake sat up and looked toward the broken windows. There were speckles of glass in his hair and there was a cut on the back of his neck that was oozing blood. He barely seemed to notice.

"Are you hurt?" Blake hastily asked. He got up onto one knee and gave her some space. Vivienne slowly pushed herself up to a sitting position. There was the sound of crunching glass and crying all around. The diner was pure chaos now. Blake wrapped one arm around her to protect her from the madness, with his other hand he brushed some loose bits of glass from her lap.

Vivienne shook her head. She wasn't hurt, just shocked. The sound of yelling came in the distance. One of the voices she heard was Nicole's. Vivienne shakily pushed herself up to her feet. She had to see what was going on outside.

Vivienne nearly tripped over the door as she pushed past the gawking people. Outside, there was a large group of teenagers, most of them were wearing the gray letterman jackets of Lethe Academy. Vivienne saw a couple of them holding bricks in their hands. They were facing Zissa, who was standing alone, holding a staff. Beside her was Yomi, who had grown giant, monstrous ram horns since Vivienne last saw him. Ashlar was pacing back and forth, swinging his wooden club.

"Is this how you want to do it?" Nicole yelled as she ran between the two sides. "Aren't we supposed to be on the same side against the demons? Why are we fighting each other?"

A pale woman with a hideous scar over the right side of her face appeared from the middle of the Lethe students. Her skin was as white as milk and her eyes were red as blood. Vivienne realized she wasn't a creature of the night, just a normal albino human who had seen her fair share of battles.

"Zissa," she said. "If you agree to back out of the trials, we will forgive you for your animal attacking our school."

"I am responsible for no such attack!" Zissa yelled in response. "You are are a liar. You're scared, Tarana, that I am going to leave your bones to rot in a watery pit in Satan's Hollow."

Tarana smiled, her skin almost translucent in the moonlight. She raised her long fingers and a demon in the shape of a crocodile appeared from the forest.

"You want to challenge me, chubby-face thot?" Tarana asked with a snarl. "You can barely see. They say your eyesight is so bad you can't tell the face of your own demon from your old man. How do you know where your damn goat has been?"