Life After: The Complete Series

by Julie Hall

  The sharp edges cut into their flesh when they pushed through, but they paid it no mind. So far, only three small demons managed to fit. The others were either too big to squeeze through the space or fought each other to advance, bottlenecking themselves in the process.

  There were so many of them. We could only hold them off for so long before the rest of the barrier broke or we became overwhelmed by the demons who managed to make it through the opening. The reality that the protective dome had failed because of my family’s hopelessness cut through me like the blade of a knife.

  Hugo sent me down here with the promise of being backed by a God big enough to handle any situation. It was time I started to fight like I believed that.

  I reached behind me and grasped the hilt of my sword, pulling it free from its sheath. Fire engulfed the blade as I ran toward the breach, determined to do what I could to stop demons from slipping through.

  The demons on the other side could see through the gap. Once I came into view, they momentarily shrank back. The brightness of my sword reflected off the barrier, creating a bubble of light around me. The sight only gave me a moment’s reprieve before one of the braver—or dumber—creatures rushed the opening.

  I slashed up with a speed that surprised me and cleaved his head clean off his body, which dissolved to smoke and ash before even hitting the ground.

  There was hardly any resistance when my weapon bit through the demon’s flesh. Nor had I ever seen a demon disintegrate that quickly. I glanced down at my sword in amazement.

  Had it downloaded an upgrade without me knowing?

  Well, whatever that was, I wasn’t complaining.

  I glared at the demons swarming the opening before me.

  Bring it.

  As if one entity rather than hundreds of individuals, the demons let out an earsplitting shriek. A sliver of trepidation slid down my spine.

  “Shoot. If that’s not the definition of creepy, I don’t know what is.” The voice came from my right.

  Truth.

  I caught a glimpse of Kaitlin’s blonde ponytail out of the corner of my eye. I wasn’t willing to risk a full look. My eyes were diligently trained on the increasingly organized creatures in front of me. Abandoning their self-warring, they formed what appeared to be a rudimentary line.

  “They’re going to rush us.”

  “Yep.” Kaitlin popped the last letter.

  “I’ll take out or injure as many as I can. You handle the ones that get past me?” I glanced in her direction and caught her nod. Her eyes were laser-focused on the demon horde on the other side of the barrier. We ignored the attacks on other parts of the shield and the other hunters. We had our own battle to focus on.

  Without warning, the next demon rushed forward. The difference this time was that the creature behind it, the one behind that one, and so on down the chain they’d created, moved as well, one after another.

  A freight train of demon flesh bore down on us.

  I steeled my resolve and ran forward to meet the attack. An unplanned battle cry left my throat as I slashed through the first demon, ashing it immediately before the next struck. The next two were so close together I took them down with one well-placed plunge of my blade. The fourth dodged at the last moment, and I only managed to hack a limb from its body as it tumbled past. I trusted Kaitlin would take care of it as I faced the next monster.

  On and on it went. Hugo had ingrained movements so deeply into my subconscious and muscle memory that I fought almost without thought. The smallness of the breach was a blessing, because no more than one demon at a time was able to enter. Most fell quickly to my blade, but the ones that made it past were all wounded in one way or another. I had to depend on my fellow hunters to take care of them. The onslaught was relentless.

  I was covered in a layer of ash in no time. The black smoke of fallen demons swirled around my ankles even as I took out another. I heard nothing, saw nothing but my next opponent.

  I’d never been so focused.

  It was as if someone else had inhabited my body and I was just along for the ride. My muscles remained strong, I didn’t feel any injuries, and the breath in my lungs was steady and even.

  Whatever power I used to fight off these demons was not my own. I’d turn that over in my head later, but for now I had a job to do.

  However I was doing it, I was doing it well.

  Despite the circumstances, a small smile touched my lips. This felt good. This felt right.

  Suddenly the mass of demons rushing toward me stopped. Perhaps a sense of self-preservation finally sank in. I’d long lost count of how many demons had spilled through the breach. A deafening silence alerted me that the attack on the dome around my family’s home had also abruptly ceased.

  I stepped a foot back and angled my body to check on the hunters behind me while still keeping an eye on the threat. I was surprised that not a single one of my companions was involved in a struggle of any kind. Breathing hard and covered almost completely in black blood and demon ash, they all stood ready behind me. Against the odds, we were succeeding in keeping the horde at bay.

  The last light from the set sun tinted the horizon with color. The once elongated shadows were now masses of darkness. I squinted. It was hard to see the demons. They blended well with the murky evening. I was sure we took out a good number of them, but looking at the throng through the shadows it was impossible to see the dent. The darkness played tricks on my eyes, making their numbers appear infinite.

  “Everyone all right?” I called back to my friends.

  “We’re hanging in there,” came Kevin’s out-of-breath reply. “Your head’s doing its thing again.”

  “What?” What thing did my head normally do? Shoot! Somewhere along the way I’d lost my helmet.

  “You know, the crazy color stuff.”

  I shot Kevin a look. Like that was on my list of concerns right now.

  “No, seriously, it’s kind of gold and shiny now.”

  Well, that was new, but I wasn’t going to take the time to worry about it. There were more pressing concerns than my hypercolored hair. I turned in the other direction.

  “Logan?”

  “Yeah.” He stepped forward to stand by my side. His eyes were trained on the demons in front of us. He was actually . . . pretty nasty looking. Black ichor was splashed over his face in a gruesome splattered paint pattern. Clumps of I don’t even want to know what were mashed in his disheveled mop of hair.

  And he smelled.

  Not sweaty guy smell, but more like putrid sulfur. My disgust must have been written all over my face, because when Logan shifted his gaze to me, he started laughing.

  A full-blown laugh straight from the gut.

  Completely surprising coming from him, and totally inappropriate for the situation. When had I become the serious one?

  “That bad, huh?”

  I scrunched my noise. “Worse.”

  He started to lift an arm to wipe his face and then realized he was so covered in general grossness he’d only make it worse. He shrugged. “I can’t be pretty all the time.”

  My mouth fell open a little. Then I shook my head. “I’m not even touching that one. What do you think is going on? And I don’t just mean with the reprieve we’re enjoying right now. How did they know to attack the barrier? And more importantly, how did they bust a hole in it?”

  Logan sobered. His eyes returned to the uncharacteristically quiet creatures in front of us. They narrowed as he thought. He glanced behind us before returning his attention to me.

  “I’ve never seen a barrier fail like this. We all knew it could happen—hypothetically—but I always assumed it would be an all-or-nothing thing. I’ve never heard of only a portion of one failing.”

  “Can’t we do something to put it back together again? Or at least plug the opening?”

  He paused before answering. I knew what it looked like when someone didn’t want to deliver bad news. “We can’t do anything about the state
of the dome. Your family’s faith is being shaken. We have to hope they hold on to what they have left so the breach is the only problem we have to deal with. Your grandfather’s accident has hit them hard.”

  Grandpa. My heart squeezed. I jerked my gaze to the house to find Romona practically pressed up against the bay window.

  “I need to check this out.”

  Logan gave a quick nod to indicate he understood. I sheathed my blade and sprinted to her side.

  I’d never seen Romona so . . . unhinged before. Her palms were pressed flat against the window, while her eyes darted frantically between family members on the other side of the glass. Her bloody post-battle appearance only added to the air of desperation clinging to her. I didn’t think she even noticed I was there until she spoke.

  “They haven’t received any additional information on the accident since the attack began.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Your father’s been making calls, but he can’t find anything out. They aren’t even sure which hospital Garrett is at yet, so they can’t go to be with him.” She turned haunted eyes to me. “They’re falling apart.”

  Romona’s behavior, more than even my immediate family’s, scared me.

  “And that’s why they were able to mess with the barrier?”

  She nodded. “I think this is the straw that broke the camel’s back. We don’t know how Satan’s been messing with them this past week, but considering what’s going on right now,” she took a moment to sweep the area around the house, her gaze taking in the demons restlessly shifting in the shadows, “it’s obvious he expected something like this to happen.”

  Satan’s words in the clearing came back to me. His threat to my loved ones. Guilt tried to climb up my throat and choke me, but I pushed it down with Hugo’s words of truth and encouragement. Have faith. Blaming myself for Satan’s psychotic nature wouldn’t help the situation.

  Almost to my surprise, I remained levelheaded. Very not me. Maybe I was maturing? Maybe it was something else? I placed my hand over Romona’s right one still pressed to the window. The contact caused her to start.

  “It’s going to be okay.” I snuck another peek at the scene surrounding us and wished I hadn’t. “I’m not sure how, but I know it’s going to be.”

  She nodded but replied, “We can’t hold them all off.”

  “I know, but we—”

  A low hissing noise started from the demons surrounding us. It sounded like a multitude of voices whispering all at once. Each word slithered over the other, obscuring their meanings.

  “What the . . . ?” Kevin exclaimed, followed by a half-scream from Kaitlin as she frantically stomped the ground.

  It was almost fully dark now, so I couldn’t see much past the glow emanating from the house. Romona and I exchanged a glance before jogging over to the unit of hunters. When we neared the group, I bit back my own gasp.

  Heavy gray smoke-like fog slid along the ground, headed our way. I followed the trail with my eyes from the ground in front of us through the hole in the barrier and into the night.

  Dark mist poured from the demons’ mutilated jaws as they chattered. Combining, it formed a denser substance. The noise slowly grew louder, and with it the movement of the fog increased.

  Other than the chill it carried, the mist passed harmlessly over and around our feet. I watched helplessly as it progressed toward the house, undulating like a ravenous swarm of snakes gliding over each other in a race to reach their prey.

  Desperate to do something, I pulled my sword from my baldric. The flames that enveloped the blade were more blue than red. I swiped down in a movement that resembled a golf swing. The fog in close vicinity to my blade scattered, dissipated, or simply displaced—I couldn’t tell. Even if my sword had eliminated some of the substance, there was too much of it for me to stop its forward progression.

  I looked up and caught Logan’s eye before swinging my sword at the fog at my feet again.

  “That’s not doing much.”

  “You don’t say?” I gritted my teeth. “What happens when it reaches the house?”

  “Nothing good.” He turned his head toward our group. “You guys stay here and guard the opening. If the demons start trying to battle their way in again, you know what to do.”

  He jerked his chin toward Romona and me. “Come on, let’s see what’s going on with your family. They’re fighting this battle right now every bit as much as we are, even if they don’t realize it. We can’t do anything to repair the barrier, only hold off as many of the demons as possible until . . .”

  “Until what?” My muscles stiffened. I forced them to loosen as we turned toward the house.

  “Until something changes.”

  Well, that sounded ominous.

  “Can we expect more backup?” We cut our way through the putrid matter clinging and swirling around our feet. Even without corporeal form, something about it was very serpentine. The hissing demons probably contributed to the image.

  When Logan didn’t answer, I cut my gaze toward him. His stoic expression wasn’t comforting.

  “We should have already received backup,” Romona’s soft voice answered instead. “There’s something . . . not right going on right now.”

  A chill went up my spine, as much from her words as from the hollowness with which she delivered them. She appeared almost hopeless. Even as my grandmother on Earth, I’d never seen her like this.

  “We’ll have to worry about that later,” Logan said. “One thing at a time. That’s all we can really do at this point.” He veered to the left of the house.

  “Where are you going?”

  He glanced back over his shoulder toward us.

  “We’re going in.”

  20

  The Shattering

  We entered the house the same way we had before. Up the tree in the back and through my sister’s window.

  “I don’t even want to know how many times Jessica used this tree to sneak out of the house,” Romona mumbled behind me as we gingerly descended the stairs.

  “I totally should have moved into her room when she left for college.”

  Romona snorted but sobered quickly when sobbing reached us from the living room. We filed into the room one at a time and surveyed the scene.

  Dad held Mom on the couch, rocking her back and forth as she cried. James sat in the sofa chair across from them, arms bent and resting on his knees as they bounced nervously up and down.

  Wide-eyed and pale, his gaze jumped between my parents. Seeing my usually infallible parents this worked up unnerved me. I could only imagine how much more it affected my little brother.

  “Love,” Dad said softly, “we don’t know for sure your father won’t be all right. I know it hurts, especially . . .” his voice caught, and he had to swallow a few times before going on, “considering Audrey, but we need to stay strong right now.”

  Mom lifted her eyes and the despair in them ripped me to shreds. “Sometimes I don’t know how to keep going on. Sometimes I wonder if He still cares.”

  Had I not been standing almost directly above them, I wouldn’t have caught her hushed confession. I glanced at James. Nothing in his posture indicated he’d heard her. For that, I was glad.

  “The windows,” Romona gasped, jerking my focus away from my family.

  Over my brother’s shoulders, inky tendrils of demon-induced fog crawled its way up the panes of glass. Layer upon layer of the mysterious substance soon blanketed the entire bay window. I dashed into the kitchen, and sure enough, the windows in there were covered as well. In my mind’s eye I imagined the whole house encased in a blanket of darkness. I ran back into the living room, and the look of horror on Romona’s face brought me up short.

  “What?”

  Without looking at me, she lifted a shaky finger toward the front door.

  I didn’t notice anything at first . . . and then I looked down. It was such a small amount it was almost indiscernible. Wisps of black fog
slid under the door and into the house. The fragments moved independently, yet with the same trajectory, like centipedes with a hive mentality.

  “It’s coming in through the glass too,” said Logan.

  With my mouth hanging open, I watched long slivers of fog snake straight through the glass.

  I vaguely processed Mom’s sobs subsiding to small hiccups. Dad whispered in her ear while continuing to rub her back gently.

  With terror clawing at my heart, I watched the first bit of darkness come near my parents. Like insects attracted to the light, it traveled straight for them.

  “I don’t think so,” I said to myself and pulled out my sword. I might not be able to stop the mass of fog outside, but I could certainly handle the little bit in here. I swiped at the ground and warded off the small amount that had condensed in front of the couch. For some reason, it stayed clear of my brother, and for that I sent up a quick word of thanks.

  Another small wave of darkness moved toward my parents in an uncharacteristic jerky manner. This time when I swiped at it, it skirted my movements. Some of it managed to slide up the side of the couch.

  The substance that wove its way under the front door and through the windowpanes collected on the floor faster than I could swing my sword back and forth.

  It wasn’t long before I couldn’t keep track of what was on the ground and also catch the stuff sneaking up the couch. Without a weapon of their own against the fog, Romona and Logan could only look on with matching expressions.

  “I don’t,” there was an obvious quiver in my voice, “I don’t think this is going to work.”

  It was then I spotted the first tendril of smoke slide smoothly over my mom’s forearm. It wrapped itself around her limb like a python about to squeeze its prey, then curled along her arm in an upward motion spiraling around her neck.

  “No!”

  Without thought, I lifted my sword high, ready to hack off the evil now attached to my mother. Before I could complete my downswing, I was knocked clean off my feet. The air was punched out of me when I hit the rug-covered floor face-first. My body groaned in pain. The heaviness pressing me down quickly lifted. I flipped over to see Logan crouched above me.