Chapter 34

"That can't be everything that you remember," Iaoel said quietly. I could sense a stiffness in his tone of voice.

"That's the only thing I can clearly remember," I said nervously, hands shaking.

"It's okay, Michelle, calm down," Ariel said soothingly, holding my hands gently. His grip made my hands surprisingly stop shaking, my whole body relaxed from his touch. "Just relax and try to detail things, okay? What did the ink look like? Did it have texture? Have you seen it before? Who do you think the guy was? Even the hair color can be helpful," he said softly as he wrapped his arms around me. I leaned back into his touch, earning a fierce glare from Samael.

With a sad sigh I looked down at my feet and closed my eyes. "He had... Brown hair," I said quietly, an image of the boy in my mind. "There's blood everywhere..." I added, my throat straining as I spoke. "I've... I've seen the black ink b-... Before," I whispered, opening my eyes and slowly looking over to Samael in horror. "We've both seen it."

At that point everyone stilled and looked over to Samael, you could hear crickets from how quiet it was.

"The hell do you guys want?" Samael muttered, completely avoiding eye-contact.

"What was it?" Cassiel asked, standing up quickly and walking towards a stack of books in the corner of the room.

"I don't know... I've never seen it before then," he replied, gaze fixed on the floor in front of him.

"It was weird," I said quietly, furrowing my eyebrows as I remembered doing little experiments with it the first time I saw it. "It... Basically killed a stick... It completely disintegrated it."

"What?" Rahab chuckled looking over to me. "What did you do to find that out?" Rahab asked, smirk on his face. "Were you p-"

"Shut the fuck up," Belial snapped, eyes flaring. "She's under enough stress as is. She doesn't need to hear your perverted shit constantly."

"Belial, maybe you should shove that same stick up your a-"

"That's enough," Cassiel stated, sounding like an irritated father of two arguing kids as he flipped through pages of a book. "We don't need the arguing right now."

"Oh, come on," Rahab said playfully, a mischievous grin on his face. "Just a little bit of fun? I'm starving!"

"Then starve," I exploded, my voice feeling like it echoed off walls, body stiff to the touch.

When everyone looked at me I could see they all got a little scared. Even Ariel hesitated to hold me.

"Why are you staring?" I asked just as Rahab snuck a quick picture of me on his phone. "Why'd you take a picture of me?

"Answer me!" I demanded after hearing nothing but my own voice echo in my head for what felt like hours.

"Your, um, eyes..." Samael said, sounding uncomfortable as he stood up and walked over to me. "They shredded the contacts you had."

"What?" I blurted out, looking around for a mirror. I saw a phone sailing towards me out of the corner of my eye, catching it just before it could hit my face.

I went to his photo gallery and quickly found my picture. And yes, it was true. Little shards of brown were on he rims of my eyes, but everything else was either red or blue.

I felt my heart beat slowly quicken. Something was weird with the picture, besides that. I could feel it. And I had an idea of what it was too.

"Where's the closest computer?" I asked in an urgent tone, making everyone look to Cassiel.

Poor guy has to be on top of everything.

"Three doors down from here. To the right," he said quickly, making us all rush out of the room.

As we all got into the hallway we jogged to the other room, tripping on each other's feet as we tried to quicken the pace.

"Make some room," I said as I nudged through, trying to get there as fast as I could. As Cassiel opened the door and they all moved over I ran for the computer. I immediately started to raid the drawer under it, trying to find the cord I needed to be able upload the picture into the computer.

Just as I was beginning to freak out I found it and instantly attached it into the phone and computer. As I started to go through the motions of downloading it my eye started to twitch. The longer it took to upload it the more I felt like I was going to kill someone.

"Michelle, cal-"

"Everyone shut up," I commanded, not knowing who spoke. My fingers tapped harshly on the table as I waited for the picture to load, restraining myself from punch the computer with all of my worked-up energy.

As soon as it finished loading I clicked the image and started zooming in and filtering out everything but my eyes, trying to make a focus on them and make that part of the image as clear as possible.

"What are you d-"

"SHUT UP!" I screamed as I started doing it even more frantically, trying to see what was wrong with them.

One more zoom in.

Maybe one more.

One more.

I'm not paranoid.

One more.

I'm not crazy.

Just one more.

"Mich-"

"SHU-" I said as a did one last focus on the picture, cutting myself off when I saw what I've been waiting for.

'This is it.'

"Hands," I said, my own hands shaking as I looked at the photo.

"Hands?" I heard someone say in what I heard as I whisper as I felt presences everywhere around me.

I pointed one of my fingers at my eyes, slowly moving from one to the other.

It looked like claws were pounding against my eyes, cracking the contacts as they did so.

"Hands," I said after a while, after dropping my arm on the table like I had no control over it anymore.

"That's not possible. They shouldn't be able to do that," I heard Samael say from right above my head.

'Demons are out of you, Michelle,' a familiar voice whispered in my mind, making me jump from my chair and land on the floor paralyzed.  'I don't know how you managed to to it, but you did it.

'And you you know what that means?' the man said, a bone chilling cackle following. 'That means I'm either killing you, or killing everything to get you.'

And that's when I it all came together.

I don't have time to prepare.

There's going to be a war.

And it starts now.

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READ THIS FOR THE LOVE OF GOD

The sequel will start now. Sadly this was the last chapter of book one. The SEQUEL will be called UNEARTHING HELL

(written in caps just in case people don't actually read author's notes)

Anywhore

Tysm for reading and yes, as promised, there will be a lot more gore in the sequel than in this book. I also come to the decision of who she will temporarily "be with" in the sequel ;)

And I guarantee at least half of you will cry when you read who dies with black poison all over them  :(

Love you!!!!

-Michelle xoxoxo