Sanctuary . Amy Blankenship

held onto the hope that Aurora was still alive in there somewhere and was trying to find her way back through to this world. However, when he saw what crawled out of the rift Misery opened, his hopes had crashed down around him and he was still in mourning. There was no way that Aurora could have survived among all of those monsters.

      He had been trapped with only one demon… Misery… and he’d still been able to feel the outside world. Being so close to freedom had lent him the hope he needed to retain his sanity. But Aurora… she had been trapped in another world with countless demons, many of them masters.

      Aurora had been an innocent, white and pure. But to the demons she would have been seen as the enemy… the same enemy that hunted, persecuted, and trapped them.

      Now the city was full of demons and Skye had been forced to blend in and disappear among the human populace. Along with the multitude of demons, he’d also seen a small army of demon hunters that were taking out the demon clans one at a time… usually just as they’d established a territory. There were many other demons that had already claimed a stake and were trying to lay low, attempting to blend in the same way he had.

      Blending in with the humans was something Skye had learned how to do very early in his life and he’d shared that knowledge with Aurora.

      When he’d first met her, he’d known they would need each other’s protection. Where as demons often mistook him for a Fallen, there was no mistaking what Aurora was… unless she learned how to suppress her true lineage.

      His heart had spilled out on the ground when he returned from his vision quest to find the village and almost everyone in it gone. The human species was no stranger to war… a resilient race in its own right. There had been a few survivors that had fled the massacre to hide in the forest and it was through them that he’d learned what happened.

      The villagers cried that demons had appeared among them to eat their souls… then the gods had descended from the sky to destroy the monsters… saving them even though there were many casualties from the sudden battle. Even as they mourned their dead… they were thankful the gods had saved them.

      With the village completely destroyed, he and the other village warriors gathered the survivors and traveled to another village. It was on the second night of sleeping under the stars that Skye noticed a stranger among them… a little girl. No one had questioned her presence, thinking she was a refugee from another village that had fallen in the wake of the massacre… she called herself Misery.

      On the third night, Misery pulled him aside and told him in explicit detail what had truly happened to his village and that the Fallen were responsible. The thing that disturbed Skye the most was that she knew he wasn’t human… no matter how much he suppressed his power. She claimed that it was his sadness that gave him away.

      By the time they made it to the next settlement, Skye was in constant fear of Misery telling the humans what he really was and that same fear kept his mouth shut.

      Over the next few weeks, Misery kept the villagers in a constant state of terror by playing pranks on them. Late at night, she would walk through the village in her rotted form… causing mass panic by sneaking up on those that were unfortunate enough to be caught out at night. Some of them were able to reach safety but the others weren’t so lucky.

      The last straw was when three warriors who had been the best of friends their entire lives killed each other in a bloodbath that painted the entire village square red.

      The villagers finally began blocking their doors at night and refusing to venture out until the sun was high in the sky. It wasn’t long before a stranger began visiting the village and purchasing goods from the market. Skye recognized what the man truly was and began to keep to himself… staying away from all the villagers and leaving Misery to her own demise.

      That plan of self-preservation failed when Misery began beating on his door in the middle of the night demanding he let her in. He’d ignored the child’s voice and slipped out of his dwelling through the back exit. Skye knew the she-demon had been discovered by the stranger… a Fallen who had gotten wind of a demon in the village.

      Unfortunately, Misery followed him and in turn led the Fallen directly to him. Skye took refuge in a cave and hid hoping beyond all hope that Misery didn’t find him. His heart dropped to his feet when Misery ran into the cave to hide. The Fallen must have seen his chance and placed some kind of barrier around the cave, trapping them for all eternity.

      Skye shook off the memories of those agonizing centuries in the cave and continued walking casually through the streets of Los Angeles. He had nothing better to do except to simply wander through the maze of tall buildings and dark alleys. It was late, dark, and most of the humans were sleeping, save for those that thrived on the night.

      Demons also roamed the streets, hungrily searching for those humans that stupidly believed the darkness was their home.

      He was still astounded at the size of the city, having never seen anything like this when he’d roamed the earth centuries before. The humans whose minds he touched had lent him the knowledge he needed to understand what he was seeing. Never had he believed the human race could progress to such a level. Before his time in the cave, human dwellings had been nothing more than small huts made out of mud and straw, but now they had towers that reached into the heavens.

      What frustrated him the most were that the stories surrounding demon occupation in history had been chalked up to legends, myth, and folklore. If the humans only knew their worst nightmares were reality… society would most likely crumble or they would blame their government for conducting experiments on the human genetic makeup.

      Suddenly wanting to get to safety, Skye shimmered through the streets, avoiding the few pedestrians coming in and out of focus like the flashing of a strobe light.

      He stopped at the mouth of a shadowy alley and looked into the darkness for a moment, then glanced over his shoulders to make sure no one would see him. Once he was certain the coast was clear, he walked into it with no hesitation. The buildings rose high around him, giving the effect of the darkness swallowing him up. It had taken some time, but he’d found a hideaway in the basement of the huge downtown library.

      His gaze easily found the bars covering the basement window at ground level in the absolute darkness. Crouching down next to them, Skye peered in making sure none of the library workers were still on duty and snooping around like they had been for the past week.

      Silently removing the bars, he slowly lowered himself into the deep concrete room before turning and sliding the bars back into place. He took a deep breath knowing he would be safe for another night. Turning back to the main area of the basement, he weaved his way through the almost countless rows of bookshelves that was home to some of the older volumes such as rare first editions until he came to a sitting area that hadn’t been used in who knew how long.

      An old sofa sat in a small clearing in the bookshelves, the back of it pushed against a windowless wall. More shelves stood tall around it with open boxes of books sitting here and there. A single floor lamp sat next to the sofa, which Skye never bothered to turn on since night vision was one of the perks of tainted blood.

      Skye had sought sanctuary here many times since his escape from the cave and so far he hadn't been disturbed. Though he didn’t need to rest that often… tonight Skye was exhausted. He’d made more than one valiant attempt to leave the city. However, someone or something had erected a barrier around it in every direction, making escape impossible. He knew there was a way out… he only had to find the key.

      He wanted to rage at Misery for causing all of this since it was her fault to begin with. She was a powerful demon with the mentality of a brat. He’d been trapped in that cave with her for so long that when he finally felt freedom… he’d taken it not knowing that freedom was a lie. He wasn’t completely ungrateful though… at least this cage was bigger and the scenery was better.

      Misery had made good on her plan to release the demons back into this world but he’d watched some of them try leaving as well. They had all been released from one prison or another, only to fall right into another one with what appeared