The Truth

After making the agreement with the brothers to help each other, Amillia takes a walk outside. She’s feeling claustrophobic being inside the house with Jackson at the moment. He’s the one that she needs to escape from honestly.

After all this time, seven years, and never not once has he said anything to her, about anything, and he probably knows just about everything. If what he’s saying it true then he should know more than what he has ever let on about. How could it not be true though? How else would he have gotten the locket if not from Damian himself. Damian is the only other person beside her that could even attempt to open the thing, it’s something special that he had made just for her many years ago. If what Jackson says is true though, then Damian trusts him, which means she should too. But why lie all these years and keep it a secret?

Daniel walks outside onto the porch and stands next to Amillia, leaning over the white wooden banister that is wrapped around the porch while holding a beer. She looks at him and scoffs.

“Should a hunter be drinking?” She asks.

Daniel look from his beer to her and back again before responding, “yup. When you’ve been through as much as we have you tend to be able to drink a lot.”

Amillia glances at him out of the corner of her eyes with a smirk. She couldn’t help but to think ‘what does he know”, but instead decided not to say that out loud.

There is something that Amillia has been wanting to know however, “how did you two end up meeting Leyla?” She asks. It’s not as if Leyla is someone easy to get a hold of as it is. She’s very interested in learning about the meeting of the hunters and sister.

He chuckles just slightly before taking another drink of his beer and says, “I’m not sure, she came to Jayven, not me. I just happened to be there. I asked him about it, and he said he’s never met her before in his life.”

Amillia couldn’t help that her eyes slanted in a very questioning and non-trusting way. Someone’s lying. Either that or these boys are just plain stupid one.

She didn’t even think twice before her temper got the best of her and she turned away from Daniel and marched back through the door of her house, Daniel right behind her.

Before anyone could say or do anything Amillia was holding Jayven up against the wall by his throat. She had moved so quick that no one even noticed what she done until it was over with. It amused both the other guys for a moment seeing a tiny girl manhandle a bigger man, Jayven’s at least twice her size, but then they both start growing concern noticing how tight of a hold she has on Jayven’s neck. Daniel has no idea how strong Amillia actually is while Jackson’s aware of who and what she is, he has never seen her mad or anything of such. Both of them are in shock right now.

“You are going to tell me exactly how you know Leyla and why she would come to you and so help me, if anything is left out then God itself won’t even be able to help you after what I do,” She said her voice low, calm, and her eyes a glowing sapphire color. “Do you understand?”

Struggling, Jayven responds, “What do you mean, I did tell you the truth.”

This only infuriates Amillia more because she knows that he’s lying. She can’t help but to punch him in the face and then throw him on the ground before putting her foot on his throat stopping the air flow once again.

“Leyla wouldn’t just randomly go to someone, a hunter at that, especially one she doesn’t know and then send him on this quest. I know you’re lying, and I want to know the truth,” she says with a calmness that sends chills down everyone’s arms. While being calm, her grip on Jayven’s neck tightens, and he’s struggling worse for air now than he was a moment ago.

Daniel and Jackson are both still at a loss for words. Daniel wants to help his brother, at least make sure that she doesn’t kill him, but Jackson gives him a look that tells him that he really shouldn’t interfere with her in a mood such as the one she is in.

“Okay,” Jayven gasps, “I’ll tell you the truth.”

Amillia releases her grip on his throat. He better hope that she believes whatever is about to come out his mouth. Amillia can’t stand being lied too, that’s her biggest pet peeve. Plus, she’s already pretty irked from Jackson spending the last seven years lying straight to her face.

Jayven straightens himself up and tries to catch his breath again. The sad part is, he knows that the little woman wasn’t even using half of her strength, which makes him wonder what the hell they have signed up for in their attempts to save their family. He massages his neck for a moment while catching his breath and all eyes are trained on him.

“I met her in hell, or the underworld, whatever that place was,” Jayven begins speaking. Now he has gained the attention of everyone in the room, except for Daniel, which did not go unnoticed by either Amillia or Jackson.

This at least explains why Jackson had thought that something about Jayven seemed familiar to him. It’s extremely, extremely rare for anyone at all to ever escape the underworld, even the demons and creatures of the night that walk the earth aren’t completely free. The underworld isn’t a place that just let’s people escape because it thrives on the pain, the torment, and the misery. Jayven has the faint stench of hellfire and burning flesh.

Curiosity has struck both Jackson and Amillia. They both are assuming that these men have no idea who they are dealing with honestly. It makes both Amillia and Jackson wonder how Jayven is free from the hold the underworld has on its victims. Not even Amillia escaped that place unharmed, yet here Jayven is walking around and acting as if nothing ever happened to him. But he’s not a demon, Amillia can sense that, so she wonders what happened while he was underground.

What Jayven hadn’t been expecting is for Amillia to tell him to continue talking. He honestly thought that she would call him a liar and demand proof. I mean, it’s not every day that you hear someone has went to hell and back now is it? Surely she doesn’t know her sister is stuck down there and she’s just allowing it to happen without trying to help her.

“What do you know about the underworld?” Jayven asked the two who doesn’t know his entire story.

They both smirked, “More than you,” Amillia plainly says. “How did you get out and how did you meet Leyla? I want to know the whole story, the truth this time too.” She demands. “Don’t forget don’t leave anything out.”

Jayven shakes his head. “I’m not sure how I got out. Leyla sought me out and she helped, I still have no idea what she did, but she sent me back here. Whole and all.” He said, and his face states that he’s not lying.

Memories of his torture shortly flash before his eyes. He stayed held up by chains with a thick shark hook that had been hooked through his skin, his body dangling over fire and the flames tickled his skin, slowly burning. He can still smell the rotten flesh and has nightmares of the experience. Screams, that’s the only sound heard down there is agonizing screams that are never ending.

“Why would she free you?” Amillia asks before Jayven can say anything else. He’s very hesitant about talking, which is understandable, it’s not as if going to the underworld is a good experience.

He shakes his head again. “I have no idea, when I first met her she seemed to be having some kind of internal struggle with herself. She didn’t seem too stable. She would go from torturing me to just randomly telling me stuff. I thought she was insane.” He answers.

Insane isn’t the word he would use to describe it perfectly. The bitch was crazy. Her favorite thing was to come in with the Spanish tickler and pear of anguish and use them on the daily. She enjoyed using her “toys” way too much to be someone of a sound mind!

So, apparently all this happened after I left, Amillia thinks to herself. Leyla wasn’t one much for getting her hands dirty while Amillia had been there, in fact, it had been mostly Amillia the one getting her hands dirty just to prove that she could handle being with Damian. Then she smiles because she has seen Leyla down there, and insane isn’t even close enough to the word to describe her sister, and if she’s awake, it would be worse.

But… If Leyla is awake wouldn’t that mean that the others are as well, and if they are then wouldn’t Amillia have felt them? They’re supposed to all be connected in one way or another, and yet, she can’t sense the others anywhere. Although she didn’t expect too, she knew when she embarked on this journey that it would not be an easy one to accomplish.

“How long have you been back?” Amillia asks, shocking the Jayven and Daniel both with her immediate acceptance of his story without looking at them as if they should belong in a mad house.

“Three weeks,” Daniel answers for his brother who is looking at Amillia as if she’s a new specimen.

Three weeks… That’s interesting.

“How long were you gone from this world, and when did you leave it?” Still not a normal question one would expect to come from someone who was just told the person standing in front of them has returned from hell.

Again, it wasn’t Jayven that answers her, instead, Daniel responds, “He was gone for about six months. We had been on a hunt, and something had killed him. I searched the whole six months trying to figure out what had taken him down.”

Six months? Both Jackson and Amillia looked at each other exchanging a knowing look. Six months here would be the equivalent of being in hell for sixty years. That’s how long Jayven had been there, being tortured, and yet, here he is, stable and of sound mind.

There’s more to this than even they realize, and Amillia seems to be thinking, staring off into space and not moving. Jackson hasn’t moved or said a word since she charged into the house and almost killed the man. He’s intrigued with what is going on wanting to know exactly what she’s trying to figure out without poking the bear more.

“What were you hunting?” Amillia asks after a few minutes of silence that had enveloped the room.

“A lamia,” Jayven states.

One of Amillia’s eyebrows raise as she looks at him as if he has grown two heads.

“’A lamia’, as in you believe there’s more than one?” She asks. “Do you even know what that is?” She adds before anyone could say anything in response to her first question. Yup, she thought to herself, idiot hunters it appears.

“Pretty sure that’s what it was,” Daniel replied. “A bunch of kids had started disappearing in that area and we researched it and all signs and clues pointed to a lamia.”

Amillia can’t help but to roll her eyes, even Jackson had a slight smirk on his face knowing what she’s thinking without her having to voice anything. Yes, a lamia did eat children, but there’s more to the story, and that demon isn’t a species, it a single entity. There’s no way two male hunters stood the chance against the deadly creature if that’s even what they had truly been pursuing.

“Idiots” Amillia mumbled just loud enough for everyone to hear it making Jackson chuckle. It’s the first time he’s actually made any noise, in fact, Daniel and Jayven had almost completely forgot about him being present.