My Devoted Demons

Chapter 9 - The Descent Into Hopelessness

Caspian

When I had gotten back to the car and saw that Gwendolyn was gone, I panicked. I immediately texted Atlas and Roman to get back to the dorm as quickly as their motorcycles could muster.

Now, we were all standing in the kitchen, crushing worry thick in the air.

"What do you mean, she's gone?" Atlas had a crazed, animalistic glare in his eyes. Almost like whoever took Gwen stole his sanity from him as well.

"She's gone. I went to the gas station, left the car, and the next thing I knew, she was missing," I prattled skittishly. "The passenger seat window was shattered and there was some blood on the seat."

I grasped my head with my palms, spiraling. Sinking to my knees, I tucked my chin to my chest and did my best to hold in the inevitable tears.

I knew that I had only known her for a few weeks, but in that short chunk of time, she had begun to mean a lot to me, probably more so than I quite realized myself.

Atlas kneeled before me and gently placed a single hand on my shoulder, as if I would crack and shatter into a million pieces if he applied more than the whisper of a feather-light touch.

"Roman, Gwen, and I all need you to be strong right now." I could feel Atlas's breath on my hair. "We will find her, but until then, we need you to put on a brave face."

I looked up into his watery, hazel eyes. Nodding, I stood and brushed my clammy hands on the sides of my suit.

I glanced over at Roman's cold, emotionless face. He was the suffer-in-silence type and had been known for bottling everything in until he couldn't, which we all believed stemmed from having business-focused parents who never gave him a chance to express how he was feeling.

For all I could tell, he was likely to be struggling the most out of the three of us, since he had never been used to someone loving him unconditionally all day, every day. I often wished that I could reach into his mind and take some of his pain away, especially because I was always able to see behind his masks of ice, whether he liked it or not.

His parents were both the owners and principals of the academy, and they spent most of Roman's early life building the school and its reputation, ultimately leaving Roman out to dry as a child. In fact, I think the nicest thing they'd ever done for him was let him go to this school in the first place.

He never told anyone about his childhood or any details of any kind of pain he suffered, but Atlas and I were at a loss when we started seeing him come to school with bruises and burns littering his body. Ever since he had been living in the dorm with us, the appearance of purposeful injuries on his body had lessened, but a little piece of me thought that perhaps he had just gotten better at hiding them.

In the last few weeks that we'd been with Gwendolyn, Atlas and I had been hoping that he might open up to her about something, but he never did. And if I'm being honest, it may take years until Roman utters a single detail about the intricacies of his life to her.

"If you're wondering how I am, I'll have you know that I'm fine," Roman snapped when I stared at him for longer than he'd appreciated.

My brows creased ever so slightly, and a deep streak of sorrow sliced its way through my heart as I grudgingly tore my gaze from his.

Suddenly, all of our phones pinged at the very same time. We locked eyes, knowing that it couldn't have been a coincidence. 

Atlas reached into the pocket inside the jacket of his suit, and fished out his phone.

"Unknown number," he stated warily, I could almost see the sweat beading on his temples.

When he unlocked the phone and pulled up the message, his face turned white like he'd just seen a ghost. His irregular breaths stopped. He looked into the eyes of Roman, and then to mine, the expression on his face bone-chillingly indescribable.