That really was the last straw. I couldn't let that happen again.

I had to run. I couldn't let them catch me, wouldn't let them. As I fled through the inky shadows of trees, my heart rate soared as footsteps started up behind me. A heavy tread that matched the pounding in my temples. Whichever one of them it was, I couldn't let them hurt me or anyone else like they hurt Sonny.

The image of the tortured, crumpled body that lay motionless on the ground would not leave my mind, no matter how hard I tried to get rid of it. The tears that resurfaced fogged my vision and I nearly ran into a tree. I couldn't afford to lose any more time, I thought.

Voices rose up behind me. I couldn't tell if they were coming from behind me or from memories of when I found my best friend so far into unconsciousness, he was surely dead.

I knew I shouldn't have let Sonny know anything about my past. I knew what would happen even if I let anyone get that close to me. But the first day I moved here, he seemed to make an extra effort to welcome me.

"Hi, I'm Sonny. You new here?" came a chirpy voice from the opposite side of my locker door.

I peered around the green painted metal to see a short, swoopy fringed boy with bright blue eyes and a dazzling smile.

"Oh, yeah, I am," I answered back shyly. He seemed to want to know something beyond that. "And my name's Samantha, but everyone calls me Sam," I said, giving the answer to the most basic question.

"Nice to meet you, Sam," Sonny flashed another bright smile. He had a silver ring on his lower lip, but it didn't make him threatening. It was cute.

After that, he took me on an orienteering tour around my new, unfamiliar school. It turned out that we were in most of each others' classes, so Sonny made me sit beside him. He was quite funny, and I couldn't help but laugh from time to time. When I did I stopped myself though. The risk of bringing someone innocent into the mess of my life was too high.

It couldn't be helped, I soon found out. Sonny was too good of a person to block out. So one day, about a month after he showed me around school, I confided in him.

"Why haven't I met your family at all?" he asked one lunchtime. Think of an excuse, Sam.

"Well they, uh, they're kind of strange. My parents have strict rules about new friends." Great one. Not.

The disbelief in the blue-eyed boy's face is what cracked me. Everything spilled from me as if I was a fountain. "Actually, Sonny, you see..."

Then I told him about how, years ago, I saw and did something I shouldn't have.

I was only around eight years old at the time. I didn't even really know what was going on.

My father, who was a guard, was home late from work one evening in the winter. Later than he usually was. I was staying up late too, because I wanted to show him something I did in school that day. My mother was too tired to restrain me. I suddenly heard voices outside our house.

"Daddy's home!" I yelled, as I flung open the front door. My father was home, but he wasn't alone. There was someone with him. Someone who seemed to be wearing a dark cloak. The second person was standing just out of reach of the ring of light cast by the streetlamp. I was about to call to my father when something the cloaked figure was holding caught my eye. A silver glint. Heading towards my father's throat. It took a moment for my young mind to process what it was. It took a moment too long before the knife was ripped across the neck of the most important man in my life. He collapsed on the ground.

In the next moment, I had the handgun that was kept in a drawer near our front door in my small palm. Before I knew what I was doing, there was something like an explosion and I was thrown into my mother. The cloaked person, who turned out to be a shaven-headed man, fell on top of the dead body of my father.

"Sammy... What did you just do?" My mother was staring at the scene in complete shock and horror.

"I-I-I don't know, mommy" I stuttered, trying to comprehend the situation myself. I had just shot someone who slit my father's throat. My eight year old mind understood this as ok, somehow. I was always told that the gun was to be used if any member of our family was in danger. This definitely qualified.

My mother, brother and I have been moving ever since. We have since found that the man who murdered my father was a member of a demon-worshipping cult. They follow orders from a 'Greater Demon', and apparently killing someone in a high position – like my father – was part of an initiation ceremony, of sorts. That guy never had his chance to join.

I received notes for the past eight years. Ransom style letters. From the cult. Saying that 'we're always watching' me, and that they'll 'get at me, sometime, somehow, soon'. My mother had the intuition to never stay in the same town for too long, and always told me to never get attached to anyone too closely. I never really knew why. Until now. Until I found Sonny, dead.

I had to get away from the cultists, now. Had to get to my mother.

I'd lost Sonny after we decided to go for a walk in the woods. After some wandering, I saw him sitting, leaning against a tree, back to me.

"Sonny! There you are!" I said brightly. "Sonny?"

"We told you we'd get you," a bone-chillingly disturbing voice whispered from behind me. Sonny suddenly slumped forward. A corpse. I screamed and bolted. I didn't need to look back to see cloaked figures following.

I saw a break in the trees, and light beyond. I burst through the tree line, but came to a wall. A wall which wasn't there when we entered the woods.

"Can't run any further, can you?" came the same creepy voice. And it sounded eerily familiar. I grabbed the gun from my bag and whipped around. The source of the voice was a tall, slim figure in a dark cloak. This scene was perfectly reminiscent of eight years ago, minus my father, and set amongst trees. I took aim.

"Do you really want to do that, Sammy?"

Sammy. No one called me that except Sonny, my mother, my father and...my brother.

The hood was being removed from the figure in front of me. I was soon looking into green eyes that were just like mine.

"That was meant to be my initiation eight years ago, Sammy."

It was...

"Jack?" My brother.

Before I knew what I was doing, there was something like an explosion, and I was thrown into the wall.