Free Devil's Thumb by S. M. Schmitz

about Paris? During the Revolution? Did you see the same thing?”
    Anna and Colin glanced at each other, but Anna answered, “Not as bad. Not nearly as bad, but yes. It was during the Reign of Terror and they flocked to France in those days.”
    “And in Leipzig?” Dylan asked excitedly. He must have felt like he was about to grasp some piece of a mystery, but Colin and Anna didn’t think it could be that easy, could it?
    “Well, there were the three and then once the battle started, more came. Napoleon was eventually defeated and chased back to France and they followed the armies,” Colin said.
    Dylan slapped his knee. “It’s a pattern. For some reason, they’re sending you these memories of all the times you had to fight a bunch of demons at once. But why?”
    Colin and Anna shrugged. How were they supposed to know?
    Max still looked deep in thought. “You said Berlin was one of the worst you’ve ever seen. Doesn’t sound like Paris or Leipzig was bad in comparison. What could compare?”
    Colin and Anna looked at each other uneasily then Colin took a deep breath, clearly uncomfortable having to relive this event. “The only thing that ever compared was Bosnia.”

Chapter 9
     
     
    Srebrenica, 199 5 . Colin and Anna had been in the Balkans for the past couple of years. When the civil war started, they had recognized all the telling features that this conflict was going to turn brutal and horrific, and after centuries of chasing brutal and horrific acts by their fellow humans, they also knew there was little hope that the world would step in and stop this conflict from becoming so deadly. And of course they’d been right.
    They followed the Serbian army into Srebrenica even though it was supposed to be protected by the United Nations, but they had little faith in the U.N. to protect the people here. After all, the town had been subjected to violence and ethnic cleansing for the past several years. They expected nothing to change now.
    Anna watched nervously as another man collapsed in the street before her. People had been starving to death due to the siege by the army surrounding the city. This was nothing new either. Colin helped her drag him out of the street and into the shade of a nearby building. He was still alive, but Anna couldn’t imagine how. He was emaciated and delusional, and Anna couldn’t understand any of what he was trying to tell her. She suspected even if she spoke the language, she wouldn’t have understood him.
    Colin reached into his bag and pulled out a bottle of water. The people who lived here, especially the refugees, hadn’t had clean drinking water since the siege began, but Colin nor Anna had ever seen anything like this. The Serbian army was preventing most of the U.N. aid from reaching the city. They had witnessed mass starvation when the Soviet Union began collectivizing, but this was intentional. This was an effort to eradicate everyone within the city without having to fire a shot. And Colin and Anna, in all of their years on this Earth, had only found themselves this angry at their fellow humans once before.
    Colin and Anna hadn’t been in Srebrenica for long. They had traveled throughout the region and had just arrived from Sarajevo. Fifty years ago, they had stayed in Germany; they had never traveled to Poland to witness the atrocities of the death camps. They had never seen genocide in person. Sarajevo had scarred them. Colin and Anna had begun to wonder if their faith in humanity could ever be restored after this.
    There was so much hatred here, so much of everything within humans that demons fed off of that the entire region was swarming with them. Like stray cats, they roamed the streets littered with debris and bodies, searching for weak victims and Anna and Colin couldn’t possibly keep up with the influx of evil personified.
    Summer had just arrived in the Balkans when they made it to Srebrenica, following the rumors that this supposed U.N. enclave was about