parking garage of the Forum des Halles , Paris’ largest shopping center, Yasmine rejoiced. The moment of reckoning was at hand.
It took them another ten minutes to find a parking spot in the crowded structure. Their oppressors were busy fattening their stomachs and filling their empty lives with material possessions that would never make them happy. She almost felt sorry for them. They were travelers on the wrong path, driven by goals and desires that took them further away from the truth and deeper into the darkness.
Yasmine drew a deep breath as the driver killed the engine. He opened the door, and they all filed out of the van, faces locked into masks of concentration. The final battle was about to begin.
The mall was crowded with stores, restaurants, discotheques, a museum, and movie theaters. A city below the city, Yasmine thought. High street retailers dominated the shopping landscape: Mango, Zara, Kookai, H & M, Bershka, Sephora, Yves Rocher, and Fnac were all represented. Symbols of wealth and privilege, all serving as another sharp reminder of her people’s oppression. The French embraced materialism and spent their inflated paychecks on all this junk while her people barely could make ends meet. Failed colonialism and a need for cheap labor had lured them to this country so that their sweat and backbreaking work could bolster the economy of the infidel. Caught in a cycle of material indulgence and selfishness, their ungracious hosts refused to bear enough children, forcing the government to continue to import cheap labor from other parts of the world. They promised immigrants a better life, but all her people received for their efforts was a subsidized housing unit in a forsaken neighborhood where no one else wanted to live.
Even though some shops had already closed for the night, crowds filled the underground city. Bright overhead lights revealed a series of escalators busy carrying shoppers from the surface to the underground shopping paradise below. She studied the eclectic crowd, fighting back a surge of primal terror. On the surface, these people might look human, but Rakan had opened her eyes to the truth. Demons lurked below the façade of wealth and refinement. Crimson eyes glared back at her, and peals of cackling laughter drifted from restaurants and shops. Struggling to fight back a panic attack, she took in the world as it truly was. Her hijab, which immediately identified her as a resident of the banlieues, was a beacon to these monsters. They homed in on her cultural differences, earning suspicious glances from the security officers who roamed the underground hallways of the complex like a hungry pack of wolves. They were servants of the demons. The guards would have to be taken out first before they could point their machine pistols at the demons lurking inside the maze of shops and restaurants.
She studied the others in her group. They were spreading out across the mall, forming teams of two or three so as to not arouse unnecessary suspicion. Eventually the demons would become aware of their presence, but by then it would be too late. Yasmine knew that she would certainly fall in battle to the infidel’s bullets, but she planned to take a few of them with her.
Someone had to stand up to these monsters.
Someone had to try to save their people.
Hopefully her sacrifice would pave the way for a better future. She was ready to lay down her life in the name of her new master and his glorious vision. This was not merely an attack on the decadent West—it was the first salvo in a war.
With the confidence of a seasoned soldier, she released the safety of her AK-47 and steeled herself for the next phase of the plan.
Soon the blood of the demons would flow freely inside the Forum des Halles .
C HAPTER F IFTEEN
SAMIA’S SCREAM ECHOED as the tentacle closed around her waist and pulled her up the elevator shaft. Talon reacted on pure instinct. He brought up his Glock
It took them another ten minutes to find a parking spot in the crowded structure. Their oppressors were busy fattening their stomachs and filling their empty lives with material possessions that would never make them happy. She almost felt sorry for them. They were travelers on the wrong path, driven by goals and desires that took them further away from the truth and deeper into the darkness.
Yasmine drew a deep breath as the driver killed the engine. He opened the door, and they all filed out of the van, faces locked into masks of concentration. The final battle was about to begin.
The mall was crowded with stores, restaurants, discotheques, a museum, and movie theaters. A city below the city, Yasmine thought. High street retailers dominated the shopping landscape: Mango, Zara, Kookai, H & M, Bershka, Sephora, Yves Rocher, and Fnac were all represented. Symbols of wealth and privilege, all serving as another sharp reminder of her people’s oppression. The French embraced materialism and spent their inflated paychecks on all this junk while her people barely could make ends meet. Failed colonialism and a need for cheap labor had lured them to this country so that their sweat and backbreaking work could bolster the economy of the infidel. Caught in a cycle of material indulgence and selfishness, their ungracious hosts refused to bear enough children, forcing the government to continue to import cheap labor from other parts of the world. They promised immigrants a better life, but all her people received for their efforts was a subsidized housing unit in a forsaken neighborhood where no one else wanted to live.
Even though some shops had already closed for the night, crowds filled the underground city. Bright overhead lights revealed a series of escalators busy carrying shoppers from the surface to the underground shopping paradise below. She studied the eclectic crowd, fighting back a surge of primal terror. On the surface, these people might look human, but Rakan had opened her eyes to the truth. Demons lurked below the façade of wealth and refinement. Crimson eyes glared back at her, and peals of cackling laughter drifted from restaurants and shops. Struggling to fight back a panic attack, she took in the world as it truly was. Her hijab, which immediately identified her as a resident of the banlieues, was a beacon to these monsters. They homed in on her cultural differences, earning suspicious glances from the security officers who roamed the underground hallways of the complex like a hungry pack of wolves. They were servants of the demons. The guards would have to be taken out first before they could point their machine pistols at the demons lurking inside the maze of shops and restaurants.
She studied the others in her group. They were spreading out across the mall, forming teams of two or three so as to not arouse unnecessary suspicion. Eventually the demons would become aware of their presence, but by then it would be too late. Yasmine knew that she would certainly fall in battle to the infidel’s bullets, but she planned to take a few of them with her.
Someone had to stand up to these monsters.
Someone had to try to save their people.
Hopefully her sacrifice would pave the way for a better future. She was ready to lay down her life in the name of her new master and his glorious vision. This was not merely an attack on the decadent West—it was the first salvo in a war.
With the confidence of a seasoned soldier, she released the safety of her AK-47 and steeled herself for the next phase of the plan.
Soon the blood of the demons would flow freely inside the Forum des Halles .
C HAPTER F IFTEEN
SAMIA’S SCREAM ECHOED as the tentacle closed around her waist and pulled her up the elevator shaft. Talon reacted on pure instinct. He brought up his Glock
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