Altercation - Episode 4 (Lost Souls)

by Laurel O'Donnell

  “Aw,” the Changed on top of her groaned. He ground his hips into her stomach. “She’s too hot not to get attention. Besides, the boss said I could take some of her sweet energy.”

  Boss? How many Changed are working together? “How many of you Changed does it take to capture me?”

  The business leader Changed ignored her. “He won’t like you abusing her.”

  “I was just having some fun.” The Changed on top of her slowly slid his body from hers, making sure he rubbed against her thighs.

  Sam clenched her teeth, disgusted.

  “She’s not here for fun, Curtis. She’s here for draining. So do it.”

  She knew what was coming. She had been in this position before. Strapped down to a table at the mercy of a Changed named Scala. They were going to feed on her energy. Drain her and recharge her so they could keep feeding on her. But there was something more than just that going on here. Sam couldn’t shake the terrible feeling surrounding her. The Changed did not normally work together. They were loners. Who was this other Changed they were talking about? They had said he so it was a man.

  Could Scala still be alive?

  She mentally shook her head. No, they had killed him. Damien had driven a dagger into the human host’s body, killing both the human and Scala. That was how a Changed was killed. Once a Changed made the Jump into a living human they were vulnerable again. If a Soul killed the human host, the Changed lurking within was also killed. And if Damien hadn’t destroyed Scala, they had also blasted him. She, Ben and Christian had channeled their energies together to blast Scala’s life force into nothingness. It couldn’t be him. It couldn’t be Scala. Besides, the surroundings didn’t match Scala’s MO. Scala preferred barns, not churches. No, this must be some kind of copycat. Still, she couldn’t get that unsettling feeling out of her body that this was too similar to the time Scala held her as his prisoner.

  Curtis swiped his brown hair from his forehead, gazing down at her chest with a hungry, lusty grin on his lips. He slowly pulled the string on her black leather bodice, staring down at her.

  Sam grit her teeth. She was going to kill him, and she was going to enjoy doing it.

  “Curtis,” the other Changed warned.

  “I like to drain skin to skin.” His smile was wolfish as he pulled the string and her bodice opened, revealing the curve of her breasts. His gaze dropped to her chest, feasting appreciatively. His finger followed his hungry gaze, traveling over the swell of her breasts.

  Sam’s fists clenched. “Why don’t you unstrap me so I can enjoy this, too?”

  “Orders,” Curtis whispered. He curled his fingers into a fist, holding it right above where her heart would be if she had been a living human. “I’d much rather have you fighting when I drained you.”

  Sam snarled at him.

  Curtis slowly pushed his fist into her.

  Pain erupted in white hot flashes. Sam’s body stiffened as he shoved his hand in deeper. Her mouth opened in a silent gasp as bolts of agony speared through every nerve of her body.

  Chapter One

  Damien’s gaze swept the theater. A wide staircase stretched to the upper level and a large hallway led into the back of the theater. It was good that Ben wasn’t with him. It gave Damien time to cool off. Sam’s brother was back at the apartment, talking to Lucas. Ben’s betrayal of Samantha, his lies and deception were almost unbearable. Ben had sided with his Changed sister, Cora, instead of being there when Sam needed him. Because of this, Damien couldn’t stand working with Ben, but he knew it was a necessary evil. He needed Ben’s help to find Sam. He knew Ben loved Sam and would search for his sister with as much dedication as he would. Guilt was a great motivator.

  Damien walked down the hallway, scanning the concession stands near the wall and the dark openings leading into the theater. Six hundred years ago, Sam had been his wife. Damien had loved her then, and he still did now. But now it went beyond love. Now it was a deep rooted need to be near her. Her presence, just the thought of her still being around, knowing he could reach out to her anytime, kept him from making the Jump.

  He had been alone for so long after refusing to pass, after refusing to accompany the woman in white. He became angry, unable to control his rage. He had Changed. It was shortly after he Changed that he discovered Sam was a Soul. She, too, had refused to go with the angel. But he had avoided her, telling himself she meant nothing to him. His anger kept him away. He was not like her. He was a Changed and she was a Soul. Still, there was a part of him that wanted to see her. And once he found her, once he saw his wife again, once he spoke to her, she had given his unending existence new meaning. She was a ray of sunshine in his dark world. She was his anchor. She kept him rooted in this world.

  Now she was gone. He could feel the longing to make the Jump growing inside of him. It was like the urge to punch a know-it-all right in the nose. He had squashed it in the past, but he knew the urge would grow stronger the longer Sam was gone.

  He fazed deeper into the theater. She had been working with the freshie Christian to help a Lost Soul. The theater was where the Lost Soul was supposed to live. It was strange there was no Soul here. What had happened to the Soul they were helping?

  Damien looked around as he walked. The theater was elegant with rich red walls and electric light sconces. When he neared the back of the lobby, a tingling flooded his body as if he had just passed through an electrical field. He froze, trying to figure out where it was coming from. It wasn’t energy. He was so charged with energy from draining Souls that his senses were heightened. He could feel and sense more than other Souls.

  He couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Maybe it was residual. He bent down to the floor and ran his hand over the carpet. Like an electrical charge, the tingling grew.

  Damien scowled and stood up. Something had happened here. He could feel it. He could feel the different energies. There were lingering energies, like static electricity, not powerful enough for him to recognize exactly what had occurred, but traces still remained. And this other thing he felt...he couldn’t figure out what it was. He shook his head and stepped back. He paced once forward and then turned and retraced his steps, trying to figure out what the sensation was.

  He willed himself to faze to the theater door, but nothing happened. For a moment, he stood still, confused. He never had to put this much concentration into fazing before. He forced every sense, every instinct, to a state of heightened alert. His energy swept out, away from his body, into the theater to scan. No one was in the theater, other than himself.

  When nothing seemed out of place, he turned his inspection inward. He wasn’t fazing. What was preventing him from doing it?

  When he stepped forward, something on the bottom of his boot stuck to the carpet with a sucking noise. He lifted his foot to examine his sole. At first, he saw nothing. Then, he ran his fingers over his sole. The small square was not as smooth as his sole. It was transparent and the corner had peeled up. He pulled it from the sole of his boot and held it up to examine it.

  It was square, transparent. Iron.

  He scowled. He’d never seen anything like it. It would easily disrupt a Soul’s ability to faze. And, apparently, a Changed’s ability, too. What was it doing here? He flung the piece of iron back down.

  He fazed into the upper level of the theater, looking for clues to Sam’s disappearance.

  ~ ~ ~

  “Missing?” Lucas asked. “Are you sure?”

  Ben stood in Lucas’s apartment. The early morning sun filtered through the slits of the blinds on the window. “She doesn’t go anywhere without her sword. I found it in the alley.” She would never have left it there, he thought. Not unless she was in trouble. “Have you seen her?”

  Lucas raked a hand through his moppy brown hair, brushing it back from his slim face. “Not for about twenty four hours. She was with Christian. Have you asked him?”

  “Can’t find him either.”

  Lucas scowled, then shoo
k his head. “I’m sure she’s fine.” He drummed his fingers on the desk he stood beside. “Maybe they are working. She was trying to help that Lost Soul in the theater. Have you talked to her?”

  Ben shook his head.

  Lucas shifted his position. He crossed then uncrossed his arms. He looked at the window, then turned and looked down the hallway. He seemed uneasy.

  “Not yet,” Ben admitted. “I thought you might know where she is.”

  Lucas fidgeted slightly, leaning first one way, then the other. “It’s strange that both she and Christian are missing.”

  “Yeah,” Ben agreed. “It is.”

  “You should go to the theater to see if you can find that Lost Soul… Rose. Maybe she can tell you where Sam is.”

  Ben nodded. He knew Lucas didn’t like to leave his human woman Esme alone, but something didn’t seem right. Lucas hadn’t offered to help look for Sam. He hadn’t offered any type of help. Sam was his friend. Ben mentally shook himself. Maybe he was reading too much into it. “I’ll head over to the theater. Just let me know if you see her.”

  Lucas nodded. “Of course.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Ben fazed to the theater lobby. He had been at the theater before to speak to Rose, so he was familiar with the layout and could faze there.

  He looked at his hands, clenched and unclenched them. It was amazing how normal he felt when just a few minutes ago he was too weak to faze anywhere. The regeneration sickness was completely gone. Ben had to admit that Damien’s energy was super charged, super strong. It had cured him immediately. Faster than a regeneration chair could have.

  Ben walked down the lobby of the theater, past the concession stands, past the doors to the theater. “Rose?” he called. Rose had not been very patient, or understanding, when he had spoken with her last. She was bordering on psychotically angry. Had she Changed? Ben looked around. “Rose?”

  If he couldn’t find Rose, Ben’s next stop would be his friend, Eugene. Eugene was a brilliant techno geek. He had made Sam the car she drove, the cell phones they used. He was a good friend of theirs, but Sam and Eugene had a falling out over Damien. Even so, Ben knew Eugene would help him find Sam. Maybe he had tracked her somewhere. Or maybe he could tell Ben where to start looking. Ben sighed.

  “Don’t look so sad, Ben.”

  Ben whirled. An elderly Soul in a brown sweater stood near one of the theater doors. It was Daniel, the leader of the group of Lost Souls that he and Sam used to part of. Before their disagreement on how to fight the Changed led to Sam, Ben and Christian making a go of it on their own. Six other Souls stood around Daniel; some of their faces were familiar, some were not. Prickles raced along Ben’s neck. “What are you doing here, Daniel?”

  Daniel pushed his glasses up on his nose. “Looking for you.”

  How had Daniel known he would be here? “What do you want?”

  “I want to talk to you.”

  Ben’s eyes narrowed. He took a step forward. “Where’s Sam?”

  Daniel grimaced and scratched his balding head. “I tried to talk to her earlier, but you know how she is.”

  “Where is she?”

  Daniel lowered his arms and stared at Ben, his face a blank mask. “We should talk about what you did to the Changed, Ben.”

  Ben clenched his teeth. “We tried to talk to you about that earlier and you didn’t want to talk. You put us in cages.”

  “You know we like to keep order and a level of discipline amongst the Souls. We can’t have everyone running around doing whatever they like. It would cause dissension and, well, chaos.”

  Ben stared at him for a long moment. Daniel was having trouble keeping the Souls in line. That’s why he wanted to talk. Maybe he needed to punish Sam, Christian and him to set an example. “You don’t have any intention of talking. You want to… What? Lock me up? Is that what you did to Sam?”

  “Ben,” Daniel said, “you’ve always been the calm one. The rational one. You and Sam are old Souls. You know what happens to a society if rules are not obeyed.”

  “I didn’t know this was a dictatorship. You wouldn’t listen to us. The humans need to be saved. They’re not cattle to slaughter.”

  “You have to look at the bigger picture. If we don’t stop the Changed, then we’ll have more catastrophes like nine eleven on our hands. One human life versus thousands of human lives? Surely you can see the larger picture.”

  The other Souls began to move out, slowly inching into a circle around him.

  Ben watched them out of the corner of his eye, but kept his gaze on Daniel. “You don’t want us to blast the Changed anymore. You don’t want us to save the humans.”

  “No. Not this way.”

  “Why?!”

  “As I’ve said before, there are rules to be followed.”

  “Outdated rules. We found a better way. Sam did. She was right. You have no intention of talking to us. You want to lock us up. Keep us quiet.”

  “Ben. You are being too emotional. You sound like Sam.” Daniel signaled to the other Souls with his hand.

  The six Souls started to close the circle, started to move toward Ben.

  “You don’t like when Souls think for themselves,” Ben said, slowly backing away from them.

  “I don’t like when Souls disrupt the natural order.”

  “Whose natural order? Yours?”

  Two of the Souls, one with perfect dark hair and another with curly hair, fazed to his side.

  Ben fazed away from them. “I don’t want to fight,” Ben announced, putting his hands up. “All I want is to find Sam.”

  “We don’t want to fight you either, Ben,” Daniel said. “So give yourself up. Make this easy.”

  Ben knew talking to Daniel was useless. Daniel would always be in favor of the old ways. He would never want to modify the way he killed the Changed. But saving even one human life was worth doing it a different way. “You were human once. I would have thought you’d recognize the value of humans. Of any living thing.”

  “I’m disappointed in you, Ben. Of all the Souls I thought you would have seen the value of following rules.”

  Movement caught Ben’s gaze. He recognized this Soul. It was Brett. The man fazed and then the others disappeared one after another.

  They were quick, trained well. The curly haired Soul and the dark haired Soul appeared beside him, grabbing his arms.

  Ben fazed to the other side of the room, taking the two Souls with him through the faze. And it was a good thing. Three Souls appeared where he had just been. The two Souls holding his arms started to drag him toward Daniel.

  Ben leaned forward and reared back, swiping his foot around at the curly haired Soul’s feet. His balance lost, the curly haired Soul loosened his grip enough for Ben to pull his arm free and deliver a blow to the dark haired Soul’s jaw.

  When he staggered back, Ben ducked in time to avoid the lunge of a third Soul. Before Ben could faze, a Soul tackled him from behind. There were so many of them. He couldn’t get a moment to faze. He knew he was in trouble when one Soul held his feet and another jumped on him from behind, pushing his face into the carpet. Even were he to faze, it wouldn’t get him out of the fight, it would just drag the other Souls through the faze with him. He grimaced and lifted his head to see two Souls moving forward holding something that looked like a net between them.

  A jolt of pain flared through Ben’s back, sucking at his energy, pulling it out of him and weakening him.

  It all happened so fast Ben could barely see it. He felt a Soul on top of him, holding him down with a knee to his back. In the next moment, he was gone. The pain disappeared with the Soul. Then, the Soul holding his feet disappeared.

  Finding himself free, Ben slowly turned over. He caught blurs of movement. The curly haired Soul standing not two feet away from him looked wildly around. He suddenly disappeared. One of the two Souls holding the net dropped it and swung at something before he vanished. Then the other one was gone and the net fell to floor.<
br />
  Finally, Daniel himself disappeared.

  Instantly, Damien stood before him, inspecting the net. “I couldn’t place what the energy was, but this was it. An iron net.” He shook his head in disbelief and stood. He fazed to Ben’s side, holding a metallic gun like device. “Daniel really doesn’t like you.”

  Ben pushed himself to his feet, the residual agony from the jolt fading. “Is that what he jammed into my back?” He rubbed his side where it still ached. “He used it on Sam, too.”

  Damien glared at the gun, his jaw tightened, his fist clenching around the metal. “Interesting gadget. Useless, really. But an interesting idea.”

  Ben looked around. “Where’d they go?”

  “Daniel fazed out as I disrupted the rest of his minions.”

  Ben had never seen anything like what Damien had just done. He had barely been able to follow him with his eyes. “How’d you do that? It was so fast.”

  Damien nodded. “Yes. It was.” He glanced around the theater, as if searching. “We shouldn’t stay here much longer. They’ll be back. And with more of Daniel’s thugs.” He walked over to an area nearby and bent to pick something up off of the carpet. He went back to Ben’s side and handed it to him. “I found this here.”

  Ben inspected it. He had seen it before. It was a small, thin square of iron. It looked like the same one that had prevented Sam from fazing in her first battle with Daniel. “Iron.”

  “There was another confrontation here.”

  “You think Daniel grabbed Sam here?”

  Damien’s jaw clenched. “Maybe. Maybe Daniel fought this Rose here.”

  Ben looked at Damien. “Have you looked for her? This was her home. The theater.”