Soulguard

by Christopher Woods

  Soulguard

  By Christopher Woods

  Section 1

  GUARD

  Prologue

  Two vans raced down the private drive toward the Soulguard outpost. Kharl Jaegher winced as Kelvin Rourke gripped the arms of the seat with enough strength to crush the frames. It was likely he didn’t even notice the mangled seat arms as he practically vibrated.

  His huge hand landed lightly on Kelvin’s right shoulder and his deep voice rumbled from the back seat.

  “Almost there, Kel,” Kharl said, “I’m sure it’s just a problem with the com syst…”

  The van rounded the last bend and a horrible sound escaped Kelvin’s throat. The door exploded outward with a screech of tearing metal and Kelvin Rourke burst from his seat. He surged forward with inhuman speed, not toward the ruins of headquarters, but toward the housing located in the rear.

  Kharl was out the side door of the van nearly as quick and was closely followed by Kyra Nightwing. These two Soulguards were Kelvin’s closest friends and had served under the Mage for twenty years.

  He felt dread growing inside him as he followed his friend toward the home Kelvin shared with his wife, Rhayne. There was no way the two Guards could keep up with the Mage. They were fast, but a Mage operates on an entirely different level. And Kelvin was one of the best.

  Once again, he winced as he heard the wail from the house that Kelvin had just entered. Only one thing would have drawn such despair from Kelvin Rourke.

  He burst into the building to find the inside of the house gutted and Demon bodies and parts of Demon bodies lying everywhere. In the midst of that carnage, Kelvin knelt with his love pulled tightly to his chest. She still lived, but Kharl could see the wounds. Not even a Soulguard lives with wounds so grievous. She screamed once in agony and gave birth to the child that had been in the process of being born as the Demons attacked. Rhayne Rourke had killed all of the Demons in the house while in labor.

  Her dying scream was followed by the first scream of her child.

  “Oh God, no,” Kyra gasped. She was at the side of Kelvin in a split second.

  Kelvin gently eased his wife’s body to the ground and reached down to raise his blood-soaked son from the carnage where he lay. With a flick of a finger and a small gout of flame, he severed the umbilical cord and stood. He looked down once more in utter despair.

  Kharl remembered the Demon they had cornered in Denver. It had laughed at them and said in barely understandable English, “You are too late, man-thing, the bloodline ends with your mate.”

  If it was a blood line they were trying to end, they had failed. Kelvin’s son would survive. Kharl’s shoulders slumped as Kel turned to Kyra and placed his son in her arms.

  “You know what I have to do now,” he said. “You both heard what it said. No one can know he survived, and I mean no one.”

  Kel looked at Kharl, “I need you two to keep him safe.”

  He looked once more at his dead wife, “She wanted to name him after my father, I wanted to name him after hers. He’ll just have to carry both now. Colin Artemus Rourke.”

  Kelvin leaned down and kissed his son’s tiny head and turned away with tears in his eyes.

  “You can feel the power in him already. He’ll be a strong Mage. Train him well,” he said as he walked by his friends toward the gaping hole in the side of the house, “He’ll need it if they ever find out he lives.”

  “We’ll keep him safe, Kel,” Kharl said. He watched sadly as his friend of twenty years walked out of the house, flames beginning to roll across his body. He was glowing with Soulfire as he launched himself northward toward what could only be described as a feeling of wrongness. This is the feeling a Soulguard has learned means the presence of Demons. The feeling was weak because of the distance as the Demons were returning to their nest.

  On this day, Kelvin Rourke’s last, a path of death and destruction that shook the Soulguard to its core left him known as The Demonkiller.

  Chapter 1

  “Colin Smith!”

  I jerked in my seat at the annoying voice of the bane of my existence, Miss Haynes, the Geometry teacher.

  “Am I boring you?” the nasal, squeaky voice continued, “Perhaps you should come to the board and show the class how to write this formula correctly.”

  How someone manages to have a nasal and squeaky voice at the same time is something I’ve wondered for some time but she had managed it. I wondered if she had actually trained herself to talk in the most annoying way imaginable on purpose.

  “It’s a sad day when a student can graduate with no mathematical skill whatsoever. Is there anything that you excel at, Mr. Smith?” she was tapping her pointer in her other hand as she spoke, “Because it certainly isn’t geometry. A student who does so poorly at this subject should pay a bit more attention in class.”

  This was a typical day in Miss Haynes’ classroom. Of course, it wasn’t always me she would single out and torment, but I guess this was just my day. Hell of a way to treat a Soulguard, defender of humanity. Even if I wasn’t an official Soulguard yet, that training couldn’t even start until I was eighteen. My adoptive parents Kharl and Kyra had, unofficially, been training me since the day I learned to walk.

  Miss Haynes was a short, precise woman whose clothes were always perfect and her hair pulled back in a bun. She was the sister of the Headmaster of Morndel Academy which gave her license to treat people as she pleased. She loved to make anyone seem small to the rest of the classroom. I think she was just a small-minded person with a mean streak due to her lack of success in her own life. But that was just my opinion. I’d never actually looked into her aura to see if this was true because I really didn’t care to know any more about her.

  That’s one of my gifts, the ability to look into another person’s Soul, or aura, whichever a person chooses to call it. And I can see their Soulstream, the link from every living thing on the planet and the massive well of life force just below the surface of the world.

  Her tirade went on for a few more minutes and I looked embarrassed enough for her to move on to another victim. I actually felt that I might have gotten off easy this time. She’d not even said a word about my low breeding or being the son of a construction worker. That’s what she called Kharl. If she had known my real lineage, she probably would have keeled over on the spot.

  As her attention swept on away from me, I looked around a bit to see everyone looking straight ahead trying not to give the crazy woman an excuse to start on any of them. The new girl, Mattie, sat there shaking her head slowly with a confused look on her face.

  “Is there a problem, Matilda Riordan?”

  I could see Mattie’s teeth grinding as she returned, “That’s Mattie, and there’s no problem.”

  “I’m sorry, Matilda, but we don’t use informal names in this school. We are a prestigious institution and we are always proper and formal. Perhaps you are from a low-bred family like Colin. His father is a construction worker.”

  The last two words were spat out in distaste. I winced as her attention was once again on me. God, this woman is bitter, I thought. Could be why she’s a Miss instead of Mrs. Luckily the bell went off and everyone bolted for the door.

  “Walk like ladies and gentlemen! You are not a herd of cattle! Although some of you have less breeding.” The last sentence was muttered but it was still loud enough for most of us to hear.

  As I said, bane of my existence.

  ***

  As it turned out, there was something I excelled at, PE was my favorite course. Although I couldn’t actually show anyone, due to the circumstances I lived with.

  Kharl taught me from the moment he had revealed the truth to me as a young child that I needed to fit somewhere in the middle of the
crowd. I couldn’t draw any attention to myself if it could be helped. The mysteries of the Soulguard were a tightly kept secret. I didn’t care for it, but it was the sensible thing to do.

  “Try to keep up, Colon!” yelled my friend, Trent, as he ran past me on the track.

  Trent was one of the football players. He was big and fast and all the girls loved him. He was over six feet tall and all muscle with blond hair and blue eyes. Girls turned to Jell-O when he was near and it pissed me off to no end.

  If it weren’t for my need to be discrete, I could have left him in the dust in the blink of an eye. There were days when it was hard not to do just that.

  “That’s Colin, not Colon, you ass,” I returned, “Piss off.”

  Trent always messed with me, and I actually enjoyed it. He was a harmless, good natured guy, even though he was pretty and made the girls turn to goo.

  I had a right to be a bit jealous. I’m about five feet and eight inches tall with muddy brown hair and green eyes. I'm really not that much to look at and since no one actually knew what I could do, no one really noticed me.

  I looked to the left to find Mattie Riordan jogging along beside me. I huffed as I noticed what part of Trent she was looking at and her face turned red.

  “Hi there, Mattie, or is it Matilda?”

  She looked at me, evilly, “Call me Matilda again and I’ll stab you.”

  “I give up,” I chuckled and raised my hands in surrender, “Peace?”

  “I suppose,” she returned, “but only cause that psycho really gave you a hard time earlier.”

  “I’m used to it, the woman is a nut.”

  “So, what’s with the construction worker comments?” she asked.

  “Dad’s a general contractor,” I answered, “He built several of the skyscrapers in Detroit and makes a lot of money from it and I think she’s probably jealous.”

  “Or she could just be an ass.”

  “True,” I agreed.

  Coach Newman blew the whistle and we all slowed to a walk returning to the locker rooms. Mattie waved and joined the girls heading in.

  Mattie was a tiny girl, maybe five feet tall, slim, but very shapely as well. She had black curly hair and the best word I could use to describe her would be cute.

  “Good luck with that, Colon,” Trent walked up beside me and chuckled.

  “How long is that name gonna stick around,” I sighed, “I mean, really, can’t you come up with something better?”

  “I don’t think there is a better one, Col,” he said with a short laugh, “I think I’d shoot my parents if they named me something like that.”

  Sometimes I agreed with Trent on that subject, but I couldn’t even ask why they would saddle a kid with a name like Colin. I knew who my real parents were.

  I’ve actually witnessed the whole incident through Kharl’s memories, another of my unique gifts. I can see into someone’s memories as they remember them. Emotion and memory both flow across the aura while they are happening, I don’t think I can actually read minds or anything. Sometimes I wish I hadn’t looked at that one.

  Reading emotion and memories from the Soul is not as easy as it sounds. The emotions are easy enough to see by the color and patterns flowing through a person’s Soul. But it took quite a few years to actually interpret the various combinations.

  Memories, on the other hand flicker through a person’s Soul so quickly, it takes a great deal of focus to actually read them. The more a person is focused on said memory, the clearer and slower it flows through. They always seem to flow right across the front of the face. It’s somewhat disconcerting to a person to have someone looking them in the eye with the amount of focus it takes to read those memories.

  Kyra says it’s rude and that I shouldn’t invade another’s privacy without permission. I avoid it under most circumstances.

  “At least it’s better than my middle name,” I said, “Artemus. Jeez, what were they thinking?”

  Trent laughed, “Really, it’s Artemus?”

  “Shhh, don’t tell anyone.”

  He laughed again and changed the subject, “I saw your painting in Miss Conley's class. What’s up with that?”

  This year, in art class, we were expressing ourselves with oil paint. That’s how Miss Conley had described it. She always talked about expression and showing the world our true selves through art.

  I think the woman took too many hallucinogens in her younger years. She was pretty flaky. No one was supposed to have seen the other students work yet. But, apparently, Trent even has a way with flaky, hippie girls.

  “What about it?”

  “Dude, its morbid,” he continued, “that thing you painted is just plain scary. Sometimes I worry about you, man.”

  I had seen a Demon while witnessing some of Kharl’s memories, and it had stayed in my head ever since. These creatures are the reason the Soulguard exist. They are evil creatures that enter our dimension from another to capture or slaughter and eat people.

  I painted one of them in art class, although I probably shouldn’t have. It was a humanoid with long legs and long arms. The beast was extremely muscular and its head had elongated jaws with huge, razor sharp teeth. Its hands had talons on the ends of the fingers that looked wicked sharp. The skin was scaled and almost black, shining with reflected light in places. All in all, it was a scary beast. I’m not sure what possessed me to paint it, though.

  “It’s nothing, man, I just saw something like it on a book cover,” I answered, “Pretty freaky, huh?”

  “Sometimes you’re just weird, dude,” He said, as he walked toward his locker shaking his head.

  The rest of the morning was pretty normal for me, although I did watch for Mattie. We apparently didn’t have any more classes together before lunch, maybe I’d get to talk to her then. I enjoyed the small bit of conversation we had shared, and it wasn’t like I got to speak with pretty girls very often anyway.

  I’d tried to talk to Haley Scott once and she looked at me like I was a bug or something. Really, what was I doing here? Privacy is important to my circumstance but most of the kids and teachers were snobs and very hard to get close to. Maybe, that was the reason. It left me less of an excuse to slip up with the truth about my family. But it does make for a lonely time.

  The only person who would actually talk to me was Trent. He had no qualms about it, he just didn’t give a damn what everyone thought and went his own way. He could fit in with any crowd here and no one would think different of him.

  Maybe I was a little jealous of the big guy. But I just couldn’t help but like him. He was the Golden Boy.

  Chapter 2

  I had already eaten my lunch and headed to my normal perch on the wall in front of the cafeteria. I liked to sit there and watch people. Most would see a young man girl watching. They would only be half right. I opened my Inner eye, turning on my ability to see the Souls around me.

  As a child, I couldn’t turn my ability off and on. It was very disconcerting to people to be studied so deeply by a three year old. I learned to, sort of, push the ability aside and see like an ordinary person. Or fairly close to that anyway. But I still like to just watch people with my Sight. It’s soothing.

  The Soul is truly a beautiful thing. I look past the body to the energy flows inside, every color imaginable swirling around inside of each and every one of them.

  Occasionally I would see an ugly Soul and these would be truly evil people. I’d rarely seen one of these Souls at the school though. I’d seen a few in some of my few trips into Detroit with Kharl.

  I was focused on a really beautiful one when someone coughed next to me to get my attention. I turned and my mouth dropped open. Mattie stood beside me and I saw her Soulstream.

  When I see a Soulstream, they all lead from the ground, up and around the person a few times, and then into them at the solar plexus. It’s not a lie when some people say that you find your center there, it literally is the center of your life-force.

&nb
sp; A Soulguard’s Soulstream enters the solar plexus and exits his back then loops back into him, enhancing him well past a normal human. Then it loops back out again to enter at a different point and loops again, and so on. A Soulguard’s aura looks like a huge knot wrapped around him. Mine was woven a bit different than a Soulguard’s knot but I could be much more precise since I could actually see it.

  I was looking at the knotted Soulstream of a Soulguard when I looked at Mattie.

  “Now that’s how a girl likes to be looked at,” she remarked.

  “You’re...”

  “Beautiful, awesome, dead sexy,” she laughed.

  “Soulguard.”

  It just fell out. I knew I shouldn’t have said it but I could see the knot of her Soulstream. I could see the shimmer of her privacy shield and...And I’m just a big dumbass sometimes. Her privacy shield flamed as she tried to strengthen it, thinking I had felt her power. Anyone can feel the enhanced Soul of a Soulguard without this shield that every one of us is taught to form. I read fear, worry and a good bit of anger in her aura. All building up to fight or flight.

  “Wait, me too.”

  I reached inside myself with my mind and turned my shield off so she could feel my Soulstream, then I turned it back on. She was backing away from me. I read even more fear in her aura. I caught flashes of a memory of a man telling her to avoid any contact with the Guard till she was eighteen, especially the Mages.

  “Soulmage,” she stammered, and then fear was replaced with anger. Anger at me and especially anger at herself for being afraid. Her hand was twitching and I felt that she was going for a weapon soon.

  “Just wait, I’m not a Mage yet. I’ve only had Soulguard training. I’m not your enemy, I think we're actually in the same boat. Early training isn’t supposed to happen. Kharl and Kyra warned me...I wish sometimes I’d listen...Don’t tell anyone, ever, they say...” I was babbling and I knew it, so I shut up.

  I could see a budding astonishment in her aura as I said those two names. God I’m stupid.