Soulguard

by Christopher Woods

  “What’s that?” she asked, her neck stretching as far as she could.

  “Stretch your neck any farther and your head might pop right off.”

  “Unh uh” she argued, but she pulled her head back down just a bit, just in case.

  I finally relented and handed her the package.

  “For me?”

  “Yeah, for you.”

  She sat down on the ground and opened the chocolates. She shoved one in her mouth and chewed happily.

  “I have to go back to Knoxville, Little Angel. The Guard is gonna train you to fight like me and the Mages are gonna train you to use the Source. You pay attention to them and learn all that you can. One of these days you won’t need anyone to protect you, You’ll protect others.”

  She looked at me wide-eyed.

  “It’s an honor to become a Soulguard, but there’s a big responsibility that goes with it. You listen to Mom and you’ll do good, ok?”

  She nodded, “Are you going to be someone else’s Angel, now?” she asked in a tiny voice.

  “I’m your Angel. No one else’s. But I still have to go help other people. There are monsters out there trying to get people and I’m going to get them.”

  She smiled brightly and hugged me, then ran back over toward Kyra, “My Angel is gonna go chase the monsters away, Mommy.”

  My mother looked at me with a smile, “You don’t need to worry about this one,” She said motioning toward the child, “She’s in good hands. You’ve done a good thing here, Son.”

  Chapter 40

  `It was my nineteenth birthday and I was trying to make sense of how Warren had doubled my money in a few short months. The man was amazing at his job.

  I don’t understand how the Mages could even have a problem with the man doing this kind of work instead of killing Demons. Sure Mages are rare, but some people are more skilled in other areas. Grimes had made more money for the Soulguard than he ever would have been worth as a Mage.

  “Warren, there’s no use trying to explain it,” I interrupted the man, “I’m a mathematical idiot. But just to be clear, you’ve doubled what I’ve given you already?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Don’t call me sir, it sounds silly.”

  “Ok sir.”

  I sighed, “Whatever you’re doing, keep it up. I’ve actually got some more to add to it. As a matter of fact, I’d like to set it up where you just receive all my pay except a couple of thousand per month. At least for the foreseeable future. Then you do what you do with it.”

  “How do you trust people so easily?”

  “I can see into your Soul, Warren. How are you gonna lie to me?”

  ***

  “Boss,” Rictor stuck his head into my office, “we got another nest. It’s up in West Virginia. It’s about a four hour drive.”

  “Ok,” I set the papers I was looking through down, “Let’s get going.”

  We left my office and went to the armory to gear up. The RRT was ready and waiting when we came out to the SUVs. Rictor and I got in the same vehicle. There were five SUVs each with four passengers except ours had six. The rear of each vehicle was crammed with weapons and body armor.

  “You gonna try to control yourself this time, Boss,” Rictor asked with a grin, “Leave a few for the rest of us.”

  My face turned a little red. I’d been really wired up the first time I got to kill Demons. I would try to control the rage inside me a little better this time. Maybe I wouldn’t freak out the Guards this time. Prada looks at me funny every time I see her.

  “What you want to listen to on the radio, Boss?” Jacobs asked innocently and Rictor groaned.

  “It just so happens I have some Drowning Pool here,” I answered and passed my MP3 player to the front.

  “It’s no wonder you’re so damn ready to fight,” muttered Rictor, “The shit you listen to would drive a sane person nuts.”

  I laughed and Jacobs said, “By the time we get there, you’ll all be aching to kill something.”

  I leaned back in my seat and closed my eyes as the speakers began to rumble. Jacobs was the only Guard on our base who liked the same music as I do and it tickles him when he gets to rub their noses in it.

  Four hours of DJ Jacobs’ music selections and the others would have gladly strung both of us up by our heels. But we were all sensing the Demons by then and the aggression could be sent in a safer direction. I’d been sensing them for hours but I didn’t bring it up. No need in freaking’ my guys out before we ever got there.

  “Feels like a lot of em,” Tyler, the driver, said.

  “They’re down deep, too,” I said, “Nick said something about a coal mine?”

  “Yeah,” Rictor said, “Old abandoned coal mine. One way in, one way out.”

  We pulled in behind the patrollers SUV and exited the vehicle. Jacobs opened the rear hatch and started handing out gear. I donned my body armor and the harness that holds my swords to my back.

  “Welcome to the party,” Rachel Corey said as she walked out of the darkness, “They’re down in a deep assed shaft right inside the entrance.”

  An idea began forming in my mind, I didn’t like it very much. My rage had started building the second I felt their presence and I’d been stewing for several hours.

  As we entered the front of the mine I looked deep into the earth with my sight and there were no human Souls down in the bottom of that shaft but there were hundreds of Demons.

  I sighed in disappointment.

  “What?” Rictor asked.

  I ran my hand across my face and beat down some of the rage trying to break out, “I got an idea, I really want to go down there and kill every last one of those damn things, but it would make more sense to kill them from here, I guess.”

  “Sure, let’s just kill em from here,” Jacobs said, “What do you want to do, stand here and throw rocks at em?”

  “Actually, yeah,” I smiled and started forming Soul fire grenade shields. I managed to make thirty-five shields without losing any shield strength. They were on the edge of the shaft. I Pulled and filled them with power. A lot of power. Lastly I Pulled and reinforced the shields farther to make them last longer once they were separated from the Source.

  “Kick em in the hole, and run like hell,” I said, “Make sure you run like hell, I put a crapload of power in these.”

  The Guards moved up and all the grenades were kicked into the hole. We all ran back out the entrance and I kept Pulling into the shields as long as I could. The shaft was over a hundred feet deep, but I managed to hold them until they reached the bottom. I cut the tendrils and a moment later, the world shook around us.

  At least that’s what it felt like, anyway. It was a small part of the world but it still shook hard enough to throw us all around some.

  “Hell Yeah!” Jacobs yelled.

  I looked down into the earth and there were no ugly black souls left alive down there.

  “They’re dead,” I said.

  “You sound so disappointed,” Rachel looked at me sadly, “Think about us, We’ve been sitting here waiting for four and a half hours just to watch you blow up a mountain.”

  I laughed and removed my gear and stuck it back in the SUV.

  “You just wait till I tell the twins how much gas you just wasted. You could have drove the Toyota and saved over a hundred dollars in fuel. You’re in so much trouble.”

  One of the other Guards said, “They got some good ski resorts up here, you know.”

  “I’m definitely not trying to explain a ski trip to the Twins,” Rictor said, “But it’s only a few miles over to the New River Gorge. I always wanted to see that bridge they have over it.”

  I slid into the back seat of the SUV we had come in, “Jacobs, how bout some Mudvayne?”

  Everyone scrambled for the other SUVs and Jacobs looked around in disappointment, “I have to drive, now?”

  Everyone had found a different SUV than ours.

  Chapter 41

  I
heard the commotion before it reached my door. I was sitting behind my desk with some of the paperwork that the Twins needed signed so we could get more supplies.

  I hate paperwork, but it’s part of the job, I guess.

  A head poked around the edge of my door. It was connected to a pretty little girl who ran in the room as soon as she saw me. She cleared my desk in a bound and landed right in my lap with her arms around my neck.

  “Angel!”

  I hugged her back and said, “Happy birthday Little Angel.”

  She turned around and froze as she saw the giant teddy bear beside the door. It was six inches taller than she was.

  “That bear’s looking at me.”

  “That’s your birthday present Little Angel.”

  She looked at it for a moment as Kharl and Kyra walked into the room. Then she looked at me, “Is it a Bearguard? It’s got a Soulstream. It’s got two Soulstreams.”

  “Go check him out.”

  She leaped from my lap, across the room and tackled the bear. The two of them rolled out into the hall and all we heard was giggling.

  Kyra sat down in one of the chairs and sighed, “Lord, that girl is a handful.”

  Kharl laughed and sat down in the other chair, “Possibly, worse than a certain person, who bounced everywhere for a year. I don’t know what his name is but his initials are Colin Rourke.”

  “What was she saying about the bear having a Soulstream?” Kyra asked.

  “I experimented a little bit and made the critter a lot tougher. She won’t tear him up that way,” I shrugged, “I interlaced a light shield into the teddy bear that makes him almost indestructible. Then I tied it to the source so it would stay that way.”

  “You say things like that as if it’s something everyone does,” Kyra laughed, “Wait till I tell Gregor.”

  I laughed, “There are several messed up bears in the armory right now that show it wasn’t an easy thing. There’s actually one in our Mini-Dome that we use for target practice. He’s solid as steel so I put one of those practice shields around him and there we go.”

  “How many bears did you have to buy?”

  “Thirty-two.”

  Kharl laughed loudly, “You don’t give up, easy. So what’s this I hear about you blowing up a mountain in West Virginia?”

  “Yeah, I think I upset some of the Guards with that. I’m not sure if it was the four and a half hour drive with no fight or the fact we listened to heavy metal all the way there that bothered them more.”

  “My bet would be the music, if you can call it that,” Kharl said.

  Lyrica poked her head in the door, “Can me and Bearguard go look around?”

  “Promise to stay out of trouble?” Kyra asked.

  “Ok,” she frowned, “I promise.”

  “Then you can look around some.”

  She turned and walked down the hallway dragging the bear.

  Kharl looked at his watch, “Her record is ten minutes.”

  “Ten minutes?”

  “Until she gets into something,” he said with a chuckle.

  After eight and a half minutes, we got up and headed out to see what she was doing. I opened my Inner eye and looked for her Soul. She was going into the Mini-Dome, which happened to be on the same level as my office.

  “This way,” I said and led the way.

  When we entered the Dome, she had Jacobs bent down listening to her, “That’s Bearguard’s brother. He fell to the dark side and I need a light sabre so I can stop him.”

  I turned to Kharl, who was looking around innocently, “Been watching Star Wars?”

  Jacobs looked at me, “Can she have a light sabre to take care of our dark side Bearguard problem?”

  I looked to Kyra and she sighed, “Practice wands, get the long daggers.”

  Jacobs headed for the rack and took down two practice wands that were about two feet long. He presented them to Lyrica with a bow.

  “Your weapons, Milady.”

  Lyrica took the wands with a giggle and looked over where she had leaned her bear against the wall, “This is how we deal with Bearguards who turn to the dark side.”

  In the next instant, she was bouncing around the other bear with her blades looking suspiciously like little green light sabers.

  “I should have fast forwarded through the scene with Yoda fighting Dooku. She bounces around more than you do.” Kharl shook his head sadly. “She’s even got Ky jumping around when they spar. It’s just not right.”

  “You’re just mad cause you can’t catch her,” Kyra said with a smile, “She’s faster than Colin was.”

  By then there was quite an audience watching from the side with us.

  “If any of you guys start showing up with light sabers, I’m making you spar with Colin,” Rictor said from behind me.

  “I’m not sparring with him,” Prada returned, “I was on the first patrol, too.”

  “What’d you do on your first patrol?” Kyra looked at me with the one eyebrow raised.

  “I got a little carried away,” I answered with a red face.

  “Carried away!?” Prada continued, “He scared those poor people so bad they wouldn’t sit near him on the bus back.”

  “I guess you sat all the way in the front for moral support?” Rictor asked.

  “Hell no, he scared me worse than them.”

  Everyone’s eyes jerked back toward Lyrica when she suddenly Pulled. She was facing the bear with her back to us, so I didn’t see exactly what she shot. The bear’s head flew straight up in the air as whatever she threw tore right through the shield. Then the lights flickered and went out as the projectile went through the shield wall, too. There must have been some wiring behind that concrete wall across from us.

  I made my personal shield flame brightly as a light source to find Lyrica standing with her head cocked to the side.

  “Oh no,” she turned to me with guilty look, “I broke it.”

  I could see fear rolling through several auras around us, but the look on her face was priceless. I began laughing and walked to her.

  I reached down and picked her up, “It’s ok, Little Angel, I broke a lot of stuff at the Academy. We’ll fix it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “What was that, anyway?”

  “Fireballs are too big,” She explained, “I can’t see around em so I squished it flat and shrunk it to Lyrica size.”

  I understood as she said it and I liked it. I was smiling and Rictor sighed, “Oh God, another one.”

  I walked out of the Dome with Lyrica whispering in my ear, “Everyone is scared of me. Why is everyone scared of me?”

  “The same reason they’re scared of me, Little Angel,” I whispered back, “Most people are scared of what they don’t understand. And not many people understand us.”

  “You’re not scared of me.”

  “That’s right, and you’re not scared of me. You never have to be scared of me, Little Angel.”

  ***

  This wasn’t the first time since we had bought our tickets to the Knoxville Fair that I wished for a camera. Kharl rolled across the floor in a bumper car being chased by a small figure in another one. Lyrica was joined by a horde of other kids in similar cars and all of them were aimed at Kharl.

  “That is a Kodak moment,” I said as I walked up behind Kyra.

  “Oh, I got pictures,” She held up her cell phone, “I’m showing them all to the Guards, too.”

  “Hehe.”

  “Are you eating again?”

  “Yeh, these things are awesome,” I raised an Italian sausage with onions, peppers, ketchup and mustard out to her, “Want one?”

  “That looks decidedly unhealthy,” she said, “I’d love one.”

  I handed the sausage to her and she bit into the end. After a moment she said, “How did you eat the crap I fixed for seventeen years without complaining?”

  “Kharl told me I was the second kid you guys tried to raise and the first only made it seven y
ears.”

  She snorted and almost choked on her sausage, “It’s all his fault, I swore after the first year of living with him that I would never cook a good meal again until he offered to make dinner just one time. He never offered and I never cooked a good meal.”

  I’d stopped chewing my sausage as she said this, “You mean to tell me, seventeen years of battery acid was because Kharl wouldn’t make dinner.”

  “You make it sound so bad when you say it that way.”

  “I have to work out every day in the Dome to keep from swelling up like a tick because of my eating habit. I just can’t stop. It’s so good. And it’s all your fault.”

  She laughed and raised the camera, “That’s a good one. The look on your face is priceless.”

  The children all caught Kharl and seven bumper cars tangled up at one end of the ring. There were squeals of joy as Kharl was cornered and brought down by the pack of youngsters. Kyra snapped another shot of them.

  “Son, thank you for bringing that little girl to me.”

  “Who else would I trust to teach her the right way to live? You and Kharl are the reason I’m here today.”

  “She’s a sweet girl,” Kyra said, “And she’s had a rough start to life. But she’s safe and now she gets to be a kid. That’s something you never had, and I’m sorry. We never were safe enough to let you have the childhood you deserved.”

  “I wouldn’t trade a minute of my childhood with you and Kharl for anything. The only thing I would have different would be Mage training and it just wasn’t possible. That’s the one thing I demanded of Gregor when I brought her to Montana.”

  “How did you manage that?”

  “I told him I taught her to stop a block and it would be better for all involved to train her,” I left out the threat that they would have to kill me first.

  “Did you?” she asked, “Teach her to stop a block?”

  “Yes I did,” I said, “But I showed her how to do it without burning down the Mages who were blocking her. It’s a matter of timing.”