by Cege Smith
“Malcom, this isn’t just my dispute. It’s everyone’s. Even now, with every soul that Renauld extracts, he is creating a creature who desires only the flesh. Our world is very soon going to be filled with monsters, and that is only part of it. We still don't know exactly what Renauld plans to do with his army of walking dead. Your daughter is our only hope.”
“You can go fly a kite. I am leaving and my daughter is coming with me. Now, I’m going to find my wife and we are going home. I’ll leave it to you and your precious Office of Souls to clean up your own mess.” Malcom turned and headed back towards the path by which they had entered.
He had only gone about twenty feet when he saw a man running toward them. It was the same man he had seen at the entrance to the garden, except now he had blood running down his face.
“You don’t want to go that way!” the man said as he passed Malcom.
The man skidded to a halt at the edge of the courtyard. “By all the Light that is good and merciful. It’s gone,” he moaned.
Malcom knew exactly how he felt.
SAMUEL
Samuel knew they didn’t have much time. He strode to Bishop’s side. The man had a dazed look on his face as he took in looked what was left of the fountain.
“Bishop, what’s going on in the compound outside the garden?”
“It’s horrible,” Bishop whispered as tears joined the blood on his face. “I was attacked by one of the acolytes. He knocked me out with a shovel. When I woke up in the garden all's I heard was screaming. I found a tiny hole in the shrub wall and I saw acolytes trying to eat other acolytes. That soulless Marius is tearing souls out of other acolytes. The small soulless with him seems to be telling him what to do. I've read about things in Before called war zones. What's going on outside the garden; that's what I think one of those would look like.”
Samuel peered over Bishop’s shoulder and saw Malcom standing there looking at his daughter. He couldn’t let the girl out of his sight, but he had to convince Malcom to stay with him long enough to make him understand. And the pandemonium outside should be enough.
“I know another way out of the garden,” he called to Malcom. “It's a secret passageway that was known only to me and the Head Master. We will be able to escape. I know of a safe place where we can go.”
“There’s not going to be a safe place anymore,” Bishop said, shaking his head.
“It'll be safe enough for now,” Samuel said. “Safe enough for you and your daughter. Away from the monsters that Renauld is creating. What do you say, Malcom?”
He saw Malcom look down at his daughter again. The baby was breathtakingly beautiful. Samuel knew that her soul was the purest soul that had ever been called to the fountain. It was the soul of a protector.
“I will go with you for now. To avoid putting Cameron in anymore danger,” Malcom finally said. “But as soon as things calm down, I need to try to find my wife.”
Samuel didn’t have the heart to tell him that if he did ever find his wife, it would be a very unhappy reunion. Now wasn’t the time. He had to do as the Head Master asked and hold the line of Light against the Darkness. A war had been declared.
“Good. Follow me,” he said.
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Read this excerpt from Twisted Souls, the second installment in the Twisted Souls series available for download from Amazon now!
CAMERON
She wasn’t exactly sure what drew her back to the spot day after day. Apprehension? Anticipation? Reality check? As Cameron rounded the corner of the dimly lit hallway and saw the door, she felt a small tug of disappointment that it was still closed. Of course it was closed. The only time it had ever been opened was the day they entered the underground bunker. It was one of her earliest memories.
“Quickly, before they have a chance to realize we’re alive and follow us,” Samuel said, his eyes dashing over his shoulder into the darkness behind them.
“How do you know this place is safe?” Malcolm demanded. He carried Cameron in his arms and squeezed her tightly to his chest. She felt his heart pounding against his rib cage as if it was going to burst right out. She was too young to understand what was happening, but the tension in the air caused her to whimper.
She twisted around and looked over her father’s shoulder to watch the old man following closely behind them. He looked grim, and the fresh gash across his scalp made him look ghoulish. The blood seeping from the wound mingled with dirt on his face. Even though the eyes that regarded her were friendly, he carried a shovel in his hands and looked like he was ready to fight.
It seemed like a long time before they reached the end of the concrete tunnel in near darkness. Suddenly, a massive metal door seemed to appear out of nowhere.
“What is it?” Malcolm breathed as he looked at it in wonderment.
“Safety, for now, as I promised,” Samuel said. He said a few words and the door groaned and slowly slid open far enough for them to squeeze through. “Get inside.”
The small group slipped inside and lights immediately came on to greet them. Samuel turned back to the door. Then they heard high-pitched screams—faint, but unmistakable.
“Shut it,” Malcolm said. His voice was strained.
Cameron watched as Samuel swept his hand up and the door rolled closed once more. It sealed shut with a heavy thud.
Cameron hadn’t understood anything then about what was happening around her. She had been nothing but a small child entirely dependent on the adults around her. But the safety that Samuel promised had become nothing more than a large jail cell in Cameron’s mind. The door seemed to mock her in its stoic silence. She reached her hand out to it and brushed the surface gently. She wished she had been aware enough to pay attention to the words that Samuel used that day to open it.
Slowly, she backed up from the door, counting her steps. When she reached ten, she knew without looking that she had reached the far wall that formed the back of the cramped entryway just inside the door. She let her knees buckle and she slid down the wall, landing on her butt. She drew her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them. She studied the door.
Her life, as she knew it, was stupidly simple. Eat, study, argue with her dad, and watch the door. One day, they would have to go out the door again. The idea made her heart thump wildly in her chest. But first the rest of her companions would have to be convinced of that fact. Cameron thought the whole situation was entirely unfair.
A kid shouldn’t have to grow up inside a ten-room underground bunker, no matter what Samuel said was outside. Samuel. As his face flashed through her mind, she flushed. Samuel had been someone very important in the outside world, but here in the bunker he had been her teacher. Everything she knew about the territory of Malm—its history, the sciences, art, music, literature, biology, and geology—came from Samuel. Her father had given up trying to teach her anything but mathematics himself when it became obvious that Cameron absorbed information like a sponge. Her father had been an accountant in his outside life, so he felt he was the authority on numbers.
Samuel’s position, though, seemed to overshadow her father’s. Samuel had been second-in-command as Lead Acolyte within the Office of Souls. The old Head Master had died on the day Cameron received her soul, so that made Samuel the new Head Master. Samuel told her that when they left the bunker, he would be required to call together the remnants of the Office of Souls to fight the demon known as Chim. Chim and his partner, Marius, had killed Cameron’s mother and were stealing souls wherever they went in the territory. When he wasn’t teaching Cameron, Samuel was planning for the day when he would go to war.
At least, he had been teaching Cameron. A month ago, her father had discovered Samuel telling her about the mythology of the Soul Garden. It appeared to have been the last straw for Malcolm.
“The only reason I’ve let you anywhere near my daughter was because I thought we had an agreement that you were going to keep your beliefs and unsubstantiated stories out of it. I will not have
you filling her head with any of this goddamn nonsense about destinies and the righteousness of your false god!” her father screamed at Samuel.
Cameron watched the exchange with tears glistening in her eyes. “Dad, stop! I asked Samuel to tell me.” She knew her father despised Samuel. Malcolm blamed him for her mother’s death and all the things that he believed the Office of Souls had ever done wrong that forced them into hiding in the bunker.
Samuel had stood firm under Malcolm’s onslaught and appeared to be completely calm. “She has a right to know, Malcolm. She is part of all of this just like I am. Just like you are. Just like Bishop is. There’s a reason the Light spared us.”
“Keep away from her, you twisted bastard!” Malcolm grabbed Cameron’s arm. She had tried to resist him, but his face told her that he wasn’t in any right mind where she could try to reason with him.
Cameron glanced over her shoulder at Samuel as she was yanked from the room. He watched them go with sadness in his eyes.
Cameron sighed heavily. Studying the door helped her forget and gave her something to do to pass the time. Since her father’s outburst she had tried to talk to Samuel in the dining room a few times, but her father’s eyes gleamed with rage when he found her doing so, and her father was never far away. In a bunker that only had ten rooms, it was difficult for anyone to ever be far away.
She missed talking to Samuel. He had never treated her like a kid, even when she was a kid. Her father had the best of intentions, but she knew that just seeing her caused him pain. She looked too much like her mother, Eve, and her father hadn’t finished grieving Eve’s death. He believed that Eve was still out there somewhere, waiting for him to find her and to save her. Cameron didn’t remember her mother, but she hoped it was true for her father’s sake.
“Cameron?” The words came softly around the corner from the hallway. It was about twenty-five feet from the entryway to the main living quarters, and Cameron was used to being left alone.
She stood up in surprise. Samuel’s form emerged from the shadows. Her hand strayed to her hair to smooth it and she felt butterflies in her stomach. Shortly before the blow-up with her father, Cameron had started seeing Samuel in a completely different way, and she had mixed feelings about this new development. The only person she would have been able to ask about it was Samuel, but considering it was about Samuel, it was something she was trying to reconcile on her own.
“Hi, Samuel,” she said just as softly. She looked anxiously over his shoulder, expecting to see her father come barging in to interrupt.
Samuel smiled a wry grin. He was tall and had sandy brown hair. His green eyes sparkled with a wisdom that she knew belied the age that he appeared to be. If she had just met him, she would have guessed that Samuel was just a few years older than she was, but he was actually over a hundred years old. He had told her that proximity to the Fountain of Souls offered the benefit of a slowing of the aging process.
She often wondered about this. Her own aging process had been the complete opposite. She knew that she had been about two years old the day they entered the bunker nine months ago. When she asked her father how old she was now, he guessed her age to be about eighteen. Things seemed to have slowed over the last month, but she could sense how uncomfortable her father was talking about it at all. Samuel had been trying to find out the reason for her abrupt maturation, but so far had uncovered nothing to explain it.
“I just checked. Your father is sleeping,” Samuel said, coming closer. “I wanted to speak to you for a few moments if that would be all right.”
Cameron was relieved. She didn’t want her father having a heart attack finding her and Samuel talking. She nodded.
Samuel smiled again. She felt her heart start to beat faster. The sensation of being this close to him after what seemed like an eternity was making her head spin a bit and she frowned.
“Is something wrong?” Samuel said, reaching out to touch her shoulder. She could see the concern in his eyes.
The feelings that swirled in her chest felt overwhelming and she took a step back just as his fingertips brushed her skin. The effect was electrifying and she saw his eyes widen as well. He jerked his hand away and cleared his throat.
“What is it, Samuel?” she said more curtly than she meant to. “You know my dad will kill you if he finds you talking to me.”
His eyes clouded over and he sighed. “It’s important, Cameron. I was going to talk to your dad in the morning, but things are moving faster than I’d like. Besides, I wanted to talk to you first.”
Something was wrong. Something was happening. Cameron felt shivers, but it wasn’t of fear. The tingling that had been in the back of her mind for weeks grew stronger.
“It’s time, isn’t it?” The words fell out of her mouth. She wasn’t even quite sure what they meant, but the sentiment felt right.
The corners of Samuel’s eyes tightened. “Yes. Do you remember what I told you about the day that we came here, Cameron? About what happened to you?”
Cameron didn’t know how she was supposed to forget. It had been part of their last discussion; the one her father had interrupted. Ever since Samuel explained what happened on Soul Implantation Day 3675, her dreams had been filled with fire, smoke, and death. It was the reason she rarely slept more than a couple of hours at a time anymore, preferring instead to spend her nights staring at the door. The door that stood between her and her destiny.
“I received the last soul from the Fountain of Souls before it was destroyed. It was called by the Head Master to be the champion against the darkness,” she whispered. Her lips trembled as she said the words that were burned into her mind. Her father had said that what Samuel told her was nothing more than twisted ideologies from a power-hungry organization that had tried to control the world, but Cameron knew with certainty that Samuel spoke the truth.
“What does that mean to you?” Samuel asked. He started to pace in the small space. Cameron had watched him do it many times in his office during her lessons. It was something he did when he was thinking about a complex puzzle or trying to work something out in his mind.
“How would I know?” Cameron said.
It was a discussion that made her anxious. Samuel seemed to think that she was supposed to know what to do next. In fact, she was certain that he was waiting for her to tell him what to do, like she was some kind of oracle. But she wasn’t. She was a just a girl.
“Cameron, I’ve lost communication with Outpost Alanstown, which is the last outpost at the edge of the territory. I haven't been in contact with any of the others for months. I fear that if I wait any longer, I am going to be too late,” Samuel said, slowing his pacing to watch her expression.
She didn’t know what to think. Samuel had been trying to keep tabs on the outside by communicating with the various Office of Souls outposts. But over the course of the last nine months, more of them had gone silent. She understood that this recent development was indeed bad news.
“What are we supposed to do, Samuel?” she said.
“We have to leave,” he said firmly, stopping in front of her once more. “I have a duty to the people of the territory. I hope that I didn’t make a terrible mistake by waiting for so long.”
“Why did you?” she asked, looking up into his eyes.
He grimaced and shook his head. “I had my reasons, but it sounds so callous now.”
She knew what he was going to say. Her father’s warnings were ringing in her ears. “You were waiting for me to grow up. You can say it.”
“That was before I knew you,” Samuel said as he raised his hand again to lightly touch her cheek. “I have no doubt that the Light put you here to save us, Cameron. You are...perfect.”
The butterflies in her stomach were back. Cameron saw something in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. The way he had said perfect held a note of something new, something that called out to her.
A low cough broke the moment. Samuel spun away from her with a guilty l
ook on his face. Bishop emerged from the darkness of the hallway.
“Sorry to interrupt, Head Master. I just wanted to let you know that everything that you asked for is ready.”
It was the first time that Cameron had ever heard Bishop call Samuel by anything other than his name. The title was formal and frightening. She looked at Samuel with a question.
“I’m sorry we don’t have more time, Cameron. It is urgent that I am able to assess the situation at the outpost for myself. I’d like you to come with me.”
“There’s no way my dad is going to let me go with you,” she said.
“Of course, Malcolm can join us as well but you are old enough to make your own decisions, Cameron. I'd like to avoid putting you in that situation, though, so I need your help to convince him,” he said. “Will you help me do that?”
He needed her. He believed with certainty that she was part of the solution to winning the war against Chim. Now the butterflies in her stomach were for a completely different reason. It was an enormous task. “He won’t agree. He hates you, Samuel. You and everything the Office of Souls stands for.”
“Just tell me you’ll try,” Samuel said.
In the end, she knew that she would do anything he asked. She nodded.
“Thank you, Cameron. Meet me in the dining room in ten minutes. I’ll go wake your father,” he said.
Cameron watched Samuel hurry back down the hallway. Bishop stayed. He was watching her with a frown, but his brown eyes were filled with concern. The Office of Souls’ former gardener had frightened her that first terrible day, but ever since then he had gone out of his way to be kind and good to her. She was very fond of him.
“C’mon, Cami. I’ll make us some coffee,” he said, gesturing with a thumb behind him. Only Bishop called her Cami, and she felt herself relaxing at hearing the nickname. Bishop wouldn’t let anything bad happen. He’d help mediate what was probably going to happen between Samuel and Malcolm.
