The Damned and The Pure Series: Books 1-4 (The Damned and The Pure Series Box Set)

by J. D. Stonebridge

  His claim caught everyone’s attention. All turned to him with curious faces, and Jenny asked, “How?”

  David smiled, exhilarated about his plan. He stood abruptly from his seat and approached Caelum. But before he could speak his request, Caelum saw him pull away with hesitation. “I— Um,” David began, uncertain what to say. “Can you send me back to…well.”

  Caelum eyed him lazily and said, “You’re making it too obvious when you’re being that awkward about it.” He grabbed David by the collar of his shirt and pulled him towards the door. David yelped as he regained his balance and marched away with Caelum, telling the rest that they would be back soon before the door closed behind them. The remaining occupants of the library looked at each other, confused by what had happened.

  Moments later, Caelum and David returned with David carrying a duffel bag. He dumped the contents of the bag on the table: a leather covered spell book, a clear glass ball, a few vials with colored liquid, and a gilded bowl. The rest watched carefully as David prepared the items. He started with flipping the pages of the book, mumbling to himself as he did. He checked the vials he’d carried and poured the contents of two of them into the gilded bowl. Picking up the bowl, he mixed the odd liquids together while he explained.

  “Okay, I’ve been spending way too much time studying souls, so I have this theory that might work.”

  “Might?” Jenny repeated with a doubtful look.

  “Have faith, my sister,” David said. He fished out a match from his pocket and lit it. The flame reflected an orange glow on his face, and he dropped the lit match in the bowl. The liquid was set ablaze, roaring with fire that rose high from the bowl. He turned to Enoch next and said, “Okay, think of this flame as a synthetic Holy Fire.”

  “What?” Jenny asked in disbelief.

  David continued. “It has nearly the same effect as Holy Fire but very minute. It cannot purify a soul, but it can purify the trace, or essence, whatever you call it.” He offered the bowl to Enoch and asked, “I take it that what you sense are the traces of the souls on the planet. But you cannot focus on just one soul because you’re sensing each and every one of them.”

  Enoch nodded, perplexed by what the boy was telling him.

  “Well, if we can purify the trace you’re sensing, even for just a moment, perhaps we can locate that one soul by scrying,” David finished.

  “Oh,” Ariel exclaimed. “I remember Mikaela doing something such as this.”

  The mention of the name brought down the mood for David, but he shook off the feeling and continued to nudge the bowl to Enoch. “Please?”

  Enoch looked at the fire that roared in the bowl. His brown eyes reflected the red and orange of the flames. He looked up at David again who gave him an encouraging smile.

  “Well, here goes,” Enoch said. He rolled up the sleeves of his coat and set his hands to hover the fire. The flames licked at his palm as he closed his eyes, immune to the pain of burning. He felt all the souls he could sense, feeling all their emotions and energies around the world. But he focused on only one: the oldest mortal soul that walked these lands. Slowly, all the other souls faded like candles dimming until the last shone brightly in the dark.

  When it was done, Enoch opened his eyes and gave a nod to David. David handed him the glass ball and the angel held it between his palms. Enoch directed all his energy to the ball and began to see lands and seas speeding away from under his closed eyes. He searched for the trace of the ancient mortal soul until he saw the flickering colored lights against the setting sun.

  “I know where he is,” Enoch announced.

  In spite of all that has happened in the past weeks, many humans still chose to spend their days entertaining themselves. The establishment that catered to the tourists would admit that their customers were fewer than the average number that visited them during the nearing holiday. Tourists and locals went about their days in that late afternoon, passing the street where an angel, a demon, and a human walked side by side.

  “Are you sure this is where that immortal guy is?” David asked over his shoulder.

  “It was your technique we used to help Enoch track him down, remember?” Caelum shot back.

  David frowned, continuing the argument in his mind. But seriously, Las Vegas?

  The voice of a man preaching about God and Heaven reached their ears. His voice was old and rough, but the message he tried to convey was clear.

  “Spare yourself from the sins!” he bellowed. “In the numbered days of humanity, love thyself and thy family. Let our Father into thy hearts!”

  All who walked by turned a blind eye to the man who wore a graying coat and scarf that covered half his face. Ignored, the man still continued his sermon with passion. “Open thy eyes to the truth of our land. It is not sin that shall save thee from the days of worry and troubles. It is—”

  He stopped mid-sentence, turning to face the three that stood listening to him. The angel with long black hair, the tall demon in a blue suit, and the lanky human stared curiously at him. He smiled at them as if seeing old friends.

  “Ah, I’ve been waiting for you.”

  Chapter Eight: A Reunion without One

  The angel, the demon, and the human who looked at the preacher exchanged confused looks. None of them expected a welcome from the man. He smiled at them genuinely, and Caelum wondered if he truly had expected them or if he was crazed. Wouldn’t be so surprising if he was a little off, to be honest.

  The angel, however, considered something else. Ariel peered into the man’s vessel to see the soul inside. Without a doubt, it was mortal like David’s. But it was also something else as well. The soul inside the man constantly replenished itself, even though the man was not at rest nor consuming nutrition.

  That is impossible. She looked around the street, seeing mortals minding their own and peered into their souls. What she saw in them was how a mortal soul should behave, wavering at each action the vessel took. Looking back to the soul inside the man in graying clothes, it did have every element of a mortal soul except for the fact that it did not consume energy.

  “Are you—?” Ariel began her question, but she was stopped by the man placing his index finger over his lips.

  “Shh…” he told her. “It’s a lovely day here. Would be bad if flying people suddenly ruined the party for these fellows,” he said, gesturing to the passersby. He bent to pick up the bag next to his feet and waved for them to follow him. “Come now, let’s not make ourselves some tourist attraction.”

  David eyed Caelum and Ariel questioningly, waiting for their decision. Caelum sighed heavily and said, “Well, come now. Do what the homeless man says.” He followed the man, with Ariel and David close behind.

  The man walked with uneven steps, humming a tune as he did. Caelum studied his peculiar mannerisms. He behaved as one who never had a care in the world. They passed streets that brimmed with sins that tempted the demon to manipulate, yet he couldn’t divert his attention from the man they were following. Is this truly the so-called immortal man?

  “The name is Scott, by the way,” he called back to them. “At least, that’s the name I go by right now. I have to change it every now and then, lest I get bored.”

  “Scott, eh?” Caelum repeated.

  Scott turned on his heel to face the demon and began to walk backwards. “Yes, I like a name that’s easy to remember. I tend to forget them a lot.”

  “What’s your real name, then?” David was curious.

  Scott raised a brow at him. “What did I just say?” he asked David sarcastically. He turned around again to face the road before him. “I don’t remember, for the love of me. Like I don’t remember your names even though I knew you three would be coming.”

  “You knew we were coming?” Ariel asked.

  “Do I really have to repeat everything I say?” Scott groaned. He scratched his head vigorously and continued. “See here, things don’t happen out of nowhere. You know that cliché saying, right? T
hings happen for a reason? Well, one reason is because it has been all planned out! Like you plan to study for a test tomorrow; but you can’t say that you just happened to pass that test, right? Or you did study but you lost sleep, then the reason you failed your test is because you lacked focus due to fatigue. Now, these things that have been happening for a while now, they were all planned a long time ago!”

  “So you know what’s going to happen?” David asked. “How it all ends?”

  “Ah ah ah!” Scott waved a finger. “No spoilers! Surprises are where all the fun is!”

  “For someone who knows the biggest spoiler in the universe, you seem to be having fun,” Caelum pointed out.

  Scott turned around again to face the demon and beamed at him. “I knew I’d like you!” he exclaimed before wheeling back around.

  Caelum had an amused look when he turned to Ariel and David. “He likes me,” he proudly proclaimed

  “That makes one of us,” David said, wiping the smile off the demon’s face.

  Their guide turned the corner at W. Charleston Boulevard, and David found himself wondering how they’d arrived at the residential areas of the city when minutes before, they’d been surrounded by the casinos and bars. “Are we at the edge of the city already?”

  “Why, yes,” Scott said.

  “But we were just—”

  “I prefer my residence to be away from all the ruckus of this city,” Scott said, turning again at a corner that David saw was supposed to lead them to Plaza Centre Drive. But instead, he was met with a vast deserted place with crimson rock formations glowing against the setting sun. He looked around in his confusion, seeing nothing but the same road and empty space stretching behind him rather than the houses he’d seen seconds before.

  “Wha—”

  “Here we are!” Scott announced. He climbed over a set of rocks. Caelum followed quickly, offering his hand to Ariel as she climbed up. Caelum stretched out his hand for David as well, but the young man chose to hoist himself up on his own. When he reached the top, he was met with a poorly made shack built against a mountain.

  “This is where the immortal man lives?” David said in hushed doubt.

  “Now, now. Don’t be so judgmental,” Caelum told him. “Be respectful to your elder, at least.”

  David eyed him questioningly. “A demon is giving me advice on good manners.”

  Caelum smiled. “Things change,” he simply said before turning back to their destination. Scott opened the fragile door to let Ariel in while Caelum followed. David was still skeptical of the way the place looked, but he was left with no choice but to move forward.

  Meeting Scott’s smiling face, David ducked his head to enter the shack expecting to find Caelum and Ariel in a cramped space. Instead, he entered a cozy home with redwood furnishings, a lofty couch at the center, and a beige patterned rug underneath it. Two doors stood opposite the front door while a narrow door was to David’s right. He blinked twice, surprised at what he was seeing.

  “Well, to be fair, this isn’t the first room that looked a lot smaller from the outside,” Caelum said.

  “I—” David looked at him in shock. “Wait, you watch that too?”

  “Oh, please, please. Make yourself at home,” Scott offered. “Just try not to wake the other person I’ve taken in my care. I believe she’s slumbering.”

  “She?” Caelum eyed him teasingly. “You have a woman in here?”

  “David!” a woman’s voice shouted. All turned to the opened door behind them where a woman with short brown hair stood wide-eyed. She wore a shirt and jeans with a fading yellow pashmina wrapped around her. She looked to be in her late thirties, though her sunken cheeks and the dark circles under her eyes made her seem older than she was.

  Caelum opened his lips to ask who she was, but David answered his unspoken question for him. “Mom!” David rushed to the woman, holding her by the shoulders. “Mom! What happened to you?” he demanded. Before the woman could speak, David turned to Scott and yelled, “What did you do to her?”

  “Dave, calm down!” his mother admonished. “This man. He saved me, okay? He protected me.”

  David turned to her. “What?”

  “Ah, what has fate brought us today?” Scott mused. “This is your son then, Ann Marie? Such a coincidence that he is the one I was fated to meet.”

  “Mom,” David looked at his mother. “What happened? What are you doing here? I thought you and Dad were going back to Vermont.”

  Upon his last sentence, his mother looked away. Tears brimmed in the corners of her eyes and her lips pursed. David could not ignore the expression on her face; the sadness and regret in them were enough to make him understand what had happened before she said it.

  “David.” Ann’s voice was controlled, though it quivered slightly with her emotions. “Dave, your dad, he’s dead.”

  The words hung heavily in the air. Even Caelum and Ariel fell silent at the revelation. David’s eyes were wide and his lips were parted; his mind refused to accept what his mother had just told him. His father, who he hadn’t seen for nearly a year now, was often at odds with him. David had been a loyal son who’d followed his parents’ every word before and took care of his sister. But things had changed when David got tired of what they did. Who would have thought that the last moment he shared with his father ended with him walking out on his family?

  Ann led David to the couch, massaging his arm as she told the story. “Your dad and I… We were about to go back to the house when we heard what happened to Jenny. But something— I don’t know what exactly, but something caught your father’s attention. He kept saying we have to go back, that we have to check something in Virginia and I couldn’t stop him. He was threatening to go by himself.” Ann stifled her sobs. “So I went with him, I had no other choice. But he still wouldn’t say what he wanted to see, so I grew suspicious. That’s when I noticed the pain in my hands.”

  Ann slipped her hands from David’s arm and began to massage her right wrist. “I guess all the confusion and adrenaline distracted me. I didn’t notice my charm bracelet has been warning me.”

  David eyed the spot on his mother’s wrist and remembered the same charm bracelet Jenny had. “Your father was possessed by a demon,” Ann continued. “And it was leading me somewhere. As soon as it noticed that I had discovered him, the demon attacked me along with a few others.”

  “Why did they attack you?” Caelum asked, concerned.

  Ann fluttered her eyes to Caelum and said, “I don’t know. They said something about the sacred bloodline. God’s blessing and the Queen of Hell. It was- it was all a blur.” She shook her head. “I was cornered, and I didn’t have a weapon with me. But that’s when Scott came.” Everyone turned to Scott who stood lazily by the doorframe.

  “Scott took me away before they could harm me and he nursed me back to health. Or at least how I am now,” she said grimly.

  “Then,” David began, “why haven’t you come back? Why are you still here?”

  Before his mother could speak, Scott took the responsibility to answer him. “Because it’s dangerous out there,” he told them. “She was being targeted by demons; no offense to you, my boy,” he added, patting Caelum on the shoulder. “And since this place can’t really be seen without my permission, much less invaded, I decided this was the safest place she could hide for now.”

  “Do you have an idea why she was attacked?” Ariel asked.

  Scott shrugged. “Maybe. Can’t really say, otherwise I’d spoil the fun.”

  “Are you kidding me?” David abruptly stood from the couch. “In what way do you honestly think this is fun, huh? The world is in chaos and people are dying, and you’re worried about spoiling the fun?”

  “Dave…” Ann tugged on her son’s sleeve. “Calm down.”

  But David did not hear his mother’s plea. He moved towards Scott until he was towering over the man. “Maybe you’re tired of that life you cheated on, but what about the rest of us who on
ly get a handful of years? Heck! What about those who don’t even get a year? Maybe you don’t value your life so much, but we value ours! So stop making excuses about spoilers and whatever stupid reasons you can come up with because none of those matter compared to all the lives we’re trying to spare!”

  His words echoed across the room until everything fell in a tensed silence. Neither Caelum nor Ariel made a move, uncertain how they could make things better. Scott kept his eyes on David’s, both challenging the other. When Scott broke his gaze, he did it with a laugh.

  “Say, son. How much do you believe in me? How much faith do you have?” Scott asked David whose anger only grew at the question.

  “What nonsense are you getting at?”

  “Answer the question, and I might just tell you,” Scott told him with a stern face.

  David’s nostrils flared, and he took a deep breath before he admitted, “After everything that has happened, I’ve got very little faith in anything.” The statement startled his mother, but she said nothing.

  Scott smirked at the young lad. “Then, if I told you everything will fall into place even while everything is in chaos, would you believe me? If I told you to jump off a cliff because I predicted that by doing so, you would finally gain the ability to fly like an angel, would you trust my word?”

  David did not answer. He took long, slow breaths in his effort to calm down. He looked away from Scott and couldn’t hide the doubt in his mind. Scott took this as a sign of victory, and his smile widened. “Say I tell you how this book ends, David. Say I tell you that after all your struggles, you will all fail. Would that stop you from moving forward? Probably not, but still, the idea would be etched in your mind and get in the way when you have to make a choice.

  “A dog chases down an intruder without question because that’s what his instincts tell him: to protect his territory. But a person would hesitate. ‘Should I call the police? What if the guy has a gun and kills me? I can’t take a man like that down by myself. What do I do?’ And before that person can make a decision, the intruder has already done what he wanted to do. That’s the thing about knowing too much, David. It helps to know all the variables before you make a decision, yes. But to know what each of your options might result in, that’s what will stop you from moving. Now, do you still want me to tell you what will happen next?”