“Caden, I’m came here to even the odds, not to be a distraction so you could kill all my poker buddies. Now who am I going to play with? You don’t come to the games!” Jack said. “And you better not touch me, Frank will have your hide regardless of whether he is talking to me or not. You do know I’m his favorite,” I could hear the gloating in his voice as he declared this last statement.
“I won’t touch you. You’re her father. I think it would upset her. Plus, you did just save my ass so I guess were even.”
“Then we’re good?” Jack asked.
“Not good, even,” Caden said.
I saw Caden’s face above me as he knelt by my side.
“How are you?” he asked as he touched my face with his hand then quickly did a check for other broken bones.
“I think I’m going to be okay. I can feel my limbs.”
“Nothing else feels broken. Okay, just lay here still. I’m going to check on the guys. I’ll be right back.”
“Okay,” I said like I had a choice. I was far from being able to sit up. He smiled sweetly at me and was gone again.
Jack’s face darted in front of my vision. “Hi darling.”
I was ecstatic to see him at this moment, regardless of how messed up of a role model father he made.
“Thanks Jack,” I said, smiling at him, and really meaning it. He’d saved me and the man I loved, that made up for quite a bit in my book.
“Call me Dad,” he said.
“Um, okay…….Dad,” I said awkwardly.
“We really have to talk about your choice of boyfriends.”
“Jack, you’re pushing it!” Caden shouted from wherever he was.
“Another time then.” He smiled at me. “I hate to run out on you, but I’ve got a date I’m late for. Hot leggy blonde. Might be your new step mother.” He gave me a wink and smiled down at me one last time before he disappeared.
My breathing was coming easier. I had just enough feeling back in my legs and arms enough to hoist myself up into a sitting position to see what was going on. The place was a wreck. Dead bodies and dismembered parts lay scattered all over the bloodied street. Now that the adrenaline had started to subside, I felt sick to my stomach seeing the destruction, blood, and gore. I leaned over, dry heaving onto the pavement.
The guys were in awful shape, but they all looked like they were in one piece, except for Charlie that is. His head torn from his body completely, as he lay lifeless on the dirty bloodstained pavement. It didn’t look like something he was coming back from. This was confirmed when Dave walked over. I could see him lay a consolatory hand on Caden’s shoulder, trying to comfort him. Caden stood as stiff as a steel blade.
Mike was up and helping Alex to his feet. I saw on their faces the moment they realized Charlie was gone. Joey seemed to be in a complete daze. He looked almost as shaken as I was, and it made me wonder if this had been his first real battle.
Sergeant Metulla walked over, side stepping bodies, as he made his way across the filthy, bloody street.
“Is it over?” he asked. “God I hope so, this is a mess.”
Caden nodded. “For now, but there are still some issues that aren’t resolved.”
The sergeant nodded his head.
“We’re going to need a few hours to get this situation taken care of.” Caden waved his hand at the mess of blood and guts.
The sergeant nodded as he held his arm over his mouth and nose. He walked away and looked like he couldn’t have stayed a minute longer. His face was almost a grey parlor by time he made his way out, weaving in between the bodies.
I made it to my feet and looked around at the destruction. I felt emotionally numb. Charlie was gone and countless others I didn’t know. It was a bit overwhelming to see it up close and personal. I was wandering around, in a something akin to shock, when I heard Caden ask Mike to get me downstairs away from the mess and to call in the crew. I felt Mike’s hand take mine a minute later and I looked over to him and saw the toll this had taken on him as well.
“It was out of our control,” Mike said.
“What will happen to all these bodies?” I slowly made a circle, still taking in the level of destruction.
“They’ll be burned.”
I looked at him in horror.
“What of their families?”
Caden stepped over to where we stood. “It’s our way. It’s what is expected and it’s what they would have wanted. We’ll do Charles separately.” He walked with me back to the bar.
“We’ve got people coming in that specialize in clean up. I’d rather you weren’t here when they come. They are a bit rough,” Caden said.
“Okay,” I agreed. I didn’t really want to see what the clean up process entailed.
I walked into the bar with Mike, and I was relieved to be away from the disaster I had just left behind.
“I thought I was going to be paralyzed,” I mentioned to Mike. “It was the craziest thing how it just healed.”
“You’re like us. As long as the head isn’t completely severed, your body will heal. Sometimes, even if it is severed, but it’s put back in place quick enough it will be okay.”
We stepped in the elevator. “Is it the same with people like Caden?” I wasn’t sure if he would even know the answer but he did.
“It’s similar but not quite the same. They would have to decapitate him, and then burn his head. That’s what he’s going to go do with the two demons he killed. They will still exist on some level but without their form. After this, they’ll be nothing but vapor. It will slowly drive any consciousness they have insane.”
It hit me like a Mac truck. Caden would have become one of those aimless souls that had attacked me. He had been minutes away from that fate.
“I’m sorry about Charlie.”
He just nodded and gave me a halfhearted smile. “I’m going to go see what I can do above.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“We’ve got it handled. This isn’t our first battle, it’s just been a very long time. Your memories start to fade, you forget how truly ugly it can get.”
I just nodded. I had no words. I didn’t know if there were any words that existed in the English language that could help in times such as these.
I hugged him goodbye and went straight to the shower. I needed to get every drop of blood from the day off me.
Chapter Thirty-Four
I scrubbed until my skin was tender and bright pink everywhere. Then I dug out the big white fluffy robe Caden had given me when I had first gotten here and sat on the couch waiting for him.
When I turned on the news, they were all covering the fictitious gas explosion. They even showed the smoke and plumes that were visible blocks away above the building roofs, smoke that was really from the mass incineration of our enemies. It made me wonder about other disasters I had seen on TV and how much we ever really knew.
It was four or five hours later when he finally showed up. He walked in and looked more vulnerable than I’d ever seen him since I had met him. He sat on the couch next to me. He didn’t speak for a long time and neither did I.
“Why didn’t you just evaporate somewhere else when they were going to kill you?” I asked him after what had to have been an hour.
“I don’t abandon my people.”
“Do you think Rufus will be back?”
“He’ll crawl off somewhere, lick his wounds for a while, but eventually he’ll regroup. He’s power hungry. He won’t stop being a problem until he’s dead. On his own, he’s manageable. It’s the trouble he stirs up that concerns me.”
“You mean the other demons.”
“I mean more than demons. I’m not sure how many he’s reached out to or will in the future.”
“Is it that bad?”
“It could be. We’ve got time for now, and we’ll be ready for them if they come back. I’ve got friends as well.”
“What would have happened if Jack hadn’t shown up?”
&nb
sp; “I would have probably seen my end along with everyone else.”
“But you wouldn’t have died completely, right?”
“No, I wouldn’t have died in the way others die. Jack showed you what I would become . You lose all sense of who you are eventually. It’s worse than death.”
He sat there silent for a moment.
“I was once like Jack. Then something happened,” he finally spoke.
“Jack told me about the trick he played on you.”
He leaned back on the couch, and I settled in next to him, waiting for him to tell me the whole story.
“We use to jump into bodies for kicks. Lots of full blooded demons do it. It would be similar to a human doing drugs. Gives you a different sense of things.”
“What happens to your body while you do this?”
“There is a different plane of existence that we store them. We don’t have human bodies, even though it seems like it. We don’t need anything for our bodies to continue on. No air, no food, or water. We eat and drink for pleasure. As long as we leave them somewhere safe, they’ll be there indefinitely.
There was a man who was in a coma. When someone is in a coma the soul is normally gone. We would only body jump into soulless bodies. Jack had said the soul was gone. I trusted him, so I didn’t check myself. When I merged with his body, there was still a soul in it. It wasn’t a complete one, ninety percent of him had moved on, but there was just a small part left that was clinging to unfinished business. I immediately tried to get out, but Jack had moved my body to another plane. We can’t be without a body for long, or confusion sets in quickly, so I stayed in this human’s body.
It was different from anything I’d ever experienced. I wasn’t just viewing his memories as a bystander, like I normally would have through his brain imprints. His soul was leaching into mine, affecting my every thought. I mourned for his lost love as if she had been my own. I grieved for his family and the men he had left behind in war. I felt remorse for the lives he had taken. It changed me.
I had no humanity before that happened. I didn’t care who was hurt. I don’t know how, but I think I grew a human soul during that month. Even after I returned to my normal body, I couldn’t return to my old ways. I wanted to. I tried but I couldn’t shut off these feelings that I now had.
The problem was, I couldn’t completely blend into a regular human existence either. I was a loner for a long time, living a fringe existence, and then I slowly found the guys. They were strangely like me. They hadn’t let the demon in them take over their lives, but they couldn’t blend any better than I.
Dave and Alex were the first to come and live here with me, then Mike, and recently Joey. I would never willingly create a creature like myself, doomed to an eternal existence. A being forced to watch death after death, the only alternative becoming a creature with no thought, slowly slipping into insanity.”
We fell into silence then. Sitting on the couch together, I just stared at him, trying to take it all in. Wrapping my head around what this meant.
He leaned forward, resting his arms on his legs and turned his head toward me. “This isn’t a life I’d ever choose. I was happy before and I tried for a long time to be that again. I still wish I could go back there.”
I just stared at him. I didn’t know what to say.
Chapter Thirty-Five
We had a service for Charles three days later. Everyone had been quiet and reserved since that night. Caden and I had barely spoken, tension from the revelation still thick in the air between us. I hadn’t seen Alex or Dave at all. Mike and Joey had been drunk day and night together at the bar. I couldn’t get closer than five feet to either of them without the smell of whiskey hitting my nostrils.
As the day finally arrived, I had no idea what to expect as we went out to upstate NY. We drove down a small dirt road and came to a metal gate that Mike unlocked and then left open. We arrived at a clearing on top of the mountain about thirty minutes before sundown. There was a massive pile of branches and sticks piled for what I knew was going to be a bonfire. It reminded me of the night that had changed my life. That night had set things in motion; this one would hopefully bring closure.
Caden and Mike lit the bonfire and I saw other cars starting to arrive. About three hundred people in total showed. I was introduced to too many people to possible remember, all seeming to give off a slight energy that tipped me off that they were different in some way.
When the fire was at full blaze, Caden, Alex, Mike, Joey and Dave all picked up Charles’s fabric wrapped body in unison and walked him into the fire. They laid him down in the burning flames. As the fire slowly consumed his body, they rose and retreated. Stepping from the flames with their clothes still burning, they looked like the devils themselves as they joined the gathered crowd watching.
It was then that I realized Margie was only a few people away from me. She stood silently crying. I walked to her and put my arm around her. The sorrow I saw in her face was hard to bear. As other’s approached, wanting to offer their sympathies I turned from her, and walked a distance away. I couldn’t watch her agony another moment. I knew how close I had come to being the one mourning and goose bumps broke out across my skin, as I looked at Caden out of the corner of my eye.
I forced the idea from my mind and turned my attention back to the blazing fire. An explosion bursting from within the flames startled me and created a large plume above. I remembered the plumes they had shown on the news that night of the fight.
A chant started around me.
“From the fire we begin. By the fire we live. Take our brother back within.”
I felt someone take my hand and I knew it was Caden without looking. He leaned to whisper to me, “In death is the only time fire can affect their skin. That was the fire reclaiming Charlie’s body. The stronger the demon presence is within the person, the larger the plume will be.” He tightened his hand on mine.
Dave and Diana came and stood by me as well, watching the last of Charlie’s plume dissipate into the sky, releasing all of his energy back into the world.
“Are you going to be hanging around for a while?” Dave asked me.
I paused for a moment before I answered, not sure where he was going with this.
“I’m not sure.”
There was a lengthy pause while I waited to see where this was going.
“I hope you do.”
It was as much of a welcome as I was ever going to get from Dave. It was more than enough. He was one of the toughest guys in the group, second only to Caden. He was tough as nails, and he didn’t bend for anyone, but if he did bend for you, it meant everything. He would be there for you to the end.
“Thank you,” it was a thank you on so many levels, and he smiled, understanding them all.
Dave walked away, and and I turned to look at Diana who was still standing next to me. She turned toward me and enclosed me in a bear hug. Then without speaking, she stepped away and followed Dave.
We watched the flames slowly die out against the backdrop of the day’s sunset. It was beautiful, and I felt as if it was a gift from god, or Frank as Jack liked to call him, to Charles.
Chapter Thirty-Six
The air had the crisp clean smell that you only get in heavily forested areas. I breathed deeply of it. I caught the slight scent of Charles’s fire lingering on the wind. The crowd silently dispersed as the last of the embers died out and I walked hand in hand with Caden back to the car. He stopped at the trunk, changing into a new shirt and pair of jeans. We drove back alone. Mike, Alex, Dave and Joey were driving separately.
The bar was dead silent as we pulled in.
“I want to show you something,” he said as we walked in. I followed him up to the fourth floor and watched him unlock the door to a level I’d never seen. He walked in and flipped on the lights. The space was huge with gigantic windows.
“Do you like it? I know it is a bit rough right now. I can have the floors redone, some paint and new ca
binetry.” He walked around trying to show me things.
I thought I could do this but I couldn’t. Seeing him day in and day out might not be a good thing. It might be a slow torture. “I’m not sure I can stay here.”
“Why?”
“I think it might be better off if I got a little space from the situation. You said that there would be some time before Rufus regained strength.”
He looked at me and dropped his head. “I hoped you would like the idea. I know you like plants. I thought you could grow them by the windows like you had at your old place.”
I turned away from him. It was the hardest thing I’d ever done, walking away from him, but I had to do it for my own sanity. “I know your trying Caden, but I can’t stay here,” and I kept walking.
I went down into the apartment and started packing my bags. I had a cousin in California that always begged me to come out there. I’d go hide there for a while and figure out my next step. Try as I could, I couldn’t keep the tears from coming, as I packed my belongings. I kept waiting for Caden to walk in the door, but he didn’t.
I walked out of the apartment, taking one last look around. It had become my home. I pushed the panel for the elevator and made my way through the still silent bar, glad no one was around to explain to. I’d send a letter to Mike after I got settled. I couldn’t handle another goodbye right now.
I rolled two suitcases that I had found in the closet along the pavement. I’d left an IOU in the empty storage space they had resided in. I crossed the now bustling street to the garage to find my Mini Cooper. I didn’t want to waste money on an airline ticket so I quickly decided I would drive cross country.
I was putting the suitcases in my small trunk planning my route when I heard him.
“You can’t go.”
I felt relieved and tortured all at once. As much as I didn’t want him to let me leave, I knew this was going to make it so much harder to leave. And I had to leave. I couldn’t stay like a groupie, hanging on for any shred of attention I could get.
Obsidian Souls (Soul Series) Page 23
