Legends of the Damned: A Collection of Edgy Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance Novels

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  Brookes couldn’t be dead. She was the god of death, she could bring him back. She couldn’t feel for a human man. She was a god, she had the power to rule over them, rule over humanity! But at the end of the day, none of that mattered.

  Brookes was gone forever and she couldn’t ask He to bring him back. The only love she ever had was gone. Kevan was going to pay for what he’d done. She would kill him with her own hands.

  She howled out, crying her feelings away.

  August lay in the grass staring up into the setting day. Sara cuddled on top of him.

  “I never understood how people could paint sunsets. The pictures never do it justice,” Sara said.

  “Yeah, well, it’s just a memory of the beauty they saw. When they look at the painting again, the brain fills in the gaps. So they could remember what it truly looked like,” August said.

  “A reminder?”

  “Yeah, a reminder. Sometimes people need a reminder of the better things, so they don’t forget a better time.”

  “Well, I would never want to have something to remind me of a better time. I’d hope that the better times would last forever. Then, I would never need to have any reminders about anything. Because I’d be living in the moment forever.”

  “I wish this could last forever.”

  “So, you won’t have to get a job and I’ll have to take care of you forever?”

  “Your choice.”

  Sara laughed. They stared into the sky.

  “Then… you shouldn’t have killed me.”

  August looked at her.

  “August!”

  August snapped out of his stupor. He stood in front of a table with a map of a building on it, in the rebel’s hideout, a warehouse. Nine other rebels stood around the table. Right across from him was Ezekiel.

  Ezekiel said, “You alright?”

  August looked around. It was a daydream. Don't think, August thought. In thinking, there was hesitation and in hesitation, there was regret. And in those regrets, were the memories he wanted to escape. “Yes.”

  “Cause if you’re scared, you can leave. But I need you to be one hundred and ten percent.”

  “I’m not scared, get on with it.”

  “Then pay the hell attention.”

  August looked at the table; they were about to do some serious shit. The map was of a theatre or a church. August couldn’t tell. Today, they were going to kill a god.

  Ezekiel passed around a picture. “This is the god of medicine. Originally, he was the god of healing, but he had an in with the Queen bitch and got promoted.”

  August got his picture. The god looked huge. How did Ezekiel plan to kill him?

  Ezekiel continued, “Now, you’re asking, ‘Ezekiel, why exactly did he get promoted?’ And I’ll tell y’all that he got promoted because he works under Queen’s rehabilitation program. Or at least he did. I don’t know what he does now. But I do know he did in the recent past.”

  Ezekiel looked around the room. All the rebels listened to him with an attentive ear.

  All but August, who stared at Juraj’s picture. There was no way they could kill a god. Maybe they could capture him, or something.

  “He was the notorious torturer for Queen. Whenever anyone of us got captured. He was the one who was tasked with getting the information out of us using any means necessary. You can use your imagination about what he did. No matter that he is now trying to escape what he’d done in the past. He’s a major god now and a target.”

  “We’re going to capture a major god?” August asked.

  “No. We’re going to kill him.”

  August stared at Ezekiel dumbfounded as he continued. “According to our intel, Juraj is attending an opera performance tonight in LA. At a large historic church. It was originally a theatre but was bought out by Ifor and turned into a church. They still have performances there to entertain and provide money for Ifor. Let’s just say the Finale will be spectacular. He’ll be surrounded by Touched and other guards. Does anybody have any problems killing innocents working under the gods?”

  Ezekiel stared at August. It was a question for him.

  “No,” August said.

  “Good, next—”

  “How in the hell are you planning on killing a god?”

  Ezekiel threw up his hands. “About time somebody asked me. It seems like everyone just follows me blindly everywhere I go and are just as suicidal. That’s why I like you, August.”

  “Answer the question.”

  “Okay, okay.” Ezekiel dug into his coat pocket and pulled out twelve colorful gems. They floated in his hand, spinning in unison.

  Everyone stared at them. Each of them were a different vibrant color on the light spectrum.

  “What the hell are those?”

  “Finite weapons.”

  “Infinite weapons?”

  “No, just finite. I didn’t come up with the name, but we will use these to kill He himself. This is a ten-man operation, including myself. So each of you will get one and I’ll take three for myself.”

  He pushed out his hand and the gems spun in the middle of the table. “Pick one.”

  August grabbed a green one. Green was his favorite color. And Sara’s.

  “Stop,” August muttered.

  “What?” Ezekiel asked.

  “How do these work?” August asked.

  “Once again, that’s a great question, August!”

  He pulled out his pistol and raised one of the gems to it. “You can take any weapon you want and enhance them with these gems.” As the gem approached the gun, it melted into a liquid in his hand and swirled quickly around the gun and then disappeared. A translucent blue-gun shaped plate appeared over the gun and then disappeared.

  “My pistol is now a finite weapon.” He cocked it. “It still uses bullets but if you don’t like using weapons with ammunition then you could use it on a blade.”

  He pulled out a large bowie knife and touched another gem on it. This time it was red. The gem melted again and swirled around the knife. And simply disappeared. A translucent red knife-shaped plate flashed over the knife and disappeared.

  “And now I have another finite weapon.”

  August held the gem up to his eye. Inside it swirled a maelstrom of green. “This could kill a god?”

  “Yep. And a Touched. Anybody really.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Glad you said that.” Ezekiel snapped his fingers and someone brought in a hooded tied-up man. “This is a Touched. Pull out your gun.”

  “You took it at the door. Remember?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Ezekiel ran off and came back with his handgun and gave it to August. “Is it in the same state that you gave it to me in?”

  August looked over his gun, cocking and uncocking it, pulling out its magazine and checking its bullets. “Yes.”

  “Then as a normal weapon, it shouldn’t hurt the hooded man in front of you, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then shoot him.”

  August looked at Ezekiel.

  “You said that you had no problem kill—”

  August unloaded his bullets into the man until his gun clicked empty.

  His bullets bounced off the man, who still stood alive.

  “Shit. I didn’t want you to unload on the man. Here.” Ezekiel gave August some bullets to reload his gun. “Now, touch your gem to your gun and think of it as a projectile weapon.”

  August touched the gem on the gun and thought about turning it into a gun. It melted in his hand and swirled around his gun and disappeared. In a flash, green gun shaped plates flashed around his gun.

  “Now…” Ezekiel trailed off. August pointed at the man’s chest and fired one round. A hole blew open in the man’s middle. He fell dead.

  There was an audible gasp around the room. August stared at his gun. What the hell? “Where did you get this?”

  “An old fox never tells his tricks,” Ezekiel said with a smile. He went b
ack to addressing the room. “Now, just because you’ve gained this incredible power doesn’t mean you’re invincible. That will come later. But if one of your comrades fall down beside you, grab their finite weapons and you can combine the gems to give yourself something even more powerful. They’re linked to your person, so if you fall dead, then they will revert to their gem form. It’s yours until you don’t want it be. You can will it back into its gem form at any time.”

  August stared at his gun. Will. He poured his thought into the gun, into turning the finite weapon back into a gem. In a flash, the green gem floated up from the gun.

  With this power, he could kill a god.

  August stared at a large table full of guns. There were machine guns, grenade launchers, what looked like a shoulder-fired missile launcher, shot guns, assault rifles and hand-guns.

  The rebels were serious. Someone walked up next to him. “We’re going in all covert-style. So I think you should leave the grenade launcher behind.”

  August laughed and looked at the man. He was young like him. “I was thinking the missile launcher, you’ll never know when you'll need one of them.”

  The man laughed. “I’m Raul, by the way. I was the newest member before you showed up. It looks like we got the guard duty of the mission. Shit duty.”

  “Yeah, but it’s needed.”

  “You thought you were just going to go up and personally kill Juraj yourself, didn’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  Raul laughed. “Get at least one mission under your belt before you try that. I don’t think you’re suicidal enough yet.”

  “You’d be surprised.”

  Raul noticed the look in August’s eyes.

  “Alright, let’s change the subject. We have to get the perfect weapon for this mission. Something small enough to conceal but big enough to cause some damage.”

  He picked up an MP5. “This could work. It’s small but accurate enough at the range we’ll be shooting from. And it looks kind of cool.”

  August picked up a Beretta 9mm. “This will do.”

  He was going to leave his personal Glock behind. He didn’t want to ever touch the thing again. Not after yesterday.

  August was in the back seat of a SUV. Raul sat next to him. But Raul wasn’t speaking much. The nerves were getting to him.

  August stared at the buildings as they passed by. It was the moment of reprieve. His thoughts of the previous day were creeping into his mind. Sara was dead. And he killed her.

  He would never feel her touch again. Never hear her voice, her laugh, because he didn’t give her a chance.

  He shook his head. He needed to stop thinking about it. He felt an emptiness coming up in his stomach, in his soul. A hatred in his inner self.

  He needed to take his mind off of things. Don’t think. In thinking, there was hesitation. And he couldn’t hesitate now.

  He was going to help kill a god.

  He dug into his tuxedo jacket and found his gun clips. He pulled them out of his pockets and counted them. Two clips. All fully loaded. With his pistol on his back. That’s all the ammo he had room for.

  He counted over and over again until they arrived. To escape the hell that was building up inside him.

  They pulled up behind the church. A man was waving them forward. Another SUV pulled up behind them. They all got out and ten rebels stood ready to go. They huddled up.

  Ezekiel gave his spiel. “If the person next to you falls, make sure you kill his killer and a god so their death isn’t in vain.”

  A man opened a back door. Music echoed out. Violins and horns blared into the air. They all entered into a backstage area.

  They walked around Ezekiel. “You all know what to do. Move out.”

  They exited the backstage area. August and Raul moved into a hallway on the stage left. The music was getting louder. They approached a door that led into the main music hall.

  A man stood in front of it, dressed like them. He nodded and left.

  “How many people are with the rebels? Are all the workers here in on it?” August asked Raul.

  “Just for today.”

  They walked through the door and into the massive hall. Rows and rows of chairs lay in front of them. Almost every seat was filled with some rich pompous human. Their eyes were cast to the stage on the left.

  A man stood before them all. He sang “Ave Maria.” His voice was beautiful, boastful. August was lost in his—

  Raul tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to the large skybox on their right. It rose over half of the room.

  There were a crowd of people sitting up there with Juraj sitting in the front row, in the center. He was looking at the performance through golden binoculars with a handle on them.

  There was their target. The massive man wore a specially tailored red suit.

  Two other rebels entered through the far off doors right across from them and stood in front of them.

  “I guess now we wait,” Raul said.

  “I guess so.” He’d never been this close to a god before. Even from this far away, the god carried a certain presence. A presence August wanted to wipe from this world.

  Raul tapped him on the shoulder again. “Calm your tits, man. He’s not for us.” He noticed that August was staring at Juraj.

  August took a deep breath. He made a note about his gun digging into his back. He could kill him from here. With his aim, it was possible.

  But…it wasn’t his time. “You’re right.”

  “You have anybody to go home to after this?” Raul said.

  August looked down. “No, not anymore.”

  “I see. The gods took someone away from you, too.”

  August’s dark thoughts came back, the darkness threatening to swallow his entire being. He tried to fight it away.

  He saw what Raul was doing. He was helping him forget his thoughts. He was trying to relieve the pressure of what they were doing. Even though that wasn’t what was troubling August. But at the very least, August could try to do the same for Raul.

  “What about you?” August said.

  “Naw. I used to. Having nobody to go back to is the reason why I’m here right now.”

  “What happened?”

  “Do you really want to know?”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, then. It only happened a few years ago. I was twenty and living in Texas. A place I thought the gods had long abandoned or, at the very least, forgotten about. I was at a family reunion at a park when everything turned to shit. Black vehicles rolled up to our little picnic and abducted every single member of my family. Including me.”

  Raul leaned against the door. “We drove for hours and hours. They put a bag over my head and handcuffed me during the entire trip. All I heard were the cries of my family. After I don’t know how long, we finally stopped. They herded us out of the vehicles and into a building. The first thing I remembered about the place was the smell. The stench of dried blood, sweat and waste.”

  August stared at him. Raul must have told his tale many times before. Because his face didn’t change one bit.

  “I heard screams and yells from the people around us. The clanging of metal and flesh. It scared me. Where I was being taken. Then, finally, they led us into a room. My entire family were kept there for days. Blindfolded, without food or water. Like animals waiting for the slaughter. Until one by one, they took us away. Whenever I heard the door open, I knew I was going to never see one of my family members ever again, that I might be next. It could’ve been my father, mother or any of my many sisters. Eventually, I was left alone with just my last sister. The door opened and they dragged her out. I kicked and scream for them to take me away instead and do you know what the man told me?”

  “No, what did he say?”

  “That it would be my turn soon enough. I still remember that voice to this very day. I have nightmares about that fucker.”

  “Who was it?”

  “The man standing above us right now.”r />
  Juraj’s eyes never moved from the stage.

  “How? How did you escape?” August asked.

  “I was left alone for I don’t know how long. I’d like to think at that time that I had come to accept my fate. But then the floor shook and explosions rocked the building. I was hoping that the next time the door opened, Juraj would finally take me to my death. But instead, when the door opened again, I felt warm hands on my arms as someone untied me and took the bag off my head. It was Ezekiel. He saved me. He saved my life. After that day, I pledged my life to him. If he wants to cast it away then I’m all for it.”

  “Did you ever find out why they took your family?”

  “Yes… It was because my mother’s best friend was in contact with the rebels. They systematically tortured and killed my entire family. Because someone unrelated to us knew about the rebels. If they wanted to create more rebels then they’ve succeeded.”

  A gun shot went off in the skybox. The performance on the stage stopped. More shots went off. The crowd stood and looked toward the box.

  August pulled his gun from his back and placed it under his coat and held it there.

  The crowd in the skybox were trying to run away from something. August couldn’t see Juraj in the crowd anymore. What the hell was happening?

  Suddenly, some of the crowd exploded over the edge of the skybox and down onto the floor. Screams erupted in the air as more gun fire popped off. A rebel landed in the center of the floor. He tried to get up but somebody jumped off the skybox and landed right on top of him.

  “Shit!” Raul said. “It’s another god!”

  “What? Who?” August said.

  A stampeding crowd came toward them. They jumped out of the way before they were trampled. August looked back at the god.

  He picked up the rebel by the neck. “What is this little power of yours?” the god said.

  The rebel was choking out.

  “Queen needs to hear about this.” The rebels’ neck snapped.

  August looked at Raul, who pointed his gun at the god. “He’s the god of wine and partying and shit. A minor god. Melik.”