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

by Lindsey R. Loucks

  It was a caveat of his job.

  A caveat mostly affecting his friends and family.

  But he was still loved by many. His company’s shareholders, the employees whose lives he had improved by employing them, the ones who used his products and the many little favors he paid back to the ones who had helped him get to where he was now.

  The ones he had left behind would never be remembered. Their names fated to fade in obscurity. He had to leave them behind. He couldn’t associate with anyone who didn’t have the same ambitions as he did.

  His name would forever be known as the start of a legacy. His eventual children’s children would look up to him. His great-grandchildren would celebrate his name.

  It was well worth it. To be this lonely on top, to leave all he loved behind.

  That was what he told himself every night. The pills helped. Barely.

  He pulled a pill bottle from his inner suit jacket pocket. He noticed how old he looked. He was in his mid-thirties, but with the lines in his skin, he could’ve been and had been mistaken for older.

  The pills helped the ones he left behind fade into a just unpleasant memory.

  The city, the world was worth it.

  He took some pills. He needed to stop taking them, his addiction was getting worse.

  A door behind him opened and closed. A woman’s voice said, “The board members are waiting.”

  He turned around; he was in his office overlooking the city. He asked for it to be built so he could watch the sunset every night.

  So he could revel in his accomplishments.

  “Tell them—”

  August froze, his body started to shake. The pills. He dropped to the ground as the woman screamed for help.

  The woman knelt down and held his head. Warmth. A warmth he hadn’t felt for a long time.

  He started to foam at the mouth. The woman was mouthing words but August heard none of it.

  He hadn’t felt another human’s contact in years.

  He had left behind a legacy at the cost of his social and family life.

  But he kept telling himself it was worth it.

  His name would forever be known to the world.

  It was worth it.

  So why did it feel so lonely at the top?

  He closed his eyes as everything went black.

  “Closer.” August heard a voice in the blackness. Before he could interpret what the voice was, his eyes were forced open.

  The sky was set ablaze in a fiery light. A shining sphere was above August, heading toward him. He stood alone on top of a hill. Below him was an immersive landscape of trees, mountains, and rivers, and beyond that, a small abandoned town.

  “We have to run!” a voice said behind him. August turned around. A man was yelling from a truck for him to hurry up.

  He was a friend. A barely passable one. But even though he was there, August felt lonely. The object screeched like a siren as it broke through the atmosphere. He was only a few seconds away from his end. There was no escape.

  A sudden void emptied itself inside August’s chest. He grabbed his middle. It hurt. He started to dry heave.

  He was going to die.

  His hands shook. The object in the sky became blinding.

  August was afraid. That was what the pain was.

  The fear of dying alone.

  The fear of death.

  He was staring at the end of the world and he didn’t want to experience it alone. He needed someone to tell him it was going to be okay. Someone to hold in his last moments.

  This was his fault.

  “Fuck!” the man behind him said. The man drove off as August stared at the light in the sky as it got brighter.

  He closed his eyes as the object hit. His body and fears were burned away forever.

  Closer.

  August opened his eyes. He was staring at the bright object in the sky again. He was in the same place. But, it was different somehow.

  “Ryan,” a woman’s voice came from his side. Ryan. That was his name this time.

  Beside him stood a woman, his love. It wasn’t Sara, but it was someone he loved just as much. Their love was just as strong.

  “Terra,” August said. That was her name. Tears were coming from her eyes. “It’s going to be okay.”

  They embraced each other. Her warmth filled his soul, her smell, his spirit. As long as he was with her, the end of the world didn’t matter.

  The object came closer, its weight filled August’s senses. August gave Terra one final kiss. Why did he leave her behind?

  The object hit and a great flame eclipsed them.

  Closer. Number seven hundred and twenty-three.

  Why did he leave her behind?

  Because he was a fool.

  August drove down a busy city street. His hands clutched the wheel. He breathed in deeply, the heat from his previous death slowly ebbed away.

  Luckily for him, traffic was sparse. If he had come to during heavier traffic, he was sure he would’ve crashed.

  “Are you okay?”

  August looked toward the passenger he was driving with. A pregnant woman. They were married and the child was his.

  August’s mind eased. His previous lives and the present were running together. “Yeah, I’m fine,” August said.

  “Good.” She gave a smile that had caught him up all those years ago. August smiled back. He loved her.

  This was what he could’ve had, but he threw it all away for his self-centeredness. For nothing.

  August stared into her eyes.

  A truck horn blared as an eighteen wheeler ran a light and smashed into their car. August’s last sight was his wife’s head smashing into the dash.

  He was never going to have a happy ending.

  Closer. Number ten thousand three hundred and forty-two.

  August floated in eternal darkness, naked. He curled up into a ball. There was absolute nothing around him.

  He still had a physical body but he couldn’t escape the black.

  All that he was left with were his memories.

  Slowly, his mind cleared.

  He asked himself questions he wasn’t in the right of mind to ask before.

  What was happening to him? Who were all these people’s lives he lived? Was this hell? Was it the Wavering Radiant? Was it punishment for what he’d done?

  He needed to escape. The hell, the emptiness he was feeling. He shouldn’t have killed them. Sara, his father. He could hear their voices in his head, pleading with him for mercy when he had given them none.

  He needed to escape them. He needed to leave the memories behind.

  He tried to scream but nothing existed around him. Only his memories and regrets clawing away at his soul.

  He slammed his eyes closed.

  Closer. Number thirty-five thousand two hundred and ninety-one.

  August awoke inside a bedroom, lying in bed. He tried to get up fast, but the years hadn’t been nice to him. His bones and muscles creaked as he slowly got to his feet. He languidly walked to a mirror on the dresser.

  He gasped as he looked at his face. He had deep black bags under his eyes, his skin drooped down over his cheeks and forehead. He was in his mid-sixties. He forgot exactly how old he was, as the disease that was eating through his body hadn’t been good to his memory.

  His bedroom door opened and a young woman walked in. She held a gun in her hand. His daughter. There was an intense heat in her eyes. Her hatred for him.

  Was that the same hatred August had felt for his father? Was this what he was fated to become? A despised man.

  August gave a hard chuckle. “I knew you would be the one to kill me.”

  His daughter raised her gun to him. She didn’t waver. There was no hesitation in her movements, no second thoughts, just cold hard determination.

  What had he done to her? His memories were fuzzy thanks to his disease.

  He looked her in the eyes. In most of his deaths, he left the ones he loved be
hind. Was his daughter just like him? Fated to continue the cycle of hate and violence?

  Hate never got anywhere.

  “Do you have any regrets?” his daughter asked.

  He wished he could tell her that the violence never got anywhere, but this universe’s body and mind took over.

  “The only thing I regret is fucking your whore of a mother,” August spat out.

  A bullet blasted out of the backside of his head and everything went black.

  Closer. Number seventy-two thousand five hundred and thirty-nine.

  August eyes slowly opened. He lay in a hospital bed surrounded by his family. He was already leaving the world before he even came in. But it felt different.

  He was nearing a hundred years old. He was surrounded by his seed. The family he started. Some of them were crying, some were giving a comforting smile. They loved him. They were going to be sad when he was gone.

  August smiled. His daughter and son held his hands. He was getting tired, he felt his body giving up.

  This was what he wanted. Happiness. People to care for him and he for them.

  But it was too late for that.

  He couldn’t turn back on what he did, on what he had become. But he could die happy, for once.

  August smiled his first genuine smile in what felt like years as his soul passed on.

  Closer. Number one-hundred and twenty-three thousand seven-hundred and eighty-three.

  August stood in an alleyway. Rain pelted his face. He felt killing intent around him. A man in a hoodie stood in front of him. He needed to kill him. It was who he was now.

  The man pulled out a knife and approached him. The man was August’s target. Once he killed him, this whole fiasco would be over. The agency could finally move on from this shit show and August could finally avenge his wife’s murder.

  August moved in fast, his hands a blur as he exchanged punches with the man. They exchanged blow after blow. He needed to end this faster. August pulled out a knife and moved into what he thought was an opening and stabbed the man in the neck.

  The man collapsed but finished what he needed to finish. August stumbled back as blood came out of a hole in his stomach. He collapsed to the ground, the blood quickly leaving a puddle under him.

  He stared up at the sky, ignoring the rain getting into his eyes. The grey clouds comforted him as he felt his body go cold.

  He needed to fight. This was all the gods’ fault. The deaths he caused. But it was as much his fault as it was theirs.

  He couldn’t stop now. He needed to finish the fight. And if he could ever escape the death, maybe he could kill God.

  August let out one final chuckle as the light ran out of his eyes.

  Closer. Four hundred and thirty-eight thousand six hundred and twenty.

  August slowly opened his eyes. He stood on the top of a mountain. There were no clouds covering the sky. He could see everything below.

  The air felt familiar, the smell felt natural.

  Was he back in his own universe?

  He was in chains, kneeling on a pedestal. Queen stepped up beside him. August glanced around. Behind him, all of the gods were watching him.

  What was happening?

  His execution. The memories of this world slowly came into his mind.

  This wasn’t his world. It was very similar, but it wasn’t his.

  A platform of impossible size rose up the mountainside in front of him. It was miles wide and long. Thousands of humans were on it cheering.

  They were going to watch him die.

  The platform stopped close enough for him to see the faces of the ones in front. They all cheered his name.

  “August! August! August!”

  It was his name, he was in his body, but they weren’t his. He was older, in his early forties. He had lost Sara and his child long ago to the gods.

  The burning he felt in their deaths had long ebbed away. It was a part of him that the gods had permanently carved out. He had nothing to regret anymore. Nothing to question. He was ready to die.

  He was always fated to die at the hands of the gods, fated to live a life of death and dissolution. He fought them for years and just now he realized how pointless that battle was.

  Queen spoke to the masses, “Thirty years it took to capture August, the leader of the rebels and the bastard child of our god He.”

  The masses cheered.

  Fools, all of them.

  “Do you have any last regrets, any last words to say to the gods?” Queen asked.

  Regrets? He had seen many in the same position as he was, pleading for the mercy of the gods. But any regrets he had died a long time ago when Sara departed this world in his very hands, when his child was taken away from him.

  His regrets and memories were forever etched into a forgotten part of his mind. He didn’t have any emotions anymore.

  The very being he was attempting to kill was in front of him. He, judging from his ivory tower.

  Hovering above them all, He sat on a throne of marble, staring down with his supercilious eyes.

  August lost his feelings a long time ago. When he learned it was useless to fight them. When he learned he was always fated to die.

  August never answered Queen. Queen looked to Svante and nodded. In a flash, August’s head rolled off of his neck.

  Close. But not close enough. Wrong path. Restart.

  August woke engulfed in flames and quickly burned to a crisp.

  Close.

  August awakened to labored breaths. He was deep in a body of water. He spun around, never orienting himself before the air went out of his lungs.

  Close.

  After his deaths, all he heard was close. Close, closer, closer! It was always close but not close enough. A word he heard a million times, as he died a million deaths.

  Through the lives of a million men, who died a million times, August tried to scream, but he had no mouth to scream from, no personal existence to scream with.

  The hell was maddening, the deaths were madness. The infinity he spun through was never-ending. Every time he tried to escape, every time he tried to scream, nobody would answer him.

  Then, after millions of lives and millions of deaths, his mouth screamed a chorus he long wished to hear, his personal existence came together piece by piece, and then… the deaths halted, the madness stopped, and he finally received an answer.

  “I’ve found you.”

  14

  The Sinner of the Infinite

  August’s eyes opened as he held a finite weapon in his hand. Speeding toward Svante who held his blade of lightning.

  This was before his death.

  Everything sped up and their blades met. An explosion ripped, knocking August out. As he came to, he was lying on the floor. Arms and legs were broken. His finite weapon was gone and so was his shield.

  A blue light appeared in the smoke. Svante approached him, he was limping but his weapon was still bare.

  “Like I said, I’m canceling your fate.” Svante raised his blade. August waited for a bullet to enter Svante’s chest, for Kevan to come save him. But his savior never came.

  Svante’s blade pierced into his chest and a sharp excruciating pain ran through his body. August screamed as the pain spread. His vision went black as an immense heat and shock pulsated through his veins.

  He screamed louder and louder as the pain never stopped but increased, tearing apart his very soul. He screamed for it to stop, he screamed for his life to end, and then, finally, it did.

  As the pain ended, his vision came back. He stood in an infinite black among the stars. The stars twinkled in an odd wonderment. Millions of them, but none were close enough to give him their light.

  He felt whole again. He looked at his hands. “Whoa.” Thousands of colors swirled through him at impossible speeds. Visions of the millions of lives he lived ran within him. They were him.

  Hovering in the black was the Omniscient Man. “I’ve finally found you.”

>   Piece by piece, August’s body rebuilt into his old self. Cell by cell, his skin materialized, starting from his hands down to his arms, and to the rest of his body.

  As his body was rebuilt, the clothes he wore to the raid on Sotira’s Ifor headquarters materialized over him next.

  He was truly whole again. He was himself.

  August stared at the man in front of him, the ping-pong like ball covering his head.

  Who was he and what did he do to him?

  “What… what did you do to me?” August asked.

  “I saved you from near-certain death. A thanks would be in order,” the Omniscient Man said.

  “You saved me from certain death? I’ve died millions of times! I’ve experienced millions of deaths!”

  “Millions? Don’t over estimate what you’ve gone through. At most, you’ve only died a million times.”

  “You have no right to do what you did! You put me through hell!”

  “You’re right. I don’t have that right. But I’m sure you’ll thank me soon enough.”

  August thought about his end. He wasn’t dead because of this man. But…what he went through, the thousands of times he died. It was horrible, he’d never be the same again.

  The memories of the horror.

  The reliving of the pain.

  “Who are you? Are you a god?” August asked.

  “Some people call me the Omniscient Man. You can call me that, but I’m not all-knowing and I’m definitely not a god. At least, not according to your definition of a god. I’m the one who created the finite weapons you used against Svante. The god you nearly killed.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “No, but you did enough damage to shutter the world of the gods forever. It’s a power they’ve never seen before. A power that can ruin them. It will be their downfall.”

  “What did you do to me?”

  “I traveled universe to universe trying to find a suitable body for your soul.” The Omniscient Man raised his arms out. “These lights aren’t stars, but they are universes, an infinite amount of them.”