The Complete Protected by the Damned Series

by Michael Todd

“Of course.” Moloch sneered. “For the next operation you will want to take a handful of Level Fives, or maybe a Level-Four powerhouse even, along with you.”

  “I really like that idea,” T’Chezz agreed as he paced, glancing to Moloch a couple of times. “I did find directing the troops from my home base very effective; more effective than anything I have done so far. Maybe I should stay there; move them like pawns in a chess game.”

  Moloch shook his head and rolled his eyes when T’Chezz turned his back to him. Controlling troops from the base was a cop-out.

  “You mean keep yourself safe, you giant pussy,” Moloch muttered under his breath.

  Chapter 7

  Katie stepped into the doorway of Joshua’s building and smiled as she leaned against the doorframe.

  Lights brightened the place up. Joshua had classical music playing and he hummed along, not even noticing that she was there.

  He had made himself a nice little home, or at least as homey as people like them could make a place. She wandered in and looked at the framed pictures on the table while she waited for his attention to shift from the sword he was constructing.

  “Oh.” Joshua raised his goggles and smiled at Katie. “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “It’s fine.” She smiled back, nodding toward the sword. “I didn’t want to disturb you while you were working.”

  “Not a problem.” He turned off the machine and set the sword on the table. “I was ready for a break anyway, AND,” he wiggled his eyebrows, “I have something for you.”

  “Really?” Katie was excited, but she hadn’t wanted to ask since she knew how hard Joshua was worked.

  “Yep.” Joshua grinned as he pressed the security lift button and waited for their armory cabinet to appear.

  Once it had locked in place he put in the code that opened the door and pulled out her new quarterstaff, which was even more intricately designed than she had thought it would be.

  She walked forward as he beamed at her with excitement in his eyes.

  “So, I gave it everything you wanted,” he told her, turning a nob at the end and pressing a button. “It’s got the metal at both ends for added protection, and I did a few more modifications.”

  He grabbed the center and pulled it apart, holding up two batons. He held them by the ends and pressed buttons, waving them as knives popped out. Katie clapped her hands and jumped up and down in excitement.

  “I figured, why have just one badass weapon when you can have two?” He grinned.

  This. Is. Amazing, Pandora cooed. I’m seriously getting wet just looking at this weapon.

  “Wow, Joshua!” Katie took the batons from him and clicked the buttons that pulled in the knives. “This is amazing.”

  “I carved your name into the side of each,” he pointed out.

  Katie turned the baton over and looked at the intricate design carefully etched into the wood.

  She smiled, running her hand over it, and decided that this was the best thing she had ever been given.

  Crazy how her wants and needs had changed. Just a couple of years before she would have loved a new volleyball or a better pair of Nikes. Now, well now it was a badass demon-killing quarterstaff that got her energy pumping.

  Katie locked the two pieces back together and stepped into an open space. She warmed up with her staff, swinging it through a couple of katas to get used to its weight and balance.

  Katie clicked the buttons and the longer blades emerged as she continued her form.

  She stabbed, then rotated in place and attacked with the other blade. She twisted the staff and the two pieces came apart, allowing her to attack in two directions.

  Slamming them together, she twisted again. However, she didn’t succeed in locking them and stumbled. “Gotta work on that,” she murmured and slowed down, her smile lighting her eyes.

  Pandora laughed. I’d love to shove these up T’Chezz’s ass.

  Hell, yeah, Katie replied. Then maybe you would be free to go back home and not have to worry about his ass.

  Yeah, Pandora replied quietly and with a forced chuckle.

  Katie noticed that Pandora had gone silent, but she took the time to thank Joshua before putting her new weapon through her belt. She made a mental note to do some design work to find something to hold it down better; maybe something strapped to her thigh. She headed back outside and looked out over the desert, leaving Joshua to his work.

  It was a beautiful day. The wind had even died down.

  I wish every day was this gorgeous. I could kick ass extra hard with the sun shining on me, Katie told Pandora.

  Mmhmm, Pandora replied.

  Okay, what’s up? You got really quiet.

  Nothing, she said in a fake upbeat tone. I just want to think for a bit. Nothing serious.

  All right. Katie was curious, but not enough to push. That will last as long as it takes to reach the kitchen and warm up more donuts.

  Katie went down into the tunnels and dropped her staff off in the practice room, then headed to the kitchen. She hadn’t noticed Pandora’s tone.

  She pulled a box of donuts from the fridge and stuck three of them in the microwave, whistling while she waited, then inhaled the scent wafting from the plate.

  “Smells like my kind of lunch,” Katie exclaimed.

  I know, right? Pandora chuckled. Gotta get the donuts in for the day.

  Pandora’s tone was playful but serious. She wasn’t in the mood to play around, and she didn’t want Katie asking questions.

  So she forced a snarky comment and tried to enjoy the donuts.

  Katie licked her fingers, thinking about the coming days and wondering what was in store for her and Pandora. It was rare that she had quiet time. She was used to Pandora’s constant chatter, especially during donut time, so she was happy to have this bit of peace.

  She never knew when the next call would come. When the next demon would break through to take out more of her comrades or innocents, those living their lives with no clue of what was really going on behind the scenes.

  She still couldn’t believe she had been one of those people for most of her life—until Pandora changed everything. She liked her new life though, and had made peace with her future.

  Katie wasn’t sure what she would do if things changed; if Pandora was gone and she went back to a life like the one she’d had before.

  It would be a lot less exciting…not that she’d remember this one, that was for damn sure.

  Katie pushed back from the table and rubbed her belly. That had been a hell of a lot of donuts—since she had gone back for another serving.

  She couldn’t help but notice that Pandora hadn’t helped out with the metabolizing this time. She was about to comment on it when the intercom buzzed. She cringed at the loud sound and sighed.

  “Attention: there has been a new incursion,” Stephanie called over the intercom. “Please report to the call room for more information.”

  Katie put her hands on the table and pushed herself to her feet. Well, good thing I feel like a donut zombie right now.

  Huh? Oh crap, sorry! Pandora kicked Katie’s metabolism into overdrive.

  Thanks, friend, Katie said as she skipped out of the room and down the hall. Sugar high metabolizing. I think I’ll be at level eleven for a while.

  She rounded the corner and slowed down to enter the call room. Stephanie was behind the desk writing something down and looked at Katie with exhaustion on her face. Katie raised her eyebrows and sat down in front of her.

  “I guess I’m the first one,” Katie said.

  “Yeah. I don’t even know if the intercom works in all of the rooms.”

  “So, what is this new call all about?”

  “It’s on a small wooded ranch two hours east-northeast of Las Vegas,” Stephanie read from the paper. “It doesn’t really give any detailed information about what to expect, but HQ sent out the call.”

  Pandora sniffed around for a moment before speaking u
p.

  You need to take this, Pandora told her with a serious tone. Bring your new weapon and specifically ask for Damian to go.

  Why Damian? Katie asked.

  Just trust me…go get the priest, she responded.

  All right, Katie said to Pandora and looked at Stephanie. “I’ll take it, and I’ll grab Damian too.”

  “Sounds good,” Stephanie agreed, staring at the computer. “Put in your earbuds, I’ll send info as I get it. I’m gonna grab something to eat, though. I’m starving.”

  Katie nodded and headed out of the room. There was something about Pandora’s tone that made her uneasy, but the call had to be taken. She went down the tunnels to the sanctuary, where she found Damian finishing a prayer. He stood and straightened his jacket, looking at Katie with a raised eyebrow.

  “What’s up?”

  “There’s a call,” Katie told him. “It’s about two hours from here on a ranch.”

  “Damn intercom system.” Damian shook his head. “They need to just start hitting the button for the bells.”

  “Yeah.” Katie looked at the floor. “Hey, listen, Pandora is really insistent that the two of us head out to this one. She wanted me to grab you and my new quarterstaff and fly over in the chopper.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, but I trust her enough.”

  Gee, thanks, Pandora grumbled.

  “I’d be fine with that, but I don’t know how to fly the helicopter. Korbin is gonna have to go with us. As of this morning, we don’t have the pilot anymore,” Damian replied.

  Shit, Pandora hissed. Korbin…the guy who has reservations about you. Great. I guess it was bound to happen one day. Listen, you need to have a heart-to-heart with Korbin while you’re in the air about totally and completely trusting you.

  I don’t know, Katie said doubtfully. That’s a big ask.

  Fine, but if you don’t think Korbin is willing to keep your secret, I’ll just show you something new some other time, Pandora told her. I can’t do it in front of Korbin if I can’t trust him.

  I think he might feel the same way about us, Katie remarked with a sigh, looking up at the neon cross. Strange things are afoot, and he is just being cautious.

  Caution is good, but trust is better, Pandora replied.

  The day had been a long one for Calvin, with endless tasks he had to complete.

  When he was done he headed over to the training area thinking he was just going to clean weapons, but he ended up doing a bit more.

  Things were weighing heavily on everyone’s minds. There had been the deaths, especially Derek’s, the rogue demon soldiers, and the fact that everything had steadily been increasing in difficulty and danger for quite a while. Calvin was just as tired as everyone else; not just physically, but mentally as well.

  As second-in-command, he had to not only keep his spirits up but his team’s spirits as well. They relied on him for a more hands-on approach then Korbin gave. That was always the way it went with the number two.

  Calvin had always had the answers—and if he didn’t he would find them—but recently he had been falling short in that duty.

  He found himself perplexed by the information he had been given, and he looked to the others to help him figure it out.

  It was new, and not just to him. These were new developments in the history of demons, which was a big thing considering it had been generations and generations since they had started to wreak havoc on Earth.

  Calvin ambled through the halls, taking his time to get to the main living quarters. He had done some hardcore training earlier and was a little tired.

  He reached the doorway and stopped, tilting his head to the side in confusion. Stephanie sat at the table surrounded by three boxes of donuts, and there was a lot of sugar around her mouth.

  “Don’t know, don’t care, don’t give me your thoughts at the moment. I’m high.”

  She smiled, giving zero shits about the situation she’d been caught in. Calvin looked down at the donuts and back at Stephanie with a plethora of questions in his eyes. Stephanie glared back as she grabbed another donut.

  “This was Korbin’s way of apologizing,” she told him. She looked at a cream-filled donut. “Perhaps donuts don’t last as long as roses, but they sure as hell taste better.”

  Calvin looked at her for a moment and she stared back straight-faced, then both of them broke into hysterical laughter. He shook his head and walked over to the table and sat down. He grabbed a donut from the box and looked at it for a moment, letting the laughter subside before taking a huge bite.

  “If I were a woman this would be how I would always want a man to apologize.” He chuckled.

  “Then all the women in the world would be morbidly obese,” Stephanie replied, raising her eyebrows. “And don’t sit there and act like men don’t have to apologize that much, because if they haven’t been they should be.”

  “The donut business would definitely boom, that’s for sure, and it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than flowers.”

  “Very true.” Stephanie smiled as she leaned back and patted her donut belly. “At least we would never go hungry.”

  Calvin thought for a moment. “We’d all have diabetes and high blood pressure, but we wouldn’t be hungry.”

  Stephanie shrugged. “Meh, who cares? Our life expectancy is pretty low anyway.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Calvin replied, shaking his head and wiping his hands on a napkin.

  They sat there quietly for several moments, not even eating. It was almost as if that lighthearted statement had landed like a ton of bricks on their shoulders. Calvin looked out the window, watching the helicopter warming up.

  There was no other feeling like the one he got when he watched his team take off toward an incursion.

  He always wondered who would come back.

  “Can I ask you something?” Stephanie began, breaking the silence.

  “Sure,” he replied.

  “You have known Korbin for a while, right?”

  Calvin hesitated, unsure where the conversation was going to lead. He had no issues with Stephanie and Korbin being together, but he made it a rule to not get involved.

  Still, he knew he was one of the few people she could talk to about their leader, so he nodded. “Yeah, quite a while. Longer than most.”

  “In all the time that he’s been a mercenary, has he ever had a girlfriend?” she asked.

  “Ha!” Calvin leaned back. “That’s an easy one. Korbin has had a stick up his ass ever since he became a mercenary, I don’t think his dick ever got hard unless he was killing a demon.” He saw that Stephanie looked unsure about whether he was telling the truth.

  He used his hands to form a circle. “No shit. A pole four inches in diameter—with splinters—rammed in there from Day One.” He shook his head.

  “Okayyy.”

  Calvin smiled and stood up to leave the room. “Give him time. He’ll figure it all out. Sometimes we start out slow, but he’s quick on the uptake. He’ll start acting right. We are stuck in our ways here, finding what helps us survive and moving forward, not wanting to change that. He cares about you though…I can tell.”

  Stephanie watched as Calvin walked out of the room and out of sight. He was right; they did all have their own special ways of doing things. They got stuck in their habits because if they had survived that far there had to be something to it.

  She reached for another donut and looked at the empty doorway.

  “I’ll let you off the hook this time, Korbin. But somehow we have to make sure you get your relationship groove back.”

  Chapter 8

  “Hell yeah!” The Enlightened was propped against the door. “We rolled in there and not one of them knew how to take it. After all the hype they met their match, and we made sure they didn’t just leave and forget that.”

  “Fuck, yes,” another agreed, his deep voice appropriate for his six-foot eight-inch body. “Did you see how I broke that one dude almost i
n half? He might have been the only casualty, but I’m pretty sure three or four of them will be drinking their breakfast through a straw for the near future.”

  The guys pulled their gear on and jacked themselves up for another ambush. They trained hard; harder than most of those in the military.

  Well, at least those in the Navy and Air Force. Those folks’ jobs didn’t require them to lug backpacks or kick in doors.

  These “Enlightened,” as Moloch called them, had sparks in their eyes for death.

  They were dangerous. While they compared themselves to the Damned mercenaries, they knew they had one advantage the others didn’t: they didn’t care about anyone or anything. They definitely didn’t care about the innocent, and that made them extremely dangerous.

  When their gear was on they sat and talked excitedly about the next mission. They were ready to go; they just needed information on where and what their targets were. All the Enlightened had pledged their lives to Moloch, and their demons had no outside touch with the world.

  They ate, slept, and breathed training, and they grew stronger every day—not just their human bodies but also their connections with their demons.

  Each day was spent learning new skills until they became muscle memory, and there were no rules or artificial constraints—like morality—that kept them from using them.

  “I keep picturing that one guy flying head-first into that cement wall.” One of the men laughed. “It was absolutely beautiful.”

  “On your feet,” Trenton, the leader of the Enlightened barked as he walked in.

  Trenton paced in front of the men, inspecting them from head to toe. Their eyes glowed bright-red and they stared forward like soldiers.

  Trenton was bigger than the rest, as well as angrier and smarter, and his demon was the highest-level among them. He had mastered his weapons, he learned faster than the others (if not by much), and Moloch looked to him to lead the troops.

  “All I heard from the hallway was gloating.” Trenton halted, his feet shoulder-width apart, hands behind his back. “I didn’t hear tactics. I didn’t hear silent contemplation. I heard childish giggling like you won some sort of fucking trophy.”