Soul Guard (Elemental Book 5) (17 page)
Read Soul Guard (Elemental Book 5) Online
Authors: Rain Oxford
I drove to a state park I knew was usually pretty
deserted. Once I pulled into a spot by a lake with a picnic table, I used my magic
to search for anyone around. Fortunately, I was alone. I set the bomb on the
picnic table, stuck the key in it, turned it on, and backed up. At about fifty
feet away, I covered my eyes and hit the detonator. Although it didn’t make any
sound, I did feel heat. I looked up after a few seconds. The bomb didn’t look
any different. The lights were still on.
I did a quick search again to make sure there was no
one around, turned around, and hit the detonator again, this time not closing
my eyes. It was almost too bright to handle even facing away from it, but it
faded after a few seconds. Again, the bomb looked fine, but the lights were
yellow instead of blue.
Excited about my discovery, I gathered everything and
drove back to my apartment. As I did, the presence came back, and it was almost
suffocating my instincts. I felt like someone was right behind me. I ignored
it.
When I got inside, I told Darwin and Henry what I
learned; they were not only harmless to people, but they were reusable. So,
Henry and I gathered it all up and got to work on our plan. Darwin took Scott
to my mother’s place so that if I needed Rocky, he could pop in and help me
without leaving my mother and Kyle alone. Darwin could get ahold of me in just
a few seconds if something happened.
I used the shadow pass again to take us to the wizard
who lived out in the woods. From the moment we appeared in the dark shed, I
could hear the dog barking. I was worried we were too late.
Then the shed door opened and the wizard stood there
with a fireball in his hand. “What are you doing on my land?” he asked.
“We’re here to help you,” I said.
“Does that ever stop someone from shooting you when
you appear out of thin air on their property?”
“I normally try not to appear out of thin air in
private property, so I don’t know.”
He lowered his fist and the flame was doused. “You
have the wrong man. I don’t need your help.”
“At sundown, you’re going to get a visit from a
demon.”
“Well, that’s a first. I don’t meet too many
religious wizards.”
“Not that kind of demon. I’m talking about a
ridiculously powerful creature that is going to appear out of the forest and
kill you. He may first try to get you to serve his master.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because there are more of them who are doing the
same thing and because… I had a vision.”
He scoffed and started to turn, then paused. “Wait.
Are you Devon Sanders? John Cross’s son?”
“Unfortunately. How do you know of me?”
“I’m friends with Vincent. He told me his nephew was
the hero type. You know; the kind who goes around trying to help everyone else.
It’s rare to find a wizard who gives a shit anymore. That’s why the council
flopped. I said it would. I said it first,” he said, walking away. Henry and I
followed. The house was just as I had seen it in my vision and we had less than
an hour left to prepare, so Henry and I placed the bombs around the house as we
explained that the demon would appear using shadows. If he used the detonator
as soon as the dog started barking, it should prevent the demon from being able
to take shape.
“So that’s your entire plan? Flash some lights at
him?”
“You’re a wizard, too, so you can come up with
another plan if you want. We have to leave. Press the button or don’t. You get
at least two shots, but I can’t guarantee more, and I don’t know what it will
do once the demon has fully formed, so time it well.”
I then dropped Henry off in Nevada, where he could
watch over the guy at the club and make sure the shadow walker didn’t actually
kill the cops.
Finally, I used the shadow pass to find the man on
the train. It must have taken ten times as long as normal before the shadows
dispersed, and when it did, it felt like it was trying to take my skin with it.
The world tilted violently, the lights stabbed at my eyes, and I threw up.
Common sense told me the lights weren’t as bright as
they seemed to be, but that didn’t help when it felt like they were going to
burn my eyeballs out of their sockets. Glancing down at myself, I expected my
clothes to be charred or my skin to be bleeding. Instead, darkness clung to my
body like smoke. I took a few steps towards the door, only to have to brace
myself as vertigo threatened to flip the car over on me.
“Not this way,” a girl said. I jumped back because
all of a sudden, there was a girl in her early teens standing right next to me.
“Who the hell are you?”
“You can’t go this way. You have to go that way.” She
pointed to the door on the opposite end of the car, where the man was.
When I turned to look, the man was gone. “Why? What’s
that way?” I asked, turning back to the girl… who was also gone. “Okay, I need
to tell Henry to stop putting weird shit in my food.” The presence vanished
then, along with much of the vertigo. I still felt like I hadn’t eaten or slept
in a week, but at least my internal organs weren’t trying to crawl up my
throat.
I managed two steps towards the opposite side of the
car when my instincts stopped me cold.
Danger
. Before I could backtrack,
the subway train lurched to a stop. I hit the floor and rolled forward. I
grabbed one of the center poles to stop my momentum just as the lights went
out. My instincts screamed at me to get out of the car. I pulled my penlight
out of my pocket…
“Fuck!” I had forgotten to switch it with a working
one!
And then, with a deafening sound of crunching metal
and snapping electrical cords, the entire back half of the train car was torn
away, leaving me dangling on the edge of the remaining half over the tracks.
People were screaming, but at least that meant they were alive for the moment.
“Well, if it isn’t Devon Sanders. I didn’t think I
would be the one to take you out. This is going to be fun.”
I climbed to my feet, relying way too much on the
pole, and then turned to face the shadow walker. The part of the car that had
been ripped off was completely gone and the man standing on the tracks was
barely visible in the dim light of the wreckage. Along with a few fires that
had broken out, several of the cars down the line had slow, flashing lights.
The shadow walker looked no different than any other
man with black hair and dark eyes. His physique was hidden under his black
robes that made him damn near invisible. I held out my hand and called on my
staff. What I really wanted was my elemental sword, but I didn’t know how to
summon that because it was a creation of the world and not my magic.
My staff came to me easily, yet the shadow walker
only looked more confident. “I guess you don’t want to play games then,” he
said snidely.
I had to keep his attention off the cars behind me
that were full of people. I drew on my magic, focused my mind on hatred and
anger towards this shadow walker who was willing to kill so many people, and
struck with red lightning. It was a technique Langril had taught me to use against
Krechea because it was functional on Earth and even more devastating on Dothra.
Although it was almost like conjuring fire, fire was part of nature and this
lightning was more like an affront to the elementals. Why the lightning was
red, I didn’t know.
Unfortunately, the energy required to make it nearly
knocked me on my ass, whilst the lightning simply hit an invisible barrier
around the shadow walker and disintegrated harmlessly. As I cursed, he laughed.
“Is this really what the Shadow Master is so worried about?”
I gathered the energy inside me again.
“Let me show you how it’s done,” the shadow walker
said before I could strike. Both of his hands seemed to glow, but that wasn’t
where the attack came from. Instead, black smoke suddenly surrounded me and the
pole I was still holding onto like a small tornado. It was unbearably hot, and
as it started spinning faster and faster, red fire and lightning crackled
inside the thick smoke.
I forced myself to breathe calmly and not choke as I
reached out with my magic for his mind. To my dismay, the smoke confused my
magic, so I couldn’t find any mind outside of it. A red glow lit the narrow
space an instant before I was struck in the back and chest simultaneously.
I had been through quite a few injuries in the
paranormal world, as well as a curse that left me with a mortally damaged
heart, and I probably had no business even being alive. All the times that I
survived by the skin of my teeth either from the help of my friends or sheer
luck probably gave me something of a subconscious immortality complex.
This time, however, I really thought I was dead. I
really thought the pain would stop my heart, my eyes would close, and I would
cease to exist. I felt my heart stop, I felt the hot metal floor as I collapsed
to my knees, and I felt the world slow down around me.
And then my heart beat again.
The pain was chased from my organs and muscles by an
entirely strange sensation of numbness. I looked up as strength filled my limbs
and saw that the smoke had dispersed and my gargoyle was there, glaring at me
as only a gargoyle could.
“How…?” the shadow walker asked, his voice weak with
astonishment.
I stood and reached for his mind again, only to hit a
mental barricade that was as strong as Vincent’s. And I realized as I did that
after four consecutive visions, multiple trips through the shadow pass, and an
unsuccessful attempt at using the lightning, my magic “well” was dry. I didn’t
have enough magic left to light a candle.
Unfortunately, even though I had the power of my key
left, my physical energy was just as depleted as my magic. On a last ditch
effort, I reached through the bond between Rocky and me, only to discover that
all of his energy was being used to keep me alive until the damage could heal.
The shadow walker must have realized this, because he
didn’t waste another minute. He raised his fists, glowing once again with red
energy, and Rocky stretched out his wings to cover me. Magic struck stone, but
I still felt some of the blow through my bond with Rocky.
When I heard the shadow walker shout with surprise, I
peered under Rocky’s wing to see what was happening, and I gaped. Felicity had
appeared behind him and in the moment that he was distracted, she had stabbed
him in the back with her sword.
* * *
I didn’t realize I had passed out until I woke in a
soft bed… and I was being kissed. I opened my eyes, fully expecting to see my
gargoyle, some bloodshed, and a seriously confused shadow walker.
There were two of those things.
I was alone with Felicity in a motel room, and she
was naked, covered in blood. And she was kissing me. I tried to push her back,
but my limbs didn’t want to work and I only managed to break the kiss. “What
are you doing?”
“Healing you,” she answered, as if it should have
been obvious.
“Why are you kissing me?”
She rolled her eyes. “My magic works differently than
yours does. I have to feel affection for you in order to heal you.” She tried
to kiss me again, so I pushed her away again.
My brain wasn’t back to full speed yet. “What
happened with the train?”
“I killed the shadow walker, the gargoyle vanished,
and I brought you here. I saved your life.”
“And why are you naked?”
“Because I don’t like being bathed in the blood of my
enemies.”
“You’d rather kiss them.”
She full-on glared now. “No, I figured when I handed
you the key to save all your precious little humans and then saved your life,
that we weren’t enemies anymore! Sorry for my mistake! Heal your fucking self!”
I wanted to say something as she got up and hastily
started dressing, but I had no idea what. I barely had enough strength to lift
my head up. She stormed out the door. I fell back to sleep.
* * *
The next time I woke, I was in my own bed. I would
have tried to go back to sleep if hunger didn’t drive me out of my room. Darwin
was working on the laptop, Scott was drawing, and Henry was on the phone in the
kitchen. All three of them stopped and stared at me.
“Is that food?” I asked, indicating a bunch of paper
bags on the table.
“Mostly chicken fingers and chips,” Darwin said.
I grabbed a plate and dug through the bags until my
plate was overflowing with chicken strips and French fries. I started eating
before I sat down and Henry handed me a mug of coffee. “So, what happened?” I
asked after half my food had been devoured.
“You were gone too long and weren’t responsive when I
tried to open a mental comlink, so I got worried and called my dad. He got
ahold of Hunt and Vincent. Vincent found you and brought you back here, and
Hunt got Henry.”
“Did you have any trouble with the shadow walker at
the club?” I asked Henry.
“She was quite shocked when the cops were waiting for
her. She resisted arrest for a few minutes and tried to kill a cop, so I took
her down. I almost took off her head before she changed into shadows. There
were no signs of her for the rest of the night.”
“What about---”
“I was just on the phone with her,” Henry
interrupted. “Becky and her parents are fine. They think they killed the shadow
walker, but it just disappeared, so they weren’t sure. She said her father
enjoyed the excuse to use his magic in battle again.”
“Because bringing joy is what we live for. What day
is it?”
“Sunday night. There’s another attack at about six in
the morning. Do you think you can handle it?”
“I can,” I said. “Did you make any progress with your
father?”
Darwin stared at the computer screen for a long
moment. “I think he wants to talk about it and I just want to pretend he didn’t
say he would kick me out if I could shift.”
“Darwin, you are a genius, but you underestimate your
father’s love for you. I’m not going to tell you that you’re overreacting
because you’re not, and I’m not going to tell you that you might have
misunderstood because you already know that. What I will tell you is that your
father would decimate his entire pack for you and if there is any chance that
you two can coexist, he would do whatever it takes. Don’t throw that away.
Things happen in this world to good people. Even the strongest man will
eventually fall.”
He glared at the screen as if it had offended him.
“Nothing will ever happen to my dad.”
“Take it from me; don’t let fear and anger ruin your
relationship with the important people in your life.” I let him ponder that as
I proceeded to finish off the entire plate and a second one after that. I would
have gotten another, but we were out.
After dinner, I summoned Rocky to see how he was
doing. Other than a bit of smoke residue on his stone wings, he seemed to be in
perfect health, so I sent him to check on the wizard out in the forest. Since
all I got back was the image of the man and his dog gathering herbs, I figured
they were safe.
Despite Darwin and Henry’s concerns, I decided to use
a vision to try to get a jump on the shadow walker. When I slipped on the ring
and Darwin sent me the mental picture of a teenage girl, the vision came
naturally.
A group of Japanese teenagers in school uniforms
were walking down a street in Japan. There were four girls and two boys. After
a few minutes, one of the girls turned to another. “Ima nanji desuka?”
“Rokuji sanjuppun.”
I didn’t hear her response over the boys laughing
about something, but the girl broke away from the group, said her goodbyes, and
headed down a narrow alleyway. Right behind her, darkness spread like oil
across the road.
The vision faded and I waited for the effects to hit
me, yet they didn’t come. “You okay?” Darwin asked. I nodded. “Did you learn
anything?”
“I think they were in Japan. It was a waste of
energy, though, because she’s going to get attacked in public and I didn’t see
any way to stop it without getting arrested for being a creepy stalker.”
“Yeah, because Japan has none of those,” Darwin said
sarcastically.
“It was getting dark there, so why did you say six in
the morning?”
“The shadow walkers are going by whatever time zone
the victim is in, not ours. Did you get an exact time?”
“They were speaking Japanese.”
“What did they say?”
“I don’t know Japanese.” He rolled his eyes. “Okay.
The girl was with her friends and she did say something like… I’m a ninja
desuka?”
“Ima nanji desuka?”
“Yeah.”
“And what was the answer?”
“Roku… sansu… something. They were fast.”
“Rokuji sanjuppun?”
“Yes, I think.”
“Well, it’s a good thing you did do the vision then,
because we would have been half an hour late otherwise. She’s going to be
attacked at six-thirty in the evening there, and that’s five-thirty in the
morning here.”
* * *
So, at a few minutes before five-thirty, I was awoken
with a mug of coffee and sent off to Japan. I appeared under a restaurant
awning and it took me a few minutes to get my bearings. Fortunately, the
restaurant wasn’t open and there didn’t seem to be anyone around that saw me
appear out of thin air. The restaurant was on the corner of a street and alley
and just when I started to recognize the spot, I heard voices.