Soulguard (22 page)

Chapter 49

              “I’ve got how much money?” I asked in amazement.

              “With all the money you’ve added over the last four years to the initial amount, I’ve been able to do some more investing and you just passed a million dollars over what is tied up in businesses. We just bought a lot of foreclosed properties around the area for next to nothing and you should be able to net a substantial amount from those when the economy picks back up.”

              “Foreclosures?” I interrupted, “I don’t want to be a part of putting people out of their homes.”

              “These homes are already owned by the banks, we don’t have anything to do with them before that.”

              “Still I feel we should try to help people instead of take advantage of them. Make some sort of donations to help some of the people around here. Maybe take one of the properties and give it to a family in need. That would be doable wouldn’t it?”

              “You can’t save everyone, Colin.”

              “True, but no one can say we don’t try,” I said, “Look up the people before you do the deed, though. I don’t mind helping the people who are in genuine need. I’m not interested in helping the useless ones who won’t try to help themselves.”

              “You’ve been talking too much with that Shoffner kid, haven’t you?”

              “He’s from this area and he’s shed a lot of light on how folks think here.”

              Patrick Shoffner was a native of the area and he’d just gotten here from the Academy. He was nineteen and new to the Guard but he was as dedicated as any of the vets stationed here. Everyone liked the kid, and when he was welcomed to Rourke’s Rednecks he had fit right in.

              I stood up and headed for the door, “I gotta go meet with the Twins, then Ric has some sort of thing going on this evening. I’ll talk to you later.”

              “All right, Boss,” he answered and I heard him muttering as I walked down the hall, “Crazy...give em away...too noble for his own good...”

              I chuckled, it might be crazy, but I don’t see why a person can’t help when they can. I have more money than I’ll ever need already. I can give some to the people in need. The Guard gives me what I need. I live on base, I make enough money to feed my eating addiction and that’s really all the money I spend.

              I passed Jenna Seymore as I walked down the hall and she smiled and nodded, “Boss.”

              “Jen.” I smiled in return. The night before she’d been the one to visit my quarters. I’m pretty sure Prada and Jenna had planned the whole thing since it started last year. Every so often one of them would show up in my quarters. They kept it secret so that I wouldn’t feel like I was painting targets on their backs. They genuinely care for me and they didn’t want me to be alone. They are both wonderful women but I find it hard to be more than friends with someone who is afraid of me. It’s hard not to see that all my Guards are afraid of me. They love me but they are afraid of me. It’s something I’ve come to find in everyone around me. Only a few people in my life aren’t afraid of me.

              Maybe it’s actually not fear of me, exactly, but fear of what I am. The skills I have as a Soullord, the rage from the altered DNA. These are what my Guards see when they see me. These are what they see when we go into the caves after Demons. It’s like I’m two people. One they love, the other terrifies them.

              So when either of those women come to me, I turn off my Sight so the fear isn’t what I see. And I just feel the companionship of a woman.

              I reached the office that the Twins share and entered.

              “Boss,” Sandy said as she saw me, “We’ve got some good news for you. You’ve officially become the youngest Mage Captain in the Guard. They can’t deny that you’ve done an excellent job since coming here and now they have to make it official.”

              Randy laughed out loud, “I bet it hurt the bastards to sign this.”

              He handed me an envelope.

              “I’d say Greg pushed this or Nora.” Sandy said, “Both of them are strong advocates for your future in the Guard.”

              “I’d say so,” I said, “What changes for me can I expect?”

              “The only thing that changes is the pay, really,” Randy said, “But there’s going to be a respect thing with other Mages. Before, everyone knew it was a position to make you fail. Now they’ll know you more than earned the rank, because you did it while they actively tried to make you fail.”

              “I did it because you two were here and Warren. I just killed Demons.”

              “Maybe,” Randy laughed again, “But you do it very well. And we make you look good. Although, I think you could easily do our jobs now. That broken arm last year actually gave you time to learn something.”

              “Even if your math skills are atrocious,” Sandy added.

              “Let’s leave my math skills out of this, thank you.” I stood back up and turned to the door, “Math shouldn’t have frigging letters in it, anyway. Math is numbers, not letters. I don’t know who the crazy ass was who decided to put letters in it but they need to be dragged out in the street and shot.”

              Both Mages started laughing and I waved as I left the room, heading for my office. When I got there the phone was ringing and I answered.

              “Colin Jaegher.”

              “Still going by Jaegher?” Sam Keller’s voice asked, “Thought you’d be going by Rourke by now.”

              “Nah, my checks are still to Jaegher although I don’t make it much of a secret about it anymore.”

              “You guys busy down there?”

              “Not so much this year. We had a pretty harsh incident last year in Little Rock and the bastards seem to be laying low.”

              “Well I have a large problem and I could use your help.”

              “What do you need?”

              “We got a pretty large infestation and I could use a lot more bodies here to help stomp it out. Too much area for me to get em all alone and I need the coverage for a large area.”

              “Not a problem, I’ll leave an RRT here and bring the rest up there. Where do you need us to go?”

              “I’ll send a plane down to get you. Fly into JFK in New York and I’ll meet you there. It should be able to get there by this evening.”

              “Will we have problems with bringing our gear?”

              “It’s our plane,” he said, “There won’t be a problem.”

              “We’ll be there.”

              “I’ll owe you one,” He said and hung up.

              New York, huh? That might be fun. I dialed Rictor’s cell phone, “Hey, Ric, we got a job. For all the Guards we can bring.”

Chapter 50

              “You could have said it was the damn sewers,” I said.

              Sam laughed, “Then you wouldn’t have come. I made that mistake with the Guards at the Academy. They just laughed at me and said to call you, cause you were closer.”

              “Which Guards?”

              “Kind of funny, his name was Jaegher, too.”

              “He’s gonna pay for that one,” I said, “Mark my words, Kharl Jaegher will pay.”

              I heard a laugh from behind us, “It was so bad he even lost his appetite.”

              “No frigging way,” I heard Jacobs, “There’s no way he lost his appetite.”

              The tired Guards were making their way into the base in Pittsburgh. We’d spent two weeks straight killing out the nest of Demons scattered throughout the sewer system of New York. It was the nastiest job I’d ever done, and it was Kharl’s fault. Maybe I could get Lyrica to set his hair on fire or something.

              “After we get cleaned up,” Sam turned to the Guards, “I think I owe you dinner at the least. How bout I order about fifty Pizzas and a truckload of beer.”

              The pizza didn’t thrill the Guards as much as the beer.

              “A big truck!” Holsey, one of the new transfers into the Rednecks yelled.

              “A damn big truck!” yelled Jacobs.

              “A damn big truck it is!” answered Sam.

***

              “I had it made,” Trent said, “I was picked for the RRT and I thought I’d miss something. Ramirez switched with me and now that smell is permanently embedded in my nostrils.”

              “That’ll teach you,” Jacobs laughed and bit into another piece of pizza.

              “Why did your Mage Captain torch that whole room?” I heard a voice ask at the other end of the room.

              “Finally found something that he couldn’t handle,” I think it was Jackson’s voice, “Rats.”

              “After all the crap you guys have told us,” another voice joined in, “How can the guy be afraid of rats?”

              “I don’t know if I’d call it fear, exactly. Let’s say he has an aversion to sharing air with the little vermin,” Jackson said, “He torched the whole room. It’s not like he ran, screaming, back out of it.”

              “True enough. He wasn’t screaming.”

              “It wasn’t as bad as the time he blew out the whole wall in his quarters on base,” Prada said.

              “Why did he do that?”

              “Sometimes he feels the Demons when they come over and it happened to coincide with some sort of bad dream he was having. He woke up Pulling and blew the whole wall out. It was right in front of a bunch of us. He was out in the hall with Soulblades and everything.”

              “Yeah,” Kim Salazar said with a snort, “The Boss sleeps naked, too. There he was, butt-naked and his eyes looked like they were flaming. As soon as he realized where he was, he blushed from head to toe and ran back into his quarters.”

              I remembered that night. There were five women out in the hall and I’d really had a nightmare. But really, did it have to be about frigging Zombies? Really?

              The Demons had been in Kentucky that time, so they were relatively close by and had triggered my rage. Needless to say, I began wearing clothes when I slept after that.

              I looked at the other Guards in the Dome. They were downing beers as fast as they could in the attempt to actually get drunk. They laughed and joked and I soaked up the atmosphere. This is what I fight for. These are my family. It’s all well and good to say you’re trying to save the world from Demons but that’s too big for one person to really cope with. But my family is large and we can say it without feeling overwhelmed because we’re all in it together.

              My thoughts were interrupted as the Guard Captain from Pittsburgh walked over to me. Anthony Caprida was his name and he was, if not an Elite, very close to one. His Soulstream was not much smaller than many of the Elites at the Academy.

              “They tell me you learned the blade from Kyra Nightwing,” he said as he sat down on the bench to my left, “Did she teach you the Dance of Blades?”

              “Yeah,” I answered and bit into a slice of pizza. I chewed and swallowed, “I’ve been teaching it to some of my Guards. Several of them are good at it too.”

              “I noticed some of them seemed to be Dancing as we fought in the sewers. Prada is really good,” He said, “What impresses me, though is when you are leading a group of Guards, the whole group seems to flow with you. It’s fascinating.”

              I wasn’t aware that he’d seen us fighting in a group down in the sewers. I didn’t remember being teamed with Caprida.

              “I witnessed your patrol from one of the tunnels above you,” He said and smiled. I thought, for a second he’d read my mind. “It was when you were in that central junction. Looked like a huge room, packed full of Demons.”

              “I remember where you’re talking about,” I said with a chuckle, “That’s where Jacobs fell in the hole right in the middle of it.”

              “Did I hear my name?” came a voice from over with the others.

              “Probably talking bout you coming out of that one place looking like a drowned rat,” I heard Trent.

              “Please don’t talk about that, it was a horrible experience and should never be brought up again.”

              Caprida chuckled and shook his head, “I have to say, you’re not like most of the Mages we deal with. It’s refreshing.”

              “Thanks.”

              “Might I talk you into doing the Dance for the guys tomorrow, before you have to leave?”

              “Sure, we might be able to get a few of the Guards to do it too.”

              “I would appreciate it,” he said and stood up, “Some of these guys have never seen it and would really enjoy it.”

              “I’ll come in the morning.”

              “Great.”

              As Caprida walked away, Trent made his way over and sat down, “You know, my luck is awful. First I thought I was winning when Mattie and me were given our orders. She got New Mexico and I got Tennessee. I was happy to get to come out to work with you after being trained where I could actually help.”

              He snagged a piece of my pizza, “Then, on my first patrol, I got the crap beat outta me. Then I talk Ramirez into switching with me so I wouldn’t miss anything and I get two weeks in a sewer. I’m beginning to worry.”

              I laughed, “At least Mattie gets to work under Daffy, She’s a hell of a fighter and I think she’s a good Guard Captain.”

Jacobs stopped dead in his tracks on his way over to where we sat, “Did I just hear you call Daphne Cavanaugh Daffy?
The
Daphne Cavanaugh?”

              I looked at him for a minute and he shook his head slowly back and forth with his mouth hanging open.

              “I think I finally figured you out, Boss,” He said abruptly and continued over to where we sat, “You got no sense of self preservation. I mean, first you piss off every powerful Mage in the Academy.”

              “Not all of em,” I protested.

              He continued, “Then you Wile E. Coyote into a wall in Little Rock.”

              “Well, I kind of misjudged th...”

              He held up his hand, “And you call the scariest woman I know Daffy.”

              “But...”

              “No self preservation,” he interrupted, “You’re supposed to have a little voice that tells you not to do things. You don’t have that little voice and I think I’m going over to the other side of the room before some of whatever you got gets on me.”

              He turned and walked back over to the other Guards. I looked back down to see that my pizza box was gone.

              “He stole my pizza.”

              “Damn it!” Trent said, “I was trying to get at least one more piece of it.”

              He stood up and followed Jacobs, “Hey give me some of that! Why do you think I went over there, anyway?”

              As Trent pursued Jacobs across the Dome to the other Guards, Sam Keller walked over and took a seat.

              “I’m not the sort of person to get jealous,” he said with a shake of his head, “but I really wish I had the rapport you have with your men.”

              “I was raised by two Guards that most of them sort of idolize. It gives me an advantage over most other Mages.”

              “It’s not just that either,” Sam said, “I go with my men into caverns just like you, but Caprida is their leader. I’m just the Mage. I saw how you work with your men, and don’t deny it, they are
your
men. I was with Caprida when we saw you cleaning out that room. Every move you made was mirrored in your Guards. It was like you were connected on some level. Caprida was quite impressed, as was I.”

              “We’ve worked together a lot,” I said, “they know how I work.”

              “It’s more than that,” he said “but you’ll see it when you’re ready. I think it has to do with being a Soullord, but it’s just a theory.”

              He stood back up and looked down at me, “Just think about it a little and see if it makes sense to you. You know more about what you can do than I do. As for me, I’m turning in for the evening. Have a pleasant night.”

              “You too, Sam.”

              He could be on to something, I had Pushed memories into my Guards before. Was it possible that I was broadcasting to them as we fought? Maybe he was right.