Soulguard (29 page)

Chapter 61

              Lyrica stood up shakily and Trent reached out to steady her. The Pulling had stopped and he could see that Colin was still breathing. Relief flooded through him as he saw his friend’s chest rise and fall.

              Lyrica bent back down and kissed him, she whispered something Trent couldn’t make out and stood back up.

              “He’ll be fine, now. He can rest for a while. He was fighting for three days straight.”

              She turned and started for the door when she saw the ugly Souls of Five Mages approaching. She stepped out in the hall with rage coursing through her, a leftover from her trip into the Soul of Colin Rourke.

              “We’ve come for the body,” Roman Graves said with satisfaction rolling across his aura.

              “If you touch him,” Lyrica replied savagely as she reached out with her mind, grasped all five of their Souls, and pulled them halfway out of their bodies, then slammed them back in, “I’ll rip your Souls apart.”

              Denton screeched and fled, Graves and Salvador both fell to the floor with spasms wracking them. Regina Worthington and Russell Fisher both fell unconscious to the floor.

              When the spasms ended, Lyrica looked down at both of the Senior Mages, “Pick up your trash and leave, Now.”

              After they staggered down the hall with the others dragging behind them, Lyrica turned to Trent and Mattie.

              “Put Guards on him until he wakes. When he does, he will do what he does best, his duty. Don’t let him go alone to face those jackals. Wake me, I’ll stand with him when he does.”

              “We all will,” Trent returned.

              As Lyrica walked off to find a place to sleep Mattie turned to Trent, “I wonder if he even knows how that girl feels about him?”

              “I doubt it, for someone so perceptive, sometimes he’s blind as a bat.”

***

              “I’ll bring all of the evidence before the Council, today,” Gregor Kherkov said to the man who sat in the chair across the desk from him.

              “Are ye sure ye should go in there alone?” Lennox Flynn asked.

              “I don’t want it to be a show of force. The Council cannot deny the truth when Guilefort and I present it to them. If we truly need a big hammer, I’ll call in the rest of them.”

              “Tis true, we have an unholy big hammer if we need it,” Flynn said. “The bloody Council canna deny the truth when Guilefort is there. It should be enough to prove the guilt of the Archmage. Then the Council will be forced to act.”

              “That is my hope,” Gregor returned, “We could wait for Colin to be present but I think it would mean more to the Council if the evidence was brought forward by someone,
not
at odds with Price already.”

              “True enough, old friend. If ye need us we will be near.”

              “Thanks, Len.”

              Flynn stood and left Gregor’s office. He headed directly to the infirmary. As he stepped into the infirmary he couldn’t help but see the Guards stationed in the hallway before Colin’s room.

              The man pulls a dedication from ‘is men unlike many people can, Flynn thought.

              There were ten Guards outside of the room, or more accurately, ten very powerful Mages. No one would enter who wasn’t welcome.

              They all knew Flynn and he nodded as he passed one of the women he’d met earlier, Cavanaugh was her name. She had been the one who had dropped her privacy shield to show him what the Soullord had caused with that insane Pull.

              He shook his head in wonder as he remembered coming completely awake from a dead sleep in Edinburgh. He’d felt that Pull from halfway around the bloody world.

              As he stepped into the room, he saw Lyrica. She sat in a chair beside the Soullord reading a book. She looked up as he entered and smiled.

              “Len,” She greeted him warmly, then she looked to Colin for a moment, “He should be waking up in the next few days. I don’t even want to get into what I saw inside of his Soul, I’ll just say it was a fight to end all fights in there. He fought for three days straight.”

              She looked toward the door with that look Flynn would see in her eyes as she looked right through things, at Souls. “Because of them,” she nodded toward the door, “he didn’t have to fight alone.”

***

              “What we are here for, is to ask,” Gregor’s voice boomed across the chambers, “no, to demand answers from a man who has committed treason against the Soulguard and against Humanity itself.”

***

              “Gregor is going to the Council, today,” Lennox said, after a moment in silence, “E’s takin te truthseer with ‘im. Tis a confrontation e is after. E was meanin to wait for young Colin, ‘ere, but ‘is honor will not allow it to wait any longer.”

              “There was something really off about those Councilors yesterday, I think we should go and back him up,” Lyrica stood up with one last look at her Soullord.

              Tis a great big lot o trouble that boy is in when she gets a little older, he thought with a smile.

              “Then by all means, let’s go talk to the Council, Lass.”

              The two of them walked out together, Lyrica had spent a great deal of time with Lennox Flynn while she was in Edinburgh. He was like the kind Uncle that always looked out for her. Mattie and Trent both fell in behind them. Every step she made, one or both of them was always there.

              Lyrica didn’t mind, Trent was Colin’s oldest friend and Mattie was one of the greatest fighters that Lyrica had ever come across. Her father must have been something else to have trained her as well as he had. Lyrica had met Mattie’s father several times but hadn’t trained with him any. It was sad to think that she had lost the only family she had left because of the travesty the Archmage had created with his crusade to destroy the Guard.

              Right now the job was all Mattie Riordan had to hold on to and Lyrica would never presume to take that from the grieving woman.

              The two Guards were unusually silent. There was always a joyful banter going on between them, but the current situation had even put a damper on their conversations.

Lyrica could see the pain in Mattie and she could also see the pain in Trent as he watched her. Neither of them would ever admit it but they were perfect for each other, and one day they would see it themselves.

***

“It has been brought to my attention, that there was a call made by The Knoxville Mage Captain informing the Archmage personally of the invasion over twenty-four hours ahead of time.”

The Councilors looked at Greg in stony silence.

***

They exited the elevator on the floor where the Council chambers were located and Lyrica felt a Pull that jarred her insides.

“Dear God,” Flynn mumbled as Lyrica went supernova. She shot forward faster than the eye could follow and slammed through the Council chambers door.

***

“All that is required is for you to answer the question, Price,” Gregor said.

Beside him stood Simon Guilefort and Gregor repeated the question, “Did Colin call you with information that there was an imminent invasion by an army of Demons coming?”

Price just stared at Gregor without saying a word.

Gregor turned to the Council, “This is a question that has an answer that will shake the Soulguard to the core. This man has plotted and deceived too many men and women to be left unaccountable. Here is the list of men and women whose lives were lost due to this man’s treason. Jacob Andrews, Saundra Adams, Franklin Banks....” the list went on and on, “Nora Kestril, Jeromy Kieser, Floyd Kramer...” each name seemed to slam into the room like a hammer blow.

He had called out fifty-one of the one hundred and five names when every Mage in the room turned and focused on him and Guilefort. He stopped and raised a stream shield around Guilefort and himself just in time. There were twenty-three Mages in the room with them, including the Archmage, and every single one of them Pulled.

“Oh shit,” he mumbled and raised two more shields like Colin had shown him, slamming the other two out against the first.

Fireballs slammed into his shield and they felt like blows to the gut. There were so many, he wasn’t sure he could hold. Even with the larger Stream he now had, he was feeling the shields weaken.

Then the door exploded inward and slammed into the wall on the far side of the chambers, it struck endways and embedded three feet into the rock wall with a huge metallic crunch. A form shot into the chamber glowing like the sun and all hell broke loose around Gregor. He’d seen something similar from Kevin Graves in the battle with the Demons. But Kevin has a twelve inch stream. Lyrica Jayne has a twenty inch stream and she was Pulling hard enough to shake the whole Academy.

“PRICE!!” the girl screamed as power exploded from her. Nine Councilors were burnt down instantly, another eight flamed soon after. Then she did something that scared the living shit out of Gregor.

He wasn’t sure, exactly what it was, but she reached out with her hands and ripped the Souls completely out of Archmage Price, Luciuos Salvador, Roman Graves, Allen Denton, Russell Fisher, and Regina Worthington. He knew that was what she did because the Souls still looked like the people that they were ripped out of as they screamed in eerie silence and were sucked down into the Source.

***

              Lyrica shot toward the doorway to the Council chambers as the world slowed almost to a stop. She had learned after the episode with Kevin Graves to find that focus point deep within her that made her mind work faster than her body. It was almost like running through a world that was stuck in a still frame. She hardly slowed down as she kicked the door completely across the Council room.

              The second she entered, she took in the situation. Every single Mage was attacking Gregor and Guilefort. All of them were shooting fireballs and they were slamming into Gregor’s shield. He was pouring power into the shield but each hit staggered the man.

              What the hell were they all attacking him for? His appeal was supposed to be to them for support in the removal of Price. It wasn’t supposed to be an attack. It was obvious that Gregor was totally on defense and Guilefort looked out of Gregor’s shield in stunned silence.

              She looked to the Mages to find that only six of them had even bothered with shields. The only thing she could see was hate rolling through their auras. There was so much hate in the room she could almost feel it pushing into her mind.

              “PRICE!!” she screamed and opened portals on eight disk launchers and her Soullance, simultaneously. She targeted nine Mages with no shields and fired one shot per Mage. Then she fired at the other unshielded Mages.

              She was pretty sure that a full out power struggle with the Archmage and the other five Mages would leave her lacking. And it would be a stone bitch to get through the man’s shield, much less the shields of three Senior Mages and two medium strength Mages. So she reached out with her mind as she had done in the hallway of the infirmary and ripped the Souls completely out of their bodies. They were screaming silently as their Souls were pulled down into the Source.

Lyrica stood in the middle of the Council chambers with Soulfire burning all around her as Lennox Flynn stepped inside the room.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” He gasped, “Ye dinna leave any for us. At seems a wee bit selfish of ye, Lass.”

She pointed at Regina Worthington, “For some reason, that one still lives, sort of.”

There was a tiny sliver of her Soul still inside of her body. When it wouldn’t release from the woman’s body, the rest had ripped away. It was ugly and purplish in color, much like a Demon’s Soul.

“There’s something strange about that woman. Maybe Colin can figure out what it is,” Lyrica said. She looked up with that far-away look in her eyes.

“He’s waking up,” she said with a smile.  

Chapter 62

              In the blackness, I heard voices. I opened my eyes. As my vision cleared, I saw Rictor standing directly between me and the door to the room where I lay on a bed. His Aura was ablaze and he held two flaming swords at the ready. He was as ready to fight as I’d ever seen him and I wondered what was happening. My eyes closed again and I slipped back into the dark.

              After some time I opened my eyes again, slowly, to find Rictor standing at the end of the bed where I lay. He was standing directly between me and the door again with his full battle gear on. He stood with his back straight and his aura was filled with a turbulence that was uncommon for Ric. As I raised my head, I could see why. His Soulstream was swollen to at least twelve inches and the power flowed across his aura much faster.

              Just what the hell had happened out on the plains of Kansas? Had all my Guards had the same sort of reaction to my Pulling through them? If so, the population of Mages in the US just increased three hundred percent.

              “If I can manage it,” I said, “I’d like to not ever do that again.”

              He spun in place impossibly quick and his aura was flooded with relief and happiness.

              “I have to agree with you there, Boss,” he said with a slightly crooked grin, “That was crazy, even for you.”

              He turned back toward the door and yelled, “Prada! Ramirez!”

              Both of them walked into the room and the first thing I saw was the much larger Soulstreams on both of them. Prada’s was as large as Rictor’s and Ramirez’s was close to ten inches in diameter.

              “It appears I’m not the only Mage in the Rednecks now.”

              “Not by a longshot, Boss,” Prada returned, “Every single Guard who went out there to the gate is much the same. Several are almost insanely powerful. You should get near Gregor and Turner.”

              “They made it alright? I was worried after they went down,” I asked.

              “We lost a lot of good men and women out there, Boss,” Rictor said, “But all who went to the gate are still alive.”

              My eyes were feeling incredibly heavy and Prada said, “Rest easy, Boss, your Guard has your back.”

              I slid back into darkness.

              The next time I awoke I felt much stronger and I saw Kharl standing guard between me and the door. I gasped as I saw his Soulstream. It was twenty inches or more.

              He turned at the sound and smiled, “Boy, you’re gonna give me a heart attack if you keep doing stunts like that.”

              “I’m in no rush to do it again, Dad.”

              “I’d say,” he said, “Next time we can find something that doesn’t involve Source Coma and almost certain death.”

              “I could really use a cheeseburger.”

              “Yep,” a voice came from the other side of the room, “He’s back.”

              I turned my head to see Jacobs in the other bed in the room.

              “Glad to see you made it, Ivan. I was worried about you.”

              “I’m just taking a break, Boss. Wraith killing is hard work.”

              “I’m thinking Eye of the Tiger would be a good song for you, Ivan. Maybe I need to speak to Holsey about it.”

              “You wouldn’t.”

              “Rocket man...” I started singing.

              “Man, I hate that damn song,” he whined.

***

              “...and the mystery continues to baffle the American people. Who were these valiant defenders and where did they go after the battle?” I sat in the infirmary bed with the back raised and watched the screen.

              It showed some of the footage of the battle in Kansas. There were some really detailed shots of us as we charged into the horde of Demons and bodies exploded around us. The camera zoomed in to show a close up of the moment when Jacobs attacked the Wraith.

              “Look, Boss!” He exclaimed from the other bed, “I’m famous!”

              The scene shifted before the part where Jacobs lost his arm and leg, “Parts of this footage had to be cut because of the graphic nature. Whoever this man was, he was severely injured but, as of this moment, there are no reports of anyone fitting his description checked into any hospitals we can find.”

              “What sort of abilities do these supermen have? This is footage at one point where the man we presume to be the leader appears to explode with energy of some sort.”

              The scene had changed to the point where I had gone berserk. It was an eerie feeling to actually watch it as it happened from a different perspective. It was hard to believe that it had actually been me in the front of that wave of destruction that rolled across the Demons between us and the Elites.

              “The real question, again, is who are these people and where did they come from?”

              I looked away from the television as Rictor entered the room. He looked distressed, and I can’t really blame him. I’d ordered him to quit stalling and give me the names of our losses. He’d told me that one hundred and five of us had perished on the plains and another eighty six had been wounded.

              I turned the TV off and turned to face him. I had dreaded this moment from the time I woke.

              “Do you want the list, Boss?”

              I nodded and Rictor handed me a paper. I could see the grief in him as he handed me the list. He looked straight ahead and began.

              “Andrews, Jacob. Adams, Saundra. Banks, Franklin,” the names hit me like hammer blows. These were my brothers and sisters, my friends. “Grayden, James,” The names went on and on. “Kestril, Nora. Davies, Lawrence,” I closed my eyes and leaned my head back as tears slid down my face. “Rostov, Nikoli. Riordan, Jackson,” I felt a hole in my soul as he said, “Shoffner, Patrick. Seymore, Jenna,” And the list went on and on. The final name was another hammer blow. It was one I expected but it hurt just as much as if I hadn’t known it was coming, “Yueh, Tien.”

As I opened my eyes I saw that mine weren’t the only tears flowing. Rictor’s face was wet as well and I heard a sniffle from the other bed in the room. I made myself not look. There are some things that should not be interfered with and a man should be able to grieve as he will without any judgments.

After some time in silence I leaned forward and said, “Now, someone had better tell me what happened after, because I can’t seem to get any answers from anyone about it.”

“All I know is that Gregor went to the Council with Guilefort. He demanded answers of the Archmage right in front of the Council and the truth seer. But the Council attacked him outright. All twenty-two of them and the Archmage. Then Lyrica hit the scene and destroyed them all. Gregor won’t go into much detail and Lyrica is quite upset. She is with your mom and dad right now and Gregor is waiting for the chance to talk to you about it, I think. Even I can see that, whatever happened, shook him to the core.”

***

“Colin, what I’ve seen in the last week has terrified my beyond anything I have ever experienced,” Gregor said. He was sitting in his office across his desk from me. There was fear and uncertainty rolling through his aura. “I’ve never been scared of anyone or anything until now. What you Soullord’s can do is beyond anything I’ve ever contemplated. She ripped the Souls completely out of their bodies with her mind.”

I watched the scene play out in his mind. I could feel the fear that overwhelmed him as he remembered what had happened.

“She made the destruction of ten Senior Mages, twelve middle range Mages and the Archmage, himself look easy. Like she hadn’t even broken a sweat,” he said.

I watched his memory of it and saw the door explode inward to fly across the room. Lyrica shot into the room, a teenage girl with worn jeans and a pink t-shirt with the words ‘I R SMART’ printed on it. Her hair was flying straight behind her and there was power exploding in every direction. What Gregor saw as a terrifying sight I saw as, quite possibly, the most beautiful thing I had ever witnessed.

“But that’s only part of it. What you did in Kansas was something unprecedented. You not only Pulled from another person’s stream, you actually created two hundred and thirty-seven new Mages. A great deal of them would be called Senior Mages because of the power level they are at.”

“The things you two can do are terrifying. Everything is in an uproar about the deaths of the Council. But they attacked us. I don’t understand why they all attacked us. I find myself at a loss as to how to proceed. All of my preconceptions are shattered and I have no answers anymore. What are we going to do now?”

“We’re going to appoint a new Archmage and then we’re going to go prepare for the biggest war this planet has ever seen.”

“You know who will have to be appointed, don’t you?”

I nodded.

***

I stood in front of the Memorial wall. There were a hundred and five new name placards attached to the wall and I reached up to touch one.

“Did you know him?” Lyrica asked from behind me.

“Yes, Jacob was the reigning poker champ in Knoxville,” I answered.

She stepped forward and pointed to one of the Elites, “Peter Samson, He lost his family in 1872 to a Demon attack. For many years, all he had was his hate to drive him. He joined the Guard soon after and spent over a hundred years with the sole purpose of killing Demons. But he still let a little girl into his heart and taught her much about the world around us as well as a great deal about the sword. He always had a smile on his face when he saw me.”

I put my arm around her shoulders and pointed to another name, “James got this idea that he was gonna get drunk, even if it killed him. He went to Kentucky and bought a whole carload of Moonshine. He got pulled over on the way back and the arrested him for running Moonshine. It took some serious finagling to get him out of trouble with the law. They just wouldn’t believe that it was all for his personal use.”

She smiled as I relived the memory in my head so she could watch it. She pointed to another name, “Johannes Calibri. He caught me trying to fly after your fiasco in Little Rock. Afterwards, he didn’t tell on me, but joined me in trying to devise a shield to use for it.”

She smiled as she relived that memory so I could watch it.

We stood there for hours, pointing out the different names of our friends and family. Nora Kestril, friend and Mentor to both of us. I told her about Lawrence Davies, the gentle giant. How he’d looked so awkward as he started to learn the Dance of Blades because he was nearly seven feet tall and as broad as a barn.

We talked about Tien Yueh and Jack Riordan. I told her about Patrick Shoffner, the local guy from Knoxville who had talked so much about the people around that area.

I told her that I knew that my Guards had lied about his death. They said that no one died from the massive Pull out by the gate. They had tried to protect me from the guilt I would feel after finding that Pat had let his focus slip too much and the Source had consumed him. There were three more that died the same way out there and it was a miracle that there weren’t more.

              “They tried to soften the blow and I thank them for trying,” I said, “It’s very hard to lie to a Soullord.”

She hugged me and I talked about Jenna Seymore, friend and lover. It hurt to talk about my friends yet it helped so much to be able to talk with someone who doesn’t look at me in fear after the things I have done.

And I’m sure it’s much the same for her. After the incident with the Council, no one can look at her without the fear being present. I can see her guilt at the fact that she had killed people, not Demons, people. She can see the guilt I feel when I think about the fact that I should have taken action years earlier and none of this would have happened as it had. But we can at least find solace together as we stand and remember the friends who have fallen.

Everyone in the Soulguard may fear her but there is one who doesn’t, me. We are two of a kind. Soullords. And we will do what we must to protect our world from the enemies that are massing to destroy us from without, and the enemies who would doom the world that operate from within.

Around us the Soulguard celebrates a great victory and rightly so. We had defeated over a hundred thousand Demons on the plains of Kansas. We had stopped, at least for the moment, a great invasion. Saved hundreds of thousands of lives. They had a right to celebrate.

But this is just the beginning. If they were ready to destroy the world because of the loss of one of their Kresh’ma’nar, Demonmages, what would they do after losing another and a hundred thousand Demons as well. I think we’ll find out soon enough.