Chapter 40.

"Have you seen their criminal records?" Paige asked, "This one is suspected in the murders of over thirty people."

"Yet they stood between innocent people and held their ground. Soldiers aren't saints, Paige."

"I've killed over forty people, Paige. I'm a killer. I'm still here. I told them to come here and join me. I told them what it would cost them and I saw their Souls. They'll make better Guards than you think. We recruit soldiers from war zones. New York was a war zone, and these men proved their metal to me. That's enough for me."

She looked at me for a long moment. I could see in her aura that she didn't agree. But I saw her accept that I wasn't giving an inch on the subject.

"They're in," she said, "But if this blows up on us, it's on you."

"If they don't follow the oath I'll remove them personally."

I'm not sure Paige would ever understand my reasoning in bringing back my motley crew of gang members to Kansas. She hadn't seen those same men stand with me as the horde of Demons came crashing down the street. They stood their ground, even when they had no idea what I could do out in the street in front of them. When all they saw was one insane man standing in the street with a pair of swords--that took courage.

A large part of their previous gang life was based on loyalty to their respective gangs. That, in its own way is a code of conduct, a source of honor. I would give them the opportunity to show that honor I had seen in those men to the world.

I also knew who she said was suspected in the murders of thirty men. Khalib. I had done some research after returning to Kansas. There had been a gang in Harlem called the Bone Dogs.

It was suspected that they crossed paths with Khalib at some point. Over a three year span, thirty Bone Dogs were found in various places around a certain area in Harlem. The Bone Dogs no longer existed long before the Demon attack of New York. Mr. Khalib was suspected of their destruction.

I had seen the raw fear in several men back in that street when they were told that the man they were looking at was Mister Khalib. I believed the suspicions about Khalib were right. But I was sure that there was a story behind that as well, and I intended to get that story before anything else. I was pretty sure Dreanna Whitaker would probably be able to shed some light on the subject,and I would ask her at my earliest opportunity.

"There are so many ways this whole thing could go sideways, Colin," Paige said. "I hope you're right, but I can't help it if I have misgivings about it."

"To be totally honest, Paige, we need everyone we can get in this. Someday, they'll really cut loose on us, and it's gonna make what's already happened look like a walk in the park."

"Somehow, I get that same feeling," she said.

I watched the dark Soul of one of my remaining Shak'Tar as she walked toward my office. It unnerves people sometimes when they find that I can see through solid objects when looking at the power flows of the world. I'd known I could do this for years. The Shak'Tar didn't seem to be phased by much. I guess they had seen so much in their lives, most of which would boggle the minds of someone on my planet that had never been exposed to the same type of surroundings.

Pelin opened the door and stepped inside, "I have news from Touran Gorvelis, Master."

"You don't have to call me master, Pelin," I said, "Colin will do."

She nodded. They were still getting used to the new order of things. I wondered if they had second thoughts about changing sides in this war. I'm not sure if they had a choice with my Mark on them.

"A new leader has come forward to take over the handling of this world. He is called Kin'Sol'Ramas. He is also called Yas'Fari, 'The Butcher'. His mind is strong and you will not be able to Mark his followers as you did against Sol'Kor'Vannas."

"Just as well," I said, "I won't be using that particular skill any more. It's too much like slavery. I can't do that."

"But it is the way it is done, Mas...Colin. Without the Mark, we have no direction."

"It's called freedom, Pelin. One day, I hope to show all of you what freedom truly is. The ability to choose your own way, your own fate, your own future."

"You are an odd being, Colin Rourke," she said, "Yet I find it easier to mold myself toward your Mark than it was to mold to the Mark of Sol'Kor'Vannas."

"Will the majority of the Shak'Tar feel the same way, do you think?"

"Some will find it more difficult, some will find it much easier. Some of us found it easy to be the hands of our former Master. Some of us found it difficult. We were left with not many choices."

"There is evil in all of us, Pelin. The true test is keeping the evil at bay and do what is right. I keep a dark monster caged in here."

I pointed at my head, "I can't let it out except when I am in battle. I'm afraid of what it will do. It's my evil and I fight it every moment."

"You must let it be a part of you, Master," she said with a startled look on her face, "if not it may consume you. Insanity lies there. We've all seen it."

I'd heard Gorvelis say the same thing. But I don't really understand what they are talking about. It is part of me. I know this but I can't let it control what I do, I have to control it.

As I was pondering her words something occurred to me. Her Soulstream, like any human, led around her and into the ground. Down into the Source. How was that possible? She was from another world, it should have led to a portal and into her own world.

How had I not seen this before? I guess I can't think of everything at once. It was the same for Gorvelis and the rest of the Shak'Tar. I hadn't really noticed before. Maybe because I saw human Soulstreams all the time.

Why did the Demon streams have to flow through a portal and the human streams didn't? Their Source must just be on the one world, and the Source of human life is on all of them. That's something that needs to be explored at some point.

"All I can do is the best I can about the evil in me," I said.

"That is all any of us can do Mas...Colin," she said with a slight bow of her head. She turned and exited my office.

Chapter 41.

"I've got some questions, Dreanna," I said. "I hope you can help me with them."

"I'll try my best, Mr. Rourke."

I could see no fear in the young woman as she faced me. She had witnessed what I was capable of and still had no fear of me. That was a rare thing for me.

She spoke clearly, unlike so many of the people who were raised in the area she had grown up in. So many of the black men I had met in New York spoke their own dialect. She had a northern accent but none of the local dialect in her speech.

"It's about Mr. Khalib."

"You've looked at his past, I take it?"

I chuckled, "I've seen some speculation about his past. I'm not interested in whether he committed thirty murders. I'm interested in why."

She looked at me in surprise.

"Ma'am, I've killed people. I know why I killed those people. I would like to know why he would do something similar."

"Mr. Rourke, I bought the protection of that man when I was seven years old. I didn't know that's what I was doing at the time. I just thought I was helping a homeless man on my way to school."

"He was slumped beside a bench near my bus stop, and I think he was awful near to death. I walked up to him, and gave him my lunch that my momma had packed for me."

"I bought that man for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a juice box."

I smiled as I watched the memories of the girl handing her lunch to the big man.

"Several years later there were a lot of break-ins in my neighborhood. Every one of those break-ins resulted in a death or rape. One morning they found four bodies in the alley behind our apartment building. There were scratch marks on our door. My momma was at work at the Diner, so I had been the only one home. I was twelve."

I nodded.

"Three years after that, I was workin' the Diner in Momma's place. She was sick, and we needed the money. There were five of these gangbangers in the diner, and they took a liking to me. I avoided them but they were loud, and very graphic about the things they wanted to do to me. I was not and am not an innocent, Mr. Rourke, but those men were scary."

"I left work and headed home after closing. Almost to my home I heard them coming out of the alley. They were making rude noises and whistling. I know exactly what was going to happen, and I reached in my pocket for the knife I had brought from the Diner. I would not be an easy target for those animals."

"Then the noises became something else, and there was screaming, and a lot of sounds I don't want to think about. After a while there was just silence, and I could see one huge shadow in the darkness."

"I turned toward my door and stopped. 'Thank you, Mr. Khalib,' I said to that shadow and I went home."

"Rumor was those boys were in a certain gang. That gang announced that they were coming to my neighborhood to take me. There had been too many witnesses in the Diner. Over the next week, twenty-three of those gang members turned up dead. The survivors threw away those colors, and no one wears them in Harlem anymore."

"You ask me why he did what he did?" she asked, "All I know is that gang would have killed and probably raped me. Then they were gone. I don't know why he chose to be my guardian, but he did. And I will give him anything it is humanly possible. He's my knight in shining armor, my hero, and my savior. That is enough for me, Mr. Rourke."

"By God, it's enough for me too, Miss Whitaker," I said.

I looked out at a crowd of expectant faces. I had no idea what to say. The new recruits were all lined up in the field in front of me. How the hell had I let them rope me into giving a welcome speech?

"I see a lot of new faces here today, and each and every one of you is welcome. We need you. Your world needs you. To join the Soulguard is not something to take lightly, ladies and gentlemen. Be sure of your decisions before you take the Oath."

"The Oath is the most important thing you will ever do in the Soulguard. When you swear it, you are no longer going to consider another human your enemy. To swear the Oath means you will from this day forward stand as I stand. You will stand in that place between the darkness and the light. You will be the first line of defense between that darkness and our world. Always and forever more you will place yourself between Humanity and the darkness. You may serve for ten years or forty, but this never changes. We stand, until the day we walk that road to Paradise, between the Kresh and our world."

"This isn't something to swear lightly. No more do we fight amongst ourselves. When the Oath is taken, we leave our old enemies behind. We declare ourselves as Defenders of all Humanity."

"There may come a time when you have to place that Oath above your own safety, above your very life. There may come the day when the end is come, and there is no hope left. On that day, we will stand our ground, and we will die with honor. We do this because we are Soulguard."

"This is what my Oath demands of me, and what your Oath will demand of you. Do not take it lightly. When you take this Oath, take it with pride, for you join my family. You become my brothers, my sisters. And you will have thousands of brothers and sisters throughout our world who will stand beside you. You will never have to face the darkness alone, and that is why we will win this war. This war we didn't start. This war we shall damn sure finish."

"Welcome."

I turned from the mass of recruits, applause following me as I left the stage, and walked toward the headquarters building. I hope the speech was halfway decent. I hate speeches, and I probably suck at it. All I could do was say what I believed. That's all anyone can truly do.

I met Rictor as I entered HQ.

"Good speech, Boss-" he said, "-short and straight to the heart of things."

"Thanks," I returned, "and how are things with our Company?"

"They're working smoothly with each other," he said. "We really need some more time working directly with you, though."

"I know," I said, " but I'm having trouble with the time to do everything I need to do. I still have to shield the planes, and that is gonna take a bit of time. Plus all the shit that's coming down after New York. Did you see that news report yesterday?"

"They had the gall to actually say 'the cure could be as bad as the disease.' Referring to us, of course."

"I know we destroyed some real estate when we cleaned the bastards out," I said, "but what did they want? Leave all the buildings intact, and let more people die as we worked our way through them?"

"That's exactly what they want," He said with a frown. "If it had been a little farther south where the wealthy citizens lived, I bet they wouldn't be bitchin so much after we saved their asses."

"Yeah, I'd say so," I said with a touch of the rage surfacing, "and then again, maybe they'd be complaining about how we did it, regardless of how things went. It's the nature of people to armchair quarterback everything."

"True enough, Boss," he said. "Have you put any thought into what you're gonna say tonight at the interview?"

"I'll try to just stick with the truth. It's what I always try to go with. It could get ugly, though. It all depends on who does the interview. I wish Alstead could do it, but she's with another network. We may have to do another one with her to counter this one if it gets too ugly. I'll try my best but I'm not gonna sit and take too much crap for doing our job."

"It's all you can do," he said.

Chapter 42.

"The short answer, Mr. Forrest?" I said in response to the latest of the asinine questions that had been thrown at me in the interview. "The short answer is that one single human life is worth more than every bit of property damage that was done in New York. One single life, you sanctimonious prick--even yours. You want me to be held responsible for the damage done in a city under attack by an alien race bent on our destruction. When you can stand on the front lines beside me, I'll put some credence to your opinion. Until then you can shut your damn mouth you useless, sniveling shit. This interview is over."

I stood up and tossed the mike to the side. Then I walked off of the stage to the applause of a pretty large live audience. The cameras followed me until I strode out the door. I was seething inside after Forrest kept digging about the damage done by the Soulguard in the area where we had destroyed the invaders.

We had led them out of populated areas and killed them in a relatively small area. I don't know what else we could have done to clean them out. There's really no telling how long they would have stayed focused on me instead of scattering again. The death toll had been over a half a million people. There had been nearly that many people wounded, mostly from other humans. Demons tended to kill any they actually got a hold of.

The problem had come when the actual property owners had raised a stink. No one who owned property there really lived there, and we had destroyed a good bit of property in the "kill box". The government was sending humanitarian aid to the people of New York but this wasn't helping the ones who were raising hell about the damage.

I exited the building with rage flowing off of me in waves. Several people simply turned around and headed the other way. Others froze in place, staring at me in fear. I tried to put a stop to it but it was just beneath the surface and I was having trouble pushing it down.

Jesus, I gotta stop letting shit like this get under my skin. There had only been one question that the man had asked that may actually have done some good. They'd probably cut it from the finished product. But the live audience heard it.

"What can the American people do to prepare for another incident such as this?" Forrest had asked.

"Each and every person should get a weapon. Buy a gun and protect yourselves. We will come. We will stop them, but we can't be there until we can get there. Every American, hell, every human being begins shooting the bastards, and they'll have to think twice before they do this sort of thing again."

Not really likely but still preferable to just rolling over and dying. Not everyone is a warrior, but there is one thing about the human race. We are not just victims. We are the top of the food chain for a reason, and we won't fold because another race wants us dead. They'll have to, by God, work for it.

"That coulda' gone better," Rictor said as I slid into the back seat of the Humve.

"No doubt," I said. "Perhaps I shouldn't be allowed to do interviews anymore."

"Ya think?" Prada asked.