Battle for Souls - 1. Chapter 1

His arms flopped off the litter, hands limp and dangling as the two soldiers at the front and back jogged away from the post. Another soldier down, and each and every one tore a hole in my soul.

“Put him with the others,” I ordered. I turned away, gaze intent on the monitors.

“Cold bastard.” The muttered insult and agreements from the squads at my back burned me up inside.

I spun on my heel, planting both feet as I glared at the troops standing in rows waiting for their release. I sent them out, and some of them returned on their backs instead of their feet. It was the reality of battle, and we were all just following orders.

“Stop fucking dying. Do your job, come back, and we’ll talk about whichever one of you is brave enough to whisper shit about your commander in the midst of a battle.”

Their eyes were all locked forward, avoiding my ire. I saw more than one swallow hard, but their jaws were locked firm. I lifted a hand and dropped it, releasing the next wave.

They hated me, but that was for the better. Let hate churn inside them, lighting a fire in their bellies. If not hate for the enemy, then hate for me. It would give them focus. Raising and dropping my hand twice more, the room quickly emptied.

Silence reigned and the air of resentment faded as I swept my gaze over the remaining squad. D squad was always last. Elite, hyped up with modifications, they were the hammer against the anvil. Once the rest of the troops softened the lines, they were my strategic strike force.

“Let us loose, Commander,” Deezen said. He stretched and flexed his hand against the hilt of his weapon.

“Not yet.” I watched the streaming footage, looking for that crack. It’d come; it always did. Deezen’s restlessness was echoed by the seven other members of his squad, but I ignored them. There! “Center to left, their generator is only protected by a single team.” Still twice as big as my D squad, but these men would not fail.

They were the secret to my success.

“We’re a go?”

I swept the monitors one last time. “Go,” I confirmed.

Calm descended and all eight members of the squad marched through the distortion field in formation. They popped up on the monitors on the other side and headed straight for their objective. D squad mowed down the demons flooding toward them, their swords flaming.

Metal I had consecrated myself to protect the team. Priests did the metal for the other troops, but D team was special, so I warded their weapons myself. Crossing my arms behind my back, I clamped my fingers around each wrist. Deezen led his men, his sword flashing in a figure eight.

Tovir and Eloq flanked him. Keeping their blades flicking in and out along the sides of the squad were Pic and Norris. In reverse order to the lead to bring up the rear was Lovell, Sushin, and Markiy. The glow of their blades lit up the shadows of the Underrealm and exposed their fierce joy.

Killing demons in their own realm was dangerous work, but someone had to do it.

D Squad were beset on all sides, but they moved with deadly efficacy straight toward the generator. If we could take that out, the portal the demons had opened from the Underrealm to Earth would collapse. It was why I’d been called in.

My forces were the best. I made sure of it. Those who gave me orders believed our success was because I wasn’t afraid to send them into the fray when the odds were stacked against us. Which they usually were, when faced with demon hordes. Shadow Lords didn’t care about their underlings, and they sent the lower circle caste into battle with wanton disregard.

Those who served under me for any length of time grew to know more than my ruthless reputation; they saw firsthand just how hard I fought for intelligence, equipment, and the right to plan battles in a way that would allow me to save as many of them as I could. I didn’t always succeed, and I’d recently had three new squads transferred to my teams which made this mission even more dangerous.

I hadn’t had time to assess their skills, but I’d tried to buffer their deployment between my other squads. This generator was one of the best defended in the Underrealm, and demons had used the portal to escape and terrorize Earth on a regular basis. They’d consumed untold souls, dragging them back to the Underrealm.

Command wanted it shut down, no matter what it took.

A demon launched up and over Pic’s head, reaching with its clawed feet for Eloq’s back and vulnerable neck. His partner, Tovir, spun on a heel and cut off both feet with one blow. He pulled his blade straight as he continued his spin until he was facing out as Eloq turned and gutted the demon. Its gaping mouth left me no doubt it was shrieking as it collapsed behind the rapidly moving squad.

The screen flickered.

“Attack on our secondary generator. Repelled. Holding at sixty-seven percent.”

In order to deploy my squads, we had sent in intelligence teams with smaller generators to create our own portal. They were more vulnerable to destruction. I needed all three to remain over fifty percent to run the monitors, but with two we could still utilize our portal.

Nothing I could do at this point, however, but watch. My days of being in the thick of the action were over. The main bulk of my squads had pulled the demon forces to the right, pretending to expose our generators while only actually leaving one vulnerable.

The Shadow Lord behind the masses of demons couldn’t redirect them, not even once he’d glimpsed D squad. The flat monitor screen didn’t mask the shocked flare of his slitted pupils or the enraged snarl twisting his black lips, or the way his aura radiated outward from him to fell his own troops too close to his deadly anger.

D Squad had reached the generator. Deezen sheathed his sword and pulled out the charges needed to destroy it, trusting his men to cover him as the team rushed their way. Too late—Deezen and I had worked together on these.

I blessed the fire inside, a holy flame that would not fail, while he formed the caging of lightweight metal built from metal taken from demon collars.

They couldn’t touch the charges, so all he had to do was roll the round cages under the generator. The second they touched the vibrating machine sending out the signal needed to power the portal allowing the demons to escape the Underrealm, the blessed fire flared and went nova.

The screen whited out, and we lost sight of D squad. The attacking line of demons wavered.

“Objective one: success,” said the tech sitting at the monitors.

Another tech watching scrolling data feed through different screens let out a quick cheer. “Demon portal closing!”

I tapped the link embedded in the bone of my jaw just in front of my ear. “Retreat. All squads return to the portal. Stay in formation; protect the flanks.”

The Shadow Lord had no reason to restrain himself. He drew a whip of fire from the ether of the Underrealm, cracking it against the demons who were fleeing the holy flames spreading from the portal and swords wielded against them.

Hammer met anvil, and I finally glimpsed D squad again as they rejoined the other squads. I rapidly counted, sucking in air but stopping a sigh of relief just in time. They were all there.

Boots hammered into the room as the first of the squads came back through our portal. Smoke, blood, and the acrid stench of demon effluvia filled the air.

“Medics!” The health team sprang into action. They wielded sealers like swords, ignoring the cries of the injured as they simultaneously purified and sealed claw marks and bites. Calls for transport rang here and there as the more critical were handed off and moved out to the surgical teams lead by priests who would fight for the soldiers’ while the doctors fought to heal their bodies.

Screens forgotten, I joined the support staff handing out cloths and water, pushing soldiers to sit and clean up, to rest. Quiet words steadied some who shook, a squeeze on the shoulder and a few breaths shared purged shock in others. We’d taken more losses, and a few squads huddled together. Some soldiers wept openly, others cried silent tears, and their companions did not begrudge them their release, sharing their grief.

I ached to join them, but as their commander, I had to stand apart. The pain from each death was a blow that chipped away at my will.

Only the reappearance of D squad, each soldier whole and on their feet, coming through the shimmering portal kept it intact. Once again, they’d deployed and succeeded where all others had failed. Sushin and Lovell both dripped black and red. D squad’s medic team began sponging away the mess.

My team was taking reports, engaging squad leaders. “Where’s Deezen?”

“Here.” I jerked, twisting to see him step through the portal. In his hands was something I didn’t expect, a spirit well. He had already sheathed his sword. A rent in his uniform exposed his ribs, but he didn’t wince as he held up the metal container.

“What did you trap that could survive a trip through our portal?”

“The familiar.”

I goggled at him. “It didn’t die in the fire?”

“No.”

That was unheard of. Destroying the generator almost always resulted in the loss of the familiar.

“It was in a pit under the generator. The flame blinded it, and I snagged it with a well.” A blessed spirit well was the only way to bring anything back from the Underrealm through one of our portals. The pure energy would kill a demon or familiar if they tried to use it alone.

It was also why shutting down their portals was so difficult; we couldn’t just go through one to find its source and destroy the generator. Their energy was just as destructive to us.

“Let me see.” I peered inside the top of the well.

The familiar was snarling, its fangs bared. The thing was naked; its form wasted and scarred. Obviously it had been ill-used, as all familiars were. Half-human, half-demon, used as both a power source, a snack, and a slave. The familiar was the link used to ground the portal to the human realm and allow the Shadow Lord’s forces to pass through.

Since the portal had been anchored to a city in North America near the western coast, this familiar had once been an American. Who knew how long he’d been taken, the transference of demonic power as the Lord’s familiar slowly changing him until he could be used as an anchor? He was missing several fingers on each hand, and I couldn’t tell if his ears had been snacked upon or if they’d been absorbed into his new shape. Ritual shapes had been carved into the flesh of his back and chest and gleamed black with the demon blood poured into them.

“We’ll take him to my office,” I said.

Deezen handed off the well to an aide.

“Well done, soldier. Once again your squad has done the impossible.” I put a hand on his shoulder. “And to bring back a familiar on top of destroying the generator? Command will be pleased.” Maybe we could actually get a break for once. I’d try to negotiate a rest for my men; they’d need it to heal, and I needed to integrate the new squads and replace those men we’d lost.

He snorted, caressing his sword hilt. “Didn’t do it for them.”

“I know.” My hand gripped his shoulder one last time. He reached up and squeezed my wrist.

Deezen knew what many others didn’t, especially those men new to our team. I’d not been pulled from the ranks of the priesthood and granted command as a favor to another high-ranking officer; I had worked my way up from the rank and file. Once upon a time, I’d been the soldier leading a squad into battle, a squad of men who no longer served with me.

Pulled into the war as a married man and already a father of a young teen, Deez had treasured the son named for him. He’d been a serious soul, determined to eradicate evil. He’d adored his family, pulling all of us without one into the fold when we’d been given leave. So his son knew exactly who I was and what I’d lived through—the same battles that his father had survived until the one came that he did not.

Rage pushed me to take risks others would not, rocketing me higher in the ranks. Finding out my best friend’s son had been conscripted and pulled into this war tempered that rage with responsibility. I’d sworn to Deez I’d protect his boy when he breathed his last in my arms on a bloody battlefield in the Underrealm just like Deezen had left.

So I’d gathered the best men and formed D squad to protect him, getting them enhancements, blessing their weapons, whatever it took. Their skill was my undoing, garnering their own notoriety and sending my team on missions that put them at risk they might not have otherwise faced. Hopefully their latest success would mean we’d be able to take a break this time.

My palm rested heavy on the scanner to enter my quarters. I’d visited the injured, checked in with the squad leaders, issued orders for extra rations, spirits, entertainment chits… just seeing to the well-being of the men who trusted my orders to lead them into battle and bring them safely home.

Then I’d faced my superiors.

I sighed as the door slid open, the sound louder than the swish of the panel parting. A faint glow from the waiting orders on my monitor mounted on the wall lit the darkness. A week was all I’d managed to wrangle, and I’d spend the entire time with Intelligence. Exhaustion wore at me, aging me before my time. An old wound ached in my left thigh, and I limped into the room, sure no one would see now.

“Lights.”

My hands went to the top button on my collar.

“Let me, Callim.”

I jolted at the low voice behind me, the hands stilling mine.

“Why aren’t you with your men?”

“My men are fine. You saw to that earlier. Besides, who’s going to see to you if I’m not here?” He slowly undid the two buttons at the top of my collar. Slight touches to a sensitive scar hidden under the fabric sent a chill down my spine.

His weight leaned against me or mine against him. I couldn’t tell which, and all I cared about was getting closer. I closed my eyes and gave in, as I always did. “Deezen,” I murmured.

“Maris,” he corrected me. His deft fingers, so strong and sure, were nearly through all the buttons. Archaic uniform, in this time and age, but Command held on to its traditions for officers. The tedium of removing it was only worth it when he was exposing my skin with these illicit caresses.

He paused at my slacks, waiting.

“Maris, please.” Even though I knew we shouldn’t do this, that I was his commander and a good decade his senior, I had only lasted a few campaigns before I gave in. His soul called to mine, and that was a rare gift.

I felt less guilty when it soon became clear he ruled the encounters between us. I’d fallen to his youthful aggression, only to find it tempered with sweet passion when he finally got me naked. And each and every time he made me beg.

Today had been one of the hardest I’d faced, sending him into the Underrealm, knowing the danger D squad would face. The coldness I’d been accused of had been the armor I’d needed to do my job, to let him do his. Now it melted away.

A long groan escaped me as he pushed down my slacks over my hips. They fell to my calves, held up by my shoes. Maris’ calloused fingertips scraped sensitive skin as he caressed my hips, my upper thighs, everything but my already rigid length. He gripped my hip with one hand, then pushed on the center of my back with the other, separating our bodies.

“Down,” he said.

I put my hands on the bunk. He left me, but I could hear him moving quickly, his clothes rustling. My skin pebbled in the cool air, and my breath sped.

“Lift.” Maris tapped my right foot. I raised my foot, and he removed my shoe and pushed the leg of my slacks off with my sock. He repeated the process with my left, leaving me naked, exposed, waiting for his pleasure.

And mine. I turned to look at him, and he’d already shucked his uniform, leaving it folded on the desk. He’d taken some damage today, only one slice deep enough to need sealer. It’d add to the scars on his skin but didn’t hamper his movements as he grabbed supplies. His sleek muscles bunched and flexed as he came closer. The tip of his cock glistened dark and wet.

I licked my lips.

He patted my ass. “Up.” With his body modifications he could have lifted me with no trouble even though he was slimmer than me. It was a position we’d enjoyed before, his body slamming into mine, but when we used the bed? I was in for a long night.

Scrambling onto the bed, I flipped onto my back. He followed, prowling over me. “Open,” he said. Maris lowered his body between my thighs. I shuddered, thrusting against him. He paused, staring into my eyes. “Yes?” he asked.

For so long I’d said no, so every time we came together he paused and held my gaze so I couldn’t look away and waited for me to say the word. To let him in as the only light in my life I had left, not just into my body, but my heart and soul.

My voice was rough, deep, my throat a thick burn from all the pain and fear I’d shoved down. “Please touch me. Make me forget.”

“Oh no, Callim, no forgetting.” The gleam in his eyes was enough to banish the shadows that had been creeping over me, driving away my exhaustion, my sorrow, everything but the feel of the love between us building into a bonfire. “You will remember every second of tonight and keep it with you. So in the morning, when you leave this room, you will know love and passion rules you with every fiber of your being.” Maris cupped my cheek, his thumb scraping over the stubble from the longest day of my life, and waited.

“Yes,” I said.