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  Blessed

  Copyright © 2013 by David Michael Hamilton

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in critical review and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. Printed in the United States of America.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Art & Design Copyright Louisa Maggio

  All cover images remain the property of David Michael.

  Interior Book Design: Cris Soriaga | BookMarked! Designs

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  For Lynne

  Your light will shine through any darkness

  This has proven to be the hardest part of the entire book. There are so many people that are now proud owners of a piece of my soul that I really don’t know that I can thank them all individually. For those of you who may be left out, just remember: I loved you enough to sell you a part of my soul.

  First and foremost, a heap of gratitude goes out to my grandmother, Lynne. Without her, this book would not be possible. Without her words of encouragement, editing would have been the death of me and for that, I owe her my indefinite thanks.

  Next on the list is my hero and source of inspiration, author Mark David Gerson. The endless fountain of advice and his responses to my text messages at ungodly hours have had more impact on me than I can ever express. This young whipper snapper thanks you from the bottom of his heart.

  Last but certainly not least, I have to express my love for my International League of Extraordinary Authors: Simone Nicole, Lola Stark, Belle Aurora and Patrick Darcy. These four ladies (that’s right Paddy) from the deepest darkest depths of internet friendship have literally saved my life during the last few weeks of polishing this novel and getting it ready for you. If you love this book as much as I do, look these guys up and send them flowers and chocolates. They. Are. Amazing.

  As the darkness shifted and the black slid across and through the empty space, the night seemed to give birth. A horrible sound somewhere between the screech of metal on metal and cracking bone let loose from within the bowels of the Universe.

  Charged with one purpose, the energy that was released set out to find the trail that would lead him to the completion of his task: Complete Chaos.

  He could feel it burning through his veins like magma, propelling him toward his destination. He willed himself through space and time with the power of thought for fuel and the Chaos in his body as his compass.

  As his presence was recognized by the laws of nature that he would soon be forced to deal with, shadows pooled in the center of the small clearing. Broad daylight gave way to a haze of smoke that thickened the air and drove even the smallest of creatures into hiding. Tendrils of the dark matter thickened and streamed toward a central location, causing the air to rumble as his physical body began to take shape.

  The world shimmered and wavered a moment through the mass of energy surrounding him before solidifying and coming into focus. The trees and the grass drooped in recognition of what was inside of him and even the air seemed to shrink away from him. The earth itself shuddered below his bare feet as they gently touched down. The energy that was released as he connected to the physical plane rolled through the meadow and into the sky like thunder.

  He stretched his new form, testing the functions of the physical body he’d assumed. Everything seemed to work well enough to suit his needs. He closed his eyes and drew forth the black sledge that coursed through his being. He allowed the tentacles to slither forth from his aura and probe the forest around him. Feeling. Penetrating. Absorbing.

  The creature closed his eyes and pieced together the information that he was receiving. The energy snaking out into the unknown acted like antennae and relayed to him what his eyes couldn’t. The animals close enough to sense him fled even further into the woods, their instincts telling them what he was capable of. The energy of everything his tendrils came into contact with was quickly sapped and transferred into him, leaving behind a black ashy substance where, moments before, a heavily wooded hillside had stood. The circle of death that was slowly expanding around him was certainly needed, but unwanted. As an assassin of sorts, he needed to leave the smallest fingerprint possible. Detection was a bad thing in his business.

  He opened his eyes once more and willed the Chaos to return to his body. The cool winter air had already begun blowing the ashen remains into small drifts.

  He smiled to himself. Everything seemed to be working fine indeed.

  Letting his blood guide him, he headed north and entered a stand of trees that had escaped his destructive scouting mission. Each leaf shivered as he passed. Blades of grass lie down of their own accord a good three paces ahead of him. The trees themselves tried to do the same with less success. The creaking and groaning was enough to prove that they were trying. The small amount of success that they managed was evidenced by the larger trees cracking and falling to the ground, separated from their roots and sentenced to death.

  He spotted a break in the trees and picked up his pace, the novelty of nature itself fearing him having worn off quickly, only to be replaced by determination. As he broke through the wall of bark and foliage, he closed his eyes again and released a single tendril that shot out into the world before him. Careful not to let it touch anything, he searched for human life.

  The first image that came back to him was a man in a black suit, black loafers, a white button up shirt and a blue tie.

  It was perfect.

  Pulling the tentacle back into himself he willed a similar suit similar to form over his naked body. He added small gray pinstripes to the design for personal taste and adjusted his tie.

  Not that he needed clothes, but it did make him less noticeable when moving around among the natives. He had learned this the hard way in previous incarnations. The finesse that he had developed since then would keep him from inspiring any folklore this time around. Unfortunately.

  While he wouldn’t call this trip a vacation per se, he intended to have as much fun as his mission allowed. He could hardly pass up the chance to leave a little bit of himself behind while he could. It wasn’t every day that he was let out of his proverbial cage.

  He cautiously approached the town where he had sensed the man, not wanting to alarm any guards that may have been on the lookout for threats—Threats that he, by nature, was happy to pose.

  He took in his surroundings with an appraising eye. Mankind certainly had come a long way since his last visit. Not only were the clothes made of better, more aesthetically pleasing materials, but the buildings were far sturdier than the mud huts, wood houses and adobe shelters that he had encountered during his previous visits to the physical plane.

  Best of all, his probing of the locals had informed him that their modes of transportation had evolved into sleek, metal vehicles that were propelled by mechanics and chemistry rather than the work of animals. The smooth lines and shining surfaces were much more pleasing
to the eye.

  As he walked through the town, the flashy signs and advertisements that colored nearly every flat surface of the place started to get on his nerves. Wisps of his smoky black energy touched everything that he passed, constantly feeding him information about how the world had changed and how people dressed, spoke, ate and interacted with each other.

  A large part of him was extremely disappointed in the decline of barbarism.

  It seemed that there were no longer public executions, brawls were highly frowned upon and the annoying sense of loyalty to one’s mate had grown into some kind of natural law that forbade a man from spreading his seed wherever he pleased. It was a wonder that the species had even survived.

  A man in a small building with a glass front set his cup down on the table. He probed the primate’s mind for the word and figured out it was a café before willing the paper cup to vanish and materialize just on the other side of the glass. When the glorified monkey reached for it a few seconds later, his brow furrowed and glanced around in search of the missing cup. When he spotted it on the outside of the window sill, he looked around to make sure that nobody else had witnessed his momentary lapse in sanity and went back to reading the magazine in his hand, clearly disgruntled.

  A woman on the other side of the road suddenly found herself pushing someone else’s stroller down the sidewalk. Another man suddenly realized that he had worn a dress out to dinner.

  The small acts of mischief filled him with immense satisfaction.

  When he’d finally had enough fun to satisfy his craving for trouble, he once again let his blood take over and do the walking for him. He quickened his pace and focused his energies on the task at hand.

  He found what he was looking for on the outskirts of a city called Indianapolis. He followed the tug through the front door of a small, unassuming business and found a woman in her late forties sitting in a large, comfortable looking chair reading a book on “finding your inner light”.

  He scoffed at the idea of the book, knowing full well that there was no light to be found within him. He’d seen the stuff he was made of first hand and had no doubts about the depth of its darkness.

  As the woman closed her book and stood to greet him, her eyes locked onto him and deep wrinkles carved themselves into the corners of her mouth. He took this as a good sign that she really was who he was looking for.

  As he slowly released his true self into the room around him, her look went from slight dismay to outright terror.

  “W-who are you?” she asked, backing away from him and stepping around to the other side of the chair as if it would offer her some kind of protection.

  “It’s not who I am that you want to know, is it…” he glanced at the stack of business cards on a small ledge to his right, “Joy? Well that’s ironic.”

  He let a tendril weave its way out of his forehead and slowly make its way toward her as he continued. “I’m pretty sure that you want to know what I am. Not who. Am I right?”

  She backed up even further.

  “So you can see me! That’s good. I was afraid my instincts had gotten a little rusty over the years.”

  The tentacle was now squirming in the air about two feet from her face. Like a predator assessing its prey.

  At last, the woman found her tongue and used it, “I-I don’t know what you’re talking about.” she stammered. The weak attempt to lie to him fell flat when her eyes betrayed her as they tracked the movements of the dark, smoky serpent weaving back and forth inches from her face.

  “Oh, I’m pretty sure you do, Joy. I’m quite positive you know exactly what I’m talking about.” He let the tentacle lash out at her with startling speed and smiled triumphantly when she ducked to the floor with a squeal of terror.

  “Now that we have that out of the way, I do believe you have something I want.”

  As he stepped around the chair to get a good look at her, he found her curled up in a ball trembling on the floor and clicked his tongue. “Tsk, tsk, Joy. You disappoint me.”

  “Just take it! Take whatever you want! I won’t call the police!”

  “Oh I plan on taking it. There was never any doubt about that, now was there?”

  The tendril began to quiver in anticipation as he exercised his will over it. Finally, he relinquished his control and allowed the dark mass to plunge itself into the top of the woman’s head. She gasped and her pupils dilated instantly. He found the conduit that he needed and, with relative ease, tapped into it.

  The voices came flooding through immediately, accompanied by the incoherent cries of the woman whose body he was using as a channel to the other side. He silenced her with a simple thought and she stood there with her mouth gaping.

  He filtered out the voices from the past that had nothing useful for him and focused on the task at hand. He was looking for a very specific piece of information about a very specific group of people from a very specific time frame. The trick was finding the voice of one of the very few people throughout history who had ever known about what he was searching for.

  After five minutes of waiting and prodding, he grew impatient. He applied a little more force and the woman began convulsing. Her dilated pupils rolled up into her head and her body temperature shot through the roof.

  He knew that she wouldn’t last much longer and the thought of wasting time trying to find another like her further incensed him. He opened the channel wider and took pleasure in the primal scream that tore its way out of her throat as she began to seize. The mental binding that he had clamped on her motor functions snapped as her instinct for survival took over and her body rallied against him.

  “Too little too late, Joy.”

  Her skin began to crack and she took on the pallid color of a corpse.

  He began to worry that he wasn’t going to find what he needed before the woman expired. Then, as the first bits of ash began to appear on the floor, he got the message he had been waiting for.

  He reversed the energy of the tentacle, changing it from an antenna to a transmitter, instantly reducing what remained of the woman to ash. No need to leave a slew of corpses in his wake.

  Slightly disappointed that he had gotten only part of the information he needed, he took out his frustration on the absurd book that Joy had been reading when he walked through the door, reducing it to ash as well before returning the monster to its cage.

  His next stop was Kirtland, Ohio. The next piece of the puzzle was housed there in a big white building with green doors. Some people called it a temple. Those people called themselves “Latter Day Saints”.

  “This should be interesting.”

  The twenty first of December marked the passing of yet another year for Ardra Cooper. She had always loved her birthday. It was the one day that it really was all about her. The other three hundred and sixty four days of the year, she actually had to work at convincing people that the universe revolved around her.

  Looking back on the twentieth year of her life, she was able to quickly label it as a good year. She had made loads of new friends, excelled in all of her classes at the University of Utah, become a Sunday school teacher for her church, and volunteered countless hours at the Bishop’s Warehouse, where the church distributed food to families in need. In her eyes, she had not only bettered her own life considerably, but she had also bettered the lives of those around her.

  Yet she still had a nagging voice in the back of her head saying that she was meant for bigger and better things. It was constantly telling her that what she was doing with her life was a waste of time. Over the summer, this bitter little voice had cast a shadow over the path that she had carefully and painstakingly plotted for herself. It had been easy to hide it from the rest of the world, even her best friend, Piper, as she had an inborn confidence that had always allowed her to hold her head up high and appear to be one hundred percent convinced that what she was doing was right.

  It was much harder to hide it from herself.

  As she lay in
bed that cold December morning, she wrestled privately with the ugly little beast that had made its home inside of her. She went through the reasons why the last year of her life hadn’t been a waste over and over again in her head, telling herself that, while she may be meant for bigger and better, there’s no reason that bigger and better needed to happen right then.

  She was young, smart, strong and truly cared more for the people around her than she did for herself. She seemed to be incapable of passing someone asking for money without offering to run to her car and see what change she could find. She had stopped carrying cash because the panhandlers were costing her about a hundred dollars a week. Try as she might, she could not afford that on a college student’s allowance.

  Granted, her parents were pretty well off so her allowance was a hefty sum, but school was expensive and gas prices were out of control. Not to mention her shopping addiction. It was her favorite way to unwind and she always donated her old clothes when her closet door started to protest. Luckily, her parents lived close to the University and let her stay home while she was in school, saving her the hassle of rent and utilities.

  She finally shoved all the doubt back in its little box and climbed out of bed with a yawn and a stretch. She grabbed her sweat pants off the back of her desk chair and pulled them on before pulling her ponytail out and tossing the elastic on her dresser. She grabbed her bathrobe off the back of her door and headed for the shower.

  After towel drying her hair and wrapping it up on top of her head, she left the bathroom door open and went back to her room to pick out a birthday outfit. She decided on a pair of jeans and a baby pink Hollister t-shirt for her day wear and a black v-neck to change into for her party that night.

  After blow drying and straightened her hair, she went down to join her parents in the kitchen for breakfast. It was a ritual that had been in place for as long as she could remember. Her mom never missed her birthday breakfast. She’d wake up hours before dawn to start cooking and this year was no exception. The smell of bacon, sausage, blueberry muffins and Belgian waffles filled the house as proof.