The Jasper Soul

By Bailey Bradford

An ancient evil stalks the earth, seeking to finish what it started…

Matt Callaghan is pretty sure he’s just an average guy. His tragic past haunts him, and the only comfort he finds is something he’s not willing to explain to anyone else. The jasper stone he found as a child had been with him for over half his life, and he can’t be parted from it.

There’s more to the stone than Matt knows. Thousands of years ago, one man, the last of his people, was cast into the stone, his soul protected when his body could not be saved.

The evil that hunted him is still alive, still waiting for a chance to destroy the jasper stone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Totally Entwined Group Ltd
• Release date: Apr 9, 2019
• ISBN: 9781786517364

Bailey Bradford

A native Texan, Bailey spends her days spinning stories around in her head, which has contributed to more than one incident of tripping over her own feet. Evenings are reserved for pounding away at the keyboard, as are early morning hours. Sleep? Doesn't happen much. Writing is too much fun, and there are too many characters bouncing about, tapping on Bailey's brain demanding to be let out. Caffeine and chocolate are permanent fixtures in Bailey's office and are never far from hand at any given time. Removing either of those necessities from Bailey's presence can result in what is known as A Very, Very Scary Bailey and is not advised under any circumstances.

Book preview

Prologue

The very distant past

Andilun was dying. The wound from his side was bleeding heavily, and his life was slipping away, his heart beating and pushing it out in ever-slowing pumps.

His legs had long since quit burning. Running was something Andilun was used to doing, but the distance he’d traveled while trying to escape his enemy had been great.

And despite his best efforts, despite his pleas to the gods and goddesses for help, despite his calls to his ancestors, he was going to die today, and his enemy would win.

Evil would prevail. Andilun grunted as pain spread through his back. Another weapon pierced his skin, tearing into his flesh.

This was not how the world was supposed to end.

His people, his lineage, were to have prospered. Instead, he, the last of them, would die.

No one would sing of them or tell their stories on cave walls. Andilun’s siblings had been slaughtered in the past three full moons. Now, on the dawn of the fourth one, he would join them in the afterlife.

Clutching the stone tight in his hand, Andilun suppressed tears that stung his eyes. Limbs and leaves hit and scratched him as he continued to run, though everything around him seemed to slow, as if time itself was ceasing.

But it was only ceasing for him. He stumbled and, when his knees hit the ground, taunted by the laughter that had haunted him and filled him with both hatred and fear for much of his life.

Andilun tried to turn, only to fall, agony white-hot as it seared through him. His heartbeat was loud in his ears, louder than the rush of water. Death’s grip was more real than the cool liquid his left hand was submerged in.

His vision went first. The face of the monster that had hunted and destroyed his kind flashed across his sight in a blur he couldn’t interpret.

The pain gave way to numbness, then a chilling cold unlike any Andilun had ever felt before. He clenched his left hand as the spirits called to him. Now he heard the gods and goddesses speak to him. Now his ancestors reached for him.

Andilun ignored the unfamiliar words coming from his killer. He focused on his people, his gods and goddesses as they pulled him into their arms. Joy filled him, all but one part of him where the anger and need for revenge would not be eradicated.

He held the stone tighter. At first he thought he was hallucinating the sensation of heat searing its way up from his palm to his forearm. It raced throughout the rest of his body and Andilun knew then this would not be the end after all—not of him. Something was happening and whatever it was, he’d survive.

He would be back, and when he returned, he would destroy the one who had sought to destroy him and his loved ones.

Chapter One

Rocks have always fascinated me. When I was a kid, I wanted to grow up to be a geologist. Every time I found a rock that interested me, I’d pick it up and take it home, then crack that sucker open with a hammer as soon as I got the chance. Despite a few injuries—I’ve got a couple of small scars on my cheeks and one on my chin from rock chips flying off as I banged away—I never stopped doing it.

But I didn’t become a geologist, or even go to college. Life happens, as the saying goes. That’s never used as a positive statement. It always indicates a rough or bad time in someone’s life, which was true for me. I had neither the money nor the grades to get into a decent college, and it seemed like too much work, when I’d stopped dreaming of a better life.

I didn’t want to go there right then. Instead, I just wanted to sit in the early morning sunlight streaming through the breakfast nook window and study the one rock I’d never been tempted to break.

Holding the piece of jasper up to the sun made the greens and golds shine brilliantly. That stone always seemed to pulse with some kind of mystic energy. I know that’s crazy, and it’s just a piece of jasper polished from hundreds, no, thousands, of years on this planet. That I found it in the first place was stupendous luck.

I’ll never forget it. Me, Timmy and Erin had been best friends practically since birth. I was just beginning to suspect I wasn’t quite like them. All their talk of girls and what they wanted to do with a girlfriend if they ever got so lucky as to have one left me cold and, to be honest, a little queasy. It was nothing for them to throw around words like ‘queer’ and ‘faggot’ as insults. I was guilty of it, too. Maybe more so than them, because I was afraid of things I just didn’t understand, and I didn’t want to examine why I was confused about stuff like not finding girls attractive. Our church was a small one, all hell-fire and brimstone. Honestly, I never understood how anyone was ever going to make it into Heaven. It sounded like an impossible task, even with Jesus interceding for us.

Well, I’m rambling off-course. I couldn’t tell my friends what I suspected, even though we’d been best buddies all our lives. There was too much hatred when they said those words and though I tried to emulate them to defer suspicion, it only worked for so long.

That wasn’t what I wanted to remember today. I focused on the stone, the smooth, warm surface of it. Sometimes I fantasized that it was an ancient, sacred relic. Really, it was just an oval, smoothed over by the river and rocks where I’d found it. It held a glow that made it look polished, and who knew? Maybe someone had tossed the stone in the river not long before I found it. That was the most likely scenario.

Even so, I’d kept the stone a secret. When Timmy and Erin and I were out hiking in the wild of the beautiful Texas Hill Country, camping out for a few days because our folks figured we were old enough to do that then, we talked mostly about girls and sex and, of course, jerking off. I’d heard stories about boys doing that together all the time but still being straight. There was none of that for us. No one was going to whip out his dick and start stroking it around the other two. If masturbating was going to get us sent to Hell, then doing it with another guy—or two—would probably have gotten us the worst level of Hell.

It was our second day out, and the heat was getting to us. The river wasn’t too deep, the current not very strong. There were some rapids that were fun to go over in inner tubes but not so much on just our ass.

We didn’t care. We were kids, hot and excited about playing in the water. We stripped to our briefs and jumped in. We had to watch out for cottonmouths and such. There was nothing quite like shooting down rapids and having a snake zip along with us. Talk about water pollution. We caused many cases of it when someone pissed themselves in fear, and rightly so. Cottonmouths could be deadly if they got enough venom in someone.

Timmy hit the rapids and yee-hawed at first, then screeched that there was a snake and Erin and I were scrambling to our feet in a rush. Timmy’s blond hair was almost white, and so was his normally tan face when he shot out of the river, clawing at the bank and dragging himself up onto dry land. He was a mess of scratches, but Erin and I weren’t in much better shape. Both of us lost our footing and went down the rapids ass over teakettle, bumping and half-drowning ourselves in our stupidity.

As I grabbed for something to hold on to, my head under water, body bent like God only knew what, I opened my eyes. In that second, everything slowed. I saw the jasper stone, sunlight hitting it through the water. The beauty of it, the perfect shape, the colors—I couldn’t worry about dying just then. I snatched that rock up and before I knew what was when, I was standing up and walking to the riverbank, where Erin and Timmy lay panting.

I was bruised and scratched, but I felt calm, not breathless or fearful. I tucked the rock into my briefs, and I don’t know why I did that. I never told them about the jasper. I never told anyone and when the trailer I grew up in caught fire, the dryer having overheated and lit a shirt that had fallen behind it, the only thing I grabbed was that stone.

Chapter Two

Those attempts at stopping myself from remembering the past weren’t entirely successful and, as a result, I had not only a shitty day, but a craptacious week. Working at a bank had certainly never been my dream job, but that was where I’d ended up. Being a bank teller was not a rewarding career, either. Some of the people I dealt with on a daily basis were just dead-set on being assholes.

It wasn’t until I was walking home from work Friday that it dawned on me—my thirtieth birthday was coming up. In two days, in fact. I groaned and ignored the people walking around me giving me funny looks. My friends were going to want to either throw me a surprise party I really didn’t want-- though they’d mean well—or drag me out to party at Ben’s, the only gay club within a fifty-mile radius of our town. Neither option held much appeal. I didn’t feel like celebrating the big Three-O when I had nothing to show for three decades on this planet.

My mobile home was older than I was, though I did the best I could to keep it from looking like it was going to fall apart. I didn’t own it, either. I hadn’t had a serious relationship in so long that I’d given up on even a contentedly-ever-after, much less a happy-ever-after. Or even a not-always-miserable-ever-after. There wouldn’t be any new blood at Ben’s, either and there certainly weren’t any available gay men that I would be willing to date—and vice versa—in the local area. My friends were a mix of sexualities, but most of them were paired up or happily fucking their way through whoever appealed to them. I, however, had become exceptionally close with my right hand in the past couple of years. At this point, it looked like that relationship would continue into the far future.

All right, so that was a bit pessimistic. I’ve never been accused of being an optimist anyway.

But back to the walk home. I was mulling over how hot and humid it was and trying to figure the odds on what was going to be proposed for my birthday. In my left trouser pocket, I rubbed my thumb over the jasper stone I carried. It was my touchstone, soothing me when I needed it to and whether that was good or bad, it was a fact.

The stone was hot and my palm was sweaty. All of me was sweaty, for that matter. I was pretty sure I was an absolute mess. At best, I was an average-looking guy. No six-pack abs and perfect hair, though I wasn’t overweight or balding, and there was nothing wrong with either of those things. They just weren’t me.

Today, I’d run my other hand through my hair so many times that chances were good my brown locks were standing up all over. It didn’t really matter to me. I was just going home.

When he bumped my shoulder, I muttered a Sorry and wondered whether I’d been the asshole or if he’d not paid attention to where he was going. The vote was definitely leaning toward me since I had been looking down, counting the cracks in the sidewalk.

Before I could get another step farther, I found myself almost walking directly into a man who suddenly stepped in front of me. My nose was about level with his Adam’s apple—lucky him, his was small and didn’t stick out like mine—and he was broader than me, as in, muscle-y broader.

I had to tip my head up to look him in the eyes and I couldn’t help but note the perfection of his features as I did so. His neck was thick, corded in that muscular, sexy way, and he had just the right amount of golden stubble starting at his jawline, which of course was every man’s dream jawline. He had that dimple in his chin and two more on his cheeks when he smiled. His teeth were perfect, white, straight, his lips full but not overly so. They were a very attractive pinkish-coral color and his nose was what I’d expect on such a handsome man—a strong line, not too big or too small.

His eyes were deep-set but not hooded, thick, golden-tipped lashes and irises as blue as the Texas sky. He was a natural blond—his eyebrows proved it. I thought I knew who everyone was in the town of Benton, but apparently I was wrong. I’d never seen such a gorgeous man there—or anywhere else in person before. An old