Brotherhood of Lost Souls

By Zoe Cannon

Sasha was a modern-day paladin, fighting righteous battles against the forces of darkness. Until a demon took away his magic in an unthinkable violation. Now he's alone, cast out by his brothers, with no power and no purpose.

 

Anyone would want revenge after that.

 

But Sasha isn't just anyone.

 

This short story is 12,700 words long. It can also be found in Mortal Creatures, a collection of stories about grief and magic.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zoe Cannon
• Release date: Sep 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215584590

Book preview

Brotherhood of Lost Souls

Zoe Cannon

© 2023 Zoe Cannon

http://www.zoecannon.com

All rights reserved

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

Brotherhood of Lost Souls

If Sasha hadn’t had such clear memories of Luc’s—if the bar didn’t still show up every night in his nightmares, two years on—he might have doubted that he was in the right place. The scuffed wooden tables were gone, replaced by dainty glass squares that would shatter into a million pieces on the floor the first time an argument came to blows. Sasha was guessing Luc didn’t allow that kind of thing in his bar anymore.

The old bar counter was gone, too. Its replacement was stark black, artfully curved, the coat of varnish shiny enough to reflect the light. The chairs were a matching black, the walls blood-red. The lights were the same, just dim enough to make it hard to see the flaws in the person you were flirting with across the bar—but combined with the new decor, now it looked intentional and not like Luc was just too cheap to buy better bulbs.

But Luc was the same.

Not his clothes—his t-shirt and torn jeans were gone, replaced by a black silk shirt just tight enough to show off his physique without being obvious about it. And not his hair—he didn’t wear it pulled back in a ponytail anymore. It was shorter now, and slicked back with too much gel. But the important parts were identical. Those dark blue eyes, with a deeper darkness flickering there that was only visible to someone who looked too closely and for too long. That smarmy half-smile as he leaned across the counter to ask Sasha, What can I get you?

So Luc didn’t recognize him. Sasha shouldn’t have been surprised. There was a lot of that going around. He’d had to introduce himself to Justin—who had been assigned to take over his territory a month after his first encounter with Luc—when they had met up for the official transfer ceremony. And even after that introduction, he could tell Justin had been skeptical that Sasha was really worth talking to, let alone going through the entire ceremony with.

Which wouldn’t have been so insulting, if not for the fact that they had joined the Brotherhood of Paladins together—within two months of each other, in fact—and had spent two full years training together. As the only new arrivals that year, they had been each other’s sparring partners more often than not, and had gone out on the town to blow off steam together multiple times per week. After they had each been assigned their own territory, their friendship had fallen off. But Sasha had still known Justin’s face the second he had seen him.

But Sasha understood. Up until two years ago, he had lived the same way. As soon as he had signed the oath and chugged that vial of angel blood, as soon as he had felt the angel fire roaring through his veins, everyone outside the Brotherhood had ceased to matter. The only people who were relevant in his new world were the ones who glowed with angel fire, like he himself had, or the ones who exuded the greasy, acrid taint of demonic influence. The ones he had been charged to fight.

As for the mundanes, they were points on a scorecard, or they might as well have been. Points for each life saved. Negative points for every mundane who got in the way, or was hurt or killed in the course of a paladin’s fight against darkness. Not that anyone ever got a perfect score. Some casualties were always inevitable.

Sasha tried to look Luc in the eye. He really