The Guardians Omnibus Read online

  The

  Guardians Series

  Omnibus

  Accidental Awakening • Unidentified Phenomenon • The Rise of Dark Flame • Ultimate Sacrifice • Balance of Power

  Damien Benoit-Ledoux

  www.damienledoux.com

  Purple Spekter™ Press

  Copyright © 2018 Damien Benoit-Ledoux

  All rights reserved. No part of this may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior consent of the Author, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Kindle ASIN: B07QLYW91B

  WORK OF FICTION

  This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents 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.

  EDITIONS

  Kindle

  1.0 | April 28, 2019 | Kindle Launch

  Dedication

  The Guardians Series Omnibus is dedicated to my son, Aury.

  Aury, before Daddy and I knew you would be the special, amazing baby boy who would join our family, I wrote Quinn as an adopted son with gay dads because that we knew adoption would be our amazing journey together.

  The dads in this story, Tim (Dad) and Aren (Daddio), are a mix of both your Papa and Daddy. You were already in my heart and mind before the universe brought you to us. My son, my wish for you is that you grow up to be a happy, strong, fierce, and loving person—and be awesome like Blue Spekter.

  The Guardians series is dedicated to all LGBTQ youth and young adults everywhere who have struggled to love themselves, or struggle to love themselves today.

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Author’s Notes

  Book 1: Accidental Awakening

  Prologue

  1-1 | When Dreams Become Nightmares

  1-2 | Junior Year at Portsmouth High

  1-3 | Bullies and Distractions

  1-4 | Family Camping Trip

  1-5 | The Day Everything Changed

  1-6 | Web of Lies

  1-7 | Organized Chaos

  1-8 | Altered

  1-9 | Testing the Waters

  1-10 | Life and Death

  1-11 | No Thank You

  1-12 | Answers

  1-13 | Darkness Rising

  1-14 | Normal is Upside Down

  1-15 | Return to the Source

  1-16 | More Unanswered Questions

  1-17 | With Us or Against Us

  Book 2: Unidentified Phenomenon

  2-1 | A Whole New World

  2-2 | Differing Ambitions

  2-3 | Forks in the Road

  2-4 | Unexpected Reveal

  2-5 | Frustrations

  2-6 | Normal is Abnormal

  2-7 | It's a Different World Now

  2-8 | Sometimes, Things Work Out

  2-9 | His Eyes Opened

  2-10 | Divergence

  2-11 | Superior Complex

  2-12 | Unwanted Tension

  2-13 | Practice Makes Perfect

  2-14 | A Night of Firsts

  2-15 | Betrayal

  2-16 | Snare of a Different Kind

  2-17 | Coming Out

  2-18 | Shifting Priorities

  2-19 | Next Up, Paranoia

  2-20 | KC-135 Stratotanker

  2-21 | Frustrated

  2-22 | Negotiations

  2-23 | The Assault Begins

  2-24 | Plots Within Plots

  2-25 | Collusion

  2-26 | Twist the Knife

  2-27 | One Chance

  2-28 | Fallout

  2-29 | Life Must Go On

  2-30 | Securing the Future

  Book 3 – The Rise of Dark Flame

  3-1 | It's a New Dawn, It's a New Day, It's a New Life

  3-2 | And I'm Feeling Good

  3-3 | You Make Me Feel Like Loving You

  3-4 | Heart of Glory

  3-5 | What Would Blue Spekter Do?

  3-6 | Leveling Up

  3-7 | The Enemy of my Enemy is my Friend

  3-8 | Interogatoriilor

  3-9 | Goodwin Park

  3-10 | Unpredictable and More Dangerous

  3-11 | RuVeal

  3-12 | His Eyes Opened unto Darkness

  3-13 | 88 Miles Per Hour

  3-14 | These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends

  3-15 | Clash of the Titans

  3-16 | Frenemies

  3-17 | Aftermath

  Book 4 – Ultimate Sacrifice

  4-1 | Thanksgiving

  4-2 | The First of Many

  4-3 | Power Play

  4-4 | A Jigsaw Puzzle with Missing Pieces

  4-5 | Revenge of the Nerds

  4-6 | Things are Looking Up...Mostly

  4-7 | Unexpected Revelation

  4-8 | The Path of Vengeance

  4-9 | We Stand United

  4-10 | Six Degrees of Separation

  4-11 | Blue Spekter 1; The Order 0

  4-12 | Lashing Out

  4-13 | December Disaster

  4-14 | You Can’t Give Up Now

  4-15 | Fallout

  4-16 | They Won’t Be Expecting This

  4-17 | I Won’t Give up on Him

  4-18 | A Whole New Level of Low

  4-19 | Heart Wrench and Desperation

  4-20 | Try not. Do…or Do Not. There is no Try.

  4-21 | Where Did You Come From?

  4-22 | Battle Royale

  4-23 | The Boot is on the Other Foot

  Book 5 – Balance of Power

  5-1 | A Morbid Christmas

  5-2 | We're Not Done Yet

  5-3 | A Much-Needed Distraction

  5-4 | Surprise, Sucker

  5-5 | Fear of the Unknown

  5-6 | Resolved Interference

  5-7 | Respite

  5-8 | Blue Spekter Strikes Back

  5-9 | The Penalty for Treachery is Death

  5-10 | The Secret of Hangar 227

  5-11 | Rise and Shine

  5-12 | Reunions

  5-13 | First Night

  5-14 | Waiting Game

  5-15 | Misdirections

  5-16 | Lower the Gauntlet

  5-17 | Northbound

  5-18 | Welcome to Nightmare's Playground

  5-19 | Changing the Plan

  5-20 | Bamboozled

  5-21 | The Trickster’s Improvisation

  5-22 | Can’t Read My Poker Face

  5-23 | The Beginning of the End

  5-24 | Nightmare’s Triumph

  5-25 | Endurance of Hope

  5-26 | Götterdämmerung

  5-27 | Decompression

  5-28 | Dawn of the Superhero Age

  5-29 | Sighs of Relief

  5-30 | The New Normal

  5-31 | Epilogue

  If You Enjoyed this Omnibus…

  About the Author

  The Purple Spekter™ Shop

  Acknowledgements

  My husband and handsome hero Tim, for his constant encouragement and willingness to share in this part of my life. I truly appreciate your support as I jockey between our lives, work, and several novels. I love you, through all of time and space…

  Transcriptionist

  My amazing sister-in-law, Joanna Ledoux, took audio recordings of chapters and scenes from long drives I made and diligently transcribed them for me, saving me hours of work.

  Editing

  My husband, Tim.

  Riders of Dragons and Slayers of Typos

  Jim Adcock

  Richard Barton

  Jim Bohlin

  Michael Miller

  Bob Silverstein

  Jay Wong

&nbs
p; Beta Readers

  My team of beta readers who pre-read the novel and provided feedback and suggestions to strengthen the story. Thank you.

  Jim Adcock

  Richard Barton

  Victor Freeman

  Gea Kuil

  David Pruette

  Bob Silverstein

  Jay Wong

  Contributors

  These fine superhero supporters added something to the story, such as an idea, a character, subject matter expertise, or simply shared their thoughts with me about something I was working on.

  Amie Borst

  Timothy Chapman

  Lisa Ehrlich

  Jeremy Menefee

  Andrew Rowe

  Ron St. Germain

  Author’s Notes

  On Chronology

  I believe you may be accustomed to reading the chapters of a book in order with the expectation that each chapter chronologically moves the story forward toward its climax and resolution. That being said…most of the time, Quinn and Blake’s story lines run in parallel chronology, but occasionally, a subchapter may take place at a different point in time. When it matters, I’ve been explicit about it. Otherwise, it doesn’t matter.

  On Making these Superheroes More Enjoyable

  Let's be honest for a moment: extra stuff can be cool. That's why I created free, bonus content for you to enjoy on my Web site about the Guardians series. It contains additional details about characters (spoiler free) and the unique places Quinn and Blake visit, such as the Orgonon Reactor Core.

  You can access it here: http://damienledoux.com/the-guardians-series/

  On Findeing Typohs?

  If you found a typo, please let me know. Despite the many editing passes and multiple sets of eyes, typos, like nasty gremlins, creep into the text. It’s extremely frustrating but with your help, we can eliminate all typos, everywhere—or at least in my novels. Use the contact form at the link below to submit a typo or other textual error. Thank you so much for helping me improve my stories!

  http://damienledoux.com/typohunters/

  Book 1: Accidental Awakening

  Prologue

  Quinn

  MY NAME IS QUINTON MCALESTER—known to the world as Blue Spekter—but my friends call me Quinn. I’m sixteen-years-old and I’m a superhero—and I love it!

  Wait…

  I know what you’re about to ask me. You want to know if I can fly, if I’m bulletproof, if I’m faster than a speeding bullet, if I can bend metal, or climb tall buildings. The truth is, I’m not like any one superhero you’ve read about in comics or seen in the movies. I’m something…different. I guess you could say I lucked out with my super powers, but I’m getting ahead of myself. (I actually can’t sling webbing around like Spidey, that would be really cool, though.)

  I’m not the only one with super powers; my best friend, Blake Hargreaves, got his super powers the same way I did. (I’ll get there, I promise.) Unlike your friendly, neighborhood Spider-man, the Batman, or Wonder Woman, we don’t live in a big city like New York or Gotham. We live in boring old Portsmouth, New Hampshire where almost nothing happens except bad Nor’easters and night crimes—but don’t tell the locals I said it’s boring. In truth, it’s not. There’s a lot going on and the downtown traffic might make you think you're stuck on the Zakim Bridge in Boston, but it’s no big city.

  My family isn’t very…normal…at least, what people around here think of as normal. See, I have two dads who are embarrassingly in love with each other. I know I should be grateful, but when you’re my age you don’t appreciate the PDA of your parents…at all.

  I talked about my friends earlier; there’s Keegan, the boy I really like, but I don't think he knows I exist. Although Keegan isn’t in my circle of friends yet, I’m working on that…big time. My other friends include Loren Davis, one of my English literature buddies, and Ravone Timber, who has a major crush on Blake. I’m not really sure how we became friends because she’s so different from us but she’s part of our inner circle and I wouldn’t have it any other way. There are a few others, but for brevity, last but not least there’s Mr. St. Germain, my favorite science teacher. He’s stupidly smart and really into superhero stuff, like from the comic books. That’s why Blake and I trusted him to help us learn about our super powers because when things started happening, we couldn’t figure out what the heck was going on—let alone that we could control them.

  Unfortunately, I have some enemies, too, and I don’t really know why. Darien James is the biggest jerk and the stereotypical school bully. He is the Flash Thompson to my Peter Parker. He doesn’t usually bug Blake, but he sure likes to pick on me. I think it’s because I’m gay, but I’m not out—at least, I wasn’t—when he started picking on me, so who knows what got his underwear in a twist.

  So, while we don’t live in a big city, there’s enough going on to keep us busy…and by busy, I’m talking about school, track, homework, and work. Blake and I attend Portsmouth High School (go Clippers!) and we’re both on the track team. Our story starts at the beginning of our junior year. We both want to go to the same college after we graduate. I want to major in English, date cute boys, and then get an MFA in creative writing because I want to be a novelist. Blake doesn't have a specific dream or major yet, but he knows he wants to make a lot of money and be in charge of something big.

  On nights and weekends, we both work as baristas at the local coffee shops; me at Breaking New Grounds, and Blake at Kaffee VonSolln. (Yeah, don’t ask me how to pronounce it either.) It’s fun because there’s a natural, unspoken rivalry between the two shops and our beloved residents and tourist fans are fiercely loyal to their brand of coffee, or kaffee as we like to mispronounce the word. Still, Blake and I don’t care. Our parents let us keep the cash we earn (although mine make me save half of it for college) and we have fun with our classmates at the Fox Run Mall or the Regal Movie Theaters.

  In the summers when we’re not working, we hang around town at Prescott Park or drive into Maine to relax on the Ogunquit or York beaches. On weekends, we head north into New Hampshire or Maine to go camping with our friends or our families. Well, my family…Blake’s parents are mean to him and they treat him like crap. So, whenever he can, Blake likes to get out of the house and spend most of his time with me, my family, and a few of our close school friends. Speaking of camping, this is how my story gets started—on the weekend I went camping with my family and Blake up in Rangeley, Maine.

  Shall we?

  ❖

  Blake

  My name is Blake Hargreaves—known to the world as Dark Flame—a stupid name I absolutely hate. It’s so friggin’ pretentious. I loathe Hargreaves as well because my parents hate each other, and I’m stuck in the middle of their bullshit, forced to listen to them scream and yell at each other well into the night. Sometimes, I think they’re just waiting for me to graduate high school before breaking up and getting a divorce. I wish they’d get it over with because it’s not fun for me.

  Money’s tight and though I work at one of the downtown coffee shops, I have to buy my own…everything. My parents rarely supply me with new clothes and in the last two years I grew a lot. I needed new shoes, underwear, pants, shirts…I had to pay for it all. Sometimes, Quinn McAlester, my best friend, chips in to help me or his dads buy me stuff when they think I need it, but I hate taking their charity and their pity. However, I do love his family. Their home is peaceful, serene, and his dads are awesome together, if not a little too in love, if you catch my drift.

  Oh, it’s Quinn, by the way, who asked me to contribute to his little documentary project. So, I’m only doing this for him.

  Still…

  Quinn is really lucky and it’s hard not to be jealous of what he has. I just wish my mom and dad would…well, I already said it.

  Quinn and I run track together at school and we’re gonna graduate from Portsmouth High in two years. We’ve talked about attending the same college, but we haven’t really started looking yet.
I don’t know if we’re going to be roommates or not, but I think it would be fun.

  At least I did, before everything changed.

  A while back, while camping with Quinn, my life changed forever. Our lives, I should say, since the thing happened to both of us. Mr. St. Germain, our nerdy science teacher, helped us figure out what happened when we decided to tell someone about the weird stuff that was happening to us.

  Quinn loved it.

  He had…and has…all these crazy ideas about helping and saving people, like he’s going to become the next Superman or Invincible comic book hero. But in reality, people freak about this crap because they don’t get it. To quote Carmine Falcone in Batman Begins, “You always fear what you don’t understand.”

  Of course, Quinn’s powers developed faster than mine, and they’re different. I can’t do all the things he can do yet, but some of the things I can do, I can do more powerfully than I let on. I don’t think Quinn trusts me fully with our powers, and I resent him for thinking I’m less than capable of dealing with this. I think that’s why he insists we do the superhero crap.

  I don’t mind helping him, but…I have my limits. If we get caught, our lives will irrevocably (today’s vocabulary word challenge from English class) change forever. Our dreams—whatever they are—will be taken away from us by a bunch of pricks who will want to dissect us and figure out why we’re so…uniquely powerful. I try to bring reason to his optimism, but I’m not succeeding. I fear he’s gonna do more than just come out of the closet for being gay, he’s gonna come out to the world as a Marvel class-five super freak.

  I need to stop that from happening—no matter the cost—even if it means hurting my best friend.

  1-1 | When Dreams Become Nightmares

  Quinn

  QUINN T RIED TO SPEAK, BUT the words caught in his throat and refused to leave his parched mouth and dry lips. Startled, he willed himself to cry out, but his voice failed him.