The Blood Guard (The Blood Guard series) Read Online Free PDF

other across white Formica tables, and there was a tiny snack bar in the middle manned by an older woman with bleached blonde hair. Her name tag read BRENDA . “All that food, just for you?” she asked. “I’m going to have to get you a bigger tray!”
    She produced a turquoise fiberglass tray from a cupboard, and Dawkins mounded everything onto it. He sat down in the first booth, and I slid into the bench opposite.
    “What is this Blood Guard thing?” I asked. “And who were those people in the station?”
    “All in good time.” He fluffed out a napkin and tucked it into the neck of his T-shirt. He wasn’t as young as I’d first thought. He looked like he was a senior in high school, but something about his eyes seeme d — t here’s no other word for i t — o ld . “In the Guard, it pays to eat fast, before some nasty sort tries to stick a knife in you.”
    Dawkins began folding the hot dogs in half in their buns and shoving them into his mouth. He’d chew vigorously for a moment, take a mouthful of soda, then swallow with an audible gulp . He shoved the last hot dog my way, saying, “You should eat something.”
    I shook my head no , feeling queasy.
    “Your call, old boy.” He leaned back, placed his hands on his belly, and belched. “Okay then. To understand the Blood Guard, you need to understand who it is they protect. Among the seven billion or so people on this planet, there exist thirty-six who are better than all the rest of us put together. Thirty-six pure souls. Deep down, these people are genuinely goo d — s o much so that they make up for the darkness and sins committed by the other six billion and change on Earth.” He worked something out of his teeth with his tongue. “They’re not a bunch of Goody Two-shoes. It’s more that they radiate a kind of…purity of spirit, let’s call it.”
    “Sure,” I said. “Thirty-six awesome people somewhere in the world.”
    He shook his head. “Not somewhere , not all together like some classroom full of A-plus students. No, just scattered around the planet, like diamonds in a dump truck full of pebbles.” He noisily slurped one of his sodas. “You with me so far?”
    “Thirty-six diamonds in a bunch of pebbles.” I listened for a moment to the train’s wheels clattering against the track. “But what does this have to do with my dad being kidnapped? Or my mom being…” I didn’t know what to call her. Badass?
    “I’m getting there.” He tore open a bag of chips and emptied half of them into his mouth. “The thirty-six appear in many mystical writings as the Righteous Ones, or the Tzadikim Nistarim , or simply the Pure.
    “The sources all agree on one point,” Dawkins said, swallowing. “The Pure are the only thing that stops God from saying, ‘Enough already!’ wiping the world clean, and starting over.” He wiped his mouth with a wadded-up napkin. “Noah’s Flood happened because there were too few Pure in the world. Whenever even one of the Pure dies, the entire world suffers.”
    “You believe that God is going to destroy the world if thirty-six people aren’t here?” My mom might not be crazy, but this guy was obviously bonkers.
    “Think of it like the spokes on a bicycle wheel. Snap one, and the wheel still holds its shape, right? Take out three spokes, and it starts to warp. Seven, and the warping gets pretty bad. You don’t have to remove every spoke to make the wheel collapse. The Second World War happened because five of the Pure had been found and murdered. The Dark Ages? Eight Pure had been killed, and as a result, the world was plunged into centuries of misery, ignorance, and plague.”
    “But these thirty-six people have to die sometime,” I said. “No one lives forever.”
    “That’s what you’d think,” Dawkins said with a smirk. “A natural death isn’t the problem; a Pure’s soul is reincarnated almost instantaneously. It’s when the Pure dies before his appointed tim e — w hen that Pure is