by D. N. Leo
Alex’s informant had charged him a fortune for this meeting with the duke but obviously did not have up-to-date information. Even if he shared his story with this woman, the information wouldn’t get to court, wouldn’t be heard, and justice would never be served.
Why bother? He sighed.
“I am told you are a fugitive.”
“No, my lady. I’m here to make a case for myself. I would like to be heard and see justice served.”
She smiled. “I understand. My husband died, and I am now in charge. What is your case?”
He hesitated. He knew nothing about this lady. “Thank you, my lady. I didn’t expect to be heard so soon, and I’m unprepared. If you give me some time, I’ll put the story in writing for you. That will make the presentation to the court a lot easier.”
“You don’t trust me.”
“I do, my lady. I only need time to prepare.”
“Let me help you remember.” She flicked her fingers, and the guards by her side charged at him. Alex drew his knife but had no confidence he would survive the attack. He took down a guard before he felt the sharp pain of a blade penetrating his side. He swung his knife, cutting off someone’s arm. He had no idea to whom it belonged. Then his world started to blur.
He slammed a hard kick at a guard standing by the door and ran out.
He ran as fast as he could in the darkness. Sprinting hard, he crashed into a concrete wall, seeing a thousand stars as he fell. Someone had thrown a spear at him, and it stabbed him in the back. As he lay on the ground, the life draining out of him, the lady in the long red gown appeared and stood over him.
She smiled, and her fangs emerged.
“The man you killed was my stepfather. As you can see, we’re vampires. We live for a long time and are in constant need of a blood supply. My stepfather supplied the money to buy it. Now, when someone like you comes along and cuts off our supply, my family isn’t happy at all. I’m afraid I’ll have to drain your memory and then kill you.”
She swung her arms, and he was thrown several feet into the air. He crashed down hard on the ground. “Just for your information, they also killed your contact, the duke, and the duchess—anyone who might be in contact with you and help you in any way. So it’s correct to say they died because of you.”
Alex let his body rest on the rocky ground for a little longer than he needed to. He pulled himself up slowly, trying to appear as if he was in more pain than he actually was. He was looking for an opportunity to make a getaway.
When the time was right, he bolted up and tried to run. But the woman was faster. Her arms stretched out, and she grabbed him from behind. When he fell, her steely arms dragged him closer to her and then pressed him down to the ground as hard as she could to maximize the damage.
He could feel his skin splitting and peeling off.
He knew he would never get out of this situation alive. But then he heard a female voice. “I can save you, but you will have to trade your soul. Do you agree?”
“Yes,” he said immediately. He didn’t need to think too hard before making the deal. He had nothing to lose.
The woman in red grabbed him by the neck with her giant hand. He could feel her thumb pushing against the back of his head. She was immobilizing him. He felt a stream of poison entering his body from her nails. As the venom was released into his body, his life, his energy, and his memory left him.
He struggled, but he knew it was no use. His body and his brain began to feel numb. What the soul trading business would do with his case, he didn’t know. All he knew now was that he still had his soul, and his head was still firmly attached to his shoulders. He kept his eyes closed.
After a few rounds of poking and prodding, they probably figured there was nothing they could do to make him say anything more. His world went completely blank.
He thought he heard voices from above, but he couldn’t make sense of the language. That was the last thing he remembered as a human.
CHAPTER 25
T hey were still in the dark, somewhere in the countryside of Yorkshire Dale. Madeline had recovered. Ciaran was deciding whether he should turn on his cell phone to navigate and risk being found or follow their very reliable four-legged companion, the black poodle, to find their way out of there.
The screen on Madeline’s wrist unit flashed, and the communication section came back to life. She yelped with joy. “Ciaran, the technology is working now. We don’t have to go to the cross-zone.” She tapped the screen. “Come on, Jo.”
Text appeared. I can’t get the visual to work. There’s some problem with the network. Are you okay?
“Yes,” Madeline said into her wrist unit. Then she frowned. The machine wasn’t typing by voice command as it usually did. “I guess I’ll have to type manually then,” she muttered, fumbling with the tiny keyboard to type the words. She didn’t know her typing was so painfully bad.
“May I?” Ciaran asked, reaching his hand out. “You need to rest a bit more. Your unit recognized me before. Let me handle this.”
She nodded and pulled the unit off, giving it to Ciaran.
He pressed his thumb to the verification screen as he had done before. Ciaran LeBlanc, Sciphil Three. King of Eudaiz. Information verified. Access confirmed, stated the text on the screen.
“Jo, it’s Ciaran here,” he typed.
“Hi Ciaran, are you okay?”
“We’re all good. Can you navigate us to the gateway so I can get Madeline home?”
“Has she completed her mission?”
“Yes. All three of them.”
Madeline arched an eyebrow at that.
“All right, please go to the gateway according to the map provided—and keep your device engaged the whole time.”
“Affirmative.” Then Ciaran whispered into Madeline’s ear, “What’s the name of Eudaiz’s first chief of intelligence?”
“Jake.”
He nodded and typed, “Can you get the chief of intelligence, Robert, to send another wrist unit for me? I’ve lost mine.”
“Affirmative.”
“All right, we’re heading out now.”
“Goodbye.”
Ciaran turned Madeline’s wrist unit completely off. She looked at him, and he knew he didn’t need to explain—she understood him. Alex looked puzzled. “The communication wasn’t from Eudaiz,” Ciaran said, “because they didn’t object when I said Madeline had three missions, and I used the wrong name of the chief of intelligence, and they didn’t say anything about it.”
Madeline added, “Plus, if it was Jo, she wouldn’t let Ciaran go back with me to Eudaiz because he can’t meet the future version of himself. Also, there was no mention of you, Alex. Whoever that was didn’t have the full picture and didn’t know how Eudaiz works.”
“All right. Now what?” Alex asked.
“We have to find our way out of this area in one piece. I think there are multiple forces of paranormal groups, all of which have a different agenda, and each of them wants one of us. These groups may be at war with one another as well. Our top priority is to reconnect Madeline with Eudaizian technology. Only then will we be able to navigate through this mess.”
Madeline nodded. “Agreed.”
Before they could discuss things or devise a plan, a shadow flew over them at an incredible speed. It was too dark to tell what kind of creature it was. It grabbed the dog and flew away. They chased after it. They heard the dog whimpering and then it sounded like he had bitten whatever was carrying him. In the dim light of the night, they saw the shape of the little dog falling down.
With his vampire speed, Alex darted forward, catching the poodle before he hit the ground. Ciaran and Madeline followed right behind Alex.
“Remember,” Ciaran said as they ran, “that everything we see now might be an illusion or a trap. Killing the soul trader will end this ridiculous game. That’s our ultimate goal.”
As soon as Alex had the dog in his hands, they found themselves standing in the middle
of a Roman arena.
“Very grand!” Ciaran said, impressed. “This is similar to a hologame environment, except if we die in here, it will be for real.”
Fifty feet away, Roman soldiers began to appear under the flickering torches. Slaves marched around, waiting for their turn to enter the arena and fight the massive Roman soldiers with swords and axes. It was like the set of a movie where they were a part of the audience, and the others were actors.
“Very dramatic!” Alex said.
Ciaran’s blood ran cold when the image of his brother, Tadgh, appeared. He was being dragged out to the middle of the fighting ground. He knew it was an illusion, but it felt just as raw as the real thing.
He felt Madeline’s hand grip his. She understood.
Ciaran looked closer and realized the arena wasn’t for fighting but for public execution. The crowd hummed with excitement. Ciaran scanned the faces. He was looking for the slightest sign that one of them was the soul trader he was after. If he saw something out of the ordinary, he planned to charge in that direction and kill the thing without mercy.
Tadgh was wearing his favorite leather jacket. It was tattered, and there was blood smeared across his face. He looked barely conscious.
“Don’t make a move, Ciaran. I’ll knock you out if I have to,” Alex said.
Ciaran turned and looked at Madeline. They stared into each other’s eyes for a brief moment. Then he turned to Alex. “I can’t let them execute my brother. Even an illusion of him.” He walked out to the middle of the arena.
In the distance, the soldiers were about to execute Tadgh. They dragged him up a raised platform and threw his body to the floor.
Nobody seemed to pay any attention to Ciaran’s presence. He drew his guns. He was a two-handed shooter, which would help a lot in this situation. He took a deep breath and charged up to the execution platform. With a gun in each hand, he dropped all the soldiers on his way with ease. The small army was taken off guard, and they backed away, confused.
Ciaran jumped up on the platform. “Tadgh!” he called. But his brother didn’t move. He tucked one gun away and reached down to Tadgh’s shoulder. When he flipped his body over, the man in Tadgh’s form leaped to his feet, shifted into a soldier, and ran at Ciaran. Ciaran didn’t even blink. He pointed his gun and pulled the trigger. The man’s head exploded.
But as soon as his body fell to the floor, the head grew back, and he stood back up. It was the same with the other soldiers Ciaran had killed. They all stood up, and they all had the same dead look in their eyes.
“Ciaran!” Madeline called as she ran, trying to get to him. The group of soldiers on the ground stormed toward at her, keeping her from Ciaran.
She pulled her sword and brandished it at the approaching soldiers.
Ciaran heard clapping.
A shiny round platform appeared, hovering in the air next to him. On it stood a man who was just skin and bones. “I’m afraid that’s too many soldiers for her to handle.”
“She’s more capable than you think.”
Madeline had killed a few of the front row soldiers. She held her sword up again. The next group hesitated. But then another group appeared, and all of them moved toward her at the same time. Some of the soldiers fighting Ciaran now turned toward Madeline. Ciaran knew she could fight a handful of soldiers, but an army was a different story. Sending those soldiers to handle Madeline was the action of a coward, and for that, her soul trader deserved to die over and over again.
CHAPTER 26
With all the chaos around her, Madeline couldn’t discern Ciaran and Alex’s movements. She turned her eudqi on, so that meant fighting the soldiers in front of her wouldn’t be a problem. According to the plan she had mentally communicated with Ciaran, she only needed to hold on for a short period of time. She was glad that, although Ciaran still treated her as a stranger and had not warmed up their relationship, they still had a mental connection—they understood each other even without words.
As Ciaran had predicted, her adrenaline and anxiety were running high due to fighting the soldiers and worrying about Ciaran. The soul trader that wanted her soul could sense that.
Because there were opposing groups within the soul trading business, they wouldn’t want to make any moves to put themselves at a disadvantage, thus making misinformed deals with their trading partners. The soul trader Madeline had agreed to deal with years ago told her that placing bad bets or making dishonest trades would kill a soul trader. So as soon as there was information about possible complications, all traders would withdraw from the market rather than make a bad deal.
A soul trader couldn’t be killed easily, except when it had its guard down before making a capture. It had been so sure Madeline would soon die and was therefore watching carefully so it could take her soul at the right time. That miscalculation had gotten the soul trader killed. Its movement became obvious, and it stood out from the rest of the crowd. In a swift move, Alex came up behind the creature and tore its throat open.
When it released a terrifying cry of death, everything—the crowd, the soldiers, and the arena—vanished. Game over. The other opposing forces of the paranormal groups needed to regroup and replan. They were here, after all, to kill, not to be killed. As soon as the trader died and the market looked unstable, the partners began to withdraw.
“We can’t let them go so easily,” Ciaran said.
Madeline knew what he was going to do. As he looked to where the paranormal groups had just disappeared, he used the only supernatural power available to him now—his ability to send out his mighty mind blade.
There was a spark and an explosive sound. He hit them—whatever they were—with his mind blade.
Ciaran’s blade was a powerful weapon, and it did one thing—it destroyed whomever or whatever he wanted it to.
He had a target in mind, and he would hit it hard. He conjured up the fury in his mind and shaped a gigantic steel blade that hurtled through the air at the retreating flock of paranormal creatures. The blade spun and swung, dipping and descending on them from above. Squealing and crying filled the air.
Soon the soldiers, soul traders, and paranormal fighters for hire disappeared into nothingness. The blade dug a large hole and cracked the surface of the ground, making it look like a miniature Grand Canyon.
The execution sucked the energy from Ciaran and weakened him. Madeline grabbed him by the shoulders. “That’s enough, Ciaran.”
He shrugged her off. “I didn’t get all of them…”
She grabbed him again. “Let them go. You’ve never been one to attack a runaway man, Ciaran.”
As soon as he heard her words, he stopped his mind attack.
Suddenly, Ciaran grabbed his head with his hands. He looked to be in excruciating pain. “Something doesn’t want me to stop. It wants me to keep my mind open.”
Ciaran clenched his teeth and willed his mind against whatever stabbed at his mind.
Madeline understood. He had told her about this before. Several paranormal creatures wanted a piece of his mind because he was born in the Daimon Gate. He didn’t know about that yet in this current version of reality, but his natural instinct was always strong. He would fight against this mental attack.
He grunted in pain as he tried to resist the urge to keep his mind in attack mode. A drop of blood trickled from his nose as the agony in his mind intensified. “Let’s get out of here,” he said through his teeth.
“We need to get back to the car,” Madeline said.
Alex helped Ciaran walk.
They heard a sound in the distance. It was a mournful sound that hovered eerily in the air.
Ciaran’s knees buckled.
“Come on, Ciaran.” Alex pulled him up, but he kept stumbling.
“Ciaran, please look at me,” Madeline said. He looked into her dark eyes. “Can you handle this?”
“It wants…to suck my brain out…” His eyes reddened.
“Can you control your mind right now?”
He tried to stand up, then he swayed and shook his head.
“I can help you. Will you let me?”
He nodded.
She had done this before and knew then that she would do it again if necessary. Madeline swung the handle of her knife at his temple, knocking him out cold.
She glanced around, the cold air enveloping her body. “You want to attack his mind, bitch, have at it! You’ve got nothing!” she cried.
He had been attacked before by a mind bender and a space creature and had asked her to knock him out so they couldn’t get any information from his mind. It was completely passive when he was out.
She had merely repeated the process. And it worked. He didn’t seem to be in pain, and the attack on his mind had been halted.
“Could you please carry him, Alex?” she asked.
Looking somewhat amused, Alex threw Ciaran over his shoulder with ease. They walked toward where they had parked the car. The little dog trailed quietly behind.
CHAPTER 27
“Have you ever driven a car before?” Madeline asked after Alex made a few jerky attempts to start the car.
“No, but I’ve seen people drive. It can’t be that difficult.”
“Move over to this side, please.” Madeline got out of the car and strode to the driver’s side. She hadn’t been in this situation for a while because she always traveled with Ciaran, who drove everything in his life—cars, situations, and even people’s lives. Now they had put him in the backseat. If she didn’t handle the driving now, they would be going nowhere.
They hadn’t made it far when they saw the shape of a woman in a red dress rising from the ground on the distant horizon. Her long raven tresses flew in the wind, and her eyes sparkled in a fiery shade of red. She grew larger by the second.
“Is that your Red Widow, Alex?” Madeline asked as she hit the brakes.
“Yes, but she isn’t mine!”
Madeline turned quickly toward Ciaran, who was still totally out of it in the backseat.