by D. N. Leo
“The call you just received, is it urgent?” He locked eyes with her to let her know he wouldn’t like it if she withheld information from him.
She nodded. “It’s urgent. But your interest lies in the natural medicine clinics, so—”
“I’m paying for the whole lot, Alyna. That includes the private security business as well. Not only do I need an answer now about what’s just happened, but I also need answers from you about the dead men in the photos this morning.”
“Pukak said you were going to leave our operation alone and only assist with financial matters.”
“No, what I said was I’ll leave your spiritual practice and beliefs alone. I know Amaraq is a mage-operating organization. I respect that. But I’ll handle any operational matter that has financial implications. And I’m guessing having your men die in the line of duty has an implication for the private security business. Am I correct?”
She looked at him, hesitating. “Have you seen a dead body before?”
He’d been to battles before. He had no idea how many thousands of space creatures he had killed. Caedmon’s face remained stoic as he said, “No, but I’m educated, I have medical knowledge, and I can handle seeing dead bodies. So…what was the call about?”
Alyna waved her arms in the air in frustration. “Pukak won’t like this!”
“If you want my money in the business, I need to know everything about it. Otherwise, I’m out.”
She sighed. “It’s a client. His son has just been found dead.”
“We provide a private security service, and a client’s son is dead, and you didn’t think it was in my interest to know?”
“Well, you know now!”
“Have you called the authorities?”
“I just found out about it now. I haven’t called Pukak, but you’re the authority now.” She paced back and forth in agitation.
“Give me a minute.” He turned away, pretending to think, and discreetly switched on his microcomputer again. He searched for general information about New Earth in his current location at the current time. The command was simple, and he didn’t think there was any danger of overloading the microchip. Instantly, a stream of information appeared in his mind’s eye.
He scanned the information. Then he switched it off and turned back to look at Alyna. He didn’t know what to say.
This was New Earth, 2999. There was no government or authority of any kind here. Commerce operated on total freedom of supply and demand. People hired private security for protection. The people were the authority over themselves.
He didn’t know he had traveled so far into the Future Earth. But that was beside the point. The system had calculated that the Scorpio key was here. At this time, and in this location now called New Earth.
“Caedmon?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your decision? If you take the business, then you’re the one in charge.”
“Right. We’ll have to see the dead body first and talk to the client. The father must be devastated.”
Alyna shook her head.
“You mean he doesn’t care?” he asked.
She looked at him, and he could see an ocean of sadness in those deep emerald eyes. She bit her lips lightly. He figured that was to prevent unwanted tears.
“Tony is seventeen, and he could have done a lot better if not for the scumbag he calls a brother. His father is on his deathbed, and his wealth has been distributed evenly between his two sons. Tony’s money is with a financial guardian until he’s eighteen. His father—when he was still conscious—hired us to protect Tony. See what he’s gotten his son?”
A tear rolled down her face, and she wiped it off quickly.
Caedmon tried to touch her shoulder in comfort, but she shrugged him off.
“So to answer your question, no, his father won’t feel any pain. He’s in a coma now, waiting to die. As for the money, we’ll lose it because his brother will take the business to Ethesus.”
“I don’t care about the money.”
“I don’t, either. And not because it’s not my money. But this is just the beginning. I told Pukak, Ethesus will do whatever it takes to destroy us.”
“I take it they’re our competitor.”
“Yes. And if they take over the city, it will be chaos. More than we’ve already seen.”
“How so?”
“They worship Satan.”
6
A lyna didn’t need to verify the security code at the door to enter Tony’s residence. The young man was dead, and the door was wide open. Amaraq had already sent people to investigate the cause of death and the potential killer. If they had found evidence, they had the authority to execute the killer.
Ben, notepad in hand, approached from a side corridor. Ben was in his mid-thirties and had been with Amaraq since he was a teenager. Like many other young teens, he had joined to learn martial arts and survival techniques to protect himself. Then he began to conduct the business to protect others. Alyna trusted him.
“He’s in the lunch room. There’s no trace of a wound, Alyna.” Ben glanced at Caedmon and stopped talking.
“This is Caedmon LeBlanc. He’s our new business owner.”
“What do you mean? You and Pukak won’t be with us any longer?”
Caedmon reached his hand out for a handshake, but Ben raised his hand, showing him the thin coat of transparent substance covering it. “I’m wearing a protective shield to examine the dead body,” he explained.
Caedmon nodded and said, “Alyna and Pukak aren’t going anywhere. I’m just assisting with some financial matters.” He gestured widely around the room. “And learning the business, of course.”
When Ben looked at Alyna, she gave him a nod of approval, so he continued. “Tony was probably killed just an hour ago,” he said, “and I’m guessing it was because of the suppression of air to his brain.”
“He was strangled?” Alyna asked.
“There were no marks. No sign of a physical struggle. And there was no poison in his system that I can detect so far. But his heart failed, and his brain reacted as if there was a lack of oxygen. I’m not sure of the sequence—whether his heart or his brain failed first—but it’s all speculation because there were no physical marks on his body whatsoever. It was as if…” He trailed off.
Alyna raised an eyebrow, waiting. Ben looked from Alyna to Caedmon.
“This is just my opinion,” he said. “I don’t have any evidence to back this up.”
“Spit it out, Ben,” Alyna said.
“It was as if the life was sucked out of him.”
“What do you mean?” Caedmon asked. “If he didn’t die naturally, then someone took his life. That’s obvious.”
Ben rocked back and forth from his heels to the balls of his feet. “It’s like his soul, or his spirit, was taken from him.”
Alyna shook her head as she strode into the adjacent room via a side hallway. The room was spacious and filled with natural sunlight via a large floor-to-ceiling glass window. She saw the table where Tony had loved to sit to have his meals, watch the screen, and read old comic books he got from an antique collection in the museum. He had been planning to reprint those books with real paper—regardless of how expensive it would be to do so. The books were still there, scattered all over the floor. He must have pushed them to the floor as he fell.
Tony’s body was on the floor. He looked as if he were sleeping peacefully. He had been so young and full of life.
She approached and crouched next to the body. On his knuckles were the bruises she had put there. He had started taking martial art lessons with her because he didn’t like being surrounded by security all the time.
Then, from the body in front of her, a whirl of black smoke and semitransparent particles surged up from the ground to form the wriggling shape of a man, his hands reaching out to grab her neck.
She staggered back, falling to the floor. She gasped. She couldn’t breathe. She tried to yank the hands off
her neck, but they weren’t tangible, and there was nothing for her to grab. But her windpipe was closing. That much she knew.
Her vision blurred quickly as her air was cut off. She saw Caedmon and Ben panicking, saying something she could neither hear nor understand. Her world was dimming by the second. She felt Caedmon’s hands on her shoulders. He said something.
Then her world went completely dark.
She felt a zap, like a spark of electric current tearing through her body. Then came another one. And another.
Blood and air started to circulate once again. She felt her body operating on its own. She opened her eyes and saw Caedmon’s face over hers. She guessed he had done something to save her. She wanted to say thank you, or at least smile, but her body didn’t want to cooperate.
“All right, I’ll take her back to her place,” Caedmon said then lifted her up into his arms. She was five foot eleven, yet he lifted her up like she was as light as a little girl’s doll. She couldn’t move at the moment, so she let her head loll on his strong shoulder.
When Caedmon turned around, she saw the concern look on Ben’s face. She understood. She felt as though she had just come back from death. She was tired, so she closed her eyes.
“It’s in your best interest to forget what you saw me do, Ben,” Caedmon said.
“I’ll have to tell Pukak.”
“You don’t have to do anything. If you say a word, I’ll withdraw my business offer to Amaraq. Talk to Pukak instead about the consequence of not having my financial backing. Understood?”
“Yes.”
Alyna felt movement. Then she heard the sound of traffic. She stirred and opened her eyes.
“There you are. Ben said I should take you home and not to a medical center. But I have no idea where you live. Let me have look at your ID card.”
A cab stopped right next to them. He climbed in with ease and settled Alyna on his lap.
“Sorry,” he said as he stuck his hand into her pants pocket and pulled out her ID. He gave the address to the driver.
She was so glad she lived in the center of the town and not in a dump somewhere on the outskirts. The downside of the location, however, was that her rent chewed up a large part of her wages. As the car moved, her face pressed into Caedmon’s chest. She could smell his masculinity. She had been with men before, but this was the most sensual scent she had ever experienced. She was embarrassed, yet unable to move her head away from his chest.
A short moment later, he carried her into the bedroom in her apartment and put her gently on her bed.
“I can see you’re now able to blink those pretty eyes of yours. But they need to rest.” He took her boots off and sat down at her bedside. “I’ll loosen this braided ponytail. It’s too tight.”
He tugged at it and loosened her hair a bit.
“Don’t panic, I’m not going to undress you. But this belt’s got to go.” He took her belt off. “Also, I have to loosen this as well. You can beat me up for this when you can move again.” He slid his arms around her back and unclasped her bra.
He then wrapped the blanket around her, dimmed the light, and left the room.
She lay there, staring at the ceiling and digesting what had just happened. She rested, waiting for her muscles to strengthen, cell by cell. She could still smell his scent hovering in the air of her bedroom.
Damn it. She closed her eyes for a bit. Then she concentrated on her muscle movements again.
7
C aedmon wasn’t keen on square buildings. But he wasn’t going to find the grand rooms and high-ceilinged towers of Eudaiz anywhere else in the multiverse. He glanced back at the bedroom door and was sure Alyna was still resting. He needed his privacy, but he couldn’t leave her alone in her current condition.
His stomach growled. He was really hungry. But he had work to do, and he had to make use of the little space he had available in this compartment.
He settled at the kitchen table and turned on his wrist unit. He entered a command, and the face of Lorcan Brody, a wicked technology head in the Daimon Gate appeared.
Lorcan frowned. “Ciaran?”
“I guess I look like my father.”
“Holy cow, you’re Caedmon. The unit just said LeBlanc, so I assumed… Wait, so you’re calling from the future? What’re you doing?”
“Uncle Lorcan, I need your and Orla’s help.”
“That much I can guess. But you’re not contacting us in the future, so does that mean we’re dead?”
“No, no, I need you at your current time. Would you mind getting Aunty Orla so I can explain this only once? I haven’t got much time.”
Orla’s exotic voice sounded, and her beautiful face loomed on the screen. “I heard my name. Hello there, Caedmon. You’ve grown into a fine man. Calling from the future, are you?”
Lorcan gasped. “How could you tell it was him. Why didn’t you think it was Ciaran?”
Orla shrugged. “Well, they do look alike. But Ciaran doesn’t have that twinkle in the eyes. You can never tell what Ciaran’s thinking. Charming Caedmon here can never hide his emotions.”
Lorcan rolled his eyes. “Women.”
He must have earned a pinch from Orla for that comment because he yelped.
“What do you need, Caedmon?” Orla asked.
“I need Uncle Lorcan to find out, at your current time now, whether my father has obtained the Scorpio key. If not, that’s the right time point.”
Lorcan turned to another monitor, returning shortly. “No. Ciaran and Madeline have just obtained the Virgo key. There’s a note, confidential of course, about another five keys. Scorpio is one of them.”
Caedmon nodded. “All right. In the future, I figured out that my father failed to obtain the Scorpio key, and the consequence was disastrous. I traveled to the past, just before he went for the key, and offered to go in his place. I got the key, married Sedna, and came back to my future. Am I confusing you yet?”
Orla shook her head. “Something happened to your wife, didn’t it?” Tears gleamed in her eyes.
“Caedmon, stop crying. Tears are contagious,” Lorcan said.
Caedmon didn’t realize tears had rolled down his face, and he had made Orla emotional. He wiped them away. “Sorry. I can’t control this.” Then he looked at Orla. “Yes, Aunty Orla, something happened to my wife. A month ago—in the future that is. I don’t know how, but she figured out that the Scorpio key we obtained was fake. She traveled back to the past to the point when she had just given the key to my father, and she asked for it back. Could you excuse me for just a sec…”
He went into the bathroom and splashed cold water onto his face. He couldn’t control his emotional and chemical reactions, but that didn’t mean he was mentally weak. Sedna always teased him when he encountered emotional news, and his chemical reaction triggered tears he couldn’t control. He would improve over time. But she hadn’t had a chance to see that, had she? He inhaled deeply to gather himself together and then stepped back out to the kitchen.
He looked into the screen again so that Lorcan and Orla could see his face and know he had composed himself. He spoke with clarity. “I didn’t know Sedna’s plan when she took the fake key back. She jumped into an ice oblivion hole, and then there was an explosion from the hole.”
“And you can’t accept that she might be dead. That’s why you are where you are now?” Lorcan asked.
Caedmon nodded. “Until I find evidence, I won’t believe she’s dead. Because I’ve traveled to the past and cheated fate to get the key, I can’t travel back to fix the future consequences of my own action. So instead, I traveled further into the future, to here and now.”
“Interesting plan, Caedmon. What’s your theory?” Lorcan asked.
“Sedna is a mage. Her mage tribe worships the Scorpio key. When we took the key and left, the tribe was supposed to dissolve. But they didn’t. They transformed and now are operating under the name Amaraq. And they still worship the Scorpio key.”
; “The real key?” Orla asked.
“I don’t know. My plan is to get into the mage tribe, find the person who swapped the real key, and make him or her—or it—go back to the past and place the real key in the temple at a time before we got the key. I can’t travel to the past, but I can send that person—or thing—back.”
“It’s good in theory, but how do you plan to make the thing agree to travel?”
“All things want to stay alive. It can stay here and die with the key, or travel back to the past to replace the key and live. I will hold whatever is important to it here at ransom.”
“You’d kill for this, Caedmon?” Orla asked.
“It’s not just my wife’s life. If the key falls into the wrong hands, many people will die. My father said the set of six keys connects multiple worlds and gives the connector the ultimate power. And Hoyt Flanagan is working to get all six of the keys. I have to get to the key before he does.”
“Flanagan?” Orla shook her head and shuddered. “You’d better get that key, Caedmon.”
“So if you already have a plan, how can we help?” Lorcan asked.
“I’ve done my research, roughly, and understand how a mage’s magic works. But just now, I saw a form of dematerialization.”
“That’s your Uncle Tadgh’s talent,” Lorcan said.
“Yes, and Hoyt Flanagan’s. But Hoyt is a lot more seasoned than my uncle.”
“Yes, he’s got a few hundred years on Tadgh. Plus he practices dark magic. Is that why you want me?” Orla asked.
Caedmon nodded. “Yes, your experience with sorcery is much needed. But I dare not ask you to perform a ritual inside the Daimon Gate. All I need now is a spell or something I can use to protect myself if dark magic is used against me.”
Orla smiled. “You’re a thousand times more open-minded than your father, Caedmon. Yes, I can work on that for you.”
“And Uncle Lorcan, could you please find out what the group called Ethesus does? Do they have anything to do with Satan? And is Satan a branch of religious belief or a kind of magic? At your current time now, could you triangulate to equivalent Earth time and figure out if there’s a surge of multiversal energy in Greenland and the Arctic? I focused only on the mage tribe and neglected everything beyond that.”