Soul Market - Shadow Justice - Book 2

by D. N. Leo

  “Sadistic b—”

  “Shhh, you shouldn’t curse the Goddess.”

  “I don’t belong to the world she rules.”

  “Still, it’s not helpful, Zach.”

  He nodded and sat down on the bed. “Let’s find out which list Kirra is on then.”

  Mya switched on her deity vision.

  The image hit her mind like a storm from hell—a sword pierced Kirra’s heart, and her body floated and spun in a whirlwind of fire.

  Mya’s knees buckled. She switched back to her human vision and found Zach holding her. Tears rolled down her face. She shuddered then regained her footing. She could feel all the muscles in Zach’s body quivering. He had somehow connected with her emotion. He released her and brushed a strand of hair from her forehead.

  “It was bad, wasn’t it?”

  She nodded. “I’ve never seen images before, just text. I’d get the information about the possible cause of death and the list the subject was on. But this time…all I saw was an image of Kirra. I don’t know which list she’s on.”

  “What did you see?”

  “She was on fire…floating. And a sword pierced her heart.”

  “Anybody home?” Kirra’s voice drifted in again.

  Zach opened the door to see Kirra standing outside with a smile as bright as the sunshine on her face.

  Chapter 4

  From the floor, Richard looked at Casey. He saw the reflection of the falling steel rail behind him in her eyes. Without thinking, he pushed her out of the way. It was strange, though. He thought she resisted his push. She saw the falling rail. But from his perspective, it was only a reflection in her eyes. Why would she want to stand in the way? But maybe it was his imagination. It was dark. He felt it hit him from behind and then the impact of his body as it hit the concrete floor. Then his world went completely dark.

  One light stroke cut across the darkness. Another one. Then there was sound. He could hear people murmuring. He opened his eyes and realized he was in an emergency room. The concerned face of a nurse hovered above his own.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked while simultaneously checking the tubes connected to his arm and the monitor next to his bed.

  “How’s Casey?”

  The nurse turned to look at him. He knew it was irrational to assume she knew who Casey was, but a strange nervousness stabbed at him, and he couldn’t think straight. Maybe Casey was famous enough that people would recognize her name.

  “You have a mild concussion, Mr. Lane. But Ms. Anderson wasn’t that lucky.”

  He sat up, but the nurse pushed him back down. “She’s in the critical unit. You can’t visit her, sir.”

  He flopped back down, recalling pushing her out of the way of way of the falling rail. “How could her injury be that bad when I only have a mild concussion?”

  “What injury?” the nurse asked.

  “The falling rail. It hit me. It must have hit her. I mustn’t have been quick enough…”

  The nurse looked puzzled. “You need to lie down. I’ll go and get the doctor.”

  “No. Tell me what happened to Casey.”

  “She had a heart attack. There were no other injuries the doctor diagnosed when you both arrived.”

  “A heart attack? What about the rail? I mean—”

  “What rail, Mr. Lane? Are you saying Ms. Anderson has other injuries we should check on? There’s nothing but a critical heart attack on her chart. Which is strange because the doctor said she has no history of a heart condition.”

  “I need to see her.”

  “All right. I’ll get the doctor. If he clears you, I’ll take you to Ms. Anderson.”

  Richard nodded and sat back down while the nurse scurried out of the room. As soon as she turned the corner, he scrambled out of bed and scooted out the door. He followed the signs and made his way to the intensive care unit. In the room, Casey lay lifelessly on a bed.

  He approached the bed, feeling helpless. He and Casey had only a professional relationship, but they had worked together for a long time, and he understandably had feelings for her.

  He wasn’t sure if she had any feelings for him.

  He heard a low growl behind him. Before he could turn around, he was picked up, and his face was shoved into a wall. He could feel the heat from the person behind him—it had to be a large and very strong man. A male voice with a faint accent growled, “So it was you.”

  Richard tried without success to get out of his grasp and pull his face away from the wall.

  “She hangs around because of you.”

  Richard shrugged harder, managing to turn around and shove the man away. “You make it sound like the fact she’s lying there half dead is a good thing.” Richard pointed to her lifeless body. “If her lingering around like this is what you want, shouldn’t you be thanking me? Who the hell are you anyway?”

  Richard looked the man up and down. Tall, strong, in his thirties. He had some resemblance to Casey. What that resemblance was, he couldn’t tell. But while it always felt to him as if Casey had a rainbow of light around her, this man was surrounded by a dark aura.

  The man glanced briefly at Richard then turned toward Casey’s bed. He started pulling out the tubes and other devices monitoring her vitals.

  “Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” Richard grabbed the man’s shoulder in an attempt to stop him from disturbing Casey. His shoulder didn’t budge an inch—he was incredibly strong. He glared at Richard and continued to do what he was doing.

  Footsteps and the sound of medical staff rushing along the corridor echoed into the room. Richard pushed the man, but he swung his arm and flung Richard across the room. When the man had freed Casey from the tubes and needles, he picked her up and began to carry her out.

  “Goddamn it!” Richard cursed and grabbed a chair from the corner of the room. Using all of his strength, he swung the chair at the man’s head from behind. The chair broke on impact. The man stumbled, turned, and dropped Casey back onto the bed.

  When the man turned back around to face Richard, his eyes were bloodshot. Richard could tell he was hurt. He approached Richard slowly. Richard was tall, but the man was at least six foot six, and there were rock hard muscles rippling under those clothes. If he tried to land a punch on him, Richard didn’t think he’d leave any bones unbroken in his hand. But still he clung to the remnants of the broken chair and stood his ground, his body pressed right up against the man.

  Richard swung a piece of the chair at him, but the man caught it midair. “She traded a life for you,” the man growled, “but don’t think I wouldn’t kill you.”

  Richard yanked the piece of wood out of the man’s grip. “What the fuck do you mean by that?”

  The man turned toward Casey. “I have to take her away.”

  Richard stomped a kick at the man’s back. He stumbled again and turned around.

  “Attack me one more time, and I’ll break every bone in your body.”

  “Then come here and do it. I can’t let you take Casey. You have to let the doctors do their work or she’ll die.”

  A doctor and two nurses rushed into the room and registered the situation. One of the nurses ran back out to call security. The man looked at Casey again. Richard saw nothing different, but the man seemed to panic. “No, don’t go.” He rushed toward the bed and grabbed Casey’s hand.

  When he wasn’t paying attention, the doctor jabbed a needle into his neck. He staggered, the drug seeming to have a significant effect on him. He swayed. Then he turned around, kicked out the window, and jumped out.

  The doctor and the nurse hurried toward Casey’s bed. In front of everyone’s astonished eyes, Casey’s body glowed and then disintegrated into thousands of shiny particles which soon vanished into nothing.

  Richard leaned against the wall as he observed what happened. The world was a blur, and then it turned into darkness. When his mind was floating, he thought he heard Casey’s voice. There was an insistent echoing sound wi
thin a muddle of other noises, but her exquisite voice was the one thing he could never mistake for anything else in this world.

  She sang to him. It was the song she had sung in her audition to join the company and take the lead role. There was one thing he had never told her—when he was considering becoming a part of this theatrical company, management had shown him the artists’ portfolios as their asset. He had watched their audition tapes, and as soon as he’d heard her voice, he made the decision to join the company.

  He should have told her that before. Now she was gone. And he was sinking into a dark place.

  Chapter 5

  Leon flexed his muscles and found he was able to move. It felt good. The talking black cat had been gone for a long time, enough for him to gain his strength back. He sat up and looked around. He was definitely in the dungeon of a castle. No, they wouldn’t call it a castle in this world. Mya referred to these venues as buildings, or sometimes premises. Anyway, he couldn’t care less—he had to get out of here.

  In not too long, Leon’s body was completely mobile. He stood up and took in the scene. Around him were several black boxes the size of the small table where he sat to have breakfast in his private chamber. There were also gigantic boxes the size of coffins. And boxes in sizes everywhere in between. He worked his way around all of them and found a small door. Pushing it open, he stepped outside into the magnificent sunshine of a glorious day.

  He looked back at the building he had just left. Although it didn’t have a castle-like shape, it was just as imposing. From his vantage point, the roof of the building looked like stacks of seashells. The people around him in the street looked friendly. There were several moving vehicles that looked like horseless carriages. He had been in one of those before with Zach as he maneuvered the machine from the front seat with a round ring he called the steering wheel. Mya called these vehicles “cars.” He didn’t like being in a confined space and definitely didn’t look forward to being inside one of those moving boxes again.

  He needed to find Mya. He could transport himself back to the Babylonian court, and from there, he would be able to find out where she was and channel to her as he had done several times in the past. But going back to the court now without Mya would be an acceptance of defeat and an admittance of the failure of the mission. For that, he would have Ishtar’s wrath to deal with before he would even be able to find Mya. But on this mission, he came here as a man, without any supernatural assistance from the court.

  Leon shook his head. He wouldn’t go back to the court now. He closed his eyes and tried to see if he could get any kind of connection to Mya. Nothing. Mya had psychic ability, but he was only the head of the temple guard—a man with fighting ability.

  “Are you okay?”

  Hearing a soothing female voice, he opened his eyes and saw a woman with sandy hair, about forty, looking at him with concern in her eyes. He nodded and smiled. Then he pulled out the little traveler’s guide book in his pocket. He flipped to the back and opened a folded map on the last page.

  “Could you tell me where I am?” he asked the woman.

  She smiled. “Yes, certainly.” She took the map and circled her finger around an area labeled Sydney Harbor. “You’re here.” She pointed at a symbol with a picture of the building that Leon recognized from the roofline. “That’s the Sydney Opera House. It’s very famous. You should pay it a visit.”

  “Thank you. I will.” Leon nodded and headed in the direction of the opera house. He had come from there just a moment ago, so he knew the building and had no intention of visiting it as a tourist. But to please the kind woman who had just helped him, he kept walking. Plus, he didn’t know where else to go.

  He sat down on the steps in front of the Sydney Opera House. He would wait right here. He wagered Mya would use her psychic ability to find him in no time. Pulling out his guide, he turned to the “English for travelers” section and started to practice the pronunciation of some of the words he found it hard to twist his tongue around.

  “Please help him.”

  A faint female voice brushed across his ear. Leon scrambled to his feet. The voice was gentle. Close by but echoing in to him as if from a distance. There was something in the voice that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.

  “Who’s that?” he asked in Babylonian. And to his surprise, the voice repeated “Please help him” in Babylonian.

  “Show yourself!” Leon commanded with his authoritative head-of-the-temple-guard tone.

  The flickering image of a beautiful woman appeared in front of him in broad daylight. Her face changed from a middle-aged woman to a teen girl and then to a woman in her mid-forties.

  “I don’t care who you are, but I can only speak to one person at a time. Show me your true face.”

  “I have many faces.”

  “Well, just pick one and use that one to talk to me. Stop changing. You’re making me dizzy.” Leon glanced around quickly. It seemed that no one around him could see the image of the woman. Talking to her would make it look like he was talking to himself. He spoke between his teeth as discreetly as possible. “What’s your name?”

  “My identity doesn’t matter. I’m not worthy of a god’s notice.”

  Leon snorted. “Everyone is a worthy individual. And trust me, there’s no god or goddess here that I can see, so don’t worry. Unless— Umm, you weren’t referring to me as a god, were you?”

  “I was.”

  Leon chuckled. He wanted to laugh, but that would make him appear crazy to bystanders. “I’m not a god. I’m the head of the temple guard. I’ve served the Goddess for a long time. You must be seeing some sort of aura from the court.”

  “I can see your magical power.”

  Leon shook his head. If he had any magical power at all, he wouldn’t be in this situation. “Who do you want me to help? And just so you know, I don’t know if I can help anyone at the moment.”

  “My son. He’s lying at the back of this building. In plain sight. The human might hurt him. I can’t help him in my current condition. No one can see or hear me except you.”

  Leon nodded. “I can see you certainly do have a condition! Can you stop flickering?”

  “I can’t.”

  “So your son is injured? And you want me to take him to the infirmary?”

  “They don’t call it an infirmary here. They call it a hospital. But I don’t think he needs to go to the hospital. He just needs to be tucked away somewhere out of sight.”

  Leon nodded. “All right. That’s easy enough. Where is he?”

  “Around the corner. At the back of this building.”

  Leon frowned. The basement where he had been held captive was in that same corner. He walked around the building and saw a man’s body sprawled face down on the steps next to the basement door. Cursing silently, he approached him. He’d have to take him into the basement, but he didn’t relish the idea of running into that black cat again.

  He pushed the door open and glanced inside. Leaving it open, he walked in quickly to ensure the cat wasn’t there. When he didn’t see it, he hurried back out, feeling a sense of relief. He turned the man over and dragged him inside.

  “Thank you,” the woman said.

  “You’re welcome.”

  On the ground, the man started to wake. Under the dim light of the basement, Leon stared down at him, and a rage washed through him. “It’s you! You’re the bloody black cat!” Leon growled.

  The man’s eyes sprung wide open when he saw Leon.

  Chapter 6

  Zach stared straight ahead and focused on the road. They had been driving from Wagga Wagga for a few hours and would soon arrive in Sydney. Mya was concentrating on her vision. She had been trying to use her psychic ability to connect to Leon for half an hour without success. In the back seat of the car, Kirra was absolutely quiet. Zach had had life-threatening injuries before, but he hadn’t known about them in advance. He supposed he wouldn’t know what to say, either, if a deity w
ith supernatural powers told him a deadly blade was going to pierce his heart, and he was going to die.

  They had discussed at length whether or not to allow Kirra to accompany them on this trip given the danger Mya had foreseen. But Kirra wanted to go. And Zach preferred to be close to her in case anything happened.

  “I can’t get to him,” Mya said.

  “I told you my wrist unit says there’s a surge in his adrenaline. He might be in some sort of a fight. If so, he’d be in full alert mode. That would block your vision when you try to see into his mind.”

  “I’m not trying to peek into anyone’s mind. I’m just trying to see if he’s okay.”

  “Same thing.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Mya, I’m worried, too. Let’s not argue about nonsense.”

  “My worries aren’t nonsense. But I agree. Let’s not argue.”

  “Look out!” Kirra yelled from the backseat.

  The female lynx Elanora had charged out from the nearby bush and now stood in front of them in the middle of the road. Zach was about to hit the brake, but he stopped himself. If he slammed on the brakes, the car would spin and crash. He didn’t even want to think about the consequence of the impact. So instead, he aimed straight at the lynx and accelerated. She jumped aside just before the car hit her.

  “Smart move,” Zach muttered. He slowed the car down a bit. In the rearview mirror, he could see the animal had disappeared. But in front of them, a pack of leopards marched down the road, heading right at them. Zach accelerated once again, but unlike the lynx, the leopards didn’t move out of the way. It was as if they were on a suicidal mission.

  The car hit the first row of leopards. The bodies of the wild animals smashed against the windshield and shattered it into thousands of pieces. The car spun and crashed into a tree at the side of the road before it could hit the second group of leopards. The car’s airbags were discharged.

  Zach worked his way out of the tangled airbag. “Mya! Are you okay?”