Soul Market - Shadow Justice - Book 2

by D. N. Leo

  Zach eased the knife away from the cat’s neck. He locked his eyes on it for a while to be sure it wasn’t moving. The he turned to Kirra. “Let’s go. If it leaps, I’ll finish it off.”

  “Are you sure, Zach? I’ll let go. I’ll stop looking at it now.”

  “Okay, ease off slowly. Take it slow. There you go,” Zach said as Kirra turned around. He took a last look to make sure the cat remained still. Then they charged in Mya and Leon’s direction.

  “Do you have a plan, Zach?” Kirra asked while running.

  “Sort of.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I have a plan…in theory. But I don’t know if it’ll work.”

  “Go away you two!” Mya shouted from a distance.

  “Is she yelling at us?” Zach asked.

  “I think so!” Kirra grinned and ran faster.

  “Are you crazy? Go away!” Leon shouted.

  “He really wants us to come rescue him, Zach.” Kirra giggled as she spoke.

  Zach could see she liked Leon. Now he could see how great a person she was. He had never paid enough attention to her. Not attention in a sexual way, but more like she was a little sister. Kirra was a few years older than his sister, but he would love her just as much. Leon was a lucky guy, he thought. Kirra was beautiful and gracious, and she was a good person. “Leon certainly needs help. Let’s do it!” Zach chuckled and kept running.

  They got close enough and stood right between Mya and Leon.

  Zach focused. He looked at the running animals and pressed a button on his wrist unit.

  Chapter 17

  Mya understood Zach’s intention now. He stood still as the leopards came closer. Then he did something on his wrist unit. Transparent circles of thin air appeared in front of the leopards. The air within the circles wavered like steam evaporating from a hot surface. The leopards jumped through the circles and disappeared.

  It was just like in a circus show when animals jump through gigantic hoops of fire. Except there was no fire around these gigantic circles, and the leopards didn’t come out the other side. Mya knew Zach had opened a dimensional gateway, and the animals were stupid enough to keep jumping into the circles, not questioning where the animal just in front of them had gone. Their stupidity was to their advantage. But she couldn’t help wondering where the other end of the circles led.

  Leon and Kirra rushed toward each other. Kirra looked Leon up and down. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yes. And you?” he asked.

  “Yes. God, I was worried when the black cat got you.” Kirra fussed over him. “That cat was enormous. And you didn’t exactly fight it,” Kirra said.

  Leon scowled. “It bit me when I was off guard. It wasn’t a fair fight.”

  Kirra giggled. “I didn’t say it was fair. Just that you killed the other shapeshifters, but for some reason, that cat was able to paralyze you with a single bite.”

  “It had pointy teeth,” Leon said.

  “All cats have pointy teeth,” Mya said.

  “Not the one up the hill. It didn’t bite us,” Kirra said. “I think it’s still sitting there.”

  “What?” Mya asked.

  Zach said, “There was a black cat. It looked like the one that bit Leon, but they all look the same. It came out and just stared at us. Then it sat there. It didn’t even move when I was about to kill it.”

  “Did you kill it?” Leon asked.

  “No, it didn’t attack. I had no reason to kill it.”

  They looked again at the leopards around them, all of them focusing on the circles. The animals were attracted to the circles like moths flying into flames.

  “Where are you sending them to, Zach?” Mya asked.

  “I have no clue. I opened the gateway from this end. I’m not sure where they’re going.”

  “What if they come out in the middle of a crowded city?” Kirra asked.

  Zach shook his head. “It won’t be in a city on Earth. I chose one of the options that connects the gateway elsewhere. I can’t tell where because it was a bunch of ridiculous mumbo-jumbo codes. I only had enough time to locate it away from Earth.”

  “And it won’t be Eudaiz, either, I guess,” Mya said and smiled at Zach.

  He shook his head. “No, I certainly wouldn’t send them to Eudaiz. I just input the destination as the original desired point of origins. The system would triangulate…” Zach trailed off as the last leopard jumped through the hoop and vanished.

  Mya looked at Zach, arching an eyebrow. “Triangulate with what?”

  “Holy cow!” Zach muttered.

  “You triangulate leopards with cows?” Leon asked.

  Zach looked at Mya then back at Leon. “I sent them to the point of origin of their attraction. In principle, it would be where you both came from.”

  “You sent them to the court?” Mya gasped.

  Leon frowned then said, “It’d be okay if they ended up in the jungle outside the court. Do you know where exactly they’re sent?”

  Zach shook his head.

  Both Mya and Leon suddenly grabbed their ears as they heard a loud gong from the court. When they looked up, an image of Ishtar hovered in the air.

  It was unprecedented for Ishtar to communicate directly with people outside the court in this way. It was even stranger for her not to be wearing her usual court outfit with tons of golden beads dangling everywhere and twenty pounds of makeup on her face. Mya looked at her Goddess. Without the makeup and the formal court outfits, Ishtar actually looked quite normal. She looked like a kind woman.

  “Why did you send these animals to the court, Mya?” Ishtar asked.

  “It wasn’t her. It was me. I sent them there by accident,” Zach said.

  “You don’t want Mya’s debts to mount up, do you, Zach Flynn? You’d say anything to stop that from happening.” Ishtar smiled.

  “If you don’t want to add these animals to your jungle, I can bring them back here,” Zach continued, “but why does sending the cats there add to Mya’s debts?”

  “There’s no need for you to take them back. I’ve already killed almost all of them. As for the rest, I put them to good use. They’ll be used in the Death Well to eat criminals. But before I was able to collect the animals, they got to a village. More than five hundred people perished. That will be added to Mya’s record.”

  “No, that’s ridiculous. It was my fault. There has to be another way,” Zach snarled.

  “I like you, Zach. You make Mya happy. I can see it on her face. She’s like my daughter…”

  Zach snorted.

  Ishtar glared at him and continued, “If you want to pay off Mya’s debts, get me the jar of potion right now. Bring it to the court, and I will honor our agreement.”

  “How long do we have?” Mya asked.

  Ishtar smiled graciously. “Until I finish my tea. Now.”

  “That’s impossible, my Goddess,” Leon exclaimed.

  “Nothing is impossible for a Eudaizian Sciphil. Am I right, Zach?”

  Zach nodded. “You’ll have it. If I have the jar delivered to the court right now, you will free Mya of all of her debts and duties. Is it a deal?”

  “Yes, you have my word.”

  “Your word isn’t enough. I want it in writing.”

  Ishtar chuckled. “As you request.” She raised her hand, and a golden scroll dropped to the ground in front of them. Ishtar’s image vanished.

  Zach picked up the scroll. “Shit…it’s gibberish.” He gave the scroll to Mya.

  Mya took a look. It was in Babylonian. She read the contract and made sure to check all the fine print.

  “Is that what she just promised, Mya?” Zach asked.

  Mya nodded.

  “So how are you going to get the jar delivered now, Zach?” Kirra asked.

  “I need some space to be by myself,” Zach said.

  Mya knew he was going to call Eudaiz and didn’t want anyone around when he did so. She signaled Kirra and Leon to walk away.
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br />   Chapter 18

  Ciaran strode into the control chamber in his tower. It was the last unit of the night in Eudaiz, a universe that a few months ago, Earth time, he didn’t even know existed. He was now king of this strange universe—a place that guaranteed true happiness to its citizens.

  He shook his head in disbelief. What was the definition of true happiness anyway? How could his ancestors buy into such a naive notion? So much that they made the promise, and then generations down the road, he was yanked out of his comfortable life in London, where he managed his global pharmaceutical conglomerate with ease, and flung into a multiversal war to protect those he had never met.

  He slammed his left palm onto the control panel and expected the screen to come up instantly. Perhaps it did, but he slammed his palm again anyway.

  “Ciaran LeBlanc, Sciphil Three. King of Eudaiz. Information verified. Access confirmed,” a robotic voice said.

  “Engage communication channel to Sciphil Four’s residence.”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Cancel that!” Ciaran said quickly.

  The machine hummed briefly and said, “Affirmative.”

  Ciaran strode back and forth in his chamber. He looked at his hands and found they shook a bit, so he shoved them into his pants pockets. He had been king for only a few days, Eudaizian time. The battle cries still echoed in his head, and the feel of warm blood was still raw in his mind—his blood, the blood of those he loved, and blood from his enemies.

  Admittedly, on the scale of all things, the fact that his wife had taken their infant twins to her best friend Sciphil Four’s residence should be a trivial matter. But it wasn’t. His family meant everything to him. Why didn’t Madeline understand that? He had always thought she understood him more than he understood himself.

  He flicked the communication channel on again. “Engage communication to Sciphil Four’s residence.”

  “Affirmative.”

  He switched the channel off immediately and cursed. He couldn’t give in to this. He had to stand his ground. He paced back and forth again. A communication signal flashed on the screen. He engaged immediately. “Madeline!”

  “Ciaran.” It was Zach’s voice.

  Ciaran cleared his throat. “Yes, Zach.”

  Zach’s image appeared on the screen. “We need the jar of potion now, Ciaran.”

  Ciaran nodded. “Sure.” He strode toward a cabinet and entered the code to open it. He took the jar out.

  “How are Madeline and the kids?”

  “Fine,” Ciaran mumbled. “How do you plan to take this potion to Mya’s Goddess? You don’t intend to make me holocast it to the Babylonian court, do you? You said you’d come back here for it.”

  Zach nodded. “Yes, but we ran into a bit of trouble. So could you do me a favor and holocast it for me?”

  Ciaran raised an eyebrow. Zach’s request was strange, but the situation he was in was also unprecedented. Ciaran considered it too early to draw a conclusion. “You understand the holocast technology, right?”

  Zach nodded again. “Yes, I know you have to transport physical objects personally, but for your safety, please do not present yourself. Just drop the jar in the court and go.” Zach’s image flickered.

  Ciaran narrowed his eyes. “I won’t do it until you give me a full report of your situation.”

  Zach’s image flickered more rapidly, and he appeared to be yanked out of the screen. Ciaran reached for the control panel. He cursed as he entered endless commands, but Zach’s screen remained blank.

  Ciaran rushed toward the main screen, turned on another control panel, and engaged. “Jake,” he called to his head of central intelligence.

  The image of a young man came on. “Yes, Ciaran.”

  “Use the central databank and locate Sciphil Two, Zach Flynn, for me please.”

  Jake lowered his voice. “Do you mean using the…that databank?”

  “Yes.” Ciaran stared straight into the screen so Jake could see his determination. He was asking his head of central intelligence to access the EYE databank, the most restricted and powerful databank in the multiverse. It was effectively illegal.

  But he and Jake had been working on a way to gain access to small amounts of data without alerting the central robot. And that was the quickest way for Ciaran to locate Zach. Zach was on a personal mission, so his journey log wasn’t recorded in the Eudaizian system. The EYE belonged to the Daimon Gate, and being independent of any universe, the EYE could see anything anywhere in the multiverse.

  Jake came back quickly onto the screen, and Ciaran switched the communication channel to private mode.

  “The location is labeled as Babylonian court. But I’m unsure what it means. It’s not a proper dimension. It lines up with Earth in two space dimensions, in a different time dimension. It doesn’t make any sense. I don’t have a precise location, Ciaran.”

  “I do. Thank you,” Ciaran said and was about to switch off the communication.

  “No, you don’t know, sir.”

  Ciaran narrowed his eyes. “What did you just say?”

  “I said you don’t know the precise location of Sciphil Two, sir. With this information, and if you want to holocast, it’s dangerous if the destination is unknown. Getting lost there is worse than going into the oblivion. If you go there by yourself, you might get stuck between dimensions—”

  “I said I know. That will be all for now, Jake.”

  “No, sir. You need your first councillor. You need Madeline and her psychic ability. I know you had some kind of disagreement with her, and she took the children—”

  “Jake!” Ciaran snapped. “Do you have a spy device in our bedchamber?”

  “No, sir. Just along the corridor outside it. It’s a standard security—”

  “Okay. I’ll sort this out with you later. This intelligence practice of yours invades our privacy too much. I don’t like it. I am going.” Ciaran slammed the control panel off, but Jake’s voice echoed back.

  “I’ll send commanders after you, sir…”

  Ciaran shook his head and took a moment to contemplate in the tranquility of his control chamber. The Babylonian court was the trickiest dimension to deal with. Not because of its strange location in time and space but because of its ontological and metaphysical properties.

  Ciaran knew no one cared for this explanation, so he didn’t explain it to many. He didn’t know much about this particular dimension, but there were two things he was sure of. One, it had a lot to do with his weakness—magic. And two, Zach was in deep trouble.

  Magic! Ciaran shook his head, making a mental note to himself that he had to be very careful with this. Then he turned on his communication channel and switched to private mode. No system in the multiverse needed to know this. Zach was on a private mission, and Ciaran knew exactly where the Babylonian court was.

  He navigated the scan to prepare for a holocast. As Zach had said, he only needed to holocast—the technology that they used to transport holographic images across dimensions—but he cranked it up a notch to teleport the jar to the court. He could leave the jar for Zach and then leave the court. If he didn’t step out of the holocast, he wouldn’t be in any danger.

  A blue needle fanned on the monitor suggesting the scanning was in progress. Then it stopped. Ciaran frowned. It had finished too fast. And the image coming across the screen made his blood run cold. Zach was being dragged out in the middle of a place that looked like a medieval execution ground. His leather jacket was tattered, and there was blood smeared across his face.

  The image wasn’t clear, and the computer couldn’t verify whether the information was authentic. Jake was right—the location was elusive, and Ciaran didn’t really know it as well as he thought. He needed more than logical deduction and scientific data. He needed Madeline. Only his wife—his first councillor—with her psychic ability could tell.

  It was too late. Ciaran had no choice but to do the holocast right now. He grabbed the control panel an
d was about to call Jake. But even though Jake was the head of intelligence, he still relied on the system to get work done. As king for only a few days, Ciaran knew he had more enemies than friends in the system. He couldn’t afford a mistake.

  He grabbed a portable device and shot a message to their bedchamber using a private channel to which only he and Madeline had access. She would get the message and know where he had gone. If she came back, that was.

  Ciaran returned to the control panel, grabbed the jar of potion, tucked daggers and guns inside his vest, and holocasted off Eudaiz.

  In front of him was a haze of dust. Steam from the heat rose up from the ground. In the distance, he could see soldiers about to execute Zach. They dragged him up a raised platform and threw his body onto the floor.

  Nobody seemed to see Ciaran. He moved his holocast light beam a bit closer to the execution platform. He couldn’t see clearly, but he was afraid that wasting even a second might cost Zach his life. Ciaran pulled his guns out. He was a two-hand shooter. But with what seemed to be a small army out there, he had to be quick. He moved the light beam closer. To shoot at them, he’d have to step out of the protective holocast and be present.

  He drew in a breath and charged outside. He ran straight 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 out, confused.

  Ciaran jumped on the platform. “Zach!” he called. But Zach didn’t move. He tucked a gun away, still holding one, and reached down to Zach’s shoulder. As soon as he flipped Zach’s body over, he knew something was wrong.

  Ciaran jerked his left shoulder back. His fatal eudqi point was located at the front of his left shoulder, and before he had any chance to figure out what to do about this fatal weakness and do something to protect all of his councillors, he would have to do his best to avoid getting hit at that point.

  The man in Zach’s form leaped to his feet, shifted into a soldier, and ran for Ciaran. Ciaran didn’t even blink. He pointed his gun and pulled the trigger. The man’s head exploded.