Dark Solar Complete Trilogy: Oleander - Wolfsbane - Maikoa

by D. N. Leo

  “You know what they want, don’t you, Cayson?” Lyla asked.

  Another tear rolled down his face. “Fifi is a gypsy.”

  “Travelers of the multiverse,” Michael said. “They’re the most vulnerable people, wanted by all kind of criminals because they don’t have an origin. They have no protection of any kind. Not even a god. No universe will take them in.”

  “You don’t trust us, Cayson? You don’t trust that Eudaiz and the Daimon Gate don’t discriminate against people because of their origin?” Lyla asked.

  “I trust no one when it comes to Fifi, Lyla. I’m sorry. She told me, once a gypsy, always a gypsy. Every creature in the multiverse hates them, and for no reason. So they have to keep their identity a secret.”

  “What do you think the brotherhood wants?” Michael asked.

  “There are more gypsies in the village. They want to know who is who. Fifi’s parents are well-respected, so they want information from them about other gypsies, I’d guess.”

  “They want a list. A dead list,” Lyla muttered.

  The leader of the brotherhood walked back and forth, talking to the crowd. No one reacted. Lyla’s mother looked at the dead body of her husband then said something to the leader, spat in his face, and slid her throat across the knife held by the gangster behind her.

  Fifi cried out, trying to pull away from the man who held her at knifepoint.

  “No!” Cayson yelled and tried to charge toward the village.

  Michael grabbed Cayson from behind, pulling him back, then swung a fist at his temple, knocking him out cold.

  13

  Michael stepped out from behind a large rock to stand face to face with a ten-foot-tall man with a human head with thin hair and pointy elf ears and a lanky body covered in scaly green skin.

  “Lanni!”

  The man hissed and swung a large sword at Michael. He blocked it and grinned.

  “Keep doing that, and I’ll chop your head off one day, Michael.” Lanni grinned back.

  “Thanks for coming in such short notice,” Michael said.

  “My pleasure. It’s good to see you again.”

  Cayson and Lyla stepped out from behind the rock. Cayson tilted his head, looking behind Lanni.

  Lanni turned, looked behind him, then looked back at Cayson. “There’s no one else. Are you looking for some troops?”

  Lyla said nothing but looked at Michael questioningly.

  Michael grinned. “We don’t need an army. Lanni here is a legendary fighter. He used to be a sea elf. He’ll kick the brotherhood gang’s ass. With my assistance, of course.”

  “Since when do I need your assistance?”

  “Always, bro!”

  Lanni sneered. “When you get hurt, don’t cry like a baby and ask me for help.” He glanced at Lyla and Linx. “Are we going to take them with us?”

  “It’s not safe to leave them anywhere here, but they’ll stay behind us. Always.” Michael looked at Lyla. “Right?”

  “I have a kid to take care of. Do you need to ask?”

  “All right, let’s do this,” Lanni said and turned around.

  A short moment later, they approached the bunker where the brotherhood and the gangsters were staying. Michael, Lanni, and Cayson followed a low wall to the back of the bunker.

  “You see the light at the far end of the yard? That’s where I think they’re keeping your people,” Lanni said.

  Cayson crawled forward, but Michael pulled him back. “Do you know how many guards there are?” Michael asked Lanni.

  “When I dealt with them, I saw a couple at a time. Mainly around feeding time. They don’t think they’ll ever be found, so they’re quite negligent of their prisoners.”

  “Or arrogant,” Michael said.

  They crawled closer to the prison bunker. Lanni peeked through a gap between the wall and a small air hole. “No guard,” he said.

  Michael fiddled with the lock. In no time, the lock clicked opened. Cayson rushed through the open door. Inside the bunker were stairs leading down. He hurried down them and darted toward the first cell. “Fifi!” he called out.

  “Cayson, I knew you’d come for me!”

  Michael opened this lock as well. Fifi ran out, racing into Cayson’s arms.

  “We might want to save the reunion party for later,” Michael suggested. “Is Ryan here?”

  “No,” Fifi said. “But there are others.”

  “Where?” Lyla asked.

  “Down another level.” Fifi rushed down another flight of stairs. Cayson followed.

  “What sort of shit are we getting into?” Lanni muttered.

  Michael said nothing but hurried down the stairs after them. “Stay here please,” he said to Lyla on his way down. As he predicted, there were more locks to pick. After unfastening the locks, he rushed back upstairs.

  “How many?” Lanni asked.

  “Many. Women and children.”

  “Lyla, could you instruct them to head for the woods?” Michael asked Lyla. She nodded.

  “I’ll handle the brotherhood,” Michael said.

  “No need. Just kill the hounds. They won’t chase us into the woods without them,” Lanni said.

  Michael nodded and darted outside.

  The stream of people quietly climbed the stairs, snaked out the door, and then ran toward the woods.

  Michael found the hounds’ cages. He pulled out his daggers and executed them before they could make any noise. A gangster walked around the corner and saw Michael with the dogs. Michael threw a hunting knife, cutting him down before he uttered a sound.

  From the corner of the yard where he stood, he could see the shadows of people running for the woods. He checked the bunker one more time and then headed after them. At the far end of the yard, two guards walked out and saw him. Michael charged at them before they could alert any others. A couple of swift stabs with his knife, and the two bodies dropped to the ground.

  “Sorry, today isn’t your lucky day,” Michael said then ran to catch up with the group.

  He saw a couple of young kids lagging behind. A shadow darted at one of them. Michael tackled the man from behind. Judging by his agile movement, this man was better skilled than the gangsters he had just killed.

  “No one takes anything from the brotherhood,” he said.

  Michael saw the flash of a knife. He pulled out his dagger. The two of them fought. After a few tumbles on the ground, Michael’s dagger ended the man’s life.

  He again followed the crowd but stayed behind them to ensure they weren’t followed.

  After a while, they arrived at a cave.

  “It’s good enough for shelter overnight. We’ll be out of the woods tomorrow morning,” Lanni said.

  Michael walked through the crowd to find Lyla. “Are you okay?” he asked her.

  “Yes, but you don’t look good. Where are you hurt?”

  Michael was dizzy. He could feel the energy draining from his body by the second. His mind started to drift.

  “You’re as white as a sheet, Michael. What happened?”

  He felt pain in his left arm. He looked at it, thinking he must have been injured in the last fight. It didn’t hurt, really. He just couldn’t seem to find his feet anymore. Then his world spun out of its orbit.

  Lyla held Michael, who had collapsed onto her. “Cayson! Lanni!” she shouted. “Light, I need light,” she said.

  Someone lit a torch for her.

  She could feel blood seeping out of his upper arm. “Left arm,” she muttered to herself. She pulled his sleeve up and looked at his arm. The blood seeping out of the cut was black.

  “Poison,” Cayson muttered.

  “Shaman!” Lanni called out.

  An old woman approached and crouched to look at the wound. She shook her head, took out a jar of potion, and held it against Michael’s already blackened lips, making him drink it.

  “Will this fix him?” Lyla asked.

  The shaman shook her head. “It will keep him
alive until the morning.”

  “You can make an antidote by then?” Cayson asked.

  She shook her head again. “The brotherhood’s poison is the nastiest kind. It will take days to make the antidote. He doesn’t have that long.”

  14

  Lyla and Cayson got as low to the ground as possible. The brotherhood had still not figured out their prisoners had gone and their hounds were dead. They saw the legs of one of the guards Michael had killed sticking out from the corner where Michael had hidden the body. Cayson crawled to the corner and shoved the legs back under cover. Then he signaled for Lyla to come over.

  She got on all fours and crawled over to him. Cayson pointed at the water tank.

  “It’s too big. Might dilute the poison,” Lyla said. She pointed her chin at a room where a couple of guards sat around a table playing some sort of game. “That jug of water is the right size.”

  “How the hell are we going to put the poison in there?” Cayson asked, staring at the jug in the middle of the table. “Why don’t we go back to get Lanni and a few more men and attack them, head on?”

  “No, Lanni and the men need to stay where they are to protect the women, children, and the injured. Let me try something.”

  She picked up a small rock and threw it at the far end of the yard. The two men looked outside, paused for a bit, and then started their game again. She threw another larger rock. That was when they stormed out the door toward the noise they’d heard.

  She crawled into the room and poured poison into the water then sneaked back out.

  When they couldn’t find anything, the men walked back.

  They heard a voice coming from an adjoining room ask, “What was it?”

  “Must have been some kind of animal,” one of the men said on their way back.

  They sat down and resumed their game. Eventually, they drank some of the water. They reacted immediately, realizing they had drunk their own poison, the poison the shaman had made from Michael’s blood. The two poisoned men scrambled toward the neighboring room from where Cayson and Lyla had heard the other voice earlier. Another two guards searched the room and the immediate area around the bunker. When they found nothing, they joined their poisoned friends in the room in the middle of the yard. The men must have been relying on their dogs to bark at intruders, not realizing Michael had killed the hounds.

  Lyla and Cayson followed but kept their distance. They peered through a gap in the wooden panel of the side wall and saw a man—probably the leader—holding a jar of potion in his hand.

  “We have only one dose of antidote. Even if I do give it to you, which one of you will take it, and which one will die?”

  The two poisoned men cried out for mercy.

  The leader sat down on a bench, looking amused. “How about you fight for it? The survivor wins the antidote.”

  Without any discussion, the two poisoned men began to fight like mad dogs. In the end, only one survived, but barely. He crawled toward the leader, reaching his hand out for the antidote. The leader swung a hunting knife, slitting his throat, and the body of the man fell to the ground.

  “Hey!” someone shouted from behind them.

  Lyla and Cayson scrambled to their feet and looked behind them. A group of men from the brotherhood was charging out of a bunker.

  “Plan B,” Lyla said.She and Cayson hurled smoke bombs the gypsy tribe had given them toward the men. The thick smoke and sparkling fire slowed them down because they weren’t sure if the smoke was poisonous or if there would be an explosion.

  Lyla threw another bomb into the room where the leader was, and then she followed it.

  The remaining men in the room ran outside through another door, but the leader stayed.

  In the thick smoke, he stood and smirked at Lyla.

  “You think a gypsy trick will work on me? You don’t look at all like a gypsy. But apparently, you’re with them. Now what do you want, beautiful?”

  “The antidote.”

  “What a beautiful voice. What’s your name?”

  “You identity thief.” Cayson charged at the man, but with one swing of his arm, he knocked Cayson to the ground. He pulled out a knife, which Lyla knew for sure had a poisoned blade.

  He bent down to use it on Cayson, but Lyla leaped quickly into the air and kicked him, sending him to the ground. He dropped his knife as well as the antidote. She darted toward the jar as the man and Cayson fought for the poisoned knife. They rolled on the floor, punching and kicking each other.

  Lyla knew Cayson was going to get cut if she didn’t do something. She had no time to think. She darted over, pulled out one of the hunting knives Michael had given her, and stabbed the leader from behind.

  He roared and turned around.

  She stabbed him again in his chest. Again and again, she stabbed, and still, he seemed to approach her.

  “Enough, Lyla.”

  Until Cayson pulled her away, she hadn’t realized she had been stabbing the leader’s dead body that had fallen on her.

  As the smoke from the bombs subsided, one of the gangsters from the yard came storming toward the bunker.

  Cayson tugged at Lyla. “Let’s go. We have to run now, Lyla.” They hurried out the side door and ran into the woods.

  They heard footsteps and what sounded like an entire troop of men chasing them. The brotherhood was fully alerted now.

  They kept running, but she didn’t know if they would make it through the open field and into the woods. Lanni had said they only had to make it to the woods, and then the brotherhood would give up the chase.

  She glanced behind her. They were getting closer by the second. The woods were far in the distance. She knew they had no chance of making it.

  Then they heard a hum and the low growl of space creatures.

  The brotherhood stopped.

  A giant man with a staff resting on his shoulder stepped out of the woods. He walked toward Lyla and Cayson.

  The brotherhood had stopped chasing them and had turned around, heading back to their bunker.

  In the distance, they saw a smaller shadow.

  “Father!” Cayson gasped.

  His father darted out with a group of men led by the giant man with the staff.

  From behind them, they heard the echoes of voices from the brotherhood. “The Guardian! Run!”

  The man with the staff ran past Lyla and Cayson, giving chase to the runaway brotherhood. Soon after, the field grew quiet, and the air was filled with the stench of blood.

  15

  Michael opened his eyes, and Lyla’s beautiful face zoomed in and out of focus. He blinked and tried to gather the pieces of his memories together. He blinked again. What did he just see? He bolted up. “Lyla, you’re covered in blood!”

  She sat at what appeared to be his bedside, or bench side, or whatever it was he was lying on.

  She smiled. It was the same beautiful smile he had seen before, and there was no sign of pain, unusual with the amount of blood on her shirt. “It’s not my blood,” she said.

  “So whose blood is it?” He tried to stand and step away from the bench and fell face down onto the ground. Apparently his legs couldn’t bear his weight just yet.

  Lyla helped him up. Sitting on the bench again, he narrowed his eyes at her. “What happened?”

  Cayson walked into the room with a glass of water, accompanied by Ryan and a giant man he didn’t know. Seeing the stranger, he refrained from saying her name.

  “Drink some water. The shaman said you’ll recover soon,” Cayson said and gave him the water. He pointed at the tall man. “This is the Guardian. Last night, you were poisoned by one of the brotherhood’s knives. Lyla and I went back to the brotherhood’s bunker to find the antidote. We were outnumbered but were rescued by the Guardian. He saved my father, too. Everyone is safe and sound now. So as soon as you can get up on your feet, we’re heading back to the Daimon Gate.”

  “How does that explain the blood?” Michael pointed his chin at
Lyla’s shirt.

  “She killed the leader of the brotherhood with a hunting knife you gave her. He bled all over her.”

  Michael gazed into Lyla’s eyes and said nothing.

  “He doesn’t want to speak when I am here. I’ll go and prepare the others for your trip,” he Guardian said and left the room.

  “Can I have a moment with Lyla, please?”

  Cayson and Ryan left the room.

  “What’s so serious, Michael?”

  “Your father originally didn’t want to send me. He said it was more of a technical problem, so he wanted to send Uncle Lorcan.”

  “Lorcan Brody? Gale’s father?”

  “Yes. But I convinced Ciaran to send me because I know there is one thing that Ciaran worries about more than a technical issue. And that is you taking on too great of a responsibility too early.”

  “He wanted me to be his tech geek for a few more years?”

  Michael chuckled. “Yes, he wanted you to be his little princess for as long as possible. He attempted to change fate, and he was wrong to do that. I was wrong too.”

  “I still don’t see what the big deal is.”

  Michael held her bandaged hands. “This is the first life you saved.” He pointed at the blood on her shirt. “That was the first life you took. And they’re both because of me. You’ve lost your innocent mind because of me. Once you’ve lost your innocent mind, it can only get worse. You’ll soon be involved with the multiverse issue. There is no way back.”

  “We didn’t have a choice. And it wasn’t your fault.”

  Michael chuckled. “I failed the very mission Ciaran sent me here for—keeping you out of this mess. He predicted whatever is coming at you now will be bigger than you can handle. And if I could have kept you out of this just for a little longer, things would have been different.” He shook his head. “But I failed miserably.”

  “Well, I haven’t seen anything big coming my way yet. And no matter how big the problem is, shouldn’t I be the one who judges it, not my father?”