by D. N. Leo
The walls were mysterious, but there was no sign of a graveyard or even a single tomb. She didn’t see how John Dee could be buried here.
The air seemed to have grown thicker, and the wind had stopped blowing. It was eerily quiet. Something kept urging her to go ahead. An ancient voice. A haunting chant.
Something was watching her.
Urging
Pushing.
Clouding her judgment.
It turned dark quickly. She wanted to turn around, but she couldn’t seem to sync her mind and her actions. It wasn’t possible to turn the car around on this narrow one-lane road. It was so narrow that two cars couldn’t pass at the same time.
Madeline checked Google Maps to see how close she was to the main road and discovered the phone was totally dead—the battery was drained.
No worries, she thought as she turned on her GPS and programmed in her address in London as the destination. The machine flashed once, twice, and then it went blank.
Madeline glanced out the windows. It was completely dark now. The chanting still hovered in the air, and the wind started to weave through the stones and trees, making eerie flute-like sounds. She needed her blue dots, but she knew very well from experience that they wouldn’t come to her when she needed them most.
She had to turn the car around somehow.
Madeline saw a broken part of the wall and veered toward it. In the beam of the car headlights, it appeared to be a grass field on the other side of the wall, not a swamp or a river. She was close to the gap in the wall when the car was suddenly pushed forward. A loud bang echoed in the interior of the car when it hit the stone wall, making her head ring. Still having momentum, she managed to steer back to the road, scraping the side of the car along the stone wall. It sloped down a bit. Maybe it was her imagination, but the car seemed to keep speeding forward. She hit the brakes.
It didn’t work.
She kept hitting loose stones and tree logs, and the car swung from one side to another, but it kept moving forward.
For a very brief moment, Madeline thought she saw a line of Roman soldiers marching along the wall. She shook her head. She knew fatigue was dragging at her now. Her head seemed to weigh a ton, and her mind was drifting, unfocused.
She hit the brakes again. It didn’t work.
She saw the Roman soldiers once more. One soldier turned around and looked straight at her. His eyes were evil and red. She pressed the accelerator.
It worked.
As she zoomed past, the soldier raised his body-length sword and his metal shield and threw his weight at the side of the car.
The car hit another log, jumped in the air, and almost flipped over.
Madeline drove faster. She didn’t realize that she was crying. Her headlights shone on armory, weapons, and marching soldiers.
There was lightning sparking from the sky and flashing on the road right in front of her car. Madeline veered off the road.
But then she saw her blue dot. And another one. Many of them, flying over the sky in a flock. But it was too late now. The car flew over a wall, landing on a slope and rolling until it hit a large rock and lay motionless.
Am I dead? She couldn’t move for long time as she was pinned between the seat and the airbag.
Then she heard footsteps. Madeline kicked hard and wriggled to free herself. She stumbled out of the car and looked up to the top of the ditch. Lightning cast light into the darkness of stone and trees. She saw the soldiers and their shadows. She heard them murmur in their search for her.
Which way is London? She scanned the vicinity aimlessly. The lightning created a spotlight right where she was standing. Thunder roamed across the sky. Madeline yelped and jumped aside to hide.
Too late. They had seen her.
The shadows moved toward her. They called her name. She ran. They chased. She kept running.
Madeline fell, rolling on rocks and tree branches. She scrambled up and kept moving.
She heard her name again. But this time, the voice sounded familiar. She knew that voice.
Lightning again, and in the brightness of the flashing light, she saw Ciaran running toward her. It was him. She couldn’t be mistaken. She recognized the shape of him, and the sound of his voice.
“Madeline!” Ciaran shouted.
He rushed forward and grabbed her to stop her from running. They both tumbled and rolled on the hard rocks.
Ciaran helped her up. Madeline grabbed on to him. She felt like weeping. In fact, she was. Ciaran held her tight for a very brief second and pushed her to continue running.
Madeline was dazed. “Why are we running? You’re here. We’re safe.”
Ciaran pulled at her. “Run!” he said.
Madeline didn’t quite get it, but she went with him.
Lightning, thunder, and now pouring rain made it impossible to tell what they were running toward. Madeline guessed he was trying to get her to run toward the light. It felt right, running to the light.
She still heard footsteps and saw shadows. It was not clear to her who they were running toward and who they were running from.
A barrage of large stones flew toward them.
It had to be from the Roman soldiers, Madeline thought. She could see the holes the stones made in the mud, the walls, and tree trunks around them.
Ciaran grabbed Madeline and pushed her down to avoid the raining stones. He was covering her, Madeline knew.
And then silence, as if the sound had been suddenly vacuumed out of the sphere.
They stood up. She heard a whooshing noise, and then the stones commenced again. Both Ciaran and Madeline fell, rolling down a slope. Then she felt cold water. They might be in a pool, a pond, a lake—but it was cold.
That was the last thing she remembered before the world went black.
Chapter 18
Thick embroidered curtains dripping with ropes and ribbons in royal colors hung around the bed and from the ceiling, looking down at Madeline.
Have I time-traveled? Madeline blinked and glanced around.
She was lying on a four-poster bed in the middle of a spacious room surrounded by walls covered in deep-colored patterned wallpaper and tapestries. Paintings in fancy frames were arranged on the walls at every corner of the room. Even the bedside lamps were ornate.
Had it not been for the sight of Ciaran standing at the window in his modern clothing, talking on his cell phone, Madeline would have argued that this was a castle straight out of the fifteenth century.
Ciaran murmured something in French. The language sounded like music to Madeline. Then, sensing Madeline’s gaze, he finished the conversation and turned around.
He completes the scene, Madeline thought. Complementing the setting of the room, he looked like a king. His long hair was swept back, revealing a broad forehead and sculptured face—the face of a dark angel. He was too young to be a king, but she couldn’t settle for a lesser description.
Within seconds, as quick and gentle as a cat, he was at her bedside.
“How are you feeling?” Ciaran slid the phone into his pocket.
Madeline moved her shoulders a bit. She ached everywhere. “I’ve been better . . . Are we in a castle? Is this your house?”
Ciaran grinned. “Yes, we are indeed in a castle. But this is not my house. It’s Lumley Castle, converted into a hotel. It’s the closest place I could find where the helicopter could drop us as you didn’t want to go to the hospital, nor did you want me to contact the authorities regarding the incident last night. So the Queen Suite is what you have here.”
“The haunted Lumley Castle?” Madeline’s eyes widened.
Ciaran winked at her. “A commercial myth! Don’t disappoint me by buying into it.”
Madeline was puzzled and about to ask more questions, but Ciaran raised a finger, gesturing her to hold on. He picked up the handset of the phone at the desk.
“Yes, this is Ciaran. Yes, could you please bring it up here? Also, there should be a fax waiting for me. My
assistant Lindsay would have gotten it by now. He’s in the Courtyard room. Could you bring me the document as well? Thank you. In the Queen Suite. Yes. Thanks.”
Ciaran turned around, smiling at Madeline.
“I didn’t know what you like for breakfast, so I ordered the whole lot. The doctor said you can have solid food when you wake. Also . . .”
“Hold on a sec. What’s going on here? What happened last night?” Madeline gestured widely. Everything was confusing to her at the moment.
“I should ask these questions, Madeline. What in God’s name were you doing in Fosse Way at that time of night? Your phone sent out a distress signal to me.”
“How? It was dead when I was desperate to use it.”
“There’s a chip in your phone. You’re using my company’s phone, remember? And don’t stress, I wasn’t monitoring your whereabouts. It’s a standard function in all company phones. Based on changing operating conditions and a lot of other variables, if the phone detects that the user is in possible danger, it will send distress signals to the central operator. I coded your signals to be sent to my phone instead of our operator.”
“Got it! And thank you for coming after me.”
“You didn’t exactly give me any other options,” Ciaran murmured. “You know what your logs looked like? Again, it’s standard data, I’m not spying on you. You went from London to Mortlake, then straight to the Roman Road during the severe storm warning hours. Then you circled on and off the ancient path, and on and off the road for hours. When I located you, you flew off a wall. Were you practicing for the Grand Prix?”
Ciaran looked at Madeline gently, but there was no amusement in his eyes.
“The Roman soldiers chased me,” Madeline explained. She might have hallucinated it, but that was the only piece of information she had and could give at the moment. I sound like a lunatic, she thought.
Ciaran gave Madeline a blank stare. He jammed his hands in his pockets and rolled up slightly onto the balls of his feet. Madeline knew that signaled a sarcastic remark was coming. But somehow, he swallowed it before it came out.
Someone knocked on the door. Ciaran opened it to allow the staff to push in a breakfast tray—or a breakfast feast, by Madeline’s gauge.
“I’ll take this. Thanks.” Ciaran took a piece of paper with one hand and grabbed a parcel that looked like clean clothes on coat hangers, wrapped in plastic, with the other. He walked to a wall cabinet to hang up the clothes, as if this was his room.
Madeline stared. Those were her clothes he was handling. She looked down. She was wearing a comfortable white robe. And she was pretty sure by now that underneath the robe was nothing but her skin.
Ciaran glanced quickly at the fax he held in his hand. Looking as if he had seen what he wanted to see, he put the piece of paper on the desk. Then he turned toward Madeline. “The bathroom is there.” He pointed to a door in the corner of the room. Then he reached out his hand. “Would you like a hand to get up? Although you had no internal injuries, you had a minor concussion last night. The doctor said you might feel a bit queasy this morning.”
Madeline narrowed her eyes, looking down at her robe and then up at Ciaran. “The doctor?”
“Doctor Thomas is our family doctor. He’ll follow up this morning to make sure everything is okay.”
Madeline looked down again to her robe and back up at Ciaran. She was in a hotel, a private doctor had examined her last night, and in her delirium, she had objected to going to the hospital.
Who exactly had put her in this robe?
Madeline remembered her situation. “I’ve got to go. I need to be back in London.” Zen was coming at any time, and she’d found nothing to show him.
“You’re not leaving until you tell me just what happened yesterday. I need answers, Madeline. You can’t just brush this off and leave.” Ciaran’s tone was firm and authoritative.
“I’ve told you all I know. Look, Ciaran, I appreciate you rescuing me last night, but I really have to go. Right now.”
Ciaran stared into her eyes. “You said Roman soldiers chased you. Just so you know, they didn’t use guns in that era.” His eyes were intense now with a hint of anger.
“Guns? What guns?”
There was a knock on the door.
“That must be Doctor Thomas.” Ciaran strode to the door and opened it to let the doctor in.
The man entering the room looked more like a kind grandfather than a doctor. Ciaran fetched a chair and put it next to Madeline’s bed so that Doctor Thomas could sit down. Then he went to a corner of the room to answer an incoming call on his cell phone.
“How are you feeling this morning, Madeline?” asked the doctor.
“Just aching a bit. But I feel fine. Thanks for checking on me last night.”
“Based on my visual examination, there are no internal injuries. However, I’d like to run a scanner through your body to confirm. Ideally, we should do a head scan as well. But that has to be done at the hospital or at our private lab.”
Embarrassment rushed through her. Her entire body had been examined last night, and she didn’t even remember it.
“Madeline?”
“Huh?”
“The scan will be quick and gentle. It’s better to be safe than sorry.” Doctor Thomas looked at her calmly, like a father. Something tugged at her heart. Yes, he was like the father she thought she should have.
“Who was here last night when you examined me?”
Doctor Thomas smiled. “Only Ciaran and myself. There wasn’t an army of people in this room if that’s what you’re worried about.” Madeline caught a flash of sorrow in the doctor’s eyes.
“I’m feeling fine right now. I’m pretty sure of it.” Madeline wiggled her toes underneath the blanket and did a quick mental scan of herself. She did feel fine.
Ciaran finished his phone call and came to the bed.
“No scanning?” Ciaran asked.
“No, she won’t agree to it.” Doctor Thomas shook his head with fatherly disapproval. Then he turned to Ciaran. “Lindsay was kind enough to deliver my medical bag this morning. So it’s time to take your bullet out.”
“Bullet? You were shot?” Madeline sat upright in the bed.
Chapter 19
“Just a scratch.” Ciaran smiled.
“No, it’s not. The LeBlanc’s painkiller is top of the line, but you can’t rely on it any longer. And you can’t carry a bullet in your shoulder for more than twelve hours—even one hour is too long for my liking,” Doctor Thomas said.
“The Roman soldiers shot at you?” Madeline’s voice was shaky.
Ciaran looked at her without a response. Madeline looked at Doctor Thomas, knowing how weird she sounded.
“Don’t worry, Madeline. I’ve worked for the LeBlancs for more than thirty years, and I’ve heard some very unusual things,” Doctor Thomas commented.
“All right,” Ciaran compromised, “how long do you need?”
“Three hours.”
“I don’t have three hours. I have to be in France for an important meeting this afternoon.”
“Two hours then.”
“Twenty minutes is all I can give you.”
“It’s surgery, Ciaran. The bullet is in your shoulder, and the wound is deep. Without the scanner, I don’t even know exactly where the bullet is. It might not be just a flesh wound, as you seem to think. The strong painkiller would numb your senses.”
“Half an hour. You’re a good doctor. I trust you can do it.” Ciaran grabbed his jacket that was resting on the reading chair. “Let’s go.”
“Go where?” Madeline asked.
“My room, of course!” Ciaran answered, cocking an eyebrow.
“No, no, oh no! Do it right here!”
Ciaran looked at the doctor, puzzled, then looked at Madeline. “I beg your pardon?”
“We can talk after Doctor Thomas has scooped the bullet out of you. It’ll save time, you’ll see. It’s just minor surgery. I’ll explain t
o you all about last night. You should be fine talking while he’s working.” Madeline raised an eyebrow in challenge.
You got to see me naked, and you got the doctor to work on me? Well, it’s time for payback. Madeline knew it was mean of her, but she couldn’t help it.
“When you’re finished with your surgery, I’ll be gone. I have to be back in London. Right now,” Madeline added.
“If you need things done within half an hour, I could use some help,” Doctor Thomas said in support of Madeline’s suggestion.
Ciaran was reluctant for a second, then nodded. “All right, no anesthesia, Doctor Thomas. Just numb it.”
Madeline got up from the bed quickly, prepared for her role as nurse. Ciaran took his shirt off. In front of her was an exquisite, well-toned, and sculptured set of muscles on a slender body that God must have created when he was in a very, very good mood. Madeline pretended to cinch her robe.
Drooling in front of a guy is not attractive, Madeline. Preserve some of your dignity, she told herself.
Doctor Thomas removed the bandage from Ciaran’s wound. Madeline gasped when she saw it. A slash of guilt cut into her. That could have been her bullet.
“Lie down in the bed for me, will you, Ciaran?”
Ciaran kicked his shoes off and obeyed Doctor Thomas without hesitation, showing that he just wanted to get his procedure over with as soon as possible. Madeline had expected that the humiliation of being handled in front of her would be so enormous that Ciaran would forget to ask her any questions. But apparently, he didn’t miss a trick.
He lay on his side, his back facing outward so that Doctor Thomas could work on him. Ciaran looked at Madeline, who was standing on the opposite side of the bed, her hands in the pockets of her hotel robe.