Curse of Soulmate--The Complete Series

by D. N. Leo

  They ran. Ciaran helped Madeline climb the hills. He held her hand in his, and he could feel her energy, her breathing. On a stone platform behind the trees, when he was sure they were alone, he stopped, cupping her face. “Don’t ever leave me again,” he said. And he kissed her.

  A few hours ago, he couldn’t even think about how it would feel to have her in his arms again. And now, he would breathe her in if he could.

  When they turned to leave, a fireball dropped to the ground near them. A couple of trees burst into flame. He protectively pushed Madeline behind him.

  From the darkness behind some trees, four fighters jumped out.

  Ciaran glanced up the hill and saw the shadows of his people closing in. But before they would be close enough to give him assistance, he had to handle these men.

  They were good fighters and moved extremely fast. They knocked his gun from his hand and pounded on him. Two fighters kicked Ciaran at once. He fell on the ground and rolled away. His head hit the stone base behind, leaving him dazed.

  Douglas pulled out his gun.

  Madeline jumped in front of him. “Please, don’t shoot. Please, for God’s sake. I’m going with you.”

  Douglas thrust his gun forward. Madeline stood in front of the muzzle. “I’ll go with you and get the crucifix. You will have all of my grandfather’s praise and glory. Stefan is down there looking for the crucifix himself. If you shoot Ciaran, nobody will stop Stefan. Please, don’t!”

  Douglas did not hesitate for long. He grabbed Madeline and fled down the hill.

  Ciaran tried to reach for her, but his vision was still blurry, and his body was not cooperating. Tadgh and Jo arrived. Tadgh pulled his brother to his feet.

  “You should be in the van,” Ciaran scolded.

  “Look who’s talking,” Tadgh responded.

  Ciaran kicked a tree in frustration and anger. “They took her again! I’ll get the crucifix, and I’ll get Madeline. Fuck them all!” Ciaran charged away toward his men.

  Another fireball dropped down right in front of Ciaran. The bright flash of light revealed the positions of all the soldiers from both sides.

  They were only meters from one another.

  Stefan had told them to shoot at anything moving, so his soldiers pulled their guns, prepared for a massacre.

  Ciaran yelled at his men, “Use your weapons! Fight!”

  The two sides charged at one another. At that moment, they were even-numbered.

  Chapter 68

  When Madeline and the fighters got down the hillside to level ground, Stefan had recovered the five soldiers who had done the scanning previously. They were waiting by the graveyard flanking the abbey. They had scanned quickly, working their way through the graveyard.

  Madeline guessed they’d found nothing except the remains of dead bodies, both human and animal.

  Stefan’s nose was bleeding, and his clothes were soaking wet.

  Douglas asked her, “What do you want to do? We don’t have scanners. And I can’t go back to Mr. Kelley with only you after losing so many of his men.”

  “We have to negotiate with Stefan then. You have the real fighters. Stefan will need them when he’s up against Ciaran. I appreciate that you didn’t shoot Ciaran. I’ll make it up to you.” Douglas nodded.

  They headed up the hill toward the graveyard. Seeing Madeline, Stefan pulled his gun. “You bitch.”

  She just glared daringly at him, and the group of fighters pointed guns at him. Madeline cocked an eyebrow, waiting. Stefan was a smart man. He would work it out. Five of the so-called soldiers against the strong fighter group was not good odds.

  “What do you want now?” Stefan asked.

  “Same deal. They need me and a sample of the gold you’ll find in the crucifix. So they still need you and your scanners. Ciaran and his men are coming down. All of your men up the hill are gone. You’ll need these fighters or you won’t get out of here alive. Your choice,” Madeline responded.

  “All of my men are gone?” Stefan asked Douglas.

  “I could only manage to get her back. I can’t protect your men. They didn’t have any leadership up there. As a result, they were slaughtered.”

  He lied without a blink, Madeline thought. That had to work.

  It did.

  “Then dig in,” Stefan said. “And don’t be a fool. You won’t get lucky again,” he warned Madeline.

  Up on the hill, the fight had finished. Ciaran, Tadgh, and Jo were taking inventory. “I’m sorry, we’ve lost ten,” Ciaran spoke to James.

  James said firmly, “It was still a win. We took out twenty of them. There were ten more down the lake. But taking the fighters will not be easy.”

  Ciaran asked Tadgh, “How is your injury?”

  “Do I need to say it? I’m alive and kicking. Told you it was just a flesh wound. But you’ll have to fix Jo’s dislocated shoulder.” Tadgh gingerly led Jo to Ciaran.

  “May I look?” Ciaran asked. Jo nodded.

  Ciaran held her left arm up gently. Holding Jo’s arm with his left hand, his right hand touching her shoulder lightly and very gently, he snapped it back.

  Jo yelped in pain, and tears escaped from her eyes. Ciaran held her and kissed her forehead. “I know it hurt. I’m sorry. We’ll get you a sling to wear, but for now, try not to move your shoulder too much.” Jo nodded.

  He handed her off to Tadgh and headed down the hill.

  Stefan led the way to the abbey via the courtyard. It had started to rain. They walked through the wet grass and muddy areas between the graveyard and the abbey. Madeline glanced up to the hill, knowing Ciaran and his people were up there. She knew he would come after her, and there was nothing she could do to prevent that.

  As they entered the long courtyard, Stefan asked the fighters to come inside with him, and he left the soldiers at the entrance. They stayed there for a while and then entered to start the scan.

  The rain came down even harder.

  Madeline caught a smirk on Stefan’s face.

  What’s that about? She’d seen the same thing at the hotel when he’d called Ciaran to tell him about her grandfather. That smirk. She couldn’t figure out what it meant.

  Then she looked outside.

  Through rows and rows of stone columns and arched doorways, the view she had was of a dark and wet canvas and Ciaran’s men approaching the abbey.

  That very path was where Stefan had been lurking before he entered the hall.

  It was not the rain and the thunder.

  She had been mistaken.

  An explosion tore through the air, the rain, and her heart. The men in front of her were blown into pieces.

  “Ciaran!” she heard the scream in her head. Or maybe she screamed out loud.

  There was no way anyone could have survived the explosion.

  Madeline tore through the rain and the mud, sprinting outside. The wind slapped at her face. She couldn’t hear much. Her ears were ringing with fear.

  The world was empty. Dark. And quiet.

  She would not believe that Ciaran was dead until she saw him for herself.

  Chapter 69

  The explosion had left a deep hole in the ground. Despite the rain, there was fire and the acrid smell of burnt flesh. Body pieces were strewn about.

  She walked into the middle of the massacre. But she refused to come to any conclusion until she found him.

  She scrambled to each body, every body part, on all fours, swimming in the mixture of fresh blood, mud, and rain water.

  She would search until she found something that belonged to him.

  She kept looking. She didn’t know for how long. She wouldn’t give up until she had looked at everything she could find.

  And then that was the end of it. She had seen everything. She felt like laughing. She was giddy.

  She could not find his body or any evidence of it.

  Douglas appeared beside her.

  He didn’t recognize the expression on her face. He must have thought sh
e was grieving. Keep it up, Madeline told herself.

  Douglas brought her inside. “I’m very sorry,” he said.

  He thinks Ciaran is dead. Good. Let him think that. Madeline maintained an expression to suit the scene.

  They had completed the scanning inside the main hall of the abbey and found nothing. Madeline thought if those cold stone walls could laugh, they would be, watching the bunch of lunatics digging for gold.

  The rain had stopped.

  They moved out to the central courtyard where magnificent stone columns and arches had witnessed a thousand years of glory, destruction, life, death, and grieving. The roofs were in ruins here and there, cutting the expansive view of the sky into bits and pieces. Madeline thought she could hear monks chanting, but it might have been her imagination.

  “I think I’ve got it,” a soldier spoke up.

  Stefan and Douglas charged toward a roofless stone tower. The scanner showed them a ten-inch rectangular box buried right in the middle of the tower. They could see through the material of the box.

  The prominent shape of a fancy crucifix was prominently displayed.

  There was also something in the box that looked like a piece of paper, perhaps a note or a letter of some sort.

  This was it. The crucifix everyone had been searching for, lying underneath a roofless tower, surrounded by stone walls and arched gothic windows, and maybe even guarded by thousands of souls and spirits.

  “Shovel,” Stefan commanded in excitement.

  The ground was soft in the roofless tower. Two soldiers came with shovels. In a short moment, the box was revealed. A metal box with a small lock.

  The box looked so innocent, Madeline thought. It was like a girl’s secret diary box where she would lock away all of her thoughts and dreams of the prince who one day would ride in on a white horse to rescue her from the tower. Who would think it could be rigged with a ton of explosives? But apparently, Stefan and the others were not fools. They had sniffed out such things before they even touched the box.

  The box was lowered to the ground. Madeline could see blood in everyone’s eyes.

  The look of greed.

  A soldier reached out for the box. Stefan immediately put a bullet, point blank, into his head. “Touch it and die,” he warned.

  The other soldiers moved back. Douglas signaled his fighters, still guarding outside. The fighters shot wire to the top of the tower and arches over the courtyard. In the blink of an eye, all three fighters hoisted themselves up, half flying and half walking on the walls like spiders.

  They were coming at Stefan and the soldiers. The soldiers were confused. They weren’t sure which side they were on, but they drew their weapons.

  Stefan reached down for the box, but a hard kick from Douglas pushed him backward. He reached for his gun, but there wasn’t enough time. Douglas pounded at him, releasing all of the hatred he had accumulated for him in the last day.

  Madeline looked through the line of stone columns that arched across a strip of grass which led toward the stone frame for a missing gate.

  A gate to heaven.

  She smiled at it.

  At the bottom of the large stone frame stood Ciaran. He smiled back. All she had to do now was make a run for him.

  Everyone was fighting for the box and whatever treasures it might hold for them. She was unimportant at the moment. They wouldn’t pay any attention to her. She backed against a wall, contemplating the shortest route to Ciaran.

  She looked again. Ciaran no longer stood under the stone frame. She knew he was coming for her. She should run in that direction.

  Madeline glanced around her again. Douglas was in a one-on-one fight with Stefan. Three fighters were struggling against four soldiers. The constraints of space between stonewalls, columns, and arched footpaths did not provide a free shooting range for anyone.

  They had to fight and eye the box at the same time.

  Madeline stepped backward once more and ran.

  Douglas saw her. He called out. “Get the girl!”

  The fighter shot up his hanging wire to the top window of the roofless tower, flying away from the fighting scene below.

  Madeline ran. She zigzagged around the stone column as much as she could. She ran as fast as she could. Behind her was the fighter, coming down from the sky on his wire and running across the tops of the stone arches and walls like a spider. Madeline looked back and saw him. She ran faster, knowing she probably wouldn’t escape.

  The fighter was approaching her from behind, hoping to scoop her up by the waist. She ran faster. But there were no more columns for her to dodge around. She kept running, and she could feel the pressure of the air behind her when the fighter approached. He touched her waist.

  From inside the long abbey hallway, Ciaran charged out, standing right in front of Madeline’s path, his gun pointing at the coming fighter. The fighter instantly pulled his wire up, managed to grab the back of Madeline’s jacket.

  In the blink of an eye, Madeline was off the ground, dangling below the fighter, who would not let go of her jacket. They dangled above Ciaran.

  Ciaran turned and aimed for the fighter’s arm that held fast to his wire. The pain startled the fighter, and he dropped Madeline. Ciaran ran forward and caught her. They both fell to the ground, rolling.

  Ciaran smiled. “You’re not going to leave me, either on the ground or in the air.”

  They stood up and saw the fighter’s body dangling next to a stone window. It appeared that he had lost control of his wire and smashed his head against the rough edge of a broken stone.

  Ciaran and Madeline were about to run off when they saw Tadgh and Jo approaching. They turned to the abbey hallway to leave from the inside. At the other side of the courtyard, it appeared that the fight continued. They ran to the end of the hall and could hear the fight right outside.

  Then Douglas darted into the hall and blocked their exit.

  “I can’t let you go, Madeline,” Douglas said.

  Ciaran pushed Madeline behind him. “I’ll talk to Richard Kelley if you let Madeline go.” Douglas glanced at the fight in the courtyard. One of his fighters was losing to Stefan.

  They would have to leave the hall by the gateway Douglas was blocking. Ciaran approached slowly, Madeline, Tadgh, and Jo behind him.

  “You want the box, go get it. I’ll talk to Mr. Kelley regarding Madeline. I promise. You spared me a bullet. I owe you. I’ll keep my promise. If you let Stefan abscond with the box, he’ll never come back. He doesn’t keep promises,” Ciaran said.

  The fighter who was losing to Stefan pulled out a small explosive device.

  Stefan knew what it was. It’d kill everyone in the confined space. He stopped pounding as the fighter picked up the box and threw it toward Douglas. At the same time, Stefan kicked the explosive device away and shot at the fighter.

  Douglas dove through the air to catch the box. It was a good catch. He got it. On his landing, a bullet from Stefan’s gun tore through air at him, striking him in the head. Douglas’s body fell to the floor.

  The box slid out from his hand, skidded on the ground, and stopped mere feet away from Ciaran.

  Madeline tugged at him. “Get away! Get away from it! I won’t let you touch it.”

  Chapter 70

  Ciaran turned around. “Don’t worry. I know, Madeline.” He held her hand so that they could move past Douglas’s body to the exit.

  Stefan charged to the hallway and stood at the exit. But he was focused on the box and nothing else. It was as if he didn’t see anything. He pointed his gun at the lock on the box.

  “No, you’ll damage the crucifix,” Madeline said. She didn’t want to be here in case the box exploded.

  Stefan looked at Madeline. He nodded his head and smiled strangely. He looked strange—so strange it made her worry about what he might do next. His eyes filled with a strange combination of satisfaction and confusion.

  He looked like a vampire, starved for blood, but now that he
had found the blood, he didn’t know what to do with it.

  They heard two loud bangs from outside. It appeared to be the end of the fight. They weren’t sure who the victor was.

  Then there was the slipping sound of the wired device, and the last fighter flew into the hall like a bird. He snatched the box off the ground, jumping on walls and stone columns so high that he almost hit the ceiling. He pulled himself up again to fly out of the hall via a gigantic window.

  Stefan drew his gun and fired at him. The body of the fighter was carried by his wire, swinging outside via the window.

  The box slipped from his hand and hit a stone arch on the ceiling. The lock was broken, and the lid swung open. The crucifix slid out, flipped a few rounds, and dropped on the floor with a thudding sound.

  The top of the crucifix fell off, and the contents inside spilled out.

  It looked like a black powder. The note from the box took its time, fluttering down and landing on the floor like a feather.

  Stefan stood over the crucifix, walking around it as if he were a cat inspecting a dead rat, checking to be sure it was really dead.

  He looked at Ciaran.

  “It’s certainly not gold,” Stefan said with a strange smile on his face. He kneeled down to examine the strange powder.

  Ciaran approached. Madeline pulled him back.

  Stefan shoved both of his hands into the pile of black powder and let the grains run through his fingers. Then he let out a short laugh.

  “It’s dirt. I think it’s dirt,” Stefan said.

  Stefan fingered the pile of dirt, rubbing some of it against his palms. He looked at his palms and laughed a little louder. “I think it’s really dirt.”

  Madeline could not make sense of it. But Ciaran looked astonished, like he instantly knew what it meant as soon as the pile of dirt poured out from the crucifix.

  Stefan picked up the note. He glanced at it then laughed some more. He held the note in Ciaran’s direction.