Totem of Aries

by D. N. Leo

  “The less you know, the better it is for you—that’s what you told me, Madeline.”

  She absently wiped away a tear that had rolled down her face. “I come from the future, Doctor Thomas. And in the future, Ciaran and I are married. We share our lives. We have children. But there’s one thing I know he never told me about Juliette, and that thing is eating at me. I know it hurts him, too, and at some point, it will blow up in our faces.”

  Doctor Thomas nodded. “For some strange reason, I believe you. The fact is, others probably didn’t tell you because they don’t know. Juliette was pregnant when she died. Ciaran knew because he was creating some kind of medical plant for her as a gift. The test detected her pregnancy well before any tests in the modern pharmaceutical industry could dream of. He consulted me to be sure he read the results correctly. He was very happy. Excited even. And before he had a chance to tell her that night, she died.”

  Madeline felt her knees weaken. “If Juliette knew, she wouldn’t have done what she did and died because of it…” She trailed off.

  She thought of Ciaran. He’d never told her or anyone else, and he’d lived with that fact since then. In her current time, the future, Ciaran had invested so much in time traveling technology. Had it ever occurred to him that he could come back and fix this?

  “It was nobody’s fault, Madeline.”

  “Huh?”

  “It wasn’t Ciaran’s fault, although he might think that way.”

  “It’s even worse when there’s no one to blame.”

  The doctor looked at her with empathy. “I’m an old man who knows nothing about time travel. But I know one thing—one should not fix what’s not supposed to be fixed. I trust you know that, too.”

  She nodded. Then Doctor Thomas turned and got into the car. As the car departed, she knew he looked back at her, unconvinced that she wouldn’t do anything about it. She didn’t trust herself either. She wasn’t a saint.

  What she was worried about wasn’t Juliette but her own problem. She had to refrain from fixing it, although at the moment, anxiety loomed in her mind and was spreading like cancer. She rubbed her tummy absently and then turned and walked back into the house.

  Chapter 34

  Ciaran sat up in bed. The painkiller had made the injuries more like a mist surrounding him than actual pain. He was sure his physical pain would be much more significant without the drugs. The LeBlancs made the best drugs on the planet, and that was without any added ingredients that many would consider unnatural—something he had been working on.

  He accepted the concept of supernatural matters and was open to the existence of things and creatures in different worlds. But acceptance didn’t mean he wanted to live among them, and it certainly didn’t make being claimed as a part of that supernatural world any easier.

  Before he got off the bed, Madeline walked in. If he wasn’t mistaken, she hadn’t knocked.

  “I was just about to go out to look for you,” he said.

  “You need to stay in bed. You need to rest.”

  “I thought you wanted to find a place to communicate with your friend. I thought it was urgent.”

  “It is urgent, and I need your help to get it done.”

  He stood and grabbed his shirt which was hanging at the end of the bed. “That’s why we’re leaving now for a place with better equipment. There’s nothing for me to work with here.”

  She pushed him back down to the bed with one finger. “I need you to believe me before you can help me.”

  He chuckled to himself. There was no way it was possible for a woman to push him down with a single finger. But seeing the look on her face, he thought resisting her push would make the situation much worse. He could handle women. He had handled many. But he found Madeline, the woman who claimed to be his future wife, intriguing and different from other women. He sat back, leaning against the headboard and waiting to hear what she had to say.

  “Do you think I would let things go this far if I didn’t believe you?”

  She smiled. “You trusted your instincts, and you did what you believed were the right things to do. But I need to take your help to the next level. I need you to do it for me because we’re soulmates, and not because of anything else.”

  He smiled at her, hoping that was the most appropriate reaction to what she’d just said.

  She hopped onto the bed.

  Women came on to him for various reasons, and he’d encountered this situation before. So again, he waited. “Madeline, I wouldn’t use the term soulmate lightly…”

  “No one should. I certainly don’t. But I have nothing to prove to you that we are just that. And you understand very well that being married to someone doesn’t necessarily mean they’re your soulmate.”

  She straddled him now, and she looked straight into his eyes when she spoke. She wasn’t referring to her relationship with Ciaran. She was talking about Juliette, and Ciaran didn’t think he was going to like what he was about to hear.

  “So you think a marriage doesn’t necessarily indicate a soulmate, but sex does?” He looked back at her, locked in her deep brown eyes.

  She smiled. “What we have together is beyond sex, Ciaran.” She bent down, her hand hovering over his bare chest. “Are you up to giving it a try?”

  She was challenging him. Ciaran couldn’t help but smile. “I think it’s neither necessary nor appropriate. But if you must prove your point, and that’s the only way, I’m happy to assist.”

  “Where we come from, we have a special sort of energy called eudqi. It gives us supernatural ability. We can control it, and we can turn it on and off. When it’s on, it activates a special triggering point. Yours is right here, on your chest. You don’t have that special energy yet, but I have my eudqi on, and you should be able to feel it now.”

  Her hand glowed slightly, and a warm electric current flowed into his chest. Every cell in his body woke up. She kissed him, and as soon as her lips touched his, an ocean of energy washed over him. His mind exploded with sensation. Her hands roamed over his body, bringing the warm, electrifying energy with every stroke.

  He responded. Perhaps he was not totally under his own control.

  He reached for her body. He wanted more. He demanded more. He flipped her over so he was on top, and he took control. Somehow he understood that their energy was connected. He let it take over. When their bodies connected, so did their hearts and souls.

  After a while, the heat cooled. They lay in bed, spent and sated.

  Madeline curled into his arms and rested her head on his chest. Their bodies fit together as if they were always meant to be together. Ciaran collected his thoughts and recalled the sensation when their energy was connected. He felt her as if she were part of his body, part of him. She completed him. She filled the empty space in his soul he’d always felt, the space he’d never revealed to anyone—a hole in his life that he knew existed but couldn’t explain. And that was the definition of soulmate.

  He believed her now. But what was in this for her? He could feel what she did for him. What could he do for her? He couldn’t feel that now. Was that because he was not yet supernatural?

  He played with a lock of her hair, then rubbed his thumb over the dimple on her left cheek.

  “What do you need me to do, Madeline? What is so important that you need to trigger all this before you tell me?”

  “You regret it?”

  He chuckled. “No man in his right mind would regret the experience we just had.”

  She sat up so that she could look at him in the eye. “You believe me, that we’re soulmates?”

  He held her hands and linked their fingers together. “Yes, I do. There are parts from your end I still don’t understand. I guess that’s because it isn’t time yet for me to understand. But I believe you.”

  She nodded. “I told you we have twins, Caedmon and Lyla.”

  He nodded.

  “They’re beautiful kids. They were conceived in a very spiritual space, s
o they’re very special.”

  He smiled, but then couldn’t help his smile from fading when he saw the pain in her beautiful brown eyes. He guessed the children were the main reason she had done all this. A tear rolled down her face. He reached over to wipe it away, but she stopped his hand.

  “We had a stillborn girl, Freyja. She was conceived when we were on a mission in New York. It happened on Earth, so you thought she was likely more human than Caedmon and Lyla.”

  “Madeline!”

  “Let me finish. I agreed with you. We treasured the thought of having a human child so much that, against all the advice of the councillors, I went to Earth to give birth. We were attacked. And to save me, you had to terminate our child.” Her voice broke.

  He pulled her into his arms. She didn’t resist this time. She leaned into him, and the emotion hit her like a storm.

  “I’m sorry, Madeline.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.” She eased out of his embrace. “We hold important positions in Eudaiz. We are responsible for many lives. We do what we need to do to protect our people. But sometimes, we make mistakes…”

  “Still, I’m sorry for having caused you so much pain.”

  “Me too. I don’t want to cause you pain either, but I have to ask you to do this. Because of the deal I made with the soul trader, I can only think of one way to fix this. We need to travel further into the past and kill it before it gets to this stage. You know something about time traveling. When we talk to Jo, you’ll have to give her access and instructions to your technology.”

  “The technology that I don’t yet know at this time?”

  “But it’s yours.”

  Ciaran nodded. “I believe I can make sense of it now if it’s mine in the future.” He looked into her eyes. “But that’s not the main part of what you want me to do, is it?”

  She shook her head. “No, it’s not. When we travel to the past, you will have the opportunity to fix what happened with Juliette. I know you lost a child with her. And you lost her in the process. But for the sake of your current family, and for our children—the ones we have and the one we lost—I ask you not to engage in anything having to do with Juliette when we travel.”

  He felt a chill running down his spine. He stood and looked out the window, although he could see nothing because it was pitch black outside. “You’re asking me to let Juliette and my child die, knowing I could save them?”

  There was silence.

  He turned and saw that Madeline had left the room.

  Chapter 35

  The Himalayas were magnificent. Not because of the height, the scenery, or the absolute hype humans gave the place. He loved it because it was a haven for his kind.

  He loved the sight of blood pooling on the snow. The deep red enticed his appetite, and the contrast of the white snow added a kick.

  He smiled and waited.

  His adrenaline was like a hungry snake slithering through his system. Although his fangs had descended and the blood in his veins was surging in waves, he wanted to take things slow.

  As if a slow death would make the blood of his prey taste better.

  He stared at the weakening pulse in the veins of his prey. What’s the human’s name? He couldn’t quite remember. It didn’t matter though. The human was dead anyway.

  He looked up at a stretch of ice that sparkled with the reflection of the light from a temple. He couldn’t remember the god the humans worshiped in there. There were too many different religions in this mountain range of Earth, too many gods, none of which he found relevant.

  As he watched, the last pulse stopped, and he bent down to enjoy the feast.

  Still-warm blood. The most delicious kind. He kneeled on the ice and absorbed its chill. The warmth of blood and the cold of the ice mixed together, sending him into ecstasy.

  When he finished, he looked up again at the stretch of shiny ice. A shadow moved past him, and a familiar scent engulfed him.

  It was the scent of death. His own death.

  He stood and turned around to look at the vampire who had just arrived.

  “How many times have I said you are not to feed on humans here?” the other asked. Its exotically throaty voice purred through the icy air like the whisper of death.

  “But their blood is so much tastier than humans elsewhere. And besides, I don’t have to do what you ask—”

  Before he could finish his sentence, his throat was torn away. Blood spurted, pumping out in a great geyser. He slumped to the ice.

  “Why?” he whispered as he felt his life draining away.

  “Why what?”

  “Our kind don’t worship any god…”

  The other vampire crouched. “Don’t insult me. We are not the same kind.”

  “No god will give you privileges… It doesn’t matter what you promised…” And that was all he could say before he felt his body spin around in the air and then crash down on to the snow. With so much blood lost, he was going to die anyway. He wasn’t going down that easily.

  The other vampire pulled out a stake, brandished it, and then thrust it at his chest. He grabbed the stake and broke it in two before it was able to pierce his skin. Using the broken end, he slashed at the vampire who was trying to execute him. He continued to do so even as the world started to fade around him.

  A silver dagger punched through his heart. He looked down and watched as his body disintegrated into a mass of black blood and gore.

  “As I said, we’re not the same kind. I can’t handle silver weapons. Let’s see if you can.”

  This was the end of more than a hundred years of being undead. “What … are you …?”

  “If I tell you, then I will have to kill you. But wait, you’re already dying. All right then, I’ll tell you. I will be the god of the undead.” The vampire pulled the dagger out and stabbed him again.

  And that was the last thing he saw in his very long and unnatural life.

  Chapter 36

  Sinking deep into a leather reading chair, Alex absently rubbed LP under his left ear, sending the little dog into ecstasy. They were in another villa just outside the place Ciaran called Mon Ciel. From what Alex could tell, this villa hadn’t had any tenants for a while. There was no scent of any living things. But the place was well-maintained and furnished, as if always at the ready for a LeBlanc to use whenever needed.

  The lawn outside the living room window was perfectly manicured. Water danced happily in a small fountain in the garden, enjoying the last bit of sunlight before dusk descended.

  Alex rolled his eyes to himself as he thought about the filthy rich British royal families he’d encountered before he was turned. He had nothing against the wealthy, but he did have an issue with the spoiled kids in those families who had never had to do a day’s work in their lives, and yet were set to run the society.

  On that note, he was glad he’d been turned and never had to deal with those human issues ever again. The undead had turned out to be a much easier society for him to manage.

  At least Ciaran was a decent man, even when he was human and rich. Maybe that was because his family’s wealth and privileges were self-made, not inherited.

  Alex’s stomach growled. He was hungry. Soon he could go out to get some food. Come on, with the technology Ciaran claims the LeBlancs have, how can they be taking so long to arrange a telecast communication?

  Just then Ciaran strolled into the room and signaled Alex with his finger, pointing toward the backyard. "The communication will happen outside. The sun will set shortly.”

  “I can handle a little sunlight. I won’t enjoy it, but it won’t burn me like a torch as people might think.”

  “Still, it won’t hurt to wait a bit.” Ciaran said nothing further, turned around, and walked out of the room as quickly as he had come in.

  Madeleine had been behind him, and she stepped into the room. Before she could say anything, Ciaran had finished and exited.

  If Alex wasn't mistaken, there was a blast of col
d air between Ciaran and Madeline. Did they have a fight? How is that even possible? As long and he had known them, this was as rare as him turning this little poodle here into a vampire dog.

  Seeing that Madeline was a bit confused and maybe a little upset, he patted her shoulder. “Let's go outside, Madeline.”

  “He's mad at me.”

  Madeline's lips weren’t moving. Her words weren't verbalized. He was reading her thoughts!

  In his wildest dreams he wouldn't have imagined he could read people's minds. Vampires had talents, but as far as he knew, mind reading wasn't his. Maybe Madeline and he were just connected somehow.

  "Alex!" Madeline gestured for him to go with her.

  "What? Oh! Sorry, be right out." He paused and stood in the same spot. "LP." He whistled and flicked his fingers. The little dog didn't need a second invitation. He followed Alex to the backyard.

  The sun had gone down behind the trees and the landscape of the rolling hillside. With his acute senses, he could detect any humans or large animals nearby. There certainly were no space creatures.

  Before Alex could ask Ciaran about the plan, a beam of light shone down to the flat area of the backyard. Ciaran looked up from his computer. He didn’t look surprised, so Alex figured he must have just dialed the beam in.

  Alex had used the holocast many times, but he didn’t care about the technology behind it. All he needed to know was that it allowed transportation between universes and sometime between worlds—whatever it was that defined a world. In the middle of the light beam stood a holographic image of Jo.

  Alex smiled to himself. Jo was a petite lady, and she was very sensitive about her height. She had broadened this holographic image from the dashboard of her computer, and because of that, she cheated on her size. She looked much taller than usual.

  “Ciaran,” Jo smiled. “I’m glad you can help Madeline reconnect with Eudaiz. I didn’t expect things go wrong that fast, and I’m not sure how I was able to find her without your signals.”