by D. N. Leo
“To congratulate Arik on his new position, I’ve ordered a special gift for him. It’s Stevie Ray Vaughan’s original 1963 Number One Stratocaster.”
“No, you didn’t!” Madeline slapped Ciaran’s chest lightly. “Really?”
He nodded. “Yes. He lost his precious guitar when we met. So I figured this replacement would be just the thing.”
She smiled. “You’re very sweet.”
“That’s to make up for the time I’m not sweet. It seems whatever I do, the bitter taste is always stronger.”
The smile faded from Madeline’s face. “Xiilok.”
Ciaran whirled around. “Where?”
The walls in front of them flashed in a purple shade, and a distant, elderly male voice came out from the wall. “Greetings!” The image of a strange-looking flower appeared with the word Arete printed above it. The flower had the features of a rose, a lily, and a daisy combined.
Ciaran pulled his gun and pointed at the wall.
“Is this how Eudaizians greet people?” the voice said.
“You’re a wall, not a person,” Ciaran said.
“I’ve come to show my appreciation. I enjoyed the thrill today. I have been hunting everywhere. But after the today’s exercise, I think I am getting close.”
“Close to what? Who are you?” Ciaran asked.
“Arete.”
“You’re Xiilok rebels. What do you want from us?”
“What I want for Xiilok is the same as what you want for Eudaiz, Ciaran.”
“I don’t know who you are, but I doubt we share anything, including our view of the politics of the cosmos. Regarding your exercise today, you have no right to it, and it has cost innocent lives. You will have to pay for this.”
“You worry me! You might not be a compatible game partner. That would be boring.”
“This is no game.”
“It is to me. And I don’t think you have a choice. Your friend, Arik Bonneville, isn’t as strong as you are, and he has no experience, but we value him. He gave us the perfect tune. If you leave him for us, I’ll trade you two thousand ex-Eudaizians.”
“If those Eudaizians left us to join you, you can keep them.”
“Four thousand.”
“I said keep them.”
“All right. I just want to let you know I have engaged the game, and I’ve pushed out a few challenges to the multiversal game council.”
“If it’s a game, it won’t have real consequences,” Madeline said.
“It’s not just any game. It’s a multiversal hologame. Your husband should educate you about the game rules.”
Ciaran blasted at the image on the wall.
“You disappoint me, Ciaran. Why would you shoot the messenger? I’m just a wall, right? Am I upsetting you that much?”
“Not at all. I’m capturing your message frequency and measuring the capability of your technology.” He looked at his wrist unit then shook his head and shrugged. “All right. I’ll take whatever challenge you can come up with.”
“Our technology is much more advanced than yours, Ciaran.”
“Whatever you say.” He shrugged and looked bored. “Anything else you want to tell me?”
“I challenged the rebel tribe in Xiilok led by your dear friend, Arik. I also challenged a few leaders in Iilos. As for Eudaiz, I challenge you and your entire council.”
“That’s a very ambitious bet. What did you have to put in as a deposit? It’s very long odds that you’d win.”
Arete chuckled. “As you’ve said, it’s a very ambitious bet. The resources I have are so impressive that the game council accepted my deposit. So you’ll get the invitation soon. For your information, my bet is seven billion. That is all for now. Goodbye. I hope you like the flower I gave you, Madeline.”
The image on the wall disappeared.
“What flower?” Ciaran asked.
Madeline shoved her hand into her jacket pocket and pulled out the purple flower the old peasant had given her in 1348 at Dorset. Arik had thrown it away, but she had picked it up again when he wasn’t paying attention. She thought when they traveled back to the present time, the flower would be gone. But it wasn’t.
“What’s going on, Ciaran?” she asked.
“Seven billion is the Earth’s population,” he said.
She looked into his strikingly beautiful eyes. For the first time since she had known him, and after all the life and death battles they had been through, she saw the confidence in those eyes waver.
“Look out!” Ciaran shouted and pushed her to the ground.
There was a thunk, and a surge of purple powder flew against the wall in front of them. Text appeared. Congratulations! You have passed the entry level of the multiversal hologame. You have been invited to the next level. Your opponents are waiting to defeat you.
Epilogue
Scotland, 1864
Agony.
That was all Jael could feel. But he didn’t waste a single moment thinking about his physical pain. He needed to find his wife. Fear stabbed at him, but he brushed it away and concentrated on his tasks with his current limited capacity. Charmine was alone, strolling her beloved Scotland hillside. Nobody knew she was with him on this mission. He had thought she was safe.
That was until Luna and her evil army had ambushed him. They had wounded him, using their dark magic to cut off his power and sever his wings. They wanted to take his light. He was at the highest rank in the council of angel of light. Other angels would have died with humiliation. He would have terminated himself if this had happened before.
But not now.
He was no longer by himself. He had Charmine, and she was carrying their first child. He was a father, and he had a family to protect. Protecting his light was a matter of the greater cause. If he gave them the light, they would let him live to come back to his family. But if the evil possessed his light, that would mean the end of the many worlds he’d sworn to protect. Innocent people and creatures would be killed. Families would be broken. He needed to survive and protect the light at the same time.
There was only one way out of this—relinquishing his angelic power. Doing so had reduced him to an ordinary human in the original form in which he was born.
He would never forget the look of disappointment and anger on Luna’s face. He had stood in front of her, an ordinary and injured man, looked into her eyes, and challenged her to kill him. He knew she wouldn’t do it. She hadn’t gotten what she’d come for. Killing him would be an acceptance of defeat, and she took failure poorly.
Not until she had roared in fury and run away had Jael realized she could have used their sisterly connections to find out that Charmine was with him. Now she would attack Charmine.
He looked down at his injured human body. He couldn’t run fast. He couldn’t fly. He had no power. Being human sucked.
“Don’t be too disappointed, Jael. You’re a good angel. I’d be happy to give you a second chance.”
The voice came from behind him. Jael turned around and said, “I don’t deal with Xiilok people, Arete.”
Arete chuckled. He stood eight feet tall, and long white hair covered half of his face, making him look even more mysterious and evil than he already was. He looked to be in his fifties, in Earth age, but Jael knew they had both been in their thirties when they’d chosen their very different paths and parted a few hundred years ago. Jael had retained his same look for a long time. But time hadn’t agreed as well with Arete.
“I thought angels held no prejudice against any creature,” Arete said.
“I’m no longer an angel.”
“I can see that.”
“So why are you here? I can’t help you. I can’t even help myself right now.”
“There is a way.”
Jael raised an eyebrow.
Arete smiled. “Come with me to Xiilok and be my commander. You have skills. You don’t need the power from the Gods.”
“My skills were given to me by the house of God
s. Although I’m no longer an angel, I can’t use those skills to serve the Gods’ adversaries.”
Arete laughed. “Oh no, I’m on your side this time. Luna is your enemy, and she is killing your wife right now.”
Jael shifted his stance.
“I know we didn’t part on good terms,” Arete continued, “but I guarantee you that we are on the same side. You want to protect the light and your family from Luna, and I don’t want Luna getting the light because she will become too strong for my liking. I don’t need competition.”
“How can I be sure you don’t want the light for yourself?”
Arete shook his head. “The light doesn’t work with my kind of dark magic.”
Jael nodded. “All right, and you promise to help me save my wife now?”
Arete nodded. “Of course.” Then he gestured Jael to follow him. Jael obeyed. Arete made it a few steps before Jael charged at him from behind. He pulled a knife from his boot, leaped into the air, and stabbed at Arete’s head. Arete ducked, and the knife cut off his left ear.
“You tried to stab me from behind!” he roared.
Jael cursed his human body. He wasn’t used to such slow movement. “Normally, stabbing someone from behind sounds bad. But I’m at a disadvantage here.”
“You don’t need to protect the light for those who have sold you short. How do you think Luna got the information about your mission? Didn’t you suspect a traitor in the house of Gods? Which is worse…a traitor or an adversary with good intentions?”
“Dead or alive, I will never betray the Gods. If Luna kills Charmine, her own blood sister, there is no good in your dark magic, regardless of what kind it is. You’ll never have good intentions toward the light of Gods.”
Arete swung his arms. A gust of wind picked up Jael’s body, spun him in the air, and smashed him down to the ground. He heard the bones in his body rattle. He knew he would be dead soon. Arete walked over and stomped his foot down on Jael’s chest, pinning him to the ground. “You’re wrong this time, Jael. I do want to save Charmine. And only you can lead me to her.”
“Why?”
Jael stomped his foot hard on Jael’s chest, making him spit out blood. “Do not question me.” He picked Jael up by the collar. “Find her, or she’ll be dead.”
While on the ground, Jael had grabbed the knife he had dropped. When Arete picked him up, he swung it and stabbed at him again, this time aiming for his heart. Quickly reacting, Arete’s hand turned into a long blade. It pierced Jael’s body from the front to the back. Arete pulled his steel hand out of Jael’s body, letting him collapse to the ground.
Arete was so upset he slashed randomly at the tall grass. “I should have known. You’d die for those who betrayed you in a heartbeat. Your wife would do the same. Righteous parents. Virtuous child. If Luna can convert your child, it will become the best of all evils. The strongest.” Arete hissed and growled. “We have to get to Charmine. I can’t let Luna get the child,” he said as he stomped around.
On the ground, Jael said, “I won’t let you have my child…”
Then he closed his eyes and drifted off into oblivion. He heard thunder exploding. He felt the wind. He felt himself flying. Then he felt comfort. Something soft and warm wrapped around his body. It felt like he was being cradled by strong feathered wings. He heard a soothing female voice echoing from a distance, “You’re a good angel, Jael. Hold on to your faith. You’re not alone.”
He tried to open his eyes, but all he saw was whiteness.
THIS IS THE END OF
OLEANDER - DARK SOLAR - BOOK 1
Wolfsbane - Dark Solar Trilogy - Book 2
Part I
Prologue
Scotland, 1864
Jael stared at the bloodstains on what used to be the peaceful Scottish greenfield. The grass had been killed by venomous fumes, which Jael was sure were coming from Luna, the dark magic sorceress. And the bloodstains belonged to Charmine, his newly wedded wife.
The scent of Charmine mixed with her blood and the ashes from the burned bush made his hands shake, his knees weaken, his heart race with fear, and his blood boil with rage.
Jael straightened up his body. He couldn't afford a mistake right now. He couldn’t let himself be weak. God had given him a second chance to live and reclaim his angel power. God wouldn't have sent him back here just to see he had failed his family. God wouldn't save his life just to let him learn he had let Charmine and their stillborn first child die at the hands of evil.
He traced his fingertips over the bloodstains. So much blood . . . but his wife was a fighter. He was sure she had survived this attack from her evil sister. Where are you, Charmine? His eyes desperately scanned the hillside.
He searched every inch of the vista, using every ounce of his energy along with the light source he had. He found nothing but trails of blood. Then, in the dead grass, he saw a leather-bound book covered in bloodstains. He picked it up. It was a fairy tale Charmine had just bought in town.
He had observed her from a distance as she went into the bookstore. He felt uneasy when she mixed in among humans in the middle of a crowded town. He didn't mind humans, but he disliked the supernatural creatures walking among them. The stray creatures were unpredictable, dangerous, and had a minimal sense of morality.
Jael kept at a distance to give Charmine some space. As an apprentice in the house of Gods, she rarely traveled to the outside world. Thus, whenever he had a chance, he took her on a mission with him. Earth was her favorite place in the cosmos.
When she left the busy town for the peaceful hillside, he had thought it was safe and had gone about his mission. That was one of the rare mistakes he had made in his life, and he could only hope it hadn’t cost him his family. He was the angel of light with the highest ranking in his council. He was the one who gave hope to his subjects—those he had sworn to protect. Now, when he needed hope, he wasn’t sure from whom he could ask it.
As the thought enraged him, he heard a noise from a large pile of charred grass. He darted over to it and yanked out a small creature. It had been wounded and burned so badly that he couldn’t tell what species it was. Judging by its charred skin and what was left of its face, the creature wouldn’t last long.
“What are you? Where are your people?” Jael asked without expecting a coherent answer. The creature looked like an elf. If so, it might have enough supernatural power to heal itself if he gave it some help.
He straightened the head of the creature, trying not to cause more damage to its badly damaged skin. The creature’s pointy left ear moved slightly, and it opened its two eyes that glowed like two large green lightbulbs. While its ears made it look like an elf, its eyes were certainly not those of an elf.
“Take it easy. If I give you some light, like a power source, would it help? I don’t want to push the light in if your body will reject it.”
The creature uttered a barely audible sound. “Please,” it said.
Jael nodded. He held the creature’s small hands and gently pushed some light energy into its body. In a short moment, its green eyes blinked and then opened wide, looking even larger than they did before. Some of its burned patches of skin started to heal. The healthy skin began to change from a shade of orange to light green and then to a deep blue.
“You’re a sea-elf!” Jael gasped. “How did you get up here? Let me take you back to the water.”
“No, I’m human.”
“What?”
“She made me.”
“She? Do you mean Luna?”
The creature nodded. “She took the heart of something at sea and put it inside me . . . just to keep it beating.”
“She ripped your human heart out?” Jael asked but didn’t need an answer. He knew what Luna had done. It was a ritual in dark sorcery to create supernatural creatures she could control. He had always thought it was a myth. Jael asked, “Did she . . . curse someone?” and this time, he didn’t wish for an answer.
The creature closed its eye
s, and in a short moment, its face started to form into the shape of a young man, but as it did, its heartbeat weakened, and its breathing started to labor.
“She changed you. You’re not meant to be on land. You’ll die,” Jael said.
“I’d rather die than live like this.”
Jael said nothing. He picked the man up in his arms, spread his wings, and flew toward the water.
“You’re an angel!” the man whispered.
“Yes, but I can’t bring you back from death. God created you, and it’s your decision to keep your life or not. But nobody has the right to take life or your heart away from you.”
“If you had come earlier, you could have saved her.”
Something inside him broke. It might have been his heart. Flying against the strong wind, he looked down and asked the man, “Did you see Luna kill my wife?”
“Oh . . . oh dear God, that was your wife? No, she fought hard. She didn’t die. She killed Luna. And as you can see, Luna burned everything before she died.”
“So why did you say I could have saved my wife if I’d come earlier?”
They had arrived at the coastline. Jael put him down close to the edge of the water. The man was weakening every second he drew in air. Jael dragged him into the water.
“Angel, what is your name?”
“I’m Jael. I am the angel of light.”
“I want to die as a man.”
“Not on my watch. I can’t let you do that.”
“Luna cursed your child before she died.”
Jael stopped breathing for a second. “With what?”
“She planted the heart in me and took me to the hill. I heard her chanting a spell, and I think she wanted to place this heart into your wife’s body after she cursed your child to have no heart. She was going to rip the heart out of your wife and replace it with this one . . .”
Jael stopped dragging the man to deep water. The man stood up as he had now regained some strength.
“She cursed our child?”
