by D. N. Leo
“Yes, I’m so sorry. Your wife killed her after that. But the curse had been completed.”
“Did you see where my wife went?”
The man shook his head. “No, but she didn’t go by herself. She was hurt badly. Someone took her, and I saw its shadow. Whoever or whatever it was, it was very large. I couldn’t see much. I’m sorry. It might have wings . . . just like yours. But I don’t think it was an angel.”
“Why?”
The man looked at Jael. “Because angels don’t rip someone’s heart out with their bare hands. That thing took Luna’s heart. Then it grabbed your wife and vanished.”
Jael nodded. “You should go.”
The man bowed. “I owe you my life,” he said then dove into the water and swam away.
Jael looked to the horizon where the water met the sky. He swore to bring Charmine and their child home. He was an angel, and he had been protecting his subjects without fail for more than a hundred years. Now, the most important subjects in his life were in trouble. If he failed to save his own family, wouldn’t it defeat the whole purpose of God creating him?
Among those at the same rank, he was the best of them all. In a hundred years of battle, he had lost only once. And that loss was to the person who had just taken Charmine.
1
Dinah walked around the exclusive chemical lab at the headquarters of LeBlanc Pharmaceuticals in London. It had been three days, and she hadn't been able to develop the compound Ciaran had asked her to make. In Iilos, she would have blamed limited resources. She looked around and sighed. Any government in the cosmos would be drooling just to get their hands on this lab. The slow process could be because she had never before made weapons of this caliber. Or maybe she wasn't as good as she had thought and should settle for being a private investigator rather chemical engineer. But damn it, she liked chemistry.
Dinah frowned and rubbed her thumb on the button of the weaponry jacket Ciaran had made for her. He always asked for two-hundred percent commitment from those who worked for him. He wasn’t king of the most prosperous universe in the multiverse for no reason.
A week ago, Earth time, Arete had challenged Ciaran, his council, and Arik to the second round of the multiversal hologame. Xiilok rebels had used a toxic fume that had nearly killed Ciaran and Madeline, and Ciaran believed they'd use an even more lethal weapon against them in the game. He wanted Dinah to create a compound that would protect them and prevent them from being affected.
“Piece of cake! I'll just pull the formula out of my ear,” she said to the computer monitor which was streaming out test results that amplified the magnitude of her failure.
She raised her arms in the air in frustration then let them fall at her sides. Turning around, she walked straight into a trolley at the corner of the room, sending lab tubes and equipment shattering all over the floor.
“Ow!”
She had bumped her hip on the side of the trolley. She wasn’t clumsy, but her frustration with the task at hand had cause her to be careless.
“You’re such a klutz, Dinah.” Her business partner grinned from the doorway.
“I’m not in a good mood, Cooper!”
He sauntered in without an invitation and sat on her lab stool. She was only five foot two, so she had adjusted the height of the stool to suit her needs. Cooper readjusted it so that his lanky body could settle comfortably. “You won’t be in a good mood being around Arik.”
“Well, I’ll need to use that chair soon because someone has to develop a chemical compound to protect us in the upcoming multiversal hologame.”
“I’ve been working out all night. My muscles are screaming. Can I sit for a bit?”
Dinah wagged a threatening finger at him. “I made those fake ab muscles for you. Remember that I can take them back.”
He gestured up and down his torso. “They’re already gone . . . when Ciaran shot at me in the market, remember? But I’m happy with the way I look now. I work out just to improve my agility.”
“Jenny and her martial arts have had some good influence on you then?”
“No one can influence me. I’m always comfortable in my own skin.”
Dinah rolled her eyes. “Says one who begged for fake abdomen muscles a short while ago!”
“Come on, can we not talk about that?”
“Yes, sure, if you stop calling me a klutz.”
“It’s a deal. Listen, I’m here to ask you for a favor.”
“Naturally.” Dinah rolled her eyes again. “I won’t make you a love potion.”
“No, that’s not what I need. But if I don’t get this problem figured out, no love potion will help.”
Dinah frowned. “Are you okay?”
Cooper shook his head. “I’ve been thinking about the sound I heard when I called you from Iilos and didn’t get a response.”
“You said it sounded like a space creature. And it made perfect sense because we’d just had a fight before that, and they took my communication unit.”
“Yes, but hear me out. I don’t think it’s just any sound. It was a static noise, like someone was tuning for frequency from the multiverse.”
“Yes, we knew that, Cooper. Arete and his people were searching for some kind of frequency, and they had been manipulating Arik’s brain waves. That was why he heard crazy music and all that.”
“Yes, but I thought about it again, and it’s not that simple. Or maybe it is in Arik’s case. But in my case, when I played that sound again and again in my head, it started to make some sense. If I rearrange some of the tune, it’s like a song. And in my last attempt, I think I got it right.”
Dinah raised an eyebrow.
He sighed. “When it formed some sort of sensible tune, it shot a shock wave through my body. The energy in me surged and then subsided.” He stood up and looked at her. “Unfortunately, it stayed that way. At the subsided level.”
“So you lack energy? You need a vitamin shot?”
He raked his hands through his hair. “It’s not that kind of energy. It’s my libido.”
“Cooper! You have officially crossed the line of our business partnership! You want me to help you get your rocks off?”
“Lower your voice, Dinah. Come on!”
“Cooper, I know masculine performance is important for a man. But we’re on a mission here. The multiverse is in trouble. Lives are at stake. And you’re worried about your libido?”
“I’m the one who’s making sacrifices for the greater good here, telling you about my manliness problem and all.”
“How is that sacrificing?”
“I think the control from the badasses who are hunting for the apertures has something to do with chemicals and a mind-controlling frequency. But you know that much. I also think they tried to either control or get information about something much more primal than that. Like sexual urges. I mean, think about it. In one sequence, my libido is up. Reversing it, my libido is down. And that was controlled across the cosmos.”
Dinah nodded. “They’re trying to control senses.” She paced the room. “This is bad. Really bad. Senses rely on the immediate environment, and that’s impossible to formulate without extensive simulation. That’s beyond my skill set. But Ciaran can do it.”
“Wait, you’re not going to tell Ciaran about my libido problem, are you?”
“How else am I going to explain about the controlling of energy via multiversal frequencies?”
“Just say energy . . . or senses.”
“Yes, but sexual urges are a primal sense. Those urges control human beings in a lot of ways. What if we miss out on the bigger picture by omitting that information?”
“I don’t know . . .” Cooper said in frustration.
“It looks like we’re having a heated debate about lab results?” Ciaran said from the doorway.
2
Arik hunched down at a desk in the private apartment block of LeBlanc Pharmaceutical headquarters. He had been here before—during the time he buddied up
with Ciaran and everyone else in the LeBlanc family. His mind wandered back to the time when things fell apart—he knew Ciaran had deliberately put him in this corner to prevent him from encountering staff.
He was supposed to trace back to the time he’d met the Xiilok people and figure out how Arete had played with the multiversal frequency of his brain waves. Ciaran bet Arete hit randomly at anyone who was prone to the signals.
But what would Arete’s endgame be?
Arik wanted to pace the room but thought better of it, so he stayed focused on the task at hand. He was taking notes of all possible events and incidents around the time he met the yellow shield tribe in Xiilok.
Arik wasn’t into computer games, let alone the multiversal hologame. He barely comprehended the concept. The multiverse was Ciaran’s turf. Arik thought he could contribute in a small way by recalling and recording exactly what had happened the day he first saw the aperture. But bad memories plagued his mind and kept breaking his concentration. He closed his eyes to rest and leaned back in the chair. The clock on the wall teased.
Tick tock.
Tick tock.
It was as if the clock was counting down the time left until the multiversal hologame challenge.
He thought he had settled in as a professor at Oxford University, living his own quiet life. Apparently, someone or something out there in the cosmos didn’t accept his life of peace.
He turned around, responding to a gentle knock at the door, and saw Dinah. The sight of her always refreshed and brightened his mood, no matter what his state of mind.
He still chuckled to himself when he thought about the first time they met when she had somersaulted into his lecture theater, struck a spectacular pose upon landing, flung one high-heeled red shoe at him, and unintentionally ejected one of the wings in her weaponry suit.
It had only been a short time since they’d met, but he found it hard to imagine life—after this multiversal attack event was over and he had to go to Xiilok—without Dinah in it. He’d gotten used to seeing the fragile, porcelain skin on that foxy oval face, and her pouting lips, especially when she tried to tease him or when she disagreed with him. He loved the long, black hair that wrapped around her shoulders. He was sure she intentionally brushed his skin with it whenever she walked past him, jolting his system with inexplicable sensation.
“Dinah.” He smiled.
She entered the room graciously. Arik reached over and pulled a trolley of books he had just ordered from the university aside because he had some odd feeling that Dinah would bump into that hard object on her way in.
“If Ciaran has sent you, no, I haven’t anything for him.”
She smiled. “Yes, Ciaran sends me. But no, he didn’t expect you to have anything done yet. We have a change of plans.”
“Why can’t he talk to me himself?”
“He was about to, but I asked if I could talk to you first.”
Arik raised an eyebrow, waiting. As Dinah moved closer to him, he felt a wave rush through his body. There was nothing wrong with being attracted to a beautiful woman, but the timing was poor. Arik shook his head to clear the thoughts out of his mind.
“Why not?” Dinah asked.
“I’m sorry, what did you just say?”
“I said we should have a clear plan before you enter Mon Ciel because the history you have with Ciaran might mess with your head.”
“It is now!” he muttered.
“What?”
“Never mind. So I guess Ciaran wants me to enter Mon Ciel to retrieve some information from Juliette?”
Dinah nodded.
“Why can’t he do it himself? Do you know how sacred that palace is to his family?”
“He told me they have very strict security, and that he’ll have to ask someone to take you in. You might know that the place is protected by a multiversal frequency shield designed to prevent any creatures from the multiverse entering.”
“I know now.” He sighed. “Ciaran and Madeline are Eudaizian now. That means they can’t get into their own home. What a twisted fate!” Arik leaned back in his chair.
“Well, you might not be able to enter after you officially become a Xiilok tribe leader. But you’re still human now, so we have a small window. But that’s not why I’m here.”
Arik approached. Dinah was small, and the top of her head barely reached his chest, so he lifted her up and sat her on the desk. He bent down, bracing his hands on the edge of the desk, and looked into her beautiful dark eyes. She blinked at him, and a tiny lash dropped onto her cheek. Her lips pouted slightly and parted as if inviting him to do the unthinkable.
“So why are you here? Hit me with the naked truth.”
He felt as if he was outside his body, seeing himself approaching a woman without permission—the type of behavior he would only dare if he wanted a slap across the face. Or the type of thing he would have done when he was much younger.
“Arik!” she whispered with her mouth next to his ear.
“Yes,” he said and turned. His lips almost touched the nape of her neck. He could feel the lust pulsing inside his body as he brushed his lips against her smooth skin.
“Arik!” she called out softly.
“Yes, Dinah!” He was going to kiss that skin.
“You’re too close.”
His surge of energy was brought to an abrupt halt. He jerked back, panting. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I did that.” He felt out of breath and slightly dizzy.
Dinah held his shoulders. “Take it easy, Arik. That’s why I’m here. And that’s what I need to talk to you about.”
He nodded and sat down.
Dinah continued. “In a nutshell, Ciaran believes that Juliette was working on an exotic compound before she died. And that compound might be the essential base for what I am trying without success to develop now. We don’t have much time left before the challenge. So the quickest way to prepare is to get Juliette’s formula, and I can work from there.”
“What’s the big deal here, Dinah? I can go in and grab the potion you need from Mon Ciel.”
“There are two things you need to be aware of. First, Juliette didn’t have the compound completed. Otherwise, Ciaran would have known. She did have the ingredients, though, and only you might be able to tell what they are.”
“Me? I don’t know anything about chemical compounds.”
“But you do know Juliette.”
Arik snorted. “Not well enough apparently.”
“You were connected. Both you and Ciaran once loved that woman. And because of that connection, you will be able to tell.”
“Because?”
“Because Juliette practiced alchemy.”
“What?”
“Yes. Compounds or potions created from that practice have spiritual meanings that only connected people can read. And to connect back to the path of mind, you have to open up your feelings for Juliette. It’ will be like opening up an old wound, and it will hurt.”
Arik looked away, out the window for a moment. Then he turned back to Dinah. “All right. I can handle that. What’s the second issue?”
Dinah smiled. “That’s what Ciaran said. You can handle the first issue easily. The second one deals with your own emotional energy.”
“Emotions again? Are you guys psychoanalyzing me like I’m a woman?”
“That’s sexist, Arik.”
“I’m sorry. Go on.”
“You know you’re prone to the multiversal frequency for some unknown reason. When you are opening up to connect with Juliette’s past practice, you will be most vulnerable. Cooper had played with the frequency just a bit, and it affected his . . . let’s call it his masculine performance.”
Arik raised an eyebrow.
Dinah continued. “He’s fine now. But he can detach the frequency from his mind, control it, and analyze it because we are not human. You are human, and you can’t do what Cooper did. So if the frequency influences you, or if Arete is playing any tricks when you
’re in Mon Ciel—”
“I’m going cuckoo.”
“Yes. And I am one hundred percent sure insanity is the result of being attacked by the multiversal frequency when opening your human emotion channels to the unknown. I don’t know much about human emotions, but I’m an expert in multiversal mixed chemistry and brain waves. I know what it can do to you.”
Arik paced back and forth then returned to Dinah. “So does Ciaran want me to go in or not? Why did he send you?”
“He is very sure you will accept the task if he asks you.”
“Cocky bastard.”
“He sent me to tell you that you have every opportunity to say no. This is not your war. And he will totally understand if you decline.”
Arik approached Dinah and tilted her chin up to look into her eyes. “What do you think, Dinah?”
“I don’t have an opinion on this because my mind doesn’t work the same way. I know life and death, but I can’t judge what it’s like to lose your mind. With my makeup, it will never happen to me. But judging by how concerned Ciaran was about this, I’m saying you should decline. Also, I think you and Ciaran should decline the game, too. The most the both of you will lose is your bet.”
“The bet is the Earth’s population, Dinah.”
“Yes, it’s a lot of creatures to lose. A big bet. But you’ll be the tribe leader in Xiilok. And Ciaran is king of Eudaiz, the most prosperous universe in the multiverse. Your lives are precious. Earth is only a small planet.”
“You don’t get it, Dinah.”
“No, I’m sorry, but I don’t. If the multiverse is at war, there will be losses and sacrifices. I don’t understand how, when you and Ciaran got tangled up with the human issue, your great minds stopped working objectively.”
“Because we’re human. Regardless of whomever or whatever we might become, we were born and raised as human. Thus human interests will always be our priority.”
Dinah nodded. “So what are you saying?”
He looked into her eyes and said, “I’m in.”
3
Madeline stepped out of the car and looked at the magnificent Mon Ciel, a palace resting imposingly on a hilltop in the exclusive area of Henley-on-Thames. The place had belonged to the LeBlanc family for a long time and bore many marks of their legacy. For her, this was the home that held many memories of Ciaran and her, of their relationship and how they had become soul mates.
