by D. N. Leo
She yelled, seemingly speaking to the air, "Grandfather, if you are the one who sent Juliette, please stop her! I'll go with you! I’ll go wherever you want. Just release Ciaran!"
Ciaran's body dropped to the ground in the center of the funnel after hitting the top of a tree. He spat out blood as he hit the ground hard. His wound had reopened and started to bleed.
Tadgh charged the tornado, trying to get to his brother. The wind wall spun him away, tossing him against a tombstone like he was a mere pebble. There was no way Tadgh would be able to penetrate the circle of wind. It was too powerful.
Ciaran shook his head. “You can’t get in, Tadgh. Don’t hurt yourself.” Ciaran was in the center of the whirling storm. He appeared to be in the eye of the tornado. He leaned on a tree and slowly pulled himself to his feet.
The holographic Juliette appeared next to him and smiled. "Welcome to my world. You're mine now, Ciaran. Forever. Dead or alive." She reached her hand out to grab him.
Her hand would have been cut off had she not withdrawn it quickly enough. A blue lightning bolt struck right between Ciaran and Juliette. Confused and angry, Juliette staggered a few steps backward.
In the middle of the tornado, the woman who stood between Juliette and Ciaran was as beautiful as an angel.
Ciaran stepped closer to the woman. She wore a long, white robe with a furred hood. He could not see her hair, but Ciaran guessed it was long, wavy, and as white as clouds. Her milky skin was almost transparent, and her big blue eyes were striking and oddly familiar.
Ciaran had seen those eyes before.
Unlike Juliette, this woman was not a hologram. The energy coming from her warmed the air around him. He could feel her physical presence.
"Ayana Dee," Juliette grunted with resentment.
Ayana gave Ciaran a warm glance and a gentle smile. Then, she quickly whirled around, snapping at Juliette. "You injured a successor. You are now exiled."
"Since when is he a successor?" Juliette growled.
Ayana grabbed Ciaran's left arm to reveal the golden crucifix tattoo. She pressed her thumb onto Ciaran’s left arm. The contact burned his flesh, glowed, and sparked out some flames.
Ciaran grunted in pain. It felt as if his body was going to disintegrate. Every cell seemed to shift, wanting to move away from the cell next to it. He slumped to the ground.
“His successor position has now been sealed.” Ayana studied the burn mark on Ciaran’s arm with satisfaction. She pulled him up and spun him outside the circle of wind that had imprisoned him.
Ciaran’s body rolled across the ground toward Madeline and Tadgh, and they darted toward him. Ciaran sat up and spat out more blood onto the ground. His insides felt like mashed potatoes. Everything around him appeared to be floating in a haze.
"Biological imprint. That's Bran's seal. I am authorized to activate it," Ayana said.
"But Ciaran didn’t give his consent," Juliette protested.
"He did."
"When?"
"Before your time. I assume your development stopped when your earthly body died. But even with the mind of a twenty-one-year-old, you should be able to understand that your position comes with great responsibility. Don’t be petty about what happened to you on Earth.”
“Petty! My life was cut short! You might think it’s petty to be angry about that, but for those of us born and raised on this filthy planet, we have only one life. Taking a life is not petty!” Juliette cried.
“So what exactly are you trying to do with Ciaran?”
“He’s mine!” Juliette looked like a child having a temper tantrum, like she wanted to stomp her feet in anger. But she was able to refrain from doing so.
Ayana shook her head. “You’re still a child, and I am afraid you’ll never grow up.” Ayana waved her arms in the air. The air pressure crushed Juliette's hologram. She heaved and hissed in anger.
"You don't have the power to exile me."
"Maybe not. But I can certainly constrain all of your power."
"No, you can't!" Juliette yelled.
A spark of white light cut through the air, and the hologram of Richard Kelley appeared.
"We need her,” he said. “You can't do this Ayana."
Madeline called out from outside the light circle, "Grandfather!"
“He comes for you, doesn’t he? Well, I won’t let him take you.” Ciaran stood up, pulling Madeline away. He could hardly walk. Each movement he made felt like he was trying to move a mountain. Madeline wrapped her arm around his waist to support him. Tadgh was right behind. They rushed toward the car.
Inside the wind circle, Ayana crushed Juliette harder. Juliette's hologram looked as if it was disintegrating. Richard then swung his white sword and broke through the air pressure around Juliette.
"You need Juliette to balance your power, don't you? You’re selfish, Richard."
Richard sneered. "We have no real leadership now. If I don't take care of my power, who will?"
"Eudaiz is a place for everyone. You don’t have to overpower the council. The thirty-three-year cycle has come. We will have a new leader.”
"No, Ayana. If we can’t get stronger, we’ll be ruined. I can't let you restrain Juliette."
“She will be the one who ruins us. Every day Ciaran is still on this planet, we’re vulnerable. And yet all she can see is her petty resentment."
“But she’s a certainty. He’s not.” Richard pointed at Ciaran. “I’m taking Juliette with me.” He approached Juliette.
“You underestimate me, Richard.” Ayana turned toward Madeline and waved her arm.
Madeline slumped to the ground and covered her ears. "That jingle, that sound again," she said. It was the same sound she had heard from Mrs. Hanson and the Roman soldiers. It was a sound that made her head feel like it was exploding. And now it was coming from Ayana.
Ciaran grabbed her. He helped to cover her ears, but it didn’t seem to help at all. Madeline’s nose started to bleed.
Ciaran charged back toward the tornado. "Ayana, tell me what you want and I'll do it."
Ciaran couldn’t penetrate the wind wall. He stood there, helpless.
Richard tightened his grip on his sword. Ayana cocked an eyebrow at him in challenge. "Juliette or Madeline. Choose."
"Richard, Madeline is your granddaughter!" Ciaran shouted at Richard.
"You don't know anything, Ciaran."
"Your ally or your granddaughter, Richard?" Ayana said dryly, her face as cold as steel.
Richard turned toward Madeline. "Madeline, I now name you the successor of Sciphil One. Do you accept?"
"Accept what?" Madeline puffed out the question.
Ayana's composure wavered slightly. It was surprise and anger that Ciaran saw on her face. He recalled Ayana telling Juliette before that she could not hurt a successor. It could work. Although they might be jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire, he didn’t have any other solution at the moment.
Ciaran staggered back, kneeling next to Madeline. Tadgh cradled her in his arms. She was fading. Blood came out of her nose and trickled from her mouth.
"Madeline, they can’t hurt a successor of whatever it was he said. Just accept it. Please,” Ciaran said.
“Are you sure her soul is virtuous?” Ayana said.
“I’m sure,” Richard said. “She lived on this bloody planet, and she works as a journalist. Her soul is probably like a nun’s by this point, which is very unfortunate.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Ciaran asked.
“A virtuous soul belongs to someone who has never killed an innocent. If her soul isn’t virtuous, succeeding a Sciphil position will only kill her,” Ayana said, casting a glance at Madeline, who was on the verge of passing out.
"I need you to stay alive. Please just say yes." Ciaran wiped the blood from her face. His hands shook uncontrollably. He wasn’t sure if he shook more because he was weakened or because he feared losing her.
"I can’t lose you, Madeline. Accep
t whatever it is. We will work out the next step,” he said.
She closed her eyes.
“No, Madeline, don’t leave me. Don’t do this to me. Just say yes.”
The world was a blur to Ciaran. Blood was everywhere. His blood. Her blood. He didn’t know which was which. He grabbed Madeline from Tadgh and held her in his arms. "Please."
Richard repeated, "My granddaughter, I name you as the successor of Sciphil One. Do you accept?"
Ciaran hadn’t a shred of strength left in him, but he would fight until he was sure she survived. He held her in his arms and waited.
Then, to his relief, she nodded. "Yes, I accept."
Ayana withdrew the sound wave immediately. She moved close to the wind wall without stepping outside and said dryly, “I hope it’s worth it, Ciaran. Remember, the day you accept the responsibility, many lives are in your hands. So choose your actions very carefully.” She turned and disappeared as quickly as she had appeared.
“Which position? What am I responsible for?” Ciaran asked, although he knew Ayana was gone and couldn’t hear him.
Richard grabbed Juliette, and they both disappeared along with the tornado.
The chilly cemetery returned to its eerie quietness. In front of Madeline, Ciaran, and Tadgh was a scene from a war zone.
Madeline recovered soon after the sound stopped. Ciaran spat out more blood. The surgical wound on his chest continued to bleed. He stood up and staggered back toward the destroyed tomb.
On the platform, Juliette's coffin was open. The inside was empty. He wasn’t hallucinating. The body hadn’t just blown away in the wind. The interior of the coffin appeared to be completely intact.
Juliette’s body had never been inside the coffin.
Ciaran glanced around in shock. What had happened to his world? Then it dawned on him. His mother had opened Mon Ciel’s security shield once, an impossible task to do by herself. There were only two people with the access code to the shield—himself and his father.
Ciaran scrambled toward his father's grave, which had also been blown open by Juliette's tornado. His father's coffin was not just empty—it had obviously been without a body inside for twenty years.
He stood completely still for a moment. It seemed as though the ground was shifting under his feet. He turned and left the tomb floor. He stumbled toward Madeline as she ran to him, reaching him just as he passed out cold on the ground.
Chapter 77
The world gradually came back to Ciaran as he opened his eyes. Ayana’s voice still echoed in his head, “Are you sure her soul is virtuous?” Ciaran wasn’t sure if he had forced Madeline into a dead end. He was a bit afraid of another one of Juliette’s scenarios.
Had Madeline killed before? he wondered.
It wasn’t just any killing, but the killing of an innocent that he worried about. He couldn’t see signs of such violence in her. But if she had killed someone, surely she wouldn’t have accepted what Richard had offered.
Ciaran gazed at the ceiling of his bedroom at Mon Ciel for a few minutes to regain his bearings. Suddenly, his view was pleasantly obstructed by the gorgeous green eyes of Jo looking at him.
“Hey, White Knight, you’re back!” She grinned and slid her arm underneath his back to help him sit up in his bed. It surprised Ciaran how strong Jo was given her petite physique.
“How's your shoulder, Jo?”
She shifted the shoulder that had been dislocated during the fight at Fountains Abbey and smiled. “See? No need for a sling. Let me get you some water."
She got up to get the water from a jug sitting on the side table.
Ciaran took the glass of water. "Thanks. Where’s Madeline?"
"Down at the library, talking things over with Tadgh. Strategies. Important matters. Things that happened at the cemetery."
Ciaran nodded.
"Aren't you thirsty?" Jo pointed at the glass of water that he still held in his hand.
Ciaran laughed. "I know they asked you to drug me when I woke up. But you’ll have to be a bit more subtle than that to fool me, Jo."
"Damn it," Jo muttered.
He turned the glass of water around in a circle. “How long have you known Madeline?”
“As long as I can remember. I think we met at school. Why do you ask?”
Ciaran smiled. “You’re Madeline’s friend. I’d just like to get to know you a bit more.”
“You want to know me? Or Madeline?”
Ciaran chuckled. “Both. Do you like Tadgh?”
Jo sat down at his bedside, looked straight into his eyes, and answered without even the slightest squirm, “He’s not my type.”
Ciaran nodded. She didn’t even sugarcoat it. Jo intrigued him. Strong-minded. Strong-willed. Just the type that would stupefy his brother. Ciaran shifted his body to get off the bed. Jo stood up, hands on her hips.
“I wasn’t able to drug you, but I’m very sure I can knock you out. Lie down, Ciaran.”
Ciaran smiled. “I need to get to my computer. It’s very important.”
“Can’t let you. Doctor’s orders.”
“Or Madeline’s?”
“Same thing. She can be pretty scary when she’s pissed off.”
“All right. Here’s the deal. You either let me work on my computer or simply answer my questions. Then I won’t need to move.”
Jo bit her pouting bottom lip. “As long as the questions aren’t too tricky, shoot.”
“Does Madeline have a criminal record?”
Jo laughed. “No.”
“Does she have any record of committing violence against others?”
“Of course not. Give her a white dress, and she’d turn into Cinderella. Or a nun. Why are you asking? Honestly?”
“What about off the record? I’m asking for your opinion here.”
The smile faded from Jo’s face. She stared at Ciaran and said nothing.
“I love her. You know that by now. Do you think I’d do anything to harm her?”
Jo shook her head. “I know you wouldn’t. But it’s not you that I’m worried about. It’s Madeline herself.”
His blood ran cold, and fear pounded in his head. He was suddenly afraid that his gut instinct had been right, that it couldn’t be as easy as making a promise to be a successor of Sciphil One to solve the problem Ayana had presented.
“I don’t know. I want to know the answer to that, too,” Jo said.
“Why, Jo?”
“Because I want to know if I was responsible for making her do the unthinkable. I can’t make her talk. Why don’t you try, Ciaran? Ask her what happened in Australia ten years ago.”
“You think she might have killed someone?”
“As I said, I don’t know what happened. I was there with her. And when I woke up, those people were dead.”
“Why do you think you’d be responsible if Madeline killed them?”
He stood up to go to the computer. Jo didn’t stop him this time. “Don’t bother looking up the records, Ciaran. There’s nothing to find. I wiped it. That was the only time I hacked into any system.”
He turned around and looked at Jo. There was the gleam of tears in her eyes, but she didn’t let any fall.
“I’m sorry about what happened to you, Jo. And I’m sorry I had to ask about it.”
Ciaran reached out to embrace her, but she stepped back. She looked him square in the eye. “The man was trying to rape me. He knocked me unconscious. When I came to, it was already over. Everyone was dead, and Madeline was there. So ask her if she killed them because of me. I need to know.”
She couldn’t hold back any longer, and tears rolled down her face. “Everything was burned to the ground. All Madeline told me was that there had been an accident, and she only had enough time to drag me out. But I know she was lying.”
“I’ll ask . . .”
Suddenly the migraine hit him in a tremendous wave. Ciaran grabbed his head and slumped to the floor. A distant voice pierced his mind, stabbing his brain l
ike shards of glass. He’d heard this voice before, but this time it wasn’t the usual robotic monotone voice. It was one with an Irish accent.
“We’re finally connected, Ciaran,” it said. “It’s about time you come back to us to fulfill your duty.”
“Who are you?” Ciaran asked. The person didn’t seem to hear his question. The static noise continued, and the voice kept ranting.
“Thirty-three years I’ve been waiting, Ciaran. It’s time.”
The voice was so distorted that Ciaran couldn’t make sense of what he was trying to say.
Jo held Ciaran’s shoulders. “Ciaran, look at me. Ciaran . . . Take this water . . . Who are you talking to?”
“Speak clearer,” said Ciaran. “I can’t hear you, goddamnit. What is Sciphil? What does Madeline have to do with any of this?”
“Madeline . . . Madeline . . . she’s the key . . .” The voice faded away.
“No, no! Don’t go! What’s Sciphil?” His vision was blurry. He tried to hang on to the sound of the voice as much as possible, but it seemed to have gone completely away.
“You’re bleeding, Ciaran.” Jo wiped the blood that trickled from his nose. “Not another Sciphil. I have had enough of this . . .”
Ciaran blinked. “What did you just say, Jo?”
Chapter 78
Ciaran punched the call button on the intercom in his office. A short moment later, Tadgh and Madeline appeared at the door. Ciaran looked at Madeline. His views about her had changed. Much more than the woman he loved, in front of him stood a world of secrets that he had to explore.
Madeline cocked an eyebrow at Jo, who was sitting comfortably with a laptop on a reading chair. “I tried to drug him, but he figured it out,” Jo said in response to Madeline’s look.
Ciaran smiled and gestured to the table and chair in the far corner where they could sit. Tadgh frowned.
“Are you okay to be up and about? I’ll call Doctor Thomas, Ciaran.”
“You can pull a better threat than that, Tadgh. Coffee anyone?”
“I’ll have one, please,” Madeline said.
Ciaran went to the coffee machine. “I told Jo about what happened at the cemetery. We need to decipher a few puzzles before we can plan any strategies to deal with the problem at hand. What’s a Sciphil, and what does being a successor mean?” Ciaran sat down on the sofa with a tray of coffee for everyone.
