Totem of Aries Read online

  “There’s no such place,” he said. “I typed the record in myself when I let the women check out.”

  “Shouldn’t your medical assistant be doing record entries?”

  The doctor shook his head. “I couldn’t find her at the front desk, so I entered the information myself. But this isn’t what I entered.”

  A tall man in uniform who had just come from the LeBlanc helicopter looked at Ciaran, waiting for instructions.

  “Where is Doctor Thomas?” Ciaran asked.

  “At the lab in the London headquarters, Ciaran. He said based on what you described, he’d need the best equipment. But some of the things he needed weren’t available, so he personally came to the lab to make arrangements. So we don’t have the patient now, sir?”

  Ciaran shook his head. “When did you receive the dispatch call?”

  “An hour ago. We could have dispatched the helicopter as soon as you called, but something went wrong at the dispatch center, and we didn’t receive the signal and clear the flight until forty-five minutes later. Doctor Thomas wasn’t happy about that.”

  “What happened at dispatch?”

  “I’m not sure, sir. I was told it was technical. Something to do with the database.”

  So he lost time somewhere after the emergency call and the encounter with the female doctor at the exit door. Ciaran contemplated the situation as he absently fingered the sword in his jacket again. It was still there, but the owner of the sword was gone. And an hour of his time had just inexplicably vanished, as had the ghostly woman who wanted to kill him.

  “You can go back to headquarters now,” Ciaran told the man. “I’ll talk to Doctor Thomas.”

  As the medical staff went about their business, Ciaran walked back to the hallway where he’d encountered the woman with the sword. He pushed the stairwell door open and cautiously peered inside.

  No one and nothing was there. He thought it might be his imagination, but the air seemed to have an eerie feel to it. Then he saw a flickering image, and a human shape started to form. He resisted the temptation to approach, holding the door open and remaining outside in the well-lit corridor. He wasn’t afraid. He was intrigued. But he wasn’t stupid.

  The image formed, but this time it was an older and kind-looking woman. “Ciaran!” she said with a soothing voice.

  “Who are you?”

  “I mean you no harm.”

  “Who was the woman who helped me before, and what was the thing that tried to kill me? And who are you?”

  “You have far too many questions, Ciaran. I came to thank you for saving my Margaret.”

  “I didn’t save her. She wouldn’t have been in this situation if it weren’t for me.”

  “It was her fate.”

  “I am not a believer.”

  “Well, then you should start now. Don’t you wonder why you met the woman with the sword you’re holding now inside your jacket? Margaret was told not to do that research project. She insisted. Then she went out of her way to make it happen. And the consequence was that she met you in front of the library.”

  “That had nothing to do with fate. Margaret told me she loved her topic of study. And who are you? Why are you here telling me all this?”

  “I am in charge of her soul.”

  Ciaran laughed.

  “If you don’t believe in these matters, why are you trying to stay in the lighted hallway out there? Come on in here.”

  “I’m sure you know that something tried to kill me in there. I’m not stupid, and I’m not impulsive. A simple challenge from you isn’t going to lure me in. Why don’t you come out here instead?”

  The woman smiled. “13 Black Rose Avenue, Heaven Path is a real address. It’s where you can find Margaret.” The woman’s image flickered and then vanished before Ciaran could ask any more questions.

  Chapter 11

  “Put me down, Alex.” It was the third time she had called out to him. He had been running with his vampire speed for the last twenty or so minutes. It felt like he was moving faster than a car. But maybe it was only her imagination. She didn’t think she was a hundred percent yet after the soul trader had attacked her left foot. Alex stopped, dropped her to the ground, and flopped down to the ground himself. She thought if he were alive and actually had any breath, he might be panting now.

  “Here’s your food.” She thrust a bag of blood at him. He grabbed it and devoured the contents.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked.

  “I should ask you that. Your scent suggested you were in deep trouble. What was that about?”

  “I have a weak point, and the soul trader nearly got it.”

  Alex scrambled to his feet. “Where is the soul trader?”

  “Gone. It was in a woman’s form—or rather, in a form that would disgrace all women. I think it’s a shapeshifter. As for how it’s related to vampires, I don’t know. The sword certainly injured it, but it healed instantly.”

  “How can you be so sure it’s the right one?”

  “I’m not. It’s just a gut feeling. Now that I think about it, it might not be the right one. The attempt to go after Ciaran might have been a decoy to get to me.”

  Madeline recalled the incident and shuddered. Without Ciaran there, she would have been dead. If that had happened, what would be the consequences for her family in the future? She had never thought about death this way. It had always been Ciaran who thought about things like that. She relied on him too much. Now, on her own, she realized several of her plans had been short-term and impulsive.

  “Where are we?” she asked, glancing around.

  “I have no idea.”

  “You meant you ran aimlessly for the last twenty minutes?”

  Alex shrugged. “I just felt the need to run.”

  Madeline slowly got up to her feet. She scanned the area with her eyes. It was too dark to see what was around her, but she felt a chill run up her spine. “Do you mean you feel an impulse to run?”

  Alex must have guessed what she was implying. His previous encounter with the other vampire was prompted by something that had caused his adrenaline level to surge. The same thing might be nearby, waiting for him. “We have company,” he muttered.

  She whirled around and switched on both her eudqi and her mind tracker ability. It wouldn’t help her healing process at all—she should let her injury heal naturally. But the situation called for it, and she had no choice.

  Her mind’s eye detected a sea of blue and gray bubbles surrounding them. These bubbles were minds that she would normally be able to track. But these weren’t active minds. They hovered like lost spirits. “I think I’m seeing the minds of the dead,” she told him.

  “We’re in a cemetery,” Alex said as he scanned the ground.

  An image hit Madeline’s mind like a storm from hell—a woman in blue dress floated in the air, a dagger piercing her heart. Her eyes opened, looking down at Madeline. Her lips moved as if she was trying to say something, but no words came out. Madeline’s knees buckled. She turned her vision off and found Alex holding her.

  “What is it, Madeline? I know you’re psychic. What did you see?”

  “A dead woman floating in the air. And a dagger in her heart.”

  “We’re in a cemetery, but I don’t think the woman you saw is dead,” Alex said as he gazed into the darkness in front of them.

  “What are you seeing, Alex?”

  “The undead—” He hadn’t yet finished his sentence when his body was lifted into the air and then smashed down to the ground. Madeline reached for her sword and realized she had dropped it at the hospital. She darted after Alex. His body was swung up in the air and smashed down again as if he were a rag doll.

  She couldn’t see what was attacking him. She switched her eudqi on again and saw the sea of bubbles moving chaotically. There were millions of them now. It seemed as if she and Alex were drowning in an ocean of dead spirits. They weren’t doing anything to her, but she couldn’t seem do anythi
ng to help Alex. The vision of the bubbles wasn’t helpful to her because she still couldn’t see what Alex saw. She couldn’t see the attackers.

  She switched her vision off. Alex was on the ground. Something held him by the legs and dragged him backward. She dove to the ground and grabbed his hands. As soon as their hands connected, she saw a group of a dozen men, and she didn’t need to ask Alex to know they were soldier vampires from another dimension. These were the worst kind because they could travel across dimensions.

  They knew she could see them now. A handful of them left Alex and approached her.

  She was injured. She had no weapons. Madeline let go of Alex’s hands. He was barely conscious. “Run,” he said weakly before they dragged him away.

  Madeline saw stars after a couple of vampires charged at her. She knew they were testing the waters, that they didn’t know her true identity or that she was from Eudaiz because Jo was very careful in masking that for her using their technology. But when it came to one-on-one combat, she was responsible for hiding her own identity. No matter what happened, she wouldn’t have to switch on her eudqi again. Because she was a psychic as a human, she could still see the vampires—she had been connected to them via Alex.

  Madeline’s bones rattled with another impact, and she realized using mere human abilities to locate vampires really sucked. She stood up, grabbed a nearby tree branch, and brandished it. The vampire hesitated. She smiled, knowing she now had a weapon. But her confidence dwindled when the vampire charged at her again. He copped the swung of the stick and died, but the others attacked her from the side and knocked her to the ground.

  She lost her weapon. Her injured human body didn’t want to cooperate. She couldn’t get up on her feet.

  Then the vampires hissed and withdrew slightly. She looked to the side and saw Ciaran.

  “Are you okay?” he asked as he approached her. She knew he couldn’t see the vampires, so from his perspective, she was just sitting there on the ground for no reason. She didn’t know if the vampires could harm him, given they weren’t in his vision. Before she had time to give it more consideration, a vampire jumped across dimensions.

  As soon as it was in the same dimension, the vampire kicked Ciaran to the ground. But Ciaran was fast. He always was. He pulled out the sword he had tucked inside his jacket and swung at the attacking vampire. Its head dropped to the ground, and its body crumbled and then melted into a black puddle.

  The other vampires followed the lead of the first one. And because Ciaran couldn’t see them until they appeared, they were able to knock him to the ground.

  Madeline darted toward Ciaran. “Give me the sword!” she shouted as she charged.

  Ciaran slid the sword across the ground toward her. She picked it up and used every drop of energy she had left to swing it at the vampires from the multiverse. It might have been a short moment in reality, but in her mind, it felt like eternity. Each movement she made was like moving a mountain. But she kept moving, slashing, and stabbing until the vampires disjoined body parts littered the ground, all of them soon dissolving into the familiar black puddles.

  Afterward, she could feel Ciaran was trying to say something to her. Her world spun out of orbit, and she fell into his arms.

  Chapter 12

  Egon looked at Margaret’s lifeless body. He had been watching her for hours. She hadn’t regained consciousness, nor was she dead. It pained him to see her this way, but even though he was a powerful vampire, there wasn’t much he could do. She had never met him and had never given her consent to being turned. So he would never do that to her even if she might die and miss out on the opportunity to be immortal.

  Egon had been turned centuries ago, against his will, when he was in his thirties. He understood the pain and the undignified life of being undead. He made a living, so to speak, dealing antiques. As he was a few hundred years old, he was well qualified for the business. He was old but still a free spirit when one day he saw Margaret, as a toddler, running around in the small garden of her family cottage while he was dealing with her next door neighbor.

  There was something in her soul that triggered the nostalgic feeling of his youth. So he watched over her, protecting her and doing whatever he could to indirectly support her family. He watched her grow up, and he had hoped he would watch her grow old with her human family.

  And now—this accident.

  The dark wood-paneled walls and gothic decoration of the room didn’t lighten his mood. He looked out the window and saw the sunlight had brushed the manicured garden with the shade of a beautiful day. But that didn’t make him feel better. He chuckled to himself. For centuries, he had walked the earth among humans, but they had no suspicion that he was a vampire because they assumed vampires couldn’t walk in the sunlight.

  That might be true for some vampires. But not only could Egon be in the sunlight, he could also see his reflection in mirrors. The only correct assumption humans had about vampires was that silver and wood were lethal to them.

  He heard people murmuring. He turned to see Frida walking in.

  “How’s Margaret?” she asked without looking at him.

  “You know too well what happens when you force a fake conscious state onto her mind—and for the sole purpose of checking her out of the hospital.”

  “She wouldn’t be lying in your arms if I hadn’t done so.”

  “You robbed her of the chance to regain consciousness naturally. What kind of sister are you?”

  “Don’t raise your voice at me.”

  He approached her and tilted his head down so his face was as close to hers as possible. He lowered his voice and said, “If it wasn’t for Margaret, you would never get what you are getting. So let me remind you, if anything happens to her, I’ll take back whatever I have given to you.”

  Frida smiled, a slow smile that gradually appeared on her beautiful oval face, which was framed by perfect long locks of sandy hair. She had looks that could seduce any man or supernatural creature.

  She shook her pretty head and clucked her tongue. “Should I be worried? I might have to find shelter elsewhere. But you’re not handling all of England, are you? I don’t think you handle districts reaching beyond London. And remember, this is not your district. You are here, and I brought Margaret here to you, only because you have been helping my family for a long time. But my gratitude has limitations.”

  Egon nodded. He had to give it to Frida. She wasn’t an easy person to handle. “I apologize. I should thank you for bringing her here. Can you tell me what actually happened?”

  Frida smiled. This time, he thought her smile looked more genuine, not that Frida’s personality allowed such a quality. “You should look into the vamps in your district, someone wanting to stab you in the back. Margaret was attacked when she was at the university with a human friend.”

  “So did this human friend see anything?”

  “Hard to tell. He checked her into the hospital. But he wasn’t there when I checked her out.”

  “Do you know him?”

  Frida shook her head and chuckled. “Someone is jealous.”

  “I can never give Margaret what a human male would be able to, so why would I be jealous?”

  “So your plan is to watch her grow up, marry a human, grow old, and die a human? How noble of you. But how can you be so sure that’s what she wants?”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “She’s old enough to know the truth. You know she studies mythology at the university, right? So she’s open-minded. Why don’t you just ask her if she wants to be with you?”

  “She has never even seen me. I can’t just walk up to her and ask her to marry me.”

  “It’s 2017, not centuries ago. I didn’t say marriage. You can date her. You’re a good-looking guy. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.”

  “What about her current romance?”

  “They broke up a week ago. She wouldn’t be going out with some guy at that hour in the morning if she were
still with her other boyfriend, would she?”

  Egon shook his head. “So it was a stranger she was with when she was attacked. What if the vampires meant to attack him, and she was just a bystander?”

  “You’ve got a good point. But there’s a rumor that a rare antique commodity has come on the market, and every supernatural creature in the multiverse wants it.”

  “You shouldn’t be involved in that kind of business!”

  “I didn’t say I was involved, Egon. But you should know that Margaret, against my advice, has started a research project to decode an ancient formula having to do with said antique item. Because you requested that we keep the paranormal world far from the mind of our Margaret, I couldn’t explain to her why I think her study of a subject that might put a bounty on her head in the paranormal world is a very bad idea.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

  “When I heard of her attack via a paranormal source, do you think it was best that I tried to save her, or do you think I should have come to notify you first instead?”

  Egon shook his head. He should have been more careful. He had neglected Oxford, and the vampires here were more vicious than he had anticipated.

  Frida sighed and sauntered toward the door. “Well, now that my little sister seems to be okay, I’ll leave you here to brood.”

  “Eliminate him,” he muttered.

  “Eliminate who?”

  “The person who was with Margaret. No human can see vampires from the multiverse.”

  “But Margaret saw them.”

  He looked at Frida. “When she wakes, I’ll make sure she’s no longer human.”

  Chapter 13

  Ciaran gazed at the antique portrait on the wall and found himself connecting with a gentleman in the sixteenth century. This was one of the mansions his family owned. But this mansion—along with several others in secret locations—wasn’t for business. Handling the family conglomerate for several years, Ciaran had asked for one thing—absolute privacy. He didn’t have a permanent address. He came and went whenever he chose.