Fire Destroyer Read online

  Still, Cole didn’t care. What concerned him was that fact he could see them play the game while having no part in it himself, and all while he was pursuing Mai. He belonged to the magical world and had never crossed.

  Mai stood solemnly at a distance and looked into the light beam encircling the game.

  “Mai!” Cole called out and rushed over.

  She turned and saw him. She looked the same. Beautiful, magnificent, and kind. His Mai. She had been his once, and she would be again.

  “Cole, I knew you’d be here. I knew you’d find me.” She smiled.

  He reached out to hold her hands, but she withdrew.

  “Don’t leave me again. I promised you I would liberate the witches, and I will. Can you give me a chance, Mai?”

  “What happened in the forest wasn’t your fault.”

  “So why punish me?”

  “I’m not punishing you. I just can’t forgive myself.”

  “But it wasn’t your fault, either. Why don’t you give us a chance?”

  She nodded. “I’ll think about it. We have time. But the children don’t. I am here to protect them.” She looked at the game again.

  “Whose children are they?”

  “The girl is Lyla LeBlanc, and the long-haired boy is Caedmon LeBlanc. They are Eudaizian royals. The other boy is their friend, Gale Brody, from the Daimon Gate.”

  “I don’t know how you know them. But I know connection to Eudaiz is impossible. And I’m glad it isn’t the dragon that we need to protect. You know we can’t penetrate the game, right? Not only can we not cross worlds, but we also cannot get into the game uninvited.”

  “I know.”

  “And they don’t need protection anyway. Look, the boy beat the hell out of the dragon.”

  She smiled and looked at him. “I hope they don’t need my protection after all. So we just wait and see.”

  “Since when are you interested in fighting? You don’t take sides in wars—do you remember telling me that?”

  “Cole, I am taking sides in this fight because it would be wrong if I didn’t.”

  There was a loud bang, and the dragon’s head exploded. Its body stopped moving and split in half. From inside the body, a creature in human form walked out.

  Mai’s body stiffened. Cole knew as soon as he saw the creature that it was the one that had crossed worlds in the game, and it was a mercenary. He didn’t know which of the teenagers Mai wanted to protect or why, but by his gauge, the teenagers now had no chance of survival.

  Mai charged at the light wall, trying to enter the game. She was knocked backward, tumbling on the ground.

  He helped her up. “Please tell me what you plan to do, Mai. You can’t enter the game.”

  “I need to save Lyla. We need to save her. I knew she’d be in trouble. That’s why I’m here.” She rushed back toward the light wall.

  “Why, Mai? Why this girl?”

  The two boys in the game were down. Lyla was on the ground, and the mercenary was looking down at her. At any moment, she would be dead.

  Mai closed her eyes and chanted some sort of spell.

  “Please, Mai, tell me what you’re doing. What can I do to help? Please tell me what you want me to do, and I’ll do it.”

  She ignored him. She looked as if she was already out of her body.

  Inside the game, the mercenary was ready to kill.

  The two boys lay helpless on the ground. Lyla had no help.

  Mai’s eyes opened. She raised her arms and spoke words Cole couldn’t make any sense of.

  In the split second before the mercenary released a death blow, a blinding white flash came from Mai’s hands, penetrated the light wall, and struck the creature.

  Mai’s body vanished. Cole had never felt such an emptiness in his very long life.

  Inside the game, the mercenary was stunned by the white light. It stood, stared down at Lyla for a brief moment, and then it vanished like Mai’s body.

  Chapter 11

  Southern Vietnam - tropical forest - present time

  Jaxper held up the candle she had just lit to see Gale’s face clearly. She could only hope his fluttering eyelids were just a reaction to his dreams and he didn’t wake. She’d had a wild thought at first to cast a sleeping spell on him, but she knew it wouldn’t work as ninety percent of him was robotic. She was a hell of a witch—sometimes she even considered herself talented. But not to the extent that she could apply magic to a machine.

  Cole had been here just a minute ago, threatening to terminate Gale. What if Gale had sensed that? What is it was causing him to awakened? Jaxper shook her head. That was impossible. Sensibility only happened in humans.

  But it was still a scare. She looked at Gale. His eyes remained shut, and he lay still, peacefully asleep as Lyla had predicted.

  She exhaled a sigh of relief and walked with the candle to the far corner of the dark cave.

  “Jaxper!”

  Gale’s voice made her jump out of her skin, and she almost dropped the candle. She put it down and turned around. Not knowing what to do, she chose the only neutral and safe action she knew—she grinned.

  Lyla had forewarned her that in the unlikely event that Gale woke before she returned, he would be operated by the robotic part of him. That robotic part had two systems—one of them Lyla had helped design and could control, and the other belonged to the hybrid space creature that had killed him ten years ago in the hologame. Lyla had no control over the space creature material, so she had given Jaxper the short version of the incident along with a Band-Aid solution. When the creature shattered Gale’s human body, it embedded its substance—the material that made it up—into Gale. Lyla didn’t know what the substance was, but she knew if she extracted it, Gale might die. All she could do to save Gale at that point was to suppress the substance from developing further and contain it in an inactive part of his brain. So it had been sleeping there inside him for a long time.

  Because of the fight they had just had, and for reasons unknown to Lyla, Kan now had a device that triggered and controlled the foreign substance in Gale. It had the potential to destroy Gale, so Lyla had turned off the robotic part of him.

  Gale was waking up now, and the human part of him would be weak and easily overpowered by the space creature part of him. Lyla’s solution was that if he woke, Jaxper would have to physically knock him out.

  “Gale!” she cried, smiling.

  Gale sat up. He glanced around the cave. He looked down at his hands and his body. Then he stood. Jaxper could see confusion in his beautiful striking blue eyes. For some reason, she knew she was seeing the human part of him in his eyes. He stood, tall and strong. Every movement he made was stealthy and agile, and she was sure the movements were inhuman.

  Damn it, Jaxper cursed silently and then said, “Lyla left you a message.”

  “Where?”

  “Over there.” She pointed toward the corner.

  As soon as he turned his head, she grabbed a nearby stone her mother had used to grind her potions and hurled it at Gale’s head. She knew it was a long shot, and she was right. Quickly and almost automatically, Gale raised his arm and caught the stone. He ground it to dust with his hand.

  She darted toward the entrance of the cave, but he stopped her before she could get there. He reached out and grabbed her by the neck. Her feet hovered over the floor and dangled in the air as he lifted her. She was choking and couldn’t say anything. Her world blurred. But she could see Gale’s eyes, passionate, still confused, and obviously in disagreement with what his hand was doing to her.

  Lyla was right. The human part of him was too weak. It couldn’t control the space creature within him. It had infected his system, and now, with the robotic part Lyla had designed for him, it was controlling his actions.

  She could see in his eyes that he was trying. The passionate and caring look had turned into anger, and that anger soon turned into rage. At that moment of rage, the hand lost its grip on her neck for just
a second. She pushed his arm away to release herself and slid down to the ground.

  Gale was on his knees, his hands holding his head. He roared in pain as the small part of his human brain fought the evil substance in his body.

  Jaxper darted to the cave entrance and the secure place where her mother had kept all her secret potions made from the flowers of darkness. She pounded on a mechanism her mother had put in place to seal the cave, and a stone door that weighed more than a ton blocked the entrance instantly.

  But she was outside. She was safe.

  There was no way Gale—or any creature—could make it out of that cave. But that wasn’t Jaxper’s worry now. She was afraid she would lose the ten percent left of the human Gale. She was afraid that the passion and emotion he had would lose out to the evil material inside him.

  She had never felt so helpless in her life. Her magic could do nothing in this situation.

  Or could it? Her mother was right. There was a thing called fate. She didn’t need to find a reason for everything. She rushed toward the stone door. Standing outside, she could hear Gale grunting. It seemed that his internal fight continued.

  “Gale, if you know who you are and what you want to do, say yes.”

  There was more grunting, and then Gale’s voice shouted, “Yes!”

  “Turn the large stone in the far left corner of the cave. You’ll see a cavity in the cave wall. There are several jars of potion. Take the one with the red lid and drink it.”

  “What is it?” There were more noises from inside the cave, and Gale roared in pain.

  “Whatever it is, it’s better than what you’re dealing with now.”

  She pressed her ear against the stone door. The noise from within was subsiding.

  Then it went quiet.

  “Have you taken it?”

  Gale’s voice was right next to her, on the other side of the stone door. “Yes… I took it… I don’t feel well… what was it?”

  “It’s poison.”

  Chapter 12

  Vietnam - Middle Ages

  As they followed Phala, the prince of the Kingdom of Champa, into his stone castle, Michael regretted not paying much attention to world history—well, any kind of history—when he was in college. He mightn’t have paid any attention to anything at all while there. He attended only because Ciaran had wanted him to, and he lived on the allowance of the LeBlancs. His supervisor, Lindsay, despite having to manage a large part of the LeBlanc’s conglomerate, had never felt good about his activities.

  But then, nobody could control his mind and what he was thinking.

  For seven years he had waited for Ciaran to return to his life, and the only skill he knew that could be of use to him was his combat and fighting skill, not the kind of stuff they taught at school. He would never have thought Ciaran would entrust him with Lyla’s care. But he had. And now he’d not only gotten Lyla stranded in Vietnam, but they had traveled back in time to the same location and had now been told that this place was called the Kingdom of Champa.

  He had never heard of a country with that name.

  Lyla’s computer system wasn’t working, Michael’s earthly experience wasn’t applicable, and his knowledge about the place and the people was zero. Phala, in particular, bothered him. He was very tall, and his face looked different from the others around him—dark brown eyes and fair skin. He had an athletic body and, judging by the way he moved, Michael wagered he was a good fighter. Not your typical prince.

  The castle was quite spacious inside. All the walls were composed of stone and rust-red bricks. There was no shiny or glittering decor. A few statues of gods flanked the pathway leading to the center of the castle, and a handful of guards stood staggered around the outside, but there were no guards inside. The floor was solid stone with no carpet, tile, or other floor cover. Michael thought the lifestyle quite modest for a prince.

  Lyla walked next to Michael and seemed to like what she was seeing. Her head turned from left to right as she surveyed everything around her. She had a curious mind, and things outside of Eudaiz and her usual circle of acquaintances and associates fascinated her.

  Michael cleared his throat. “Are we going to meet the king or the royal family?”

  Phala turned back and smiled. “I’m the one in charge here.” He gestured toward a dining table with nothing on it but a few candles. “You might have expected to see a grander castle, but this is the border of the kingdom, and we are here to protect our boundaries, not to live in luxury.”

  Lyla nodded. “I see. But if that’s the case, I would think you’d have more soldiers.”

  Phala laughed. “We’ve been living in peace for a long time. There’s no need for heavy military protection.”

  Michael rolled his eyes to himself. That was just another way of saying this kingdom most likely didn’t have anything to attract invaders. Michael pulled out a chair for Lyla to sit on. Phala sat at the far end and gestured for his staff to prepare dinner.

  Phala smiled. “It’s not going to be a grand banquet. My humble household doesn’t consume much.”

  “Well, we don’t eat much,” Lyla said and returned his smile.

  Michael shifted and adjusted his tall body to fit the small frame of the chair on which he was sitting. In a short moment, the staff brought out several plates of food for dinner. Michael thought the food looked quite decent.

  He noted Lyla was quite cautious after the chicken experience. “These are fine, Lyla. They’re vegetables.” He dumped the vegetables from his plate onto hers and then forked a chunk of roasted meat and placed it on his plate.

  “She’s vegetarian,” Michael said to Phala, who watched them with amusement.

  “I see.”

  “You don’t invite all visitors from the West to your castle, do you? And where did you learn such good English?” Michael asked and took a bite of the meat. Delicious, he thought.

  "I lived in the West for a while. That's how I learned English. I also know a little bit about the culture. Whereabouts in the West are you from?"

  “A place they call New York. Have you ever heard of it?”

  Phala shook his head. "And what about you, Lyla?”

  "Very West…”

  “If you haven't heard of the place I come from, you definitely haven’t been to where she comes from!” Michael cleared his throat. “Because of the distance between this place and where we come from, I think we might be from a different time period as well. I'm feeling a little confused here, so can you tell me what year this is?”

  Phala smiled. “This is the year 1258.”

  “Bloody hell!” Michael dropped his piece of meat onto the plate.

  Phala raised an eyebrow. "Is that very different compared to where you come from?"

  Lila nodded. "Very.”

  "All right, so you come from a different place and a different time. What are you looking for in the Kingdom of Champa?”

  “We’re looking for an object with this symbol on it.” Michael placed a piece of paper on the table and pushed it toward Phala.

  Phala glanced at the symbol. Michael caught a flash of an uneasy look on Phala’s face, but then he composed himself and showed no sign of distress.

  “Yes, I know of it. It’s the ash of Lythe—she is one of the goddesses we worship.”

  “Worship? Does that mean we can’t access her?” Lyla asked.

  Phala shook his head. “That’s right, you can’t.”

  Michael leaned back in his chair. “But you can.”

  Phala reached toward the side of the table, his hand moving closer to the meat knife. Michael pulled his small knife, leaned over, and stabbed it into the sleeve of Phala’s robe, pinning his arm to the table.

  The servants nearby were on alert at his action, but Phala raised his free hand and said something that seemed to calm them. Then he sent them away.

  “I was reaching for my wine,” Phala said.

  “He’s telling the truth, Michael.”

  “So yo
u’re a mind reader now, Lyla?”

  She shrugged and said nothing.

  Michael knew reading minds was a skill on Lyla’s wish list, but she had told him she had not yet developed it. The figured this must be a part of her plan, and she had too many of those for his liking. He pulled the knife from Phala’s sleeve. “Where I come from,” he said, “Lyla is my princess. If she loses a hair, you’ll lose your head, regardless of what kind of prince you are. And you haven’t answered my question. Why did you invite us here? What do you want?”

  Phala didn’t have a chance to answer Michael’s question before they heard a soft, frail female voice calling for Phala. From behind the curtain, a young lady, about Lyla’s age, stepped out. Michael’s heart skipped a bit. She was beautiful. But it wasn’t her beauty that struck him. For some strange reason, he felt connected to her. Not the whole of her, just a corner of her mind, something deep and dark, a place where no one could go. There, they were connected.

  She looked straight ahead. Her eyes were empty.

  Michael realized she was blind.

  Phala lost his composed manner. “My sister,” he said and then rushed toward her. “Kannitha …” he started then spoke long sentences in a language Michael and Lyla didn’t understand. But they could tell Phala was trying to get his sister to go back inside.

  They exchanged a lot of dialogue, and Michael wagered the sister won because she approached slowly, reaching her hands out toward Lyla. “Let me feel your hands,” she said in clear English.

  Michael held Lyla back by her elbow. “Don’t, Lyla. Let me try first.” He approached Kannitha. “I guess this is how you communicate with people, given the circumstances. I understand.” He reached his hands out. “I’m Michael.”

  When his fingertips touched her hands, she grabbed his hands. He felt a wave of energy flood into him. The amount of energy surging through him was overwhelming. It made his knees buckle and his head feel as if it was going to explode. He yanked his hands away.