Chapter 1
New Earth - Distant future
Alyna tilted her head to watch the two glowing bullets flying as if in slow motion toward the two men's heads.
She had practiced her two-handed shooting skill for years but couldn't say she had ever perfected it. She would normally hit around ninety-five percent of the targets. But the remaining five percent bothered her.
She holstered her two guns and punched a button on the wall. At the far end of the shooting range, the two dummy targets glowed in a neon green light, and her shooting score hovered in the air above the targets in a light green color.
Her left-hand score was perfect, but her score from the right-hand gun wasn’t so good. She had missed the head by four inches. The floating screen printed all kinds of statistics—her accuracy, her track record, her probability of hitting the target if she changed her shooting position, pose, arm movement, and even pressure on the trigger. She ignored them all.
A miss was a miss. There was nothing more to it.
She jiggled her right shoulder and felt a slight tingling in her collarbone. Perhaps Pukak was right. Amaraq, the mage tribe she had grown up with and fought for, had won battles by the sheer strength of individuals, strength magnified by martial arts skills. Pukak disliked technology and weapons of mass destruction.
But for Alyna, the ultimate aim of engaging in a fight was to win. And her simple philosophy for winning was to do whatever it took to get the win. As long as the end was morally justifiable, she needn’t worry about the means. She hadn’t been raised to be righteous. She had been raised to serve and protect Amaraq.
Her ear pricked at a faint noise from outside her compartment. It sounded like someone or something was shuffling through the trash cans she knew were empty.
Her compartment was one of a stack of six units right in the center of the city. It wasn’t too shabby, and she’d gotten it at an affordable price. When she’d decided to buy the compartment, the deciding factor had been the extra basement where she could build her shooting room.
In two steps, she sneaked out the side door. A human-like shadow was bent over, shuffling through her neighbor’s trash can.
“Hey!” she called out.
The person jerked his head up and staggered a few steps back when he saw her. Then he turned around and dashed to a nearby alleyway.
She raced after him. It wasn’t much of a race because she caught up with him in no time. She grabbed him by the collar, pulling him up after he tripped and fell. He was taller than she was, but apart from that, there wasn’t much in his body that would prevent her from breaking him in half with one swift move.
He struggled in her grip. “Let me go!” he cried.
“I saw you at the market,” she said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She pushed his face into the fence with one hand and used the other to keep him still. “What’s your name?”
“Don’t have one.”
She slammed his face against the fence.
“Ouch. Sam.”
“Okay, Sam, I saw you picking pockets at the market—”
“Hey, that’s none of your business.”
“That’s right. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be standing here. I’ll break your neck if you go anywhere near my people.”
“Who are your people?”
“You don’t need to know. But I don’t want to see you near the trash cans at my compartment again.”
“That’s what happens when I don’t pick pockets.”
“How old are you?”
“It’s none of your—” He looked at her raised eyebrow. “Nineteen.”
“A few years late. But better late than never.”
“Late for what?”
“You can join Amaraq.”
Sam stepped backward. “No way.” He waved his hand in the air dismissively. “I don’t want that.” Then he walked away.
“If you don’t want it, why did you watch the open audition on the North Side? If you don’t want people to know, you either don’t do it, or you erase the trace properly. The door stamp is still on the nape of your neck.”
“Damn it.” Sam stood the neck of his jacket up to cover the mark. “I’ll never make the entry comp. I’ll get killed.”
“What?”
“Not literally. But you know…” He flexed his skinny arm muscles, or lack thereof. “I’m not strong enough or big enough. I’ll get squashed like a bug.”
Alyna pulled out a couple of credit tokens she had in her pocket. “Eating food from trash cans isn’t going to help you get bigger and stronger. One credit for tonight’s dinner. One for tomorrow’s breakfast. In the afternoon, I want to see you working at the door of the Amaraq North Side. I can give you some private training until I think you’re ready for the entry comp.”
“Who are you?”
“Alyna McCabe.”
“You’re joking. You’re the Alyna McCabe?”
“It’s the only name I have. I didn’t think I was famous.”
“You should hear what they say at the fighting ring.”
“I’m too busy to listen to gossip. I’m not giving you these credits for free. I want them back in a week…with interest. So get working. I’ll be calling Amaraq North Side in the morning. They’ll be expecting you.”
Sam looked at the shiny credit tokens in his palm. “Why are you helping me?”
She looked him up and down then shrugged. “Why the hell not?”
She turned, planning to head back to her shooting room, when her communicator buzzed.
“Yes, Pukak.”
“Alyna, I need you at the South Side. They found a body.”
She lowered her voice, looking behind her to see if Sam had followed. He hadn’t. “You mean, the body?”
“No, another one.”
“I’ll be right there.” She hung up the communicator and saw dust whirling up into the air in the distance. It must have come from one of the factories outside the city. The dirt must be thick since she could see it from such a distance inside the transparent dome that protected the air inside the city.
Amaraq was the strongest private security agency in the city. If they lost the city, they would have to be stationed on the outskirts, out there in in that whirling lump of dirt.
Chapter 2
Polluted. That was the first impression Caedmon had when he stepped out of the portal to New Earth. They called it New Earth, but it wasn’t so much different than when he had been with Sedna in Greenland. He should have treasured every moment he’d had with her. He shook his head to escape his brooding mood. He couldn’t afford that right now.
Focus. He had come to the future only to alter his past reality. One wrong move and he’d be stuck in this future oblivion forever.
He could still feel the sensation of the heatwave from the explosion—the one that had robbed him of his family, and the multiverse of the precious traces to the Scorpio key.
He had reminded himself every waking moment over the last month about the mission he had to fulfill by coming here. He was a commander with Silver Blood energy—a special source of energy that could destroy almost anything in its way. An important skill he had learned over the years was to control the energy so he could use its destructive power against those who deserved it. But he knew his disadvantage when coming to Earth from Eudaiz, a faraway universe, and being on his own.
His father had approved of his mission but wouldn’t have approved of the way he had approached it. Thus, he had no military support. The injury his father had suffered from the explosion had limited his capacity to work for a few weeks, Eudaizian time. That means he’d have years on Earth to execute his plan.
He stepped into a corporate transport, a hovering private car that was waiting for him. Inside, he was greeted by a computer screen that flashed a scanner beam at him and then faded away immediately once it recognized him.
Apparently, asking for consent wasn’t a part of the identification process on New Earth. There was definitely room for system improvement, but he had no attachment to Earth, neither the old one nor the new one. And he had his own problem to deal with.
He punched the green start button on the control panel. As the car automatically departed the station and drove itself, he settled next to the window to look outside. He saw nothing but red dirt. The multiversal teleport terminal must be quite a distance from where people lived.
After a while, the transport crossed a transparent dome that covered what looked like a city. It was similar to London, New York, and other places he had been to when he’d visited Earth before. But he didn’t recognize any of the landmarks here, and the liquid map on the dashboard didn’t show the shape or size of any of the countries.
He could have done a more thorough investigation of the place before he came, but he had been using a rather shady source of information to get what he needed, so he was in and out of the databank too quickly to obtain anything more than the bare essentials.
There it was, the LeBlanc headquarters in the center of the city, in a small but exclusive area called Old Sydney. It was apparently a piece of what used to be Sydney, a city in Australia if his memory served him right. Some of the landmark’s architecture had been preserved and treated like rare pieces of art in a museum. It was quite charming.
The floor-to-ceiling steel door slid open as he approached. He noted that the lightweight steel his father had invented when he was a kid had been used for the office door. It looked just like any other door, but the properties of this steel could protect the people inside from a multiversal war of the worst kind.
A stunning woman approached him. “Mr. LeBlanc, welcome!”
“Caedmon, please,” he said and glanced at his wrist unit, which by that point had scanned and identified the woman as his executive secretary. “It’s very nice to meet you, Leanne.”
“It’s an honor to be at your service, Mr.—” She hesitated then smiled graciously. “Caedmon. The LeBlancs have never before sent a representative to this corner of the Earth.”
“I’m happy to be here. We need to interact much more with our associated branches.”
She gestured to a smaller steel door, and he guessed his office was inside. “I have arranged everything you need inside,” she said. “Your computer, your workstation. Also, food and beverages are there as well.”
“Food and beverage?”
“Oh, I don’t know about Mid-Land London, but eating the wrong foods here can have nasty consequences, especially for out-of-towners. If you need more, I’ve programmed your contacts. Just call for service, and whatever you need will be delivered to you. Please don’t wander around the city, especially in the unsavory areas, without a security escort.”
“I can take care of myself.”
“I’m more than sure you can, Caedmon. But it’s my top priority to make sure you are safe.”
“You seem so tense. You’re making me feel unsafe already.”
“Really? I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to—”
“Leanne, I’m just joking. Relax.”
“I’ll try.” She smiled.
“Okay, just to make you feel better, I promise not to head into any bad parts of the city, okay? So what places are at the top of that list?”
“The North Side.”
“All right, North Side it is.” He grinned at her and was pleased to see her relax a bit more. But then her shoulders tensed up, and her smile vanished. “Mr. Tann,” she whimpered and looked down.
Caedmon turned around. An intimidating man with a hard face and a scar along his left jawline approached, reaching his hand out for a handshake.
“I’m Lewis Tann.”
Caedmon smiled. “The man in charge!”
Lewis smiled. “Only when you’re not here. To what do we owe a visit from the Mid-Land London central, Mr. LeBlanc?”
“Don’t worry, I won’t be in your way for long. I guess that’s where my temporary office is?” He pointed at the steel door.
“Sure is. As permanent or temporary as you’d like it.” Lewis gestured for Caedmon to go ahead of him.
Caedmon turned and grinned at Leanne. “I promise I’ll only eat the food you recommend.”
Leanne smiled then looked down when her eyes fell on Lewis.
On the way into the office, Caedmon quickly scanned the area for the layout, entry and exit points, and number of staff.
“I trust you received the memos, Mr. Tann?”
“Yes, and I still don’t understand them. The business here is doing well. Why do we need to take on Amaraq’s burdens?”
“It’s called a business extension.”
“Look, Caedmon, private security business isn’t our thing. We’re not into fist fights and gang business.”
“But it can be lucrative if done the right way. That is, using advanced technology and weapons street gangs can’t afford. And it’s the LeBlanc’s profits we’re talking about here.”
“Yes, but it’s not a safe business.”
“Are you suggesting we should start selling flowers?
“LeBlanc Pharmaceuticals is our strongest business line. Why deviate from that?”
Caedmon smiled. “You obviously haven’t gotten the full picture of the takeover proposal, Mr. Tann. Amaraq has two main businesses, and the private security business is a by-product for me. I am interested in their natural medicine business, which is bankrupting them at the moment.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’m from Mid-Land London. You don’t have anything to worry about, Mr. Tann. If I turn Amaraq’s natural medicine business into a success, you’ll keep your job doing whatever you do here.”
Mr. Tann nodded.
“I’ll need to survey the area along with the clinics, so I’m going to take a walk around. Where do you suggest I look first, Mr. Tann?”
Lewis Tann smiled. “The North Side.”
“The North Side it is. I’ll let you know what I find.”
Mr. Tann nodded a goodbye and strode out of the office.
Chapter 3
Alyna walked into a small natural medicine clinic that Pukak managed and used as his office on the North Side of the city. She knocked on the crooked office door, but there was no answer, so she pushed her way in.
Pukak was the leader of the clan, a powerful mage with ultra-sensitive ears that could hear faint sounds even a mile away, and his light energy could burn the entire block of compartments.
Well, that had been during his heyday. He was nearly retired now. Or if Alyna understood him right, he could retire if he found a rightful successor for the clan.
But he cared too much to let go.
Pukak startled and jerked up from his chair. “Don’t you know how to knock, Alyna?”
“I did, but you seemed to be too busy sniffing your piles of paper to hear me.”
He rubbed at his temples and leaned back in his chair. She noted the bags under his eyes. He looked ten years older than when she had seen him yesterday.
“Is everything okay…apart from the two dead bodies?”
He shook his head and sighed.
“I have friends in the investigation business uptown,” she said. “They can help.”
“What’s the point, Alyna? Ethesus wants to ruin us. If they don’t do it in one way, they’ll find another.”
“Pukak, we are the best in the business. There is nothing a bunch of scumbags on wheels like Ethesus could do to threaten us.”
“We are the best in the private security business, but not in natural medicine. Ethesus is the second best at everything in the outskirt territories.”
“I thought medicine was just a small business…”
Pukak shook his head. His eyes drooped, and with that, the skin on his face sagged even more. “It’s small because I failed. With today’s technology, people don’t appreciate natural medicine anymore.”
She approached the table. She wanted to do something to comfort him, but she always felt awkward when it came to showing compassion. She could help with a fight. She could physically protect him. But she didn’t know how to help when it came to his sentimental attachment to Amaraq.
“Have you given the successor role some more thought?” he asked.
“No, I’m sorry.” She shoved her hands in her pockets. “I’m not a mage.”
Pukak chuckled. “As if I didn’t know that! Thank you for the reminder. I’ve been taking care of you since you were sixteen. You’re my protege. Nobody says the successor has to be a mage. We elect by competition. And you are the best, Alyna.”
“I’m only good at combat, Pukak. As you said, the business is more complicated than that. I don’t think I’m fit for the role.”
He nodded. “If that’s the only reason.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re not an ordinary human. You know that, Alyna.”
“I don’t know that.”
“No human could have survived that car crash. Your parents died. When I pulled you out of the wreck, I swear to you I saw your light go out for a moment and then return.”
“You told me that, and I don’t have an explanation for you. Maybe it was a near death experience. But it still doesn’t make me anything different from how I was created.”
“You’re absolutely right. But I am an old mage. I have seen a lot of things you couldn’t imagine. And I can see the dark energy in you. Something returned with you during that experience.”
“Yes, Pukak, you’ve said that several times. But I don’t have any supernatural power. That much I know. The blow I took from the Ethesus thug the other week injured my right shoulder. I didn’t get away unscathed. And if I’m ever in another car crash, I’m pretty sure you won’t pull me out alive.”
“All right, all right, I won’t push you. Anything new about the dead body?”
She shook her head. “If the death toll rises, it will set the private security business on fire, Pukak. And it’s not just the business…we can’t let them kill our people. We have to stop Ethesus. We have the manpower.”
“We can’t go to war with them for no reason. We have no evidence they have killed our men.”
“I can—”
“No, Alyna. We can’t afford to lose you. I don’t approve of you going anywhere near Ethesus territories by yourself. If we fight them, we must be better prepared. They have the wheels, but we will have weapons.”
“It’s about damn time.”
“Excuse me?”
“I mean, it’s only fair if we get more guns. Fist fighting against a motorbike gang won’t do us any good.”
Pukak nodded. “I understand. We’re skilled fighters, but yes, weapons help. But they cost money.” He looked at her with eyes that told her she was about to hear something she didn’t want to. “I’ve sold Amaraq’s business.”
She didn’t know what to say, so she remained silent.
“Our spiritual practice will stay the same. We’ll still operate the same way. It’s just that the financial matters and business practices will be handled by the LeBlanc Group.”
“The LeBlancs? The super uptown, living-in-the-cloud-with-the-gods LeBlancs?”
Pukak chuckled. “They’re not that elusive. In fact, one of the LeBlancs handled the business purchase himself—he didn’t even send his minions. He’s coming here to do a site visitation.”
“You’re kidding!”
“No, I’m not. The contract is still in the cooling-off period, so we’d better behave, Alyna. We need the money for the business. And I promise you, Amaraq’s spirit will stay the same. Nothing’s going to change that. The LeBlancs aren’t interested in our spiritual practice anyway. They vetted us carefully. I’ve done my homework, too.”
“I’m sure you know what you’re doing.”
“I can’t do it without you. Now I need you to host the visit for me.”
“Host? Me? What do you mean?”
“Well, we have dirty laundry to hide, don’t we? I’m not asking you to lie. All I’m asking is that you get them to see the negative aspects of the business in perspective.”
“Got it.”
They heard a knock on the door.
“And here he is,” Pukak muttered and stood up. “The door is open.”
Alyna turned around, and in front of her was a face that left her speechless.
She had seen him before.
For a week, she had seen his face repeatedly in her dreams, dreams that woke her up in the middle of the night. Longish dark hair, strikingly haunting gray eyes, and a beautiful God-given face that didn’t bear any mark of a hard life.
He straightened his posture after bending over to get through the low doorway. “Hello,” he said.
She swiveled to his right side, reached her hand up, and stopped his head an inch before it hit the broken low-hanging ceiling lamp.
As she moved, the photos of the dead bodies she had just taken slid out of the folder in her hand and landed on the dirty floor in front of him.
He glanced at the photos and looked at her, smiling, “Thank you. Caedmon LeBlanc.” He reached his hand out to shake hers.
She shook his hand quickly and bent down to pick up the photos. Pukak wanted to walk around the table for a handshake, but there was no room, so he reached over and across it.
Caedmon advanced to the table to shake his hand. Pukak’s elbow hit the pile of papers on his table, scattering them all over the floor. Photos, unpaid bills, an eviction notice from the building owner, complaint letters about water leakage from citizens living around a clinic in midtown drifted all over the room.
Alayna scrambled on all fours to pick up as many pieces of paper as possible.
Caedmon crouched. “Let me help,” he said.
Pukak pushed his way to the front. “Oh no, no, it’s okay. I’ll handle this. Alyna,” he said. “Please take Mr. LeBlanc to visit the clinic in midtown. The one that’s open today.”
That means the one that doesn’t have water leakage, she thought and winked at Pukak.
Caedmon stood up.
“Go, both of you. You’re crowding my office.” Pukak was all but pushing Caedmon and Alayna out of his office.
“All right,” Caedmon said and turned to the door. Then he sneezed because of the dust, lost his balance, and hit his head on the low doorway on his way out.
“Are you okay?” Alayna asked.
He rubbed his head and grinned.
What a smile! she thought.
“My father always told me I have a hard head.”
“You might, but still…competing with a doorframe isn’t a good idea.”
“Totally agree.”
Before she could react, he slid his arm around her waist and guided her out. She felt like a true lady.
“Now, is someone killing your men? Those dead men in the photos were Amaraq fighters, right?”
Chapter 4
The beginning of time.
He picked up a shard of ice that shone a deep blood red. It wasn’t just ice. It was frozen dragon blood.
He glanced behind him and saw that Thunder was still sleeping soundly next to a large rock. It had taken them days to get here, and she was tired. He should give her a better name than Thunder. But thunder came whenever she clapped her hands. So before he knew it, it’d become her name.
He didn’t even have a name for himself. People called him Keymaster because he made keys. Not just any keys. His keys unlocked the sources of energy and power, unlocked the doors between worlds. He considered himself an artist in the key-making business, and thus, he didn’t come cheap. If creatures in the multiverse needed his keys and couldn’t afford them, they’d kill to get them. And to that extent, he knew he had indirectly created some chaos and casualties in the multiverse.
But it was just business. He got paid to make keys. That was all he did. He couldn’t control what people did with the products they had paid for.
He couldn’t even remember how many keys he had created. A few hundred maybe. Some were more difficult to make than others. But this one might be the most difficult one—the Scorpio key.
He chipped into the large piece of ice to break it into several shards that he could transport easily. The freezing conditions weren’t ideal. He needed to get the ice back to his studio so that he could work.
He went back to the child and tucked the cloak around her to keep her warm. He brushed aside the hair on her forehead. She was beautiful. She was a child born of angels, after all, and he wouldn’t expect less when it came to her beauty. She must be eight now, or maybe seven. He’d lost track of time.
He had picked her up as an infant, sitting next to the dead body of her mother, clapping her little hands and flapping her tiny wings. Before he knew it, she had given him instructions on how to make some of the more difficult keys and had become a significant part of his life. And just now, she had showed him the way to the rock of dragon blood.
He kept telling her she could go to the Daimon Gate or go back to the angels. But she preferred to stay with him.
She winced in her sleep, and he knew what was coming. He picked her up in his arms and clutched her tight. “Come on, don’t do that to yourself, child.”
Her shoulders twisted, and her body shook. Tears rolled down her face. He held her tighter. Otherwise, she would clap her hands together, and the thunder would come. He had seen that before. Her thunder could devastate a mountain.
Her nightmares came often, and it pained him as much as it tormented her. She never talked about it. But he knew she had seen what killed her parents, and it haunted her dreams. The older she grew, the more frequently the nightmares came. But if she wouldn’t talk about it, there was nothing he could do for her.
Her body shook for a while then eased off. He lay her down and wiped the sweat from her beautiful young face.
“One day you will tell me what killed your parents, Thunder,” he said.
Her eyes fluttered and then opened. She smiled at him. “Did you find the blood rock?”
“Yes, right over there.”
She sat up and looked in the direction he pointed. A smile brightened her angelic face. She rushed toward the rock and traced her little fingers along the rough edges of the ice shards.
She remembered nothing about the dream she’d just had or how much she had shaken in his arms. She had no conscious recollection of her parents’ violent death. Yet in dreams, it came back to haunt her. Perhaps she remembered but didn’t let on. There had been so many times he’d wanted to ask her. But he had no clue when she would be old enough to handle such a conversation, so he always let the thought go.
She turned around and smiled at him. “Bloodstone.” She grinned again and raised her hands.
“No, no, don’t clap. You know you have a clapping disorder, don’t you?”
She giggled and then put her hands down.
He exhaled in relief and flopped down, leaning against the rock she had just slept next to. That was his eternal nightmare. He didn’t know when one of her thunder strikes would explode him right out of his immortal life.
She shrugged then picked up his hunting knife and used it to chip away at the rock. A thin stream of red liquid leaked out.
“Look, Keymaster.” She pointed.
He approached. “Holy cow. The rock is bleeding. It’s dragon’s blood,” he said.
“No, Keymaster, not dragon’s blood. It’s scorpion.”
“Scorpions don’t have blood.”
“It’s King Scorpion’s blood. He used to be a man.”
He staggered back. “Are you sure? Is he in there?”
“No, it was just his heart and his head.”
“How do you know that?”
“It comes to me in my dreams, Keymaster.”
“Oh, those dreams. All right. As long as a giant scorpion isn’t going to crawl out of that stone to bite me, I’m fine. I hate insects. I only need the rocks to make the key. I have no need for a bleeding heart. Let me chip away some more rocks, and then we’ll leave for home.”
“For the Scorpio key, you’ll need some blood from the heart, too.”
“How do you—” He stopped himself. “All right, knowledge from the dreams, right? But how long will it take me to chip away that giant rock to the heart of the Scorpion?”
“I’ll do it for you. One strike.” She smiled graciously.
“You’ll just use any excuse to clap that thunder out of your little hands. Okay, don’t pout. I’ll let you do it. But let me find shelter first.” He scurried away to a nearby cave and crawled inside as deep as he could. “All right, I’m safe,” he called.
He heard her giggle, and then an explosion of thunder that almost punctured his eardrums echoed through the air. Everything went quiet.
He stepped outside and saw a massive hole in the ground. Thunder stood next to a neatly cut giant piece of bloodstone. She smiled at him.
“Where are the heart and the head?” he asked.
She pointed at the piece of icy red rock. “In there. It’s all done for you, Keymaster.”