Bron looked up. Lucius had his own spy satellites winging through the heavens overhead, much like the Hubble Telescope, except that the lenses were all pointing toward the earth. He'd be taking infrared pictures of them, trying to track them. He'd probably succeed for awhile, until they reached a city, someplace with enough people so that they could get lost in a crowd. Lucius didn't have enough satellites to get constant coverage. There would be blackouts during those times that the satellites crossed the horizon, but he still had good coverage.
"We'd best be going," Bron said nervously. He felt torn, pulled in so many directions. He felt repulsed by the Draghouls, terrified of them, and yet a small part of him wondered if it wouldn't be safer to join them.
He wanted to delve further into the minds of the Draghouls, but he knew that to do so was a trap. Even now, Lucius knew that his men were down. He might not come himself for hours yet, but he could easily send reinforcements.
"We're going to need to burn the house," Sommer suggested. "We don't want them finding any stray fingerprints or DNA."
Bron nodded. "Everything is so wet out here, will it even burn?"
Sommer grinned. "With the right accelerant, all things are flammable," she said, bastardizing a quote from the Apostle Paul. "Pappy had the right accelerants."
Bron did not want to murder the poor Draghouls that he'd drained, but it would be necessary. Shooting them would be merciful, but somehow he didn't have the stomach for it. He decided to take the coward's way and just let them burn. Creatures that were so evil deserved no mercy.
Olivia stood on the docks looking forlorn and nervous while Sommer went upstairs and poured kerosene all over the house.
She came back out with a flare in her hand, struck it, and stood for a moment.
"Who wants to do the honors?" she asked.
Bron took the flare, prepared to toss it through the open door, and had a brief inspiration.
"Give me a moment with the Draghouls," he said. "I need to know one more thing."
Chapter 32
The Flight
"There is no sin in running from a fight that one cannot win. The sin comes if we run forever."
— Olivia Hernandez
In the predawn light, Sommer's cabin lit up the sky with flames. Plumes of smoke rose above the cypress trees in the swamp, and smoke crawled upon the water.
Firelight reflected from the smoke, making the swamp as bright as day.
No screams rose above the crackling of flames. The Draghouls in the house had died in silence, not with a shriek, but a whimper.
"More to the left!" Sommer said. She was guiding their boat toward the far end of the swamp.
"We came in from the other side," Olivia objected.
"That's because Pappy brought you the long way," Sommer said. "There's a shortcut."
Olivia drove one of the Draghouls' rafts. She didn't need a pole. The Draghouls had left two black rubber rafts with electric motors on the docks. She'd been able to clamp both motors on the back of one boat with ease, and now they rode over the water swiftly, sliding past a huge leaning willow that blocked the channel.
"Skirt the tree, and turn left, under its branches," Sommer warned.
Olivia spotted the opening, a thinning in the fronds that trailed down over the water. She plunged through the curtain of foliage. Sure enough, there was a channel ahead, a narrow passage not much wider than the boat. A big gator was floating in the shadows. It whipped its tail and disappeared.
Olivia recognized where she had come ashore in the dark.
"That's it!" Sommer said. "Ease into the channel. The water isn't deep, but we can make it!"
Olivia realized that the hidden inlet made a lot of sense. That old man couldn't have dragged all of his supplies over miles of swamp each week.
She worried about Bron. She needed to keep him safe. She gunned the electric motor and headed for shelter, under the shadows of the trees.
Chapter 33
Dying to Meet You
"Violence does not solve everything, but it does solve some things."
— Bron Jones
When Lucius's plane touched down at the Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans, it took only moments to rush to a waiting helicopter.
By then, satellite pictures showed that the cabin was in flames, and three people had left it—speeding off in a raft until they reached an old Ford Explorer. A transmitter had been fitted onto the Explorer years ago, but it had suddenly gone inoperative.
Lucius's quarry had made it into the city, where they would soon be lost in the crowd.
Still, Lucius was eager to see how his agents had died. From the airport, he and his men took a chopper and headed along the Black River, into a tangle of trees. Half an hour after sunrise, they reached the remains of the cabin, it was only a smoking ruin.
From the sky, it looked like a black hole in the canopy of the forest. The trees all around it had leaves of dull green, as happens late in the summer, and only a little gray smoke marked the site.
Adel ordered the pilot to circle the burn a few times before landing. There was no open ground to land on—only a bit of shallow swamp, but the helicopter's landing gear was fitted with pontoons for a water landing.
So they circled.
A sweep of government radio frequencies confirmed that no authorities had come to investigate. A brush fire deep in the swamp wasn't a concern. The area was deluged by thunderstorms at this time of the year, and lightning strikes were common. But with the frequent rain, aided by humidity that normally ran at eighty percent, a fire in the swamp wasn't likely to burn long.
"Sir," Adel told Lucius, "the cover is very thick. Do you dare risk a landing?"
"Of course. Our quarry has already fled," Lucius ventured, for that was the safest thing to do. The Ael were good at running, at hiding. That was about all that they were good at.
So when the chopper dropped near the cabin, no one was there.
The house was completely gone. It had been propped up on poles, and when the main structure was consumed by flames, the floor and struts of the cabin had burned completely. Then the house had crashed in upon itself.
All that was left was the lower dock, with a black pontoon boat tied to it. Flames had scorched it, leaving it disfigured.
The chopper circled, dropping lower with each approach, much as a goose will do during hunting season, staying just out of shotgun range.
When the chopper landed, it made a perfect touchdown near the smoking ruins, and Adel leapt from the chopper onto the dock. He took a rope and wrapped it loosely around the pylons, and then two of his men followed after him.
His men climbed up to the burn and began to search for bodies. The Draghouls, in their dark assault gear and helmets, strutted through the smoking debris, taking no harm. They looked like demons in hell, tormenting the remains of the damned.
Lucius remained beside the helicopter, listening to his agents chatter through his Bluetooth, which was set to a secure channel.
"I've got two over here," one man said.
"Here's a third," Adel answered.
"I think... yes, there's one down here in the water."
The men began to flip charred bodies.
"They're all in fetal positions, my lord," Adel said. "I'm looking, but I don't see any signs of bullet holes. Our men were burned alive, I think. They didn't die in a firefight, or in any type of hand-to-hand."
Lucius grinned widely. An entire hunting squad, snuffed out by one untrained teen? It sounded too good to be true. He had to verify it himself.
He leapt off the floating dock, then rushed a few steps until he reached land. He strode among the remains of blackened timber, while wisps of smoke slithered about his feet. Glowering embers simmered here and there like fiery carnations, lending the swamp their brutal heat. His dead agents smelled like roasting pork, scorched in a pit.
He went to one of the corpses, blackened and puckering, its hair all burnt off. It lay in a fet
al position. Millennia ago, Lucius had worked as a priest in an Egyptian temple, and he'd often taken dead merchants out into the desert for burial, folding them up just as these agents lay now.
With their hair burnt off, their heads looked shaven, in a style that had been popular back in Pharaoh's court. Adel flipped one of the bodies, and knelt, studying it intently.
"No sign of a struggle," he said. "No bullet holes or knife wounds. No ligature marks from strangulation."
Killed by a dream assassin, Lucius exulted.
Lucius began to chuckle. What a treasure Bron would be!
He raised his hands high, and threw his head back in triumph. "I love my son!" he roared, and deep in the swamp, herons squawked in alarm at the sudden noise.
On the far side of the inlet, Bron knelt behind a log, with an assault rifle in hand. He'd been waiting for Lucius to step into the open. He studied his father with his own eyes: a man with dark skin, head shaved clean, a little black soul patch for a beard. He had the glittering dark eyes of a snake.
Now Bron pulled the trigger, as easily as plucking a string on a guitar, sending one sweet note to fill the universe. He had taken only a few minutes of instruction in automatic weapons, having Olivia rip the information from Ramira's mind, training his fingers how to pull the trigger fluidly, how to take the long shots while releasing his breath imperceptibly.
It all came so naturally.
The gun jerked once, and the bullet ripped from the muzzle at 2700 miles per hour, spinning as it went. The brass casing ejected, and in that instant, Bron froze, hoping that he'd made his shot, even as the gun roared.
The bullet crossed the water in a fraction of a second, slammed into Lucius, pierced flesh and muscle. The lead bullet mushroomed as it went, sending fragments through bone, slicing nerves and arteries.
Something exploded in Lucius's neck—as if he'd taken a blow from an ax. Bones shattered, and a fragment of vertebrae exited from his throat. With his spinal cord snapped, Lucius dropped even as he registered a report from a single shot.
The blast roared, then echoed across the water, and echoed back, and echoed again and again. It reminded him of cannon fire in the old days, when a cannon was set upon a hill, and blasted into the heavy walls of a castle. The echo of the blast went on and on and on.
He landed on his side in the ashes, and felt a coal blistering his right cheek.
Here in the bayou, with trees rising up on every side above the water, the gunshot report seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, as if it rained down like a judgment from god.
His men cried out in alarm, and suddenly Uzis appeared in their hands, flashing up from their suits. They immediately laid down suppressing fire, each spraying almost blindly in a different direction.
Lucius lay choking on his own blood, gasping. He was perfectly conscious. The bullet had severed his spinal cord, paralyzing him. Lucius could not feel his fingers or toes. The only sensation below his head was a hot pain in his neck, as if someone had shattered a vertebra and then laid an ember in the wound.
He had moments to live before his lungs and heart shut down, moments to suffer. He struggled to breathe.
Adel knelt over him, Uzi in hand, and checked for a pulse. "My lord," he whispered, even as he opened fire into the brush. If he hit the enemy, it would be a miracle. Lucius worked his mouth, but no words would come out.
One of Adel's men rushed up, instantly assessed the situation, and grunted, "Leave him!"
The words were hardly out of the man's mouth when Adel leapt up and raced for the chopper. By some stroke of fortune, Lucius was lying in such a way so that the helicopter was in full vision. The Draghouls flitted into the black chopper quickly, shadows disappearing into deeper shadow. Smoke stung Lucius's eyes, and the coal against his cheek sizzled.
I'll come back, Lucius thought. I'll come back, and I will be stronger, and I will gain the devotion of my son.
The bayou looked so peaceful. He peered out over the dark pool where hordes of dragonflies danced above the waters, winged jewels of emerald and ruby and sapphire. The thought of his son filled him with hope. The blades on the helicopter whirred, and the prop wash whipped up the ashes, blew them onto Lucius's tongue and into his face.
The helicopter rose no more than ten feet before a white tracer round coated in phosphorous streamed from the jungle. Such rounds presented a severe fire hazard, and perhaps half a second after it slammed into the chopper's tank, the helicopter exploded. None of Lucius's men had time to leap for safety.
Bits of fiery shrapnel slammed all around Lucius while a fireball erupted into the sky. The props and hood exploded upward, while the ruined body veered and nosed into the swamp. Flaming debris rained down everywhere, amid falling bolts that thunked loudly. Most of the rubble sank instantly, while some of the insulation and seat cushions floated on the water, flaming ruins.
Lucius lay there in a daze, fading from consciousness. Watching, waiting, watching....
Bron rose up from his hiding spot in the jungle. His body had been hidden behind a fallen log, and it was a good thing. Return fire from one of the guards had sprayed into the log, almost as if the Draghoul knight had spotted him.
Heart hammering, Bron hurried through the cypress trees along the water's edge. He felt lucky. Killing Lucius had been easy, almost too easy. The Draghoul guards had tried to flee, as he had hoped. The sniper shot had taken his enemies by surprise.
He'd been well concealed in the shadows, away from the blazing sunlight. His enemies had directed most of their suppressive fire across the swamp. He'd hoped that they would think he was on the opposite shore.
Few snipers in the world had been as good as Ramira, and almost all of them were masaaks. Along with the training, he'd learned all about how to field dress his weapon, an Israeli galil ACE 52 assault rifle. It was a bit heavy for his inherited tastes, but the barrel was long enough to ensure accuracy for long-range shots like this one had been, and Ramira had installed a Humboldt laser sight on the gun's Picatinny rail. With a dead wind on a day like today, the bullet had hit within an eighth of an inch from where Bron had aimed.
At only two hundred yards, it had been easy to sever Lucius's spinal cord, leave him alive, paralyzed.
Now Bron reached his father and found him breathing almost imperceptibly. Bron twisted his father's face up, so that he could look into it.
"Hello, father," Bron said.
"My son," Lucius mouthed.
"This isn't over, I know," Bron said. "I learned from your man Stalzi. You're too powerful for me to take out this easily. So I wanted to see your face, and let you know: I'm going to destroy everything you've created."
Lucius peered up at Bron, and there was no fear in the dying man's eyes: only admiration for his son. Lucius smiled broadly, and then his breath faltered, and his focus slid from his son into the eternities.
With his father dead, Bron went back to the dock and waited. The swamp was quiet by day, the air as heavy as a wet shroud. Bron's thoughts came jangled.
He crouched for a bit, and sat. In the distance, an alligator growled, and a white egret flew up out of the trees. Dragonflies were everywhere, glittering in the morning sunlight.
Stress pulled at the muscles in Bron's neck. As the adrenaline wore out of his system, it felt as if a darkness settled over him.
Was I right to kill him? Bron wondered.
It had seemed like such a good idea, to make a statement, to put the monster down, declare war. Yet it accomplished so little.
Olivia had argued against it, claiming it was too big a risk. But Bron remained firm.
He'd pulled the trigger easily enough.
Yet now an arctic front seemed to blow through the hollow landscape of his soul. Bron crouched on the dock, shaking, suddenly chill despite the heat. He peered around at the swamp as if through a haze.
There was nowhere that he could go. He didn't know the way out.
He wished that he was not alone, that Whitney was the
re. Today was supposed to have been their first big date, out hiking in some incredibly beautiful canyon.
I'm missing it, and for what?
He wondered what she would think if she knew what he had done.
A week ago, he thought, I longed to know my past, to know who I am. Now I know: I'm a killer.
He wondered if he should ask Olivia to erase the memory of the past twenty-four hours, but he knew that he couldn't do that. What was done was done, and sometimes forgetting can be far worse than remembering.
Memories can haunt a man. Memories can be a form of torture. No one had understood that any better than Ramira, a woman trained in a hundred forms of torture.
A foreboding warned that more Draghouls might be coming, and each little movement in the forest, each slap of a leaf or crunch of a twig, brought Bron more alert.
After a few minutes, Bron went and heaved up the little that he had in his stomach. Miserably, he sat and waited for Olivia to return in the boat and take him to safety. Olivia, or Whitney, or anyone.
He longed to be rescued from what he was becoming.
Back in Saint George, Whitney woke that morning to the sound of doves cooing in the backyard.
She grabbed her cell phone, checked it for messages, and found none.
She lay in bed for a long time, wondering what had become of Bron. He'd taken off early from school, and though she'd left three messages, he hadn't returned her call.
They were supposed to leave early this morning, drive up to Bryce, and go hiking through the fairy canyons. It was perhaps the most beautiful place on earth, and they could drive there for fifty dollars. It wasn't as if her mom had money to spare, of course. Her mom was making a tremendous sacrifice for Bron, for this date, and he hadn't called.
She resisted the urge to dial him again. Maybe his phone was broken, or maybe he'd gotten hurt.
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