by Lincoln Cole
He doubted it. “I can’t wait,” he lied. “I’ve been dying to see my sister for months.”
Of course, Megyn wasn’t his real sister any more than Leopold had been their real father. Nor was Sheila his real aunt. Leopold was the one who formed them into a family. His mission became their reality. He offered them a way forward and had been the anchor point of their extended family.
Without him, the family was on the verge of disintegration. Jeremy had to hold them together at least a little while longer.
Just thinking about that moment on the docks when Bishop Glasser had been shot in the face caused Jeremy’s fists to clench. He needed to hold his family together until they had gotten revenge. He’d never been so angry and frustrated about anything in his entire life.
The Bishop’s vision had been left unrealized with his death, but as long as Jeremy lived, the plan would continue. It would, in fact, evolve and become even stronger. Jeremy would find a way to finish what Leopold Glasser had started back in Everett.
“Have your driver pull the car out back,” Sheila said. “There’s a little shed he can park in so he’s off the road and out of sight. We’ve boarded up the windows and locked the place down so we don’t want to draw any attention.”
Jeremy turned and nodded to the driver, letting him know it was alright to follow Sheila’s order. Then he followed Sheila into the service station. Even with how disgusting and rundown the place was, he was glad to be here because it meant realizing the beginning of the mission he’d set for himself after the Bishop died.
He had chosen this location to begin his attack for a couple of reasons. After all, there were children stationed all around the country he could have joined, but Megyn had been the one in the most important location in Southeastern Ohio. She was also one of the most powerful children of the bunch, and on top of that this place was targeted specifically to get vengeance for crimes committed against Bishop Glasser.
Leopold had warned against putting two powerful children so close together. They would create a target that could be easily stopped by the Church and its allies. However, Jeremy had thought of the perfect solution to that exact problem: he would use the other children as bait.
He had sent activation messages to all of the other cells with the special children. Many of them were unprepared for such an uprising and would be unsuccessful in their missions, but that mattered little. Some would probably die, but they were acceptable losses given the greater mission that was at stake. They had known the risks when they were recruited and trained by the Bishop.
They would form the perfect distractions, however, to give him time to finalize his plan. All Jeremy needed to do was keep the Church busy while he embarked on the attack that would make the Bishop proud. He would garner international attention, he knew, and redeem his father.
◆◆◆
They walked deeper into the grimy service station, pushing a swing door open and moving into the dimly lit storage room. His mind’s eye showed a thriving gas station long ago, but now it was just a building waiting for a demolition crew.
“Megyn,” Sheila said softly, holding up her hand to warn Jeremy to stop moving. “You can come out now, honey.”
Jeremy heard the familiar click of a pistol cocking from off to his left, and he froze in place. His eyes hadn’t adjusted to the darkness yet so he couldn’t see anything more than a shape.
“Who is he? You! Don’t take another step.”
“I didn’t intend to take one. Megyn, is that you?”
A hesitation. “Jeremy?”
“Yes. It’s me.”
Three people walked out of the darkness. One man, a second older woman, and then a girl about twelve years old. The man he didn’t recognize: he was balding with a flannel shirt on and missing teeth. He carried a shotgun.
The woman was in her twenties, probably, with bug eyes and an unpleasant face. Jeremy didn’t know her by name, but he had met her at some point in the past. She looked familiar.
The little girl was Megyn Wilford. She was a pretty little thirteen year old girl with flowing blonde hair and a big smile. She was also the most powerful telekinetic child of the group, able to do things that had impressed even him.
“Why are you here?” the bug-eyed woman asked. She demanded it of him, and Jeremy was annoyed. “What is going on? Where is Leopold?”
“There’s been a change in plans.”
“What do you mean?”
He hated answering this woman’s questions. Who the hell did she think she was? She was a normal civilian, not special like him or Megyn. He didn’t owe her any explanation; right now he wanted nothing more than to lash out at her mentality and force her to grovel at his feet.
He needed to use tact, however, to win Megyn over. To bring his plan to fruition he would need for Megyn to trust him, which meant being diplomatic.
“I mean it is time for us to get to work. Lower your gun and let’s all talk. We have much to discuss.”
◆◆◆
“I want to talk to him,” Megyn said. Jeremy had finished explaining the situation to her (at least, the modified situation he had concocted to get her help). She had listened patiently, growing more anxious as Jeremy spoke. She wrung her hands and scowled at him.
His version of events didn’t contain the Bishop’s murder. That fact he conveniently left out.
“I told you, he is very busy.”
“I can call him. He told me I could call him whenever I needed him.”
“He is off the radar since the Church is looking for him. If you call him now you will be putting him at risk. But he sent me here to put things into motion and we have a lot to do.”
“Father was very specific that we had to wait for him to activate us. Not you, Jeremy.”
Jeremy waved his hand in annoyance. He felt like they had been having the same circular conversation for the last hour with no progress. It was starting to frustrate him. Megyn was persistent about that one sticking issue, and he knew she was right: Leopold had made it abundantly clear that they were only to listen to him.
Jeremy couldn’t very well conjure up the Bishop to talk to her, though. Sending the messages to other children hadn’t been very difficult: they were waiting for coded messages anyway, and impersonating the Bishop wasn’t difficult like that. In person, though, things were trickier.
He considered admitting that their Father was dead. It was a fine line to not tell Megyn the full truth, but he couldn’t risk compromising his agenda by her having a breakdown because of her tender emotions.
She couldn’t know of the murder of her father. If she found out then she would never agree to his plan.
“I know, Megyn.”
“It just seems like a major divergence from our original objective.”
“You know me. Would I lie about something like this?”
She hesitated, and for a minute he worried that she might say ‘yes.’ Finally, she shook her head.
“No, of course not. It just seems odd that he didn’t contact me to tell me you were coming.”
“I told you: the Church was on to his plans and they are chasing him, so he had to speed up our timetable. He was afraid to make any calls or contact until he could evade the church, but by then we need to have acted. We are supposed to distract them to give him a chance to escape.”
“OK.”
“We are out of time, though, so we need to handle this as quickly as possible.”
She started to open her mouth to speak and then changed her mind. Finally, she said, “Ok. So, what do we do?”
“In due time,” Jeremy said. “First, though, how long has it been since you got to eat ice cream?”
He could tell from the sudden grin on her face that his guess had been right: it had been a long time. He fished some money out of his pocket. He didn’t have much left, but this was important.
“I saw a shop about a mile up the road. How about you go get yourself a scoop and bring it back?”
“Sure,” she sa
id, accepted the offered money. She turned to the other adults in the room, settling on Sheila. “Are you guys coming?”
“They are going to hang out here with me,” Jeremy cut in before Sheila could respond. “We have a lot of things to get ready for the Bishop’s plan to work, and we’ll be ready to go by the time you get back.”
“Ok,” Megyn said. Humming to herself, she walked across the room and back into the main area of the service station.
Jeremy turned to the demon driver he’d brought with him. “Is the car stowed?”
“Yes.”
“Why did you send her off?” Sheila asked.
To her credit, there was a slight waver in her tone. Jeremy didn’t answer her question, but turned his attention instead to the man holding the shotgun. He reached out mentally, testing his fortitude. A weak willed man, he determined, easily dominated.
Jeremy gave him the suggestion to aim the gun at Sheila. “Put your gun down, Aunty,” he said, smiling pleasantly at Sheila.
“What are you doing?”
“I won’t ask you again. Please set your pistol on the floor.”
“Jeremy…what are you doing? What’s going on?”
“I don’t much like the idea of you second guessing me, and I don’t need any of you.”
Her lip quivered. “You won’t have him shoot me. Megyn would hear.”
“I’d rather not have anyone get shot,” Jeremy replied. “It would spoil the organs.”
Sheila’s eyes went wide. “You intend to harvest us.”
“It wasn’t my original plan, but then she started second guessing me,” he said, pointing at the younger woman. “And the thing is, I don’t like having people question me. If there was any other way…”
The bug eyed woman turned and ran for the door. Jeremy mentally overpowered her and forced her to fall to her knees. She groveled there, and he felt a smile spreading across his face.
“Much better.”
“Jeremy, you don’t have to do this.”
“I know. Obviously I don’t have to. But, for what I have planned I’m going to need a lot of organs, and I’d rather get as many of them as I can before letting anyone know I’m here.”
“We’ve served Leopold faithfully for years. If he has any idea what you are—”
“Leopold is dead,” he said flatly. “Go figure. Guess that means he won’t care much what I do with you.”
The shotgun shook, the man struggling to break free of Jeremy’s grip on his mind. “Start with him,” he said, nodding for his bodyguard to begin. “And be careful not to damage any of the precious bits.”
“Jeremy—”
“I think you’re done,” he said, turning to look at Sheila. He seized her, stopping her from speaking. She was a lot stronger than the man, nearly breaking free of his mental grip, but he held her grip.
Jeremy watched as his driver moved from one to the next, slicing their throats. He overpowered them, and forced them into submission, unable to get free. As the blood drained out, so did the light from their eyes.
The smell of their coppery blood was overpowering as it pooled across the dusty floor and he walked back to make sure it didn’t get on his feet.
“Hurry up and get what we need into the cooler. I’ll stop Megyn outside and we’ll be in the car waiting for you. I’d rather not have her see any of this.”
“Understood.”
“Make it look like there was a struggle. Make it look like the Hunter killed them.”
“Why?
He smiled. “Every story needs a good villain. Once Megyn sees what they did to her friends, she’ll have no choice but to help me.”
He turned and strode back out of the service station with a sigh. It was an unpleasantly hot day, and he was starting to wish he’d asked Megyn to pick him up some ice cream, too.
Chapter 3
Arthur was still a little unsure of his decision to bring Desiree along with them all the way to Ohio. Her driving helped, but he had no idea what sort of danger they were heading into. It wouldn’t be fair or right to bring her out of one dangerous situation and into another one.
It had been her decision, though, and it would have been even less fair to refuse her help simply out of his own pride. In the end, it was better to have three heads instead of two in trying to figure out what was going on in Ohio with Jeremy … especially since one of those heads was still being quiet and withdrawn.
Niccolo barely spoke, but his animation increased dramatically. He was out of his own thoughts at least a little bit. Even still, for most of the drive the tension in the car felt thick enough to cut with a knife.
The priest would answer questions and offer up suggestions occasionally, but when he was in one of his moods at least Arthur could converse with Desiree and stay occupied.
It was a long couple of days driving to reach Athens, Ohio, but once he was finally there Arthur’s first plan was to reach out to his brother for help, hoping to get a seedier picture of the city and what they were up against.
He chose Athens because he knew the territory very well. Just to the northeast of Columbus and a quick shot to any heavily trafficked places Jeremy might hit. It could serve as an initial base of operations for them while they tried to figure out what Jeremy was planning.
If he was being honest, however, he also picked the city of Athens because it was close to his home.
He spent a sizable chunk of his youth near Amish Country and it was a familiar place. Being back here was simultaneously relaxing and painful: this was also the city where he’d lost his family.
He paused at an intersection in downtown Athens, however. Turning right would take them to the hotel, but even as the light shifted to green he just let the car idle.
A minute passed. The light changed back to red.
“What’s going on?” Desiree asked, leaning up from the backseat. “Do you need the map?”
“No,” he said, rubbing his face with his hands. Behind them, a car started honking as the light changed back to green once more. His turn signal kept blinking at him and he felt sweat beading on his forehead.
“You said we were almost to the hotel, right?”
“Yeah,” he said. “We are. That’s not where we are going, though.”
He flipped the turn signal to turn left instead. He had made up his mind about something he needed to do now that he was back in his old stomping grounds, and it was better to get it taken care of early than to drag it out.
“Where are we going, then?”
Arthur didn’t immediately answer. This was something he had put off for the last several months, a trip he needed to make.
“Home.”
◆◆◆
“Where are we?” Niccolo asked as Arthur turned off the paved road and onto a gravel drive. The car jostled a little bit and kicked up a cloud of dust behind them as they went. He looked around, groggy, and turned to Arthur. “Are we almost to the hotel?”
Arthur didn’t immediately reply: his palms were sweaty and the air felt hot around him. He tugged at his collar, finding it suddenly difficult to breathe. Even his knuckles turned white as they gripped the steering wheel and he forced them to relax. He felt Desiree’s hand on his shoulder. She must have sensed his discomfort.
The way the gravel crunched under the tires was something Arthur had heard a thousand times before. A million, even. It was a comforting sound, but also jarring in the memories it elicited. How many times had he come this way with his daughter in the backseat, her laughter filling the car?
He brushed the sweat off of his forehead and took several deep and steadying breaths.
“I thought we were going to the hotel?” Niccolo said, seeing the house looming up ahead.
“We still might,” Arthur replied. “I just need to make a quick stop, first.”
Niccolo was quiet for a moment. “This is your home, isn’t it?”
Arthur didn’t answer. He could see the town house in the distance, next to the old red
barn and paddock. He’d painted that house about a year ago, giving it a fresh coat that shined in the waning sunlight.
Both the barn and the fields were empty now and forgotten, the horses long since sold off.
Mitchell oversaw the farm while Arthur struggled to find his way back. While Arthur had been too broken to actually deal with the world around him and wanted nothing more than to just crawl into a hole and die, Mitchell took care of the property for him. He never really said so aloud, but he was thankful for his brother and knew that by now he would have lost the house—or worse—if not for him.
He didn’t blame Mitchell for that, though. It had been his own fault for trusting the Council to protect them. He should have kept his family better hidden, more secret.
Or, better yet, he should have taken his brother’s advice and never gotten married in the first place. He had known the risks when he first met his future wife and eventually had his beautiful daughter, though it was something he’d never believed could happen. Not to him.
He’d been too foolish to actually believe in the possibility that he might lose everything.
Still, he didn’t regret it … not fully, at least. After everything that had happened, he knew it was better to have tried to be happy than to resign himself without ever making the effort.
“This is your home?” Desiree asked as he parked in front of the front porch. The drive ended at a large circular parking area big enough to fit about eight vehicles.
“This was my home,” he corrected. “Not anymore, though. Now it is just a property I own. We can stay here for the next couple of days and save the hotel cost.”
“Are you sure?” Niccolo asked. “I can pay for the hotel if need be and –”
“I’m sure,” Arthur said. Not an ideal time for such a trip, but he knew that the longer he put it off, the more difficult it would become.
The time was now.
Still, he made no immediate move to exit the car, just kept taking deep breaths and willing for the emotions to subside. His mind kept wandering to memories of his family and life before.
No one spoke for another few minutes while Arthur continued staring at the front door of his country home. He couldn’t see anything in his mind except for the blood of his family on the kitchen floor. The looks on their faces.
