I couldn’t agree more.
As we ride through town, I use the silence to think. I have little knowledge of, or use for, computers. Whatever Noah has been closeted away doing, I didn’t understand much when he tried to explain it. It doesn’t matter. Zander and Chris understand the process of tracking financials and GPS and whatever other leads the loyal Godlings have been able to provide him. All I need to know is that he has three locations for where the deserter Godlings and council are hiding.
However, I do appreciate the irony of his Eroi training being what helped us, and not the Eroi, find them.
Neither Zander nor I have ever been a part of a tactical strike team. Yet, it feels very natural to me, and Zander seems equally at ease. While killing for sport or profit is instinctually wrong, stopping evil men needs no close examination of morality. I only hope the location our group is going to will be the one to hold the council members. Godlings are not my favorite, to begin with. Godlings who attempt to kill my sister fall only marginally below my hatred for Isolde.
Caleb is leading one of the other strike teams, largely made up of Roth cousins and other rogues. The third is being led by the Godling who trains the youngest students in basic combat. I have only met him in passing, but Chris promised he was trustworthy and ready to use whatever force necessary to catch or kill our quarry. Getting information is Chris’s top priority. Personally, I just want them all dead.
I can tell we are nearing our drop off location when Chris and Zander both direct their attention toward me. Chris speaks first. “You are to act in a support roll unless your life is in imminent danger.”
Holding back the urge to sigh at his repetitious instruction, I say, “My life is always in imminent danger.”
Zander shakes his head. “Just stay focused, okay? No mistakes.”
Turning my gaze from them to stare at the graffitied building we’re approaching, I ignore anything else they have to say. No one knows my limits better than I do. Or my intentions.
A few seconds later, our SUV stops alongside a second, and we step out onto the poorly patched pavement of the parking lot behind the dismal store. If the building weren’t surrounded with others that looked equally ramshackle and on the verge of collapsing, I would have thought it abandoned. This is a section of Albuquerque where you can stop at a fast food restaurant and come out to find your car either gone or up on blocks. A perfect place for Godlings detritus to hide.
Both SUVs pull out of the parking lot and leave us to our work. As the sun sets and the sky fills with pinks and oranges that won’t last more than another half hour, four Godlings, three rogues, and two brothers set out to end a civil war the majority of the world has no idea even exists. The plan is to keep it that way. Chris’s plan, anyway.
Even though I don’t understand the intricacies of locating a cell phone through a remotely installed GPS tracking program, I am familiar with schematics. I spent a great deal of time studying the schematics of the hospital I was held in. Aerial images, as well. They were much more detailed than the three building we are about to simultaneously assault. Simpler. Easier to find the weakness. Less options for where a stronghold might be set up.
Chris’s plan is to sweep toward center, clearing outer rooms as we go to make sure we aren’t attacked from behind. It isn’t the worst plan. There are better, though. Such as mine.
I trail behind, where I am meant to support the others, when we silently make our way to the ancient carniceria with cracked stucco and peeling turquoise window frames. The storefront of the butcher shop is tiny, leaving the majority of the building either for freezes and supplies, or a hiding place for Godlings. Above the shop is an apartment, where Chris believes the Godling remnants will be hiding, if they are in fact here. For all the things Chris does well, schematics and aerials are not his best area.
The only plain clothes—though still heavily armed—Godling on the mission breaks off from the group and moves to the front of the building as we approach the rear entrance. Holding our position, we wait for the lone Godling to relay confirmation that he has the storefront secured and locked against interruptions from carnivorous customers intent on making fresh carne asada for their evening meal. Once we are cleared, the assault launches.
Breaching the rear door is nothing difficult, yet completely silent. Godlings begin to fan out across the cold storage area, eyes on their assigned targets. The benefit of being support is that the others forget to watch you. I’m supposed to be watching them, after all. Except I’m not. There’s no reason to waste time. Instead of blindly searching the building, I move to the wall of three large refrigerators and knock on the walls between the racks of knives and mounted rolls of butcher paper until I hear the dull echo of my knocking reverberating off metal conduit.
The rogue Godling assigned to guard the back door watches me warily. I ignore him as I examine the wall for some indication of a door. Large air vents would make sense near the refrigerators and freezers. Behind the knives and paper? Not so much. When I noticed the schematics submitted to the city did not match the aerial pictures Noah was able to find online, I began to suspect upgrades has been made to this unassuming shop.
While half the country isn’t sure whether New Mexico is actually a state, those who do know are aware the state is known for green and red chile, adding exorbitant amounts of cheese to all our foods, and drugs. Meth, particularly. The large air vents on the roof hint at a great need for air circulation. I learned quite a lot about the production of meth from one of the other patients at Peak View, who had sampled too much of his own product, but had known exactly what it took to make it without poisoning himself on the fumes of production.
Sophisticated recirculating air systems on a butcher shop that appeared to be seconds away from closing its doors, or collapsing, was a waving red flag to me. Appearing legitimate, should anyone choose to investigate, was paramount to not landing in prison, which made me believe there were other undocumented renovations to this building.
Noticing chipped texture running along the mounted rack holding three large rolls of butcher paper, I think it an odd place for the texture to be disturbed, and run my hand along the wall and inner edge of the rack. Unsurprised when my finger catches on something, I depress the switch and step back to allow the portion of wall to swing open. The rogue door-watcher makes a noise of surprise before mumbling into the microphone attached to his earpiece.
I say nothing as I climb through the opening barely big enough for my frame. Whatever the Godling is saying to me as he darts in my direction, I don’t particularly care. I have the door closed, and am hurrying down the cramped staircase, before he makes it half the distance needed to stop me.
Silent in my approach, I hear mumbled voices before anyone below hears me. They are too faint to understand, but I am not concerned with what they’re saying. The voices either belong to drug traffickers or Godling refuse. My conscience won’t suffer from killing either.
As I near the bottom of the steep staircase, I pause long enough to orient their voices to where they’re standing, and how many of them are in the room. Once I’m reasonably sure there are no more than six, I step into view and shoot two of them in the head. Their bodies crumple. Motion erupts from the table they’re gathered at, too fast for humans. Satisfaction makes me smirk. Godlings. Noah did well.
I was off by one in my assessment. Five, rather than four, Godlings remain. All are standing now, hunger and power rising in their bodies as they face me down. “Guns?” one of them sneers. “All the power you have and you want to shoot us?”
Shrugging, I say, “Worked well enough for the first two. Besides, you used guns to attempt killing my sister. Why not return the favor?”
Anger flashes in the eyes of the Godling who spoke. “The council did that on their own, out of fear they couldn’t capture and control her. No one else agreed to it. Why would we kill the Gift?”
“To keep her from killing you all?” I drawl. David never was all tha
t concerned with choosing the most intelligent, simply the most blindly obedient.
“The Gift isn’t a weapon,” he argues. “It’s a solution. David knew that, but he twisted what he knew to fit his agenda. It’s control over the Eroi. You’re the weapon, Oscar, not her.”
That’s apparently some clue to fight. Sighing, I decide I’m tired of this whole thing and shoot three of them before the last two can reach me. Hunger blazes inside me, but I am very practiced at keeping it at bay. I never would have survived my time at Peak View if I hadn’t learned to control my hunger. Self-restrain came too late to save my parents, but it keeps me from accessing my screaming hunger, and the power it is pouring into me as the dying men writhe in pain and gasp for their last breaths.
I tuck the gun in close to my side, pointing behind me, as the two remaining deserters leap for me. The one who lands on my back uses his body weight to pull me off my feet. He’s already been shot in the gut, though. I use the moment to position myself to face the man whose knife is digging into my shoulder. He missed my heart, where I’m positive he was aiming. Godlings are not easy to kill. Head and heart. The head is the best, the heart second. Even those still gasping on the floor won’t be able to heal fast enough to repair their hearts. The complexity of the electrical impulses which make the heart muscles pump blood makes them very difficult to heal when damaged to such a large degree.
The knife digs further into my shoulder, aimed downward, hoping to hit my heart. It won’t. Not only because the knife isn’t long enough to make it that far, but because I shoot the last Godling in the head before he even gets close.
Shoving him off, I stand and dust away the debris stuck to me from rolling around on the crude dirt floor. Zander, Chris, and the others barrel down the stairs after me, but I’m already looking at the table the deserters had all been sitting around. I ignore the questions being thrown at me as I scan the various photocopies and original documents and ignore the paraphernalia of the stalled meth operation. Most of the papers are intel on us and the school. One piece of paper catches my eye because of its aged, weathered quality, and I tug it out from beneath a stack of guard patterns at the school. I’m transfixed by what it says before Chris grabs my shoulder and forces me to look at him.
Angry, he glares at me, but I don’t give him the chance to ask any questions. “You were wrong…partially,” I tell him. “These ones didn’t attack Van. The council carried it out. Them…they wanted her alive so they could use her to control the Eroi.”
“I’m amazed you had time to chat before you shot all of them!” Chris snaps. “How are we supposed to question corpses?”
I shrug. “Any questions you want answered are likely on that table…or their bodies. Zander you might want to check for snake tattoos, but I doubt you’ll find them.”
I gesture behind me to the table I mentioned, knowing Chris will be interested in how much the deserters have already learned about the school and our routines. Isolde has yet to call again, but I am positive she knows even more. Rolling the paper in my hands, I move to put it in one of the pockets on my cargo pants, but Chris’s hand grabs mine. When I shift my gaze to his, his flinch is barely perceptible, but there all the same.
“Get your hand off me.”
“What is that?” he demands.
My free hand wraps around his wrist, my thumb pressing into the ligaments at the base of his hand until they are on the verge of snapping and he finally relents. His eyes are murderous as he stands down, but he won’t move against me. He may be running the school and playing at being leader of this band of merry psychos, but he knows they chose me. With seven dead bodies lying at our feet, he doesn’t have the strength to oppose me.
Having established that, I take the paper from my pocket and unroll it in my own due time. Zander rolls his eyes while Chris grinds his jaw back and forth. I have their attention, though. Every still-living Godling in the room listens when I speak.
When the balance between renewal and destruction shifted, and the war between Godlings and Eroi erupted, the last of the creators, Egidio, gave a warning. Godlings and Eroi were created to maintain the balance between life and death, greed and generosity, abuse and compassion. The war to rule the other will not end until Godlings embrace the truth of their purpose and the Eroi prove themselves worthy to once again nurture and train the Richiamos vessels meant to aid the Godlings.
When selflessness returns to both groups, a Gift will be given. Marked by purity, the Gift will bring an end to vengeance, control, abuse, and violence. Those unworthy to bear the influence of the Gift will shrink before it. All those who stand in opposition will be destroyed.
Leveling my gaze at Chris, I stuff the true message from Egidio back into my pocket, and say, “Regardless of this promised Godling-Eroi lovefest, I still have every intention of killing Isolde. Gift or no Gift. Try to stop me, and it won’t just be those would oppose the Gift who’ll get destroyed.”
I don’t wait for him to respond before walking away. The basement is dirty and I already know his answer anyway. He answered it when he backed down in front of his own team.
Chapter Twenty-Six: Fixing What’s Broken
(Zander)
I’m doing my best not to show any fear as Van turns the key in the ignition of my truck. My truck. I love my truck. I don’t want my truck wrecked. Despite Ketchup’s reassurances about her driving abilities when the topic first came up, as pissed off as she’s been about everything lately, I’m struggling not to panic. The engine rumbles to life and I can’t stop myself from flinching. Caleb looks wary in the backseat, but says nothing. Van rolls her eyes and shifts into reverse.
It takes everything I have not to look over my shoulder and say something about the fact that there are cars parked directly behind the truck. It’s a big vehicle, not the easiest to maneuver, yet Van shocks me by calmly inching back and straightening out in the aisle. She shifts into drive and makes for the parking lot exit. Not daring to say anything one way or the other quite yet, I dread her pulling into traffic. When she signals to turn left, back toward our grandma’s house, I watch the heavy traffic rolling past us and my anxiety rises. Van taps her fingers on the steering wheel in time with the music coming from the radio.
Once a break in traffic finally appears, she merges onto the street with no problem and continues on her way. It takes me a good ten minutes of driving before I can breathe again. Words are a little slower to form. Seeing my sister calm, controlled, and pleasantly relaxed is not normal. Especially not after nearly dying, saving Ketchup, finding out about his heart, burying our Grandma, not having Ketchup around constantly, and being left behind on last night’s raid.
The only thing that might have contributed to her calm was getting a call from the Godling lawyers this morning that I’m officially her guardian now. I hadn’t really believed they’d pull it off until getting that call. Actually hearing the news was a little frightening, thinking I was responsible for her as more than just a brother, but also a huge relief at the same time. Van had reacted by throwing her arms around me and not letting go for five minutes.
When I asked her to take me to get the book she and Ketchup stole from Ivy’s temple once she let me go, I expected her to fight me. I didn’t expect her to agree only on the condition that she got to drive. Getting in the truck with her was more nerve-wracking than facing down the deserter Godlings trying to kidnap or kill my sister. I’m still not convinced the attack had been purely the council, or that the others were willing to keep her alive, even if it means she might use the Gift to demolish them.
I need more to convince me than Oscar’s account of what one dead Godling had to say before he shot him in the head. The other groups weren’t any more helpful, the council members dying without giving up a single piece of information, and the third group never giving our strike team a chance to ask questions before lethal fighting broke out. That’s why we need the book.
I’m too concerned with watching the cars around us
and puzzling out half a dozen mysteries to do much talking, until Van drives past the turnoff to our grandma’s house and keeps driving. “Where are we going?” I demand. “You said the book is at the house.”
“Yeah.” That’s all she offers.
I don’t like the idea of distracting her while she’s driving, in my truck, but her clipped answer puts me on alert. “Where are we going, Van?”
Her shoulders tense and she takes a deep breath before speaking. “Home.”
The tremor behind that single word makes it clear she’s not talking about our grandma’s house. I feel cold. Suddenly, I wish Caleb wasn’t with us. Van sees my hand begin to shake and reaches over to squeeze it. “Two hands on the wheel,” I growl.
Shaking her head at me, she puts her hand back on the steering wheel.
“Why?” I ask. “Why there?”
Her voice is quiet as she says, “Because David wouldn’t think to look there.”
From what Oscar told me, David wouldn’t want to be in my childhood home any more than we did. The last time I’d set foot in that place was the day I found my parents dead and Oscar mumbling to himself as he stared at their blood on his hands. I never intended to go back. The house is legally mine. My Grandma was in charge of it until I turned eighteen, then deeded it over to me, even though I told her I didn’t want it.
“Ketchup took it in for me and hid it,” Van says.
“You didn’t go inside?”
She shakes her head. “I couldn’t.”
Van never saw their bodies in the house. She’d been dropped off from dance by a friend and confronted with police tape and an officer waiting with me for her to get home. Grandma had been trying to deal with Oscar’s arrest, which left me to be the one to tell my baby sister that our parents were dead and our brother had killed them.
It’s only then that I wonder if Oscar ever told her the truth. Everything has been so chaotic since moving into the school, we haven’t discussed it. In all honesty, with as close as he and Van are, I thought he would confess to her before me, but as her knuckles blanch white at the idea of setting foot back in our house, I’m not sure.
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