31
Azrael
March 12th, 2023
Icalled Havoc on my way out of the city towards the woods.
“Ghost,”
“Havoc,” I said in return.
“What do you need?”
It’s what I appreciated the most about him, about all the Blackheart brothers. They didn’t ask unnecessary questions or linger on business. They didn’t care. All they wanted was to do whatever job I might have for them and get back to their own work, whatever that may be these days.
“I need you to pick up my bike from the church and take it to your shop. Give it the Special. Secondly, I need all three of you for a little project I have in mind.”
“Wracking it up, are we?” he hummed.
I smiled. “You have my personal phone number.” The only three people in the world that did. I had a family phone, a personal phone, and then the phones I recycled through every few days. Sometimes, I called members of my sacred family from different phones just to keep them on their toes, other times I shut the family phone off just to get some peace and quiet. Both of those phones were highly modified. Unable to be traced, able to access any server in the world, any camera, and there were absolutely no restrictions on it. The people of this world had no idea what they didn’t know. Not even a little bit. What their government keeps from them, what the leaders of this world tellcertain people just to cause painful rhetoric to divide them in the cruelest of ways. I could see through it all. The power I had? It could probably end all wars. End every argument of good and evil.
The people didn’t even realize that all of these politics they were a part of, titling themselves this or that, it was all a way of controlling them. Controlling the narrative while the people who created the sides were off having grand dinners, laughing and mocking the people while they ate rhinos for dinner and drank million-dollar wine together.
I suppose I did have to hand it to them, I could only dream of having that much control one day. Perhaps Alaric and I could run this country. I did love controlling narratives, and he was absolutely terrifying in his silence, but the politics? I couldn’t say that I disliked them, in fact, I was very interested in politics. The politics of organized religion, government, society. I simply didn’t like how it was handled.
‘Politics’ was the pen in the hand of whomever had their own sentience, and suddenly, everyone was a writer.
People pretended that politics were about ideals, but it’s actually much simpler than that. It’s about who owes whom, who keeps secrets and who uses them. It’s about whispering the right name in the right ear at the right time, or in this case the right name to the right media outlet, and the entire world shifts.
It’s about money, favors, loyalty, and fear, all of which I have. Those are the currencies to play the game. The people who are learning about which alliances are skin-deep and which are made of bones. Being ruthless with illusions is also part of it. Charm and strategy gets you in the door, but the ability to make magic is what keeps a person there.
Our father dearest tried to play the role of powerful politician, but he had failed in so many ways. While building relationships, he forgot the most important part; sometimes being silent wasall the power you needed. Let the people spreadtheirrhetoric like crazy while you sit back and watch them implode over a little whisper you ‘leaked’ on the internet. Eventually, you’d step back in, be the hero who saves the day, earning votes, earning favor, and so on. The problem was, he didn’t like any version of him that was weak, so his Initiates, the people who he ‘ruled over’ could never see him as wrong.
In that, he didn’t realize that it wasn’t always about being right, but more about being effective. Sometimes making calculated mistakes was exactly what you needed in order to propel yourself forward. What he didn’t realize in his hunt for power was that power didn’t always look the way most thought it did.
But control did, which was why this was a game I loved to play. As was everything else, politics was my strong-suit, which would aid in our next steps forward as a family.
If we remained a family long enough to succeed.
“I do. What’s the favor?”
I flexed my hands, pulling myself out of my own thoughts. I did like to live there but I couldn’t let the tangents keep me from completing my mission. “I need a house. Created by the hands of you and your brothers.”
He was quiet a moment. “Location?”
“I’ll send you the coordinates.”
“We’ll have to bring people in.”
“I trust you will do what’s right.” They would either bring in very trusted individuals or they would bring in who they could and kill them upon completion. It’s the only way this would work. I couldn’t have anyone questionable knowing where this was located.
“Any specifications?”
I pulled into the lot in front of the building. “Hell.”
“Got it.”
I hung up asI parked in the cub’s designated parking spot. I headed inside, not many things going through my mind.
