Aiden
The bastard. The absolute, utter bastard. He thinks he smells blood in the water. This is what I was worried about when Teddy died, after the wash of grief had passed over and through me. I knew others would start taking their shots as well. I had hoped it wouldn’t be this literal.
My phone rings.
“We’re all alive, and you’re lucky for it,” I say.
“I knew you wouldn’t be harmed by anything as simple as bullets,” Eric says. “You’d take a more complex trap than that, I’m sure.”
“Eric, we are not going to be integrated into your little empire, so it’s about time you gave up on the idea.”
“It’s all about leverage,” Eric says. “And I feel like I have found some against you. And she’s pregnant? That is going to be a really difficult situation for you. Hard to sweep a baby into the air at a moment’s notice. Much easier to just give into the man who can make a dozen armed men appear out of anywhere at a moment’s notice.”
“A mercenary magician,” I say. “Don’t forget, Eric. We have resources too.”
“You’re threatening me?”
“Of course I am threatening you. You just attempted to wipe out my bloodline, you pathetic wet teabag…” I wasn’t meant to talk this way, but my anger is getting the better of me as adrenaline starts to surge again, as I remember the hail of bullets, and how easily we could all have perished to them.
“If you have any loved ones, say goodbye to them,” I growl down the line. “Because this, you fucking soggy sandwich fuck, is the fucking end of you.”
That’s when Luke slides the phone diplomatically away from me and ends the call.
“Great negotiation, buddy,” he says. “For our next attempt at diplomacy, let’s throw a brick through his window, and insult his mom.”
“Sorry,” I say. “I lost my temper.”
“I get it,” Luke says. “But I might hold onto this for a while anyway.”
The phone rings.
He answers it.
“Oh, Eric. Hiiiiii,” he says in the way only the youngest brother of a family can. He is slipping back into that role now. Teddy had it for years, but before Teddy was born, Luke honed that role, really made it his.
“Hi, yeah, no, he can’t come to the phone right now.” Luke says. “Why? Well, I think it’s a case of Uranassholeitis. Yeah. Look it up. Okay, bye.”
“That was immature,” Leo says from the rear.
“Do we care? Is there a prescribed response for talking to the guy who just tried to kill you?”
“We’re giving him too much information by talking to him, and the plane will have been tracked. It has a transponder. And now we’re calling and talking to him, from the plane. So either we ditch these phones and move now, or we’re going to have another set of visitors very, very soon would be my guess,” Leo points out.
“Here’s what we do,” Leo continues. “We lay up for a month. We take up residence in a fucking bunker. We heal. In another thirty days, I’m going to be fit again. Then when all three of us are ready, we start wiping this son of a bitch off the face of the planet, one thing at a time.”
He’s right. We have to move.
All phones and personal effects are left on the plane. We take the car, along with the pilot and the doctor. Nobody can be left behind.
We start driving through the night, aiming as quickly as possible for an interstate. We need to blend in with the rest of humanity, and we need to do it fast. We also need to swap the cars, whichis doable. Eric will have access to satellites, and it won’t be easy to ditch him, but I suspect he won’t take that direct hit approach again.
He was trying to scare us. The gun men stayed at a distance, fired in a pattern that wasn’t particularly effective. If he’d wanted us dead, they would have laid in wait, and that airport would have lit up on both sides as soon as we came to a halt. A rocket launcher to the fuel reserves would have done it.
This is a game. A sick game played by a sick man who thinks that everybody he’s ever interacted with is a toy that can bleed for him. I used to think that we could escape evil by just getting powerful enough. Now I know the more powerful you become, the more evil there is. It collects in places of influence, extending tendrils throughout every interaction until everything is corrupted.
We need a fucking exorcism.
CHAPTER 19
