But this Mr. Brass fellow apparently was a bit of a rabid dog prone to chomp down on the hand that merely sought to guide him into a long-lasting and mutually beneficial arrangement. Although it hadn’t hit the news yet, all present company were well aware that the chief’s home had been burned to the ground and that two charred skeletons, both without their heads, had been found amidst the rubble of the home.
Two severed forearms with unmistakable police patches on them had been found in the city park, and then the nutcase had blown up the damn police station. It was clear they weren’t dealing with any ordinary criminal. This guy was going to have to be put down hard and fast, but the resolution to do so was far simpler than the how.
He must have had some pretty die-hard followers to risk stuffing the police station with dynamite on such short notice, and how in the hell they lit the fuse without getting shot halfway up to the moon themselves was a mystery the private detective had been assigned unravelling.
The most serious topic of conversation that evening had been whether to seek or resist full-blown military involvement in the city. The governor could declare a state-wide emergency and request a small contingent of national troops. Or the president himself might order this. Or the president might strongly suggest it and gauge the governor’s reaction.
While none of the present company had anything against troops turning homes inside out and putting every last member of Mr. Brass’s gang to the sword, the situation wouldn’t be so cut and dry. They also might turn city desk drawers inside and out and do a little too much poking around in city finances—all under the auspices of following the money trail to “the bad guys” of course.
But that trail might lead an overly thorough investigator to discover large, inexplicable deposits in the chief’s bank account over the last year or two, and that might cause them to think it would be a good idea to take a little peek inside the mayor’s accounts. In a word, it could get ugly.
They were all in agreement that this was a Sivingdel housekeeping matter, and they didn’t need any outsiders—in which category they unhesitatingly placed the governor—meddling. Like a socially prominent set of parents with a psychopathic son that kills their daughter, they would take care of the matter in a way that saved the family name, even if that meant murdering the wretched son and making both deaths look like a tragic accident.
Although the city’s police force had been reduced roughly by half, the private detective currently in their midst unofficially oversaw a crack team of around fifteen experienced officers—none of whom had been at the police station during the attack—who at 9 a.m. tomorrow were going to be given the green light to carry out warrantless searches, heavy-handed interrogations, and even executions, until they sniffed out Mr. Brass, whom they would then torture to death in the mayor’s basement.
Afterwards, they would award each of the fifteen officers with the city’s coveted Valor medal and claim that the mastermind behind the cowardly police station bombing had been killed in self-defense in police custody and that the decorated officers had barely escaped with their lives.
Then, the really grisly work would begin. They would arrest at least thirty people in any way associated with Mr. Brass’s gang, force confessions out of them through torture, hang them all in their cells, and claim the cowards had decided to sullenly take their fate into their own hands rather than face the unswerving hand of public justice.
“FOUR outside the carriage?” Righty asked Harold, hoping he had misunderstood his calculation of the coachmen and the men flanking the coach.
“Yep,” Harold said with a tone that showed he recognized the enormity of the task. It wasn’t killing them that was going to be hard. That would represent about as much difficulty to Harold as a cobra killing four mice inside a cage.
The tricky part was getting the job done without Main Street turning into a miniature amphitheater where a bird not to be found in the thickest zoology textbook slashed and dragged four screaming victims before the sight of a hundred terrified sets of eyes peering cautiously from windows, nauseated by the sight yet unable to avert their gaze from the macabre scene.
And that was without even taking into account the five occupants Harold had seen march into the coach.
“Nine men, and just one of them is my target. May Kasani forgive me if I kill the innocent!” Righty said with a sigh.
Righty had a bag with several nasty surprises inside that he had brought along to hopefully enable him to adapt to whatever situation he found.
“If it comes down to eyewitnesses saying they saw a bird that looked like a miniature dragon, we’ll probably have good, old-fashioned skepticism on our side. But the fewer people with sixteen-inch claw marks the better,” Righty said, pulling a stone the size of his head out of a bag strapped to Harold’s side.
Harold reached his flexible talon back and grabbed it easily, and then Righty handed a similar stone to Harold’s other talon.
About fifteen minutes later, Harold said, “They’re about to pull into a house, it looks like,” with a bit of alarm in his voice.
Righty had been hoping maybe the two men flanking the coach would leave, and maybe even some of the inhabitants inside the carriage—besides the mayor—but he now realized he would not be so fortunate. For all he knew, they were all about to go piling inside the house, where there might be even further protection, and Righty had had enough of home invasions.
“Fire at will,” Righty said reluctantly, realizing there was no time to formulate a battle plan.
“It won’t be pretty,” Harold said, his tone that of a disclaimer.
“No, it won’t be, but it’s now or ne—”
Harold took Righty’s breath away with a sudden plunge. Righty was strapped in tight, but he grabbed the straps for good measure with a vice-like grip.
Harold was going his usual three hundred miles per hour by the time he approached the ground. He was coming in from behind with his wings tucked. About fifty feet from the ground, he flared his wings out and approached the right-side bodyguard at a sharp diagonal angle.
He held his left talon out, and as soon as the rock made contact with the back of the man’s head it exploded violently in a cloud that would have surely been red if it had not been robbed of its color by the black night.
Harold was already moving at an upward angle by the time the rock made contact, and before the other bodyguard could even turn his head in that direction—which didn’t take very long—Harold had hopelessly disappeared from sight into the bosom of the night sky.
“Whoa there,” the bodyguard said calmly but forcefully to the coachmen.
One of the coachman—the one on the right—peered over his shoulder just in time to see the headless corpse slump forward onto the horse and then fall over the side.
“INSIDE THE GATE!!” the coachman shouted at the top of his lungs.
The coach lurched forward while the surviving bodyguard headed around to the other side to see what had happened.
He felt the gust of wind just in time to look up and see a rock coming straight towards his face, but not to avert the fatal blow. His head exploded just as violently, bathing the side of the coach.
Righty was submitting to Harold’s will, at this point, as maintaining consciousness was his chief concern, and he hung to it by a bare thread.
Harold, conversely, was in his element, calmly but quickly plotting his next move like a bird eyeing worms on the ground.
A few windows opened in some apartments on the side of the street, but there were no street lamps sufficiently near to shed light on the horrible scene below.
The coachmen were now thrashing the horses mercilessly, urging them to get inside the gate as soon as possible.
Only when the horses nearly crashed against it did the coachmen remember they had to dismount and open it. Forgetting their duty, they leapt from the carriage and began to sprint in opposite directions, leaving the gentlemen inside to see to their ow
n salvation.
Amongst this group, the private detective was the next best thing to a warrior, and this was confirmed by the unanimous movement of glances towards him, which seemed to say, Well, do something!!
He pulled out a dagger that some might have called a short sword and stepped outside.
Harold, alarmed at the rapidity of the coachmen, decided they would have to be dealt with before they got too far. He had brained one by the time the private detective stepped out of the coach, but by that time he had a conundrum on his hands—or, in this case, talons.
He opted to take out the detective, since he was on the way after all. He decided it would be best not to take any chances with that wicked dagger, and so once he got within ten feet he launched the stone at him.
It struck him in the chest and launched him about twenty feet backwards, smashing his heart and lungs instantly.
Harold didn’t stop to watch but kept flying straight towards the coachman, who was making disturbingly quick progress, suggesting he had missed his calling in track and field. Harold felt no joy as he ended the poor soul’s life, but some people were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Harold knew the rest of the job had to be handled quickly, as he now spotted at least a dozen lanterns in windows.
It would only be a matter of time before someone stepped foot out onto the street.
“Righty?”
No answer.
“RIGHTY?!” Harold growled.
Righty’s eyes flapped open. The thread attaching him to consciousness had snapped about thirty seconds ago.
“Yes?!”
“You deal with those in the carriage!” Harold commanded. “They’re the only ones left!”
“Fair enough,” Righty said.
Harold landed, and Righty got off. Harold disappeared quickly into the night.
Righty walked towards the carriage, compressed sword in hand. The coach’s horses were right in front of the gate, but the coach doors appeared to be firmly shut.
Righty approached them and gave them a good yank. They wouldn’t budge.
Righty extended his sword and made a vicious forward thrust. It went inside the coach about four feet and elicited a bloodcurdling scream.
“OUT! OUT! OUT!!” he heard someone scream.
The door on the other side opened, and Righty went sprinting around to that side.
The senator was the first out, and Righty hacked him in two as calmly as a man chopping sugar cane.
This caused the remaining passengers to seek egress via the opposite door, and Righty heard it open.
He went running around to that side, feeling a bit like an angry dad chasing a pack of brats around the house with his belt, and he thrust his sword clean through a councilman’s heart, from behind, as soon as he stepped out.
This inevitably caused the stampede to shift towards the other door, and by the time Righty got around he saw one of the men had already made it to the gate.
The other—a councilman—was not so fortunate, and Righty ran him through the heart from behind before he could get further than a couple feet from the coach.
But the other man was now pulling open the gate and making his way towards safety. Righty sprinted forward, recognizing him as the mayor by Harold’s description earlier that day.
Righty reached the gate to see the mayor’s smiling face mocking him from the safety of the barred gate. And Righty even heard the click of what was surely a lock being closed.
Righty almost got him with a sword thrust, but the mayor seemed imbued with the reflexes of a cat, quickly springing away from the thrust with a wild look of mocking joy in his eyes.
Righty looked to his left and saw that the fence was made of solid stone and stood around seven feet tall. He compressed his sword, slid it into his forearm sheath, and leapt up in the air, arms outstretched, fingers reaching for the top.
He made it but barely. His boots weren’t exactly ideal for vertical leaps. Nonetheless, as soon as his fingertips latched onto the surface, he did a pull-up so effortlessly that he catapulted himself onto the top surface.
He quickly jumped down and began sprinting towards the mayor, who had almost made it to the front door.
Righty reached him just when the mayor was beginning to turn the door handle. A hard right cross to the back of the neck put him into a sleep from which he would never wake.
“It’s nothing personal, Mr. Mayor, just tying up a few loose ends,” Righty muttered.
He pulled out a mangy looking dagger he had purchased from Tats last night, cut the mayor’s throat, and then stuck it deep into his back with the following note attached:
Its alwas smart tu pa yur dets!!
He began running towards the backyard, hoping Harold was watching and would anticipate his movements, and also hoping he wouldn’t run into an eyewitness or a growling dog.
For what seemed like the first time in a while, luck was on his side, and he found Harold prostrate as he turned the corner of the house.
He jumped on his back, and they were hundreds of feet in the air before Righty could blink more than a few times. But as he turned back it looked like a small cluster of moving lanterns were in the general vicinity of the blood-stained coach.
“We just need word on that one last job, and we can call it a night!” Righty said to Harold.
Chapter 27
Twigs hadn’t exactly been Tats’ first choice for participation in the nearly suicidal mission of chaining the main police station’s doors shut in broad daylight in anticipation of a violent gang leader doing some unknown, but predictably violent, act. But precisely because of the nature of that mission, volunteers had been a bit scarce.
Twigs had been hoping to earn a better nickname—his skinny appendages being the inspiration for his current appellation—and he had also seen the murderous threat in Tats’ eyes that many had failed to see that night and who had paid with their blood for their lack of perspicuity.
But he knew he was in a fix now. He would hang for sure. His skinny little frame should have enabled him to wiggle out of the police officer’s grip like a piece of spaghetti escaping the fork seeking to ensnare it, but, alas, the officer’s grip had been firm and unyielding, and he believed, rightly, that he had been the only soul so unfortunate as to be captured. He had seen most of his compatriots escaping into the anonymity of the crowd, which was bedazzled by the fireworks display put on the by the incineration of the Sivingdel Police Station.
He supposed he would have to cooperate. There was no way he could save his scrawny little neck otherwise. He would rather take his chances disappearing into some other city than facing a bunch of stern-faced judges who could make him alone bear the government’s wrath for the horrible crime.
But he knew things. He knew where several of Tats’ mansions were. He knew what Mr. Brass looked like, having seen him back in the old days at the junkyard. And he suspected that just maybe, if he could convince the police that a dozen or two necks are more fun to stretch than just one, he just might be a free man in a short time.
But he knew he would have to disappear and fast. He didn’t want Mr. Brass’s terrifying eyes to be the last thing he saw on some dark night.
As he contemplated his gloomy scenario, he heard the soft fluttering of wings.
Some tiny bird had deigned to share company with him in this dingy cell.
The bird looked at him from the base of his bed, on which it had alighted, and cocked its head in a friendly manner.
“Come here, little birdie. I won’t hurt you.”
He then tickled the bird lightly with his bare toes.
He wasn’t sure if it was the shifting of the moon, or whether a cloud had unveiled an erstwhile hidden portion of the moon’s glow, but he suddenly saw what looked like a small needle extending from the bird’s beak.
Before he could contemplate the matter further, he felt a sharp sting in the big toe on his right foot.
?
??OWWWWWW!!!” he screamed, making the cell reverberate thunderously.
He bent forward to grasp the injured area and saw it was puffy and red, and its swelling was expanding rapidly.
He screamed and screamed, but no footsteps at the makeshift jail came stomping along to his rescue.
The guards had been warned by the mayor not to approach the cell under any circumstances until he arrived, since the prisoner might lure the guards into a trap. The mayor was going to arrive “with a special team,” he had promised.
Twigs began to feel light-headed as the poison coursed through his veins. Finally, sleep offered him a respite, and he accepted it willingly.
About twenty minutes later, the same bird alighted on his chest and cocked its head towards his heart and then towards his nose. Satisfied, it left the room quickly through the small, barred window.