Birth of a Monster (14 page)

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 own 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.