He used his money to finance strange enterprises. He had hundreds of forensic accountants hired just to monitor how much various world dignitaries required for bribes.
Yet what fascinated Bron most was not the breadth of Lucius's organization, but how he put the money to use.
He leveraged his wealth to great benefit, controlling the prices of commodities. When oil prices spiked, sending the world into global recession, he was there to purchase the failing corporations. He toppled entire countries in South America so that he could buy up land, and then put it to good use in mining and oil exploration.
To Bron's astonishment, Lucius had his own technologies division, where scientists across the globe were working on bizarre new propulsion systems for extraterrestrial flight. The sightings of "flying saucers" since the 1940s had been his experimental aircraft.
With Draghoul training techniques, Lucius's scientists had leap-frogged well ahead of mankind in some fields. He remembered an astrophysicist saying, "We're at least seventy-five years in front of them, but keeping an edge grows harder every day."
There was a method to Lucius's madness, some plan that had been thousands of years in the making, and the technician knew that Lucius's plans were about to come to fruition.
But what could they be? Even the tech did not know all of the details. He only held parts to a greater puzzle.
Once Lucius had jested, "People imagine that they are wise when they think in terms of global economies. A hundred years ago, only a few men thought on such a grand scale. They were so busy trying to figure out what was happening in their own small countries. And so in the future, one will need to think in terms of interstellar economies. Mere humans do not plan on such a magnificent scope, and so..." Lucius said with deep satisfaction, "I am far ahead of the game."
Bron stood on the dock, tried to clear his head. He looked out into the waters. His grandfather's body was gone, apparently dragged off by a gator. Sommer and Olivia came down with him.
"Don't you want to learn more?" Olivia asked.
"I've seen enough," Bron argued. He rubbed his temple. "This house..."
Sommer said, "Is bugged...." She'd seen the same memories. "Lucius's people let me go. They've been following me for years.... They've heard every word we've said. We'd better take care of it before we make any plans."
Together, they took one of the flashlights from a downed Draghoul, and went beneath the house. The house stood on stilts, in case the bayou flooded, and for years there had been wasps and swallows building nests of mud under the floor. The nests were wedged up where the support beams joined the floorboards.
Sommer held the light while Bron went to a couple of small nests and knocked them down.
They were fakes, mere covers to hide the listening devices that the Draghoul had attached to the house.
Bron ripped off the powerful microphones, with their batteries and transmitters, and hurled them out into the water.
When they splashed beneath the waves, Bron sighed in relief.
"Well, now we know for sure how they found us," Sommer said. "They've been hoping that you'd come to me. They're more patient than I'd ever dreamed."
Bron looked up. Lucius had his own spy satellites winging through the heavens overhead, much like the Hubble Telescope, except that the lenses were all pointing toward the earth. He'd be taking infrared pictures of them, trying to track them. He'd probably succeed for awhile, until they reached a city, someplace with enough people so that they could get lost in a crowd. Lucius didn't have enough satellites to get constant coverage. There would be blackouts during those times that the satellites crossed the horizon, but he still had good coverage.
"We'd best be going," Bron said nervously. He felt torn, pulled in so many directions. He felt repulsed by the Draghouls, terrified of them, and yet a small part of him wondered if it wouldn't be safer to join them.
He wanted to delve further into the minds of the Draghouls, but he knew that to do so was a trap. Even now, Lucius knew that his men were down. He might not come himself for hours yet, but he could easily send reinforcements.
"We're going to need to burn the house," Sommer suggested. "We don't want them finding any stray fingerprints or DNA."
Bron nodded. "Everything is so wet out here, will it even burn?"
Sommer grinned. "With the right accelerant, all things are flammable," she said, bastardizing a quote from the Apostle Paul. "Pappy had the right accelerants."
Bron did not want to murder the poor Draghouls that he'd drained, but it would be necessary. Shooting them would be merciful, but somehow he didn't have the stomach for it. He decided to take the coward's way and just let them burn. Creatures that were so evil deserved no mercy.
Olivia stood on the docks looking forlorn and nervous while Sommer went upstairs and poured kerosene all over the house.
She came back out with a flare in her hand, struck it, and stood for a moment.
"Who wants to do the honors?" she asked.
Bron took the flare, prepared to toss it through the open door, and had a brief inspiration.
"Give me a moment with the Draghouls," he said. "I need to know one more thing."
Chapter 32
The Flight
"There is no sin in running from a fight that one cannot win. The sin comes if we run forever."
In the predawn light, Sommer's cabin lit up the sky with flames. Plumes of smoke rose above the cypress trees in the swamp, and smoke crawled upon the water.
Firelight reflected from the smoke, making the swamp as bright as day.
No screams rose above the crackling of flames. The Draghouls in the house had died in silence, not with a shriek, but a whimper.
"More to the left!" Sommer said. She was guiding their boat toward the far end of the swamp.
"We came in from the other side," Olivia objected.
"That's because Pappy brought you the long way," Sommer said. "There's a shortcut."
Olivia drove one of the Draghouls' rafts. She didn't need a pole. The Draghouls had left two black rubber rafts with electric motors on the docks. She'd been able to clamp both motors on the back of one boat with ease, and now they rode over the water swiftly, sliding past a huge leaning willow that blocked the channel.
"Skirt the tree, and turn left, under its branches," Sommer warned.
Olivia spotted the opening, a thinning in the fronds that trailed down over the water. She plunged through the curtain of foliage. Sure enough, there was a channel ahead, a narrow passage not much wider than the boat. A big gator was floating in the shadows. It whipped its tail and disappeared.
Olivia recognized where she had come ashore in the dark.
"That's it!" Sommer said. "Ease into the channel. The water isn't deep, but we can make it!"
Olivia realized that the hidden inlet made a lot of sense. That old man couldn't have dragged all of his supplies over miles of swamp each week.
She worried about Bron. She needed to keep him safe. She gunned the electric motor and headed for shelter, under the shadows of the trees.
Chapter 33
Dying to Meet You
"Violence does not solve everything, but it does solve some things."
When Lucius's plane touched down at the Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans, it took only moments to rush to a waiting helicopter.
By then, satellite pictures showed that the cabin was in flames, and three people had left it—speeding off in a raft until they reached an old Ford Explorer. A transmitter had been fitted onto the Explorer years ago, but it had suddenly gone inoperative.