Lucius's quarry had made it into the city, where they would soon be lost in the crowd.
Still, Lucius was eager to see how his agents had died. From the airport, he and his men took a chopper and headed along the Black River, into a tangle of trees. Half an hour after sunrise, they reached the remains of the cabin, it was only a smoking ruin.
From the sky, it looked like a black hole in the canopy of the forest. The trees all around it had leaves of dull green, as happens late in the summer, and only a little gray smoke marked the site.
Adel ordered the pilot to circle the burn a few times before landing. There was no open ground to land on—only a bit of shallow swamp, but the helicopter's landing gear was fitted with pontoons for a water landing.
So they circled.
A sweep of government radio frequencies confirmed that no authorities had come to investigate. A brush fire deep in the swamp wasn't a concern. The area was deluged by thunderstorms at this time of the year, and lightning strikes were common. But with the frequent rain, aided by humidity that normally ran at eighty percent, a fire in the swamp wasn't likely to burn long.
"Sir," Adel told Lucius, "the cover is very thick. Do you dare risk a landing?"
"Of course. Our quarry has already fled," Lucius ventured, for that was the safest thing to do. The Ael were good at running, at hiding. That was about all that they were good at.
So when the chopper dropped near the cabin, no one was there.
The house was completely gone. It had been propped up on poles, and when the main structure was consumed by flames, the floor and struts of the cabin had burned completely. Then the house had crashed in upon itself.
All that was left was the lower dock, with a black pontoon boat tied to it. Flames had scorched it, leaving it disfigured.
The chopper circled, dropping lower with each approach, much as a goose will do during hunting season, staying just out of shotgun range.
When the chopper landed, it made a perfect touchdown near the smoking ruins, and Adel leapt from the chopper onto the dock. He took a rope and wrapped it loosely around the pylons, and then two of his men followed after him.
His men climbed up to the burn and began to search for bodies. The Draghouls, in their dark assault gear and helmets, strutted through the smoking debris, taking no harm. They looked like demons in hell, tormenting the remains of the damned.
Lucius remained beside the helicopter, listening to his agents chatter through his Bluetooth, which was set to a secure channel.
"I've got two over here," one man said.
"Here's a third," Adel answered.
"I think... yes, there's one down here in the water."
The men began to flip charred bodies.
"They're all in fetal positions, my lord," Adel said. "I'm looking, but I don't see any signs of bullet holes. Our men were burned alive, I think. They didn't die in a firefight, or in any type of hand-to-hand."
Lucius grinned widely. An entire hunting squad, snuffed out by one untrained teen? It sounded too good to be true. He had to verify it himself.
He leapt off the floating dock, then rushed a few steps until he reached land. He strode among the remains of blackened timber, while wisps of smoke slithered about his feet. Glowering embers simmered here and there like fiery carnations, lending the swamp their brutal heat. His dead agents smelled like roasting pork, scorched in a pit.
He went to one of the corpses, blackened and puckering, its hair all burnt off. It lay in a fetal position. Millennia ago, Lucius had worked as a priest in an Egyptian temple, and he'd often taken dead merchants out into the desert for burial, folding them up just as these agents lay now.
With their hair burnt off, their heads looked shaven, in a style that had been popular back in Pharaoh's court. Adel flipped one of the bodies, and knelt, studying it intently.
"No sign of a struggle," he said. "No bullet holes or knife wounds. No ligature marks from strangulation."
Killed by a dream assassin, Lucius exulted.
Lucius began to chuckle. What a treasure Bron would be!
He raised his hands high, and threw his head back in triumph. "I love my son!" he roared, and deep in the swamp, herons squawked in alarm at the sudden noise.
On the far side of the inlet, Bron knelt behind a log, with an assault rifle in hand. He'd been waiting for Lucius to step into the open. He studied his father with his own eyes: a man with dark skin, head shaved clean, a little black soul patch for a beard. He had the glittering dark eyes of a snake.
Now Bron pulled the trigger, as easily as plucking a string on a guitar, sending one sweet note to fill the universe. He had taken only a few minutes of instruction in automatic weapons, having Olivia rip the information from Ramira's mind, training his fingers how to pull the trigger fluidly, how to take the long shots while releasing his breath imperceptibly.
It all came so naturally.
The gun jerked once, and the bullet ripped from the muzzle at 2700 miles per hour, spinning as it went. The brass casing ejected, and in that instant, Bron froze, hoping that he'd made his shot, even as the gun roared.
The bullet crossed the water in a fraction of a second, slammed into Lucius, pierced flesh and muscle. The lead bullet mushroomed as it went, sending fragments through bone, slicing nerves and arteries.
Something exploded in Lucius's neck—as if he'd taken a blow from an ax. Bones shattered, and a fragment of vertebrae exited from his throat. With his spinal cord snapped, Lucius dropped even as he registered a report from a single shot.
The blast roared, then echoed across the water, and echoed back, and echoed again and again. It reminded him of cannon fire in the old days, when a cannon was set upon a hill, and blasted into the heavy walls of a castle. The echo of the blast went on and on and on.
He landed on his side in the ashes, and felt a coal blistering his right cheek.
Here in the bayou, with trees rising up on every side above the water, the gunshot report seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, as if it rained down like a judgment from god.
His men cried out in alarm, and suddenly Uzis appeared in their hands, flashing up from their suits. They immediately laid down suppressing fire, each spraying almost blindly in a different direction.
Lucius lay choking on his own blood, gasping. He was perfectly conscious. The bullet had severed his spinal cord, paralyzing him. Lucius could not feel his fingers or toes. The only sensation below his head was a hot pain in his neck, as if someone had shattered a vertebra and then laid an ember in the wound.
He had moments to live before his lungs and heart shut down, moments to suffer. He struggled to breathe.
Adel knelt over him, Uzi in hand, and checked for a pulse. "My lord," he whispered, even as he opened fire into the brush. If he hit the enemy, it would be a miracle. Lucius worked his mouth, but no words would come out.
One of Adel's men rushed up, instantly assessed the situation, and grunted, "Leave him!"
The words were hardly out of the man's mouth when Adel leapt up and raced for the chopper. By some stroke of fortune, Lucius was lying in such a way so that the helicopter was in full vision. The Draghouls flitted into the black chopper quickly, shadows disappearing into deeper shadow. Smoke stung Lucius's eyes, and the coal against his cheek sizzled.
I'll come back, Lucius thought. I'll come back, and I will be stronger, and I will gain the devotion of my son.