Horsemen's War (The Rebellion Chronicles #3) - Steve McHugh Page 0,137
houses are now made and the old ones clear of anything that wants to eat people. The community is thriving. More people are coming through from Shadow Falls and Avalon. Quite a few humans from the Earth realm too. We’re hoping to get a second settlement going closer to the mountains.”
“Cool, cool,” Tommy said.
“Right, what is it?” I asked, turning to him.
“I just . . . I miss working,” he said. “I love my kids, but my God, I want to do something else. I thought that maybe I could bring Daniel to Nidavellir and show him around.”
“Do it,” I said. “Spend a few weeks there; bring Olivia. If she can’t get away, I’m sure she’ll be fine with you coming alone. There are a bunch of kids there Daniel’s age; he’ll be fine. Not a lot of TV time, though. So I hope he likes reading and walking around a lot.”
“I could show him how to track and hunt,” Tommy said, enthusiasm in his voice. “Not kill—he’s too young for that, even as a werewolf—but to know how to deal with nature, how to behave around it. It would be nice.”
“And we have mead,” I said. “Turns out it’s dwarven tradition to bring mead to anyone moving into a new settlement, and they had a lot. Remy and Diana turned up, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen them both as happy as the moment they saw several hundred barrels of mead.”
I looked through the scope again and held up a finger to quiet Tommy as I got comfortable. The door to the town house far below opened, and two large men walked out; both wore suits. One walked to a newly arrived BMW and opened the rear passenger door.
I moved my trigger finger a fraction of an inch and breathed out slowly.
There were runes drawn on the side of the BMW and similar ones on the door of the town house. I’d walked past myself. I had a very short window of opportunity.
Gawain stepped out of the town house and looked around. He wore an expensive gray suit that I’d discovered had been made by a tailor in Italy who had been instructed how to put runes inside it to make it bulletproof.
He’d managed to escape during the battle in Washington, DC, and with the help of several KOA, he’d been able to remove his sorcerer’s band. From there, he’d stayed off the radar and created a fake identity. It wasn’t going to save him.
I breathed out again and counted to five. There were twelve steps from the door to the pavement. Twelve moments where I could have pulled the trigger. Gawain reached the pavement and looked around him. He’d done this every day for a week. I’d been tempted to kill him on day one, but I’d needed more intel about him, about the runes he’d used. I needed to make sure he did not get away.
He stood behind the armored, rune-scribed BMW door and looked like a man who had nothing to fear.
I pulled the trigger.
The bullet hit the door in its center and tore through it like it was made of paper. Zamek had put his own runes on the bullets. There was nothing Gawain could do that would stop it. Gawain fell toward the pavement, and I pulled the trigger again, catching him in the chest as he fell.
One in the groin, one in the chest. Gawain looked up toward me.
“Fuck you,” I said, and I put one more through his eye.
I dismantled the rifle, put it away in the bag, and passed it to Tommy. “I’ll see you soon,” he said. “Take care.”
“I look forward to it,” I told him. “And you too.”
Tommy took off at a run across the rooftops, jumping between them like he was playing a video game, while I made my way to the street and got into a British-racing-green Jaguar F-Type and drove away.
I stopped the car a few hours later, when I’d reached Maine, where I made my way to the realm gate underneath what had once been a bar but had become a restaurant after the bar had been destroyed a few years earlier.
I grabbed a thick winter coat and boots and stepped through into what many would consider a winter wonderland. The snow was thick, the air full of the smells of winter. It was a short walk from the realm gate temple there to the settlement, which still needed a name. Remy had suggested