With Silent Screams (21 page)

CHAPTER
23

Stratford, Maine. 1977.

W
hatever rage and hate I felt as I left Galahad and the forest, both marked with the blood of Rean’s wife and son, remained with me for the entire journey back into Stratford.

I drove through the town, stopping off at the motel to pick up the misericorde dagger and put it in the car. I had a feeling it was going to come in handy. While in the motel, I asked the owner for directions to my target before setting off once again.

The mayor’s house was on the opposite side of town, so it took me a short time to drive through the deserted streets. I drove past the property twice before pulling up to the guarded front entrance.

The house itself was huge, certainly more of a mansion than what I’d been expecting. The street itself was full of half-built houses, all looking slightly smaller than the mayor’s and all utterly abandoned in the darkness.

I walked across the street, the dagger in hand, and gave it to one of the two guards, who stared at it in confusion.

“Someone from here put this in my bedroom,” I told him. “It had to be one of you, because if Simon or his cronies had done it, I’d have found it nailed to a dead rabbit or something much less subtle.”

“Fuck off,” the guard said and moved to shove me back.

I pushed his hand aside and struck him in the throat. He dropped to the ground, trying desperately to breathe, as a blast of air took out the second guard and threw him into the small hut that they’d been using as shelter while on duty. He crashed inside and didn’t move again, as I walked into the hut and pushed the button to open the gates.

“Where’s your boss?” I asked the first guard, who was just beginning to catch his breath again.

He pointed toward the house.

“Yeah, I got that. Whereabouts in there?”

“Not sure,” he said, his voice raspy.

I removed the air from his lungs and allowed him to crash unconscious to the floor, as cries sounded out from more guards who were spilling out of the mansion’s front door.

I cracked my knuckles and walked toward the four men who called out warnings, while one of them aimed a gun at me.

“We will shoot,” the nearest one told me.

A blast of air knocked the first man over into his friend behind him, the sound of the gun going off filled the night as I turned my attention to the two guards who remained upright.

They ran toward me with batons out, erroneously confident. I wasn’t really sure what they hoped to achieve. The closer of the two reached me and missed with his first strike. I snapped his arm and drove my knee into his ribs, pushing him into the path of his friend. He tried to avoid the injured guard, but walked into a kick from me that snapped his head around and sent him unconscious to the driveway.

The first two guards had finally managed to untangle themselves just as I caught one of them with a vicious elbow shot to the back of the head instantly knocking him out. His friend tried to get away, but I grabbed the back of his shirt and spun him around, throwing him over the bonnet of the nearest car.

“Where’s the mayor?” I asked as I picked him up and repeated the process of throwing him onto the car, this time his head struck the windscreen, cracking the glass.

He slid down the bonnet, leaving a streak of red on the white car. I helped him on his way and pulled him off the car, punching him in the stomach as he moved.

“Don’t make me ask again.”

“Inside,” he said as he crumpled to his knees. “Ground floor, at the back.”

I hit him in the head, sending him to join his comrades in the land of unconscious assholes, before walking into the house.

I’d only taken a step into the large hallway, before another guard came out of a room beside me with a shotgun. I grabbed the gun with one hand and forced it up toward the ceiling, twisting as I moved to claim it from the guard. I jabbed him in the face with the shotgun’s butt then blasted him into the wall several feet away with a gust of air, knocking him and several pictures to the floor with a loud crash.

After emptying the shells onto the floor, I tossed the gun outside and closed the door. The rest of the lengthy hallway remained problem free, allowing me to get to the final door without having to hurt anyone else.

I pushed the door open, just long enough for me to see the mayor and three more guards, at the end of the kitchen. Bullets filled the air, and I dove through the doorway behind the nearest counter.

The second I heard the click of an empty gun, I surrounded my enemies with a wave of air then ignited it, instantly engulfing the three guards. Their screams of fear soon turned into ones of anguish as the fire did its job.

I sat motionless and counted to ten before extinguishing the flames. The cries had vanished, replaced with the soft whimpers of semi-conscious bodyguards. I glanced around and only saw three men, all lying on the tiled floor, but the mayor was nowhere to be seen.

“You can’t hide forever,” I said, slightly surprised that the mayor had managed to escape the flames. If we’ve been outside I would have used a lot more magic, but in an enclosed kitchen, I didn’t want to risk igniting a gas main, or killing the mayor before I’d talked to him.

“Fuck you,” he snapped and fired randomly, achieving nothing but giving away his position behind a door at the side of the kitchen.

I crept around the counter until I was opposite the door, then I stood, took the extra two steps to the door itself and kicked it with everything I had. It tore off the hinges and collided with Mayor Richardson, who was standing behind it. His gun, a small revolver, fell to the floor as I pushed the door aside and grabbed my prey, throwing him back into the kitchen and over the counter.

He landed on one of the guards, who was badly burned, his face already blistering. I’d tried not to kill any of the guards, they were only doing their jobs for the most part, but using se
mi-automatic
machine guns to kill me was going above and beyond, and needed to be dealt with accordingly. The three in the kitchen would probably live, but they’d remember this day for a very, very long time.

I dragged the mayor upright and punched him in the solar plexus, standing him back upright. He dropped to his knees.

“You arranged for Simon to get out,” I told him.

He opened his mouth to speak.

“Don’t deny it, you’ll only make me angrier. You did it, we both know that. I just want to know what you got out of it. What did you get from having him murder wood trolls, or police officers?”

“You have no idea what’s going on, do you? You stupid
little man.”

“Enlighten me.”

“Why do you think Galahad had you do all this? Because he wants me dead. Because with me dead, that’s one less person who’s loyal to King Whitehorn. He’s using you, he set you up.”

“Are you saying that Galahad is working with Simon? Because I find that hard to believe.”

“You’re a fucking idiot.”

I placed a foot on his knee and pushed down hard, causing him to cry out. “Keep talking, but do it nicely, I’m in no mood for rudeness.”

I removed my foot and he rubbed his knee. “Galahad and Simon aren’t working together. But Galahad is keeping things from you, and you know that. Simon knew about the deal between Galahad and the trolls before you turned up; he allowed himself to be captured. And then allowed himself to be freed so he could kill them.”

“Why?”

“Because Simon was making a point, to show everyone that Galahad can’t protect his people. That he’s weak. The murder of that Sally-Ann girl moved everyone’s plan around. After her death you got involved, although until you told Simon that she was friends with Avalon, no one knew why she was so fucking important.”

“That doesn’t explain why you think Galahad set me up, or why you’re spilling your guts.”

“Because I got set up too. Galahad sent you after me. I bet he told you I released Simon from prison. But I didn’t, he was already free. He knew the first thing you’d do is come running here and try to kill me.”

“You were going to release him anyway, so you’re just playing semantics.”

“Maybe, but I didn’t want him to massacre a colony of wood trolls. I’m many things, but murdering women and children is a little above what I’m willing do to.”

“And the cops? They would have had to die anyway, no
matter
who released him.”

“Collateral damage.”

The ease at which he described the murder of people who were there only to protect the public was sickening, but hardly surprising. “Why do you hate Galahad so much? What did he do to you?”

“He sent me
here
,” he snapped. “I used to be a human
advisor
to King Whitehorn, and after he was overthrown, Galahad decided to remove me from that post and stick me in the middle of fucking nowhere to be the mayor of a shithole of a town. No one even knows where Whitehorn is, no one but Simon. I’ve heard rumors that Whitehorn plans to run for some political office in Washington, but hell if I know how accurate that is. Simon was in charge of this whole operation, I don’t even think the old king even knows about it.”

“Then why go to all this trouble?”

“Because Simon has a fucking hard-on for getting back at Galahad for Whitehorn and him being kicked out of the realm. When Simon turns up and tells you about your obligation to help him put Whitehorn on the throne, you do as your fucking told, or he skins you in front of the town hall.” Mayor
Richardson
sighed. “I don’t care about these people, or this town, I just want out. I want to move back to Shadow Falls, and Galahad isn’t going to make that happen. So, I hitched my wagon to Simon and Whitehorn. I just want my fucking life back.”

“So, all of this death that you were quite willing to help cause is because of some petty attempt at a temper-tantrum.”

“Simon came to me with a need. To be able to kill and take people without any police interference, so I helped facilitate that. In return, I was to be given my old life back and I would have gotten to be there when Galahad finally lost his head and it was stuck on a pike for all to see.”

“Petty vengeance for a small man. All because Galahad demoted you, which it turns out was probably a good thing considering you were in league with his enemies.”

“You call it petty vengeance, I call it justice. Righting a wrong against a man who committed harm against me and my life.”

“Harm?” I said. “I’ll tell you what, you tell me all about what Simon wants from this town and I’ll pass you over to Galahad unharmed.”

“I don’t know a damn thing,” he pleaded.

“You are partly responsible for everything that has happened here, for all the death and terror that Simon and his friends spread. You thought you could do all of this and get away free. I’d planned to come here and kill you, but I’m not going to do that. Galahad wants you dead, and I’m not playing his game anymore. So, if you want to lie there and tell me you don’t know anything about what’s happening in your town, that’s fine with me.” I removed a paring knife from a nearby knife block. “In fact, that’s exactly what I was hoping you’d say.”

It didn’t take long for me to discover that Mayor Richards knew nothing more, so by the time I’d finished and dragged his bloody and broken body through the house, Galahad had arrived with five of his guard in tow.

I dropped the mayor at Galahad’s feet. “Surprised to see him alive?” I asked.

Galahad glanced down at the human and then up at me. “Yes, to be honest. I figured you’d kill him.”

I dragged the mayor to his feet and shoved him into the arms of the nearest guard, a young woman who spun the mayor so he was facing away from her, and then slit his throat. She pushed his body to the ground to let it bleed out on the driveway.

“He needed to die,” Galahad said, turning his attention back to me.

“You set me up,” I said, barely able to keep my temper in check. “You got me here to find Simon, and you knew that he was going to escape. You planned for it.”

“Nate, do you really want
.…
”

“Yes, I fucking want to talk about it. Right here, right now. You knew someone would free Simon from his cell, didn’t you?”

Galahad nodded. “We were pretty certain of it, yes. Like I told you back in Portland, I didn’t know whom I could trust here. We needed Simon alive to hopefully identify those he was working with. We were sure the mayor was in on it, but weren’t certain if he was acting alone. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize that members of my own guard were working with them. Those who betrayed me have been dealt with.”

“You told me the mayor had set Simon free, so I’d come storming over here and kill everyone.”

“Yes, I’d hoped you’d make so much noise that anyone looking here would realize what happens to people who cross me. That it might bring some peace to my reign.”

I punched Galahad in the mouth, drawing blood and knocking him to the ground, as his five guards all reached for their weapons.