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Searching with a wary glint in his eye and a great
deal less sure of himself, Benny could spot no dog, no men, see nothing that
appeared to be a sec system in disguise. All the other manor houses were either
patrolled or, like the one with the mutt, unreachable.
Growing nervous, he shifted. Benny shook his head.
“Too weird.”
Unease wormed through the back of his mind.
This neighborhood was where the real fat-cat politicos
hid out, sucking the very lifeblood from their constituents. It was too rich and
too . . . too fat, to be passed up by any burnout with a church key and more
guts than brains.
In a soft tone, he began to curse.
The smoky blue eye grew deadly, predatory. Benny
slipped to the top of the broad stone wall. He moved cat-like, lithe. Under his
boots glass as old as the nation crunched. This had been part of an old fort or
something, several hundred years ago.
Since Carl died, he really didn't give a damn about
living. Carl was the only one who knew the pain, and the shame, equal to his
own. As hard and merciless as his stepfather had been, he accepted Benny, loved
him in his own way.
Shoot, they did a stretch in prison together, after
that raid on the Manse. Well, kind of. Protective Custody it was not. From the
frying pan into the fire, man. Prison was ok, because out of it came the
marriage of his mother, Anna, and Carl. Before that he and the almost decade
older Carl had been in the Children's Home, up in Wilkes-Barre.
An on-line aga:ki followed Benny. The eyes of
the Sun-Person, if there were any in those hollow, smoldering sockets, burned
with a dark rage. The massive head twisted and turned. The body moved with a
leonine grace that belied his nine-foot frame.
He watched Benny for a moment. The aga:ki
slipped through the broad wall as if stone were less substantial than smoke. He
watched with the ease of a predator.
The glass crunched and snapped under his boots. In
silence Benny dropped to the ground. He smothered a grin.
“Scene one, take two.”
His boots sank into a deep, woodsy mulch behind a
trimmed and tortured baby's breath shrub.
“Where's the fuzzy creeps, man?”
A plastic butcher’s container dangling from his hand,
he crouched on his heels. Benny's eye continued to dart, to seek movement. A
hiccup belted out. Benny clapped a broad, callused hand over his mouth and
hissed a few hot words into the palm.
All his life those blasted hiccups tormented him. Mr.
Greylov, as his dad's father had demanded his daughter-in-law and ‘that breed
bastard' grandson call him, used the hiccups to point out to the pre-schooler
Benny just how weak he was. Indian blood just can't stand up to white. The
hiccups were proof of it.
The old pedophile used him on the Witches Stone and
eventually tried to murder him there. Sick, but the old man was nobody's fool.
He played forces off, one against another in the spirit world and died rich. But
man, the way he had died . . . .
Benny grinned.
Mom claimed she still regretted the loss of a good
butcher knife. Then she would squint and sigh, as if wondering if the trade-off,
the loss of the knife against the loss of her only kid, was worth it.
‘My daughter taught you right, kid,’ Grampa
Wya said. ‘You are a son of a wolf-bitch, and I’m proud of her.’
Benny chuckled. He blinked his good eye. Too many of
old man Grey's coven survived. A few were still in prison. All wanted Benny's
corpse as a gift to the Mohawk-Buu, the demon called the Owl, and old man
Grey’s vast wealth. What power and fame would come then? Change to the shape
of an animal, a grotesque caricature of a dog and man, and hunt terrified
victims in the dark of the moon. He was heir to that.
Benny swallowed hard. The hunger for it pulled at him.
The way he would have to acquire it sickened him.
Dozens, maybe, of the coven were on the prowl, looking
for him. They stalked him, hoping that if he died, then the killer would be
named as replacement for Leda Melancowski, that bitch.
It was only a matter of time before he was forced to
kill again, and again or was killed himself. Too bad politicos don't believe in
self-defense for the sheep. Man, but the cops would love a crack at him, too. A
lot of bodies trailed him north.
A wanted man, and only going on seventeen. Innocent,
but tell that to the Nazis. No way he'd return to prison. He'd kill first, make
them take him out. Prison was only a holding pen for the Janissary Project. He'd
die before returning to whoring.
A shrill giggle rent the velvet warm night air.
Benny twisted. He crouched deep behind the bush. His
heart slammed against his rib cage. Death before the dishonor of prison and the
breeding farm.
His entire body tensed, prepared for leap that would
carry him to the top of the wall and freedom.
An odor like decaying blood drifted past flaring
nostrils. Benny was too gripped by the need to escape to notice. Hate clutched
his mind.
For an instant he was lost in time. Black knife raised
over him as he lay bound on the Witch's Stone, bitter with evil, the face of old
man Greylov loomed above a terrified Benny.
©2003 StoriesByEmail.com
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