“Men like you always want more,” I said. “Why else would you be pointing your guns at me and my friends?”
He chuckled through the reeking cloud of cigar exhaust. If we’d met anywhere else, he would’ve seemed friendly. Even now it was hard to reconcile his pleasant smile and affable demeanor with the knowledge that he could have us all killed in the blink of an eye. He made a smooth figure-eight motion with his cigarette, as if conducting an orchestra only he could hear.
“Money buys a man many, many things,” he said. “Guns, soldiers, the kind of women who value cash over emotion. It can even buy you power. But wealth has limits. To go beyond them, you need something else. Determination. Skill. Knowledge.”
Grimaldi lifted the cigarette to his lips, inhaled another lungful of smoke, then released a thick ring that framed his face. He acted like he didn’t have a care in the world and would be happy to keep us prisoner here until whoever had paid him off arrived.
My thoughts went to my mother. If she’d figured out what I was up to, she had the resources to make this thug a very tempting offer. The heretics not only had money, they had knowledge that criminals would find very useful.
“Then tell me what you want,” I said. “Whatever you sold us out for, I’ll beat it. But you have to let us go. We need to finish what we came here to do. We’ll all die if you don’t get out of our way.”
The soldiers tightened their grips on their weapons at that. They all looked nervous and ready to start shooting at the slightest provocation.
“All men die,” the criminal said. “But you four are the only ones in immediate danger of meeting their maker today. You’d do well to relax and wait for the other interested party to arrive.”
It had to be my mother. No one else could find me so easily or had the money and power to turn Grimaldi’s head. Her counteroffer to the millions I’d promised must have been truly insane. If I could figure out what it was, though, maybe I could top it. I did have dragons on my side, after all.
“What are you getting for betraying me?” I asked. A rivulet of sand trickled down from the ceiling and sent grains dancing across the stone between us. “You’d be very surprised at the resources I have at my disposal.”
Twin jets of smoke poured from the man’s nostrils. He smiled at me and tapped the side of his head with his index finger as he doodled a circle in the sand that had fallen in front of him.
“Knowledge,” he said. “And a seat at the table when the world changes. Aldo Grimaldi, King of the American Southwest. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
That definitely sounded like something my mother would promise. She’d swear to make him emperor of the whole world if it got her what she wanted. It made no difference to her, because my mother’s plans would end society as we knew it. Aldo wouldn’t be king. He’d be dead or another serf for her to crush under her heel. I had to make him see that.
“It’s a lie, Aldo,” I said. “My enemies would promise you anything your heart desires. But that doesn’t mean they have any intention of making good. They’re insane. If you don’t let me finish this, there won’t be a world for you to rule over. You have to believe me.”
Eric’s anger was growing behind me. The rage aspects in his aura warmed me like a bonfire. One way or another, my conversation with Aldo was about to end.
Messily.
“Who is more likely to lie?” Aldo drew a little question mark of smoke in the air to punctuate his query. “A wealthy, powerful person with the means to do anything they want in life? Or a boy, surrounded by guns, unsure of himself or even the next step on the path laid before him?”
The dark instincts of the Eclipse Warrior grew through my thoughts like thorny bramble bushes. I’d run out of patience with Grimaldi. He’d been paid well, but now he stood between me and the end of my road. This was his last chance.
“She can’t give you what she’s promised,” I said. “No one can. I’m trying to save the world. If you won’t get out of my way—”
Grimaldi raised a hand to silence me. He looked at me quizzically, his face surrounded by a wreath of stinking smoke.
“She?” he asked. “Who is she?”
Portals sizzled into existence above us as if on cue. Figures in tattered robes plummeted through the holes to land behind Grimaldi’s men. Fusion blades plunged into bodies and sliced through the barrels of guns. Chaos erupted all around, as the ambushed soldiers defended themselves against the heretics who’d appeared through the gateways. Guns roared, and men and women bellowed in pain.
“He’s talking about me,” my mother said as she landed nimbly alongside the mob boss. “Hello, Son.”
The sight of my mother so nearby rattled me to my core. She looked like another person from the last time I’d seen her. Her long robes were so ragged the lower half of the skirt was little more than moth-eaten lace against her shins. Blood and oil stained the off-white fabric across her chest and dotted her cheeks. She’d shaved her hair down to stubble, and a heavy bandage was taped into place across the left side of her head. Her eyes were blue as ice and filled by the light of fanatical zeal.
I wanted to kill her. If I threw myself at her and attacked with my serpents, she’d be dead in the blink of an eye.
But if Grimaldi’s men opened fire on me, I’d never reach her. My friends and I would all be dead. Far better to use the moment of surprise to do something much more logical. It was now
