Chapter Twenty Eight
Skovia lit up her cigar and puffed the smoke Vile's way.
"I expected you would be dead by now" she said full of contempt.
Vile would have smiled but he knew his time was running short, his sister was as treacherous as the old man used to be and Vile's mood was turning sour.
"You can shoot me. I'm right here!"
Vile raised his hands above his head showing he was unarmed.
She kept her eyes firm on him. Or rather, her eye.
Half her face had more scar than skin. Her right eye was gone since the day their father died.
"What do you want?"
She knows I'm not here to talk about the old times, Vile thought.
A good thing too.
Not that she had ever been an innocent little thing, to Vile recollection she had always been sick in her own way.
They were all sick, bloodthirsty. A family of monsters.
Vile just never tried to hide it, masking it as formality.
"I'll be short about it." He stood up. Until now he had been sitting on the floor, amidst the crates and vats at the heart of the warehouse making sure he had enough junk around him to make any sniper's cringe with frustration but without locking or cornering himself.
"You have something my employer wants."
The silence that followed was sharper than a knife.
"Who's the idiot you're working for and why should I care?"
She let out another puff of smoke, like that made her look rough.
He hated her stare. He could almost feel the black void of her empty eye socket beneath that scar he had left on her. Reminding him of his failure.
If only he didn't need her.
"I'm working for that creep, the Monday man."
Another moment of silence but this time she ended it with a burst of laughter.
The sound made Vile want to wretch, The kind of laugh you learn just to spite some one and provoke your enemies into doing something rushed.
"He's going to take down the Agency. Play along and you can have this s**t hole of a town for yourself."
His sister pretended to put herself together with effort, as if her laughter had been natural instead of a forced show of scorn.
"You can die and take your terrorists with you."
She threw her half smoked cigar at him the burning tip hitting his left knee pad.
"You have nothing to lose. Just turn your guns at the birds when the time is ripe.
Play along and if anything goes wrong no one will ever have to know you were in this."
She looked down at him, with that eye of hers.
Like a flint of ice just standing and letting Vile to boil inside, all to get him to do something stupid.
"He only wants me to stand ready to shoot once the order is out?"
"No" Vile replied. "That's what you will do if you want to take the city. I don't care and neither does he, far as I can tell. He wants one of your warehouses."
She tried to mask her feelings, her very thoughts just like the old man used to, her face like carved stoned.
She almost succeeded. Vile saw the corners of her lips curling for just an heartbeat, a moment so short anyone else might have it pass unnoticed.
"Which one?" She asked.
Vile shrugged.
"Anyone as long it's ready and good as empty by tomorrow."
Vile knew she wouldn't resist. She couldn't. The gains would be too big if the Smile Patrol succeeded.
"Tell him he can have the thirteen. The one by the west docks."
Vile did smile now, a grin as savage as his face could provide.
"Where I killed the old man? I didn't knew you so sentimental, little sister!"
She didn't deign to reply and turned around to leave, the old man's jacket flapping around as it swirled never dropping from her shoulders..
He moved out to try to catch her when he heard several clicks.
The sound of guns being cocked, ready to fill him with holes.
One more step and he would risk being exposed.
"Never show your face around again.
Once I have this town, I'll put a bounty on your head so big that even mom would chop it off for the money." His sister told him never turning back.
Walking like she owed the world.
"How's the old b***h?" Vile asked.
Skovia never replied.
Monday Delirium Community Member 
|
|
