Thanks to Rex Brookdale for helping with editing. Please Note: English is not my first language. This chapter contains scenes of extreme violence.
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When the wind picked up that evening, it blew a scent of exotic spices in all directions. It was near the mansion that I had first tracked the pungent odor. My nose had finally discerned that very thin tendril of spiked scent, and I focused my mind on how to determine its origin.
Sean was bemind me, and passed a pair of binoculars over. By now, we had been at the stake-out location for almost a week. He nudged me, and pointed at a car moving up the street. As per our routine I wrote down the license-plate number. The list was getting quite long. Almost all of the cars were late-model. The people who visited the mansion must be well-to-do businessmen, to afford such luxury.
The deadline tonight: the man in the dark suit who had assaulted and molested the women in the house of Aine, had demanded three new playthings. During a couple of dinners this week, information was passed to me about the members who had visited the house of Aine. Maeve and her family, and many other women.
I couldn't quiet comprehend the importance of my 'liberation' of all of these women from the darkness they were under, but they seemed intent on letting me know how good they felt being around me.
Sean and I never visited Maeve's residence after that day; instead we received invitations from other women, all connected to Maeve's network, with whom we had a lot of fun.
All of them were attractive, even stunning. As soon as we walked up to their doors, they bowed and kneeled. And then they had us pampered until we had almost passed out from pleasure.Not just me, Sean got his needs taken care of too. I wondered why they were so generous to both of us, but bit by bit I found out that the previous 'challenger' of power had met a dire end.
Sean also revealed his past experience.He was often forewarned by a woman he never met before , suddenly telling him to move, to prevent him from being harmed by dark magic.
As a business graduate from Trinity College, my training no help; I found it difficult to dissect yhe esoteric information. What was real? What was magic? Reading up on Irish folklore on the internet, while easily accessed on my tablet, it brought even more strange conclusions to my growing body of knowledge.
I was now aware that the threshold between reality and the other realm could be easily nearby me, without my sensing it. If I was not with any of the five Munster-banshees, I felt on the verge of stepping on mines.
Every building, every road, every corner seemed to have some sort of legacy attached to it. Low hedges could ne hinding something just beyond them. If I just didn't cross the lines, I should be fine. But it meant that I was confined to watching the entrance of the other house from a house belonging to a seventy-year-old granny. I was bored.
I knew from an earlier recon mission two nights ago that there were a substantial number of security guards posted around the main building. While flying a drone, we had picked up strange heat signatures, using the Infra-Red channel. We mapped it with aerial photos from Google Maps, trying to determine what it could be. It seemed like there was some kind of grouping of the signatures outside the main building. He noticed the red dots on the screen were positioned in strange rows.
"Heads up" warned Sean, and I used the binoculars to focus on the next vehicle coming down the road.
A big SUV was making a turn into the drive, and the the entrance gate slowly opened. It moved up to the front entrance of the mansion. The doors opened and two well dressed exited the car.
I zoomed in but could not determine who they were. I could tell that they were not young by the way they moved. Probably in their sixties. I heard a deep sigh leave the mouth of the person behind me. turned to face Uncle Sean.
"You know them?"
"Yeah" he nodded. "Those are two of the most evil bitches on the planet as far as I am concerned."
"Who are they?"
"Well, I wondered how all this started, and how you ended up in this. But I got a feeling that tonight is going to be a pain in the ass."
As soon as he spoke these words, I saw one of the women turn her head toward us, as if aware that we were there.
"Oh fuck, she spotted us" said Sean. He started packing up our stuff and throwing it in a big duffel bag.
"Move idiot, we got to scramble out of here" he yelled at me.
I grabbed everything around me and packed my backpack. Hurriedly I followed him downstairs and out the back door. We ran to our small sedan parked beside the house, and drove off.
A cold shiver went through me. Sean wanted to speed up, but I put a hand on his arm and told him to calm down. When we passed the next crossing, I noticed a black SUV following us at a distance.
"We got a tail."
I let his arm go, and he accelerated immediately. For those who have never been to Dublin, speeding is almost impossible. The density of traffic that had come with the economic boom around the millennium was still wreaking havoc on the roads. Sean weaved through traffic, creating more space between the SUV and our sedan.
Luckily after three hard turns, Sean suddenly pulled in to an open garage. An oddly dressed man standing to one side immediately pulled down the door. It was instantly dark.
"Cool Sean, real cool. I guess I am new to this, but you worked this out in advance didn't you?"
My mind reeled at the possible upshot of this occurence: clearly Sean had not told me enough to explain this military-style maneuver.
"Let's say, I got a few friends from younger years. They don't ask questions and don't tell things. As they don't want to know what is going on, just knowing that sometimes a friend needs some help."
He extracted himself from the car, and took the bags with him. He then started wiping the car completely clean with small wipes. I followed his example. When the car was completely wiped clean, he grabbed a can and started spraying inside the car, and then around the car. And then he gave special attention to the doors.
"No DNA will be left to recover when this is settled in about half an hour. Put on the backpack. We have to walk a little" he grumbled.
He stuffed the trash and towels in one very large garbage bag. Then he lifted his duffel and hoisted it onto his back. Carrying both, he groaned when the weight settled. He opened a side door and we stepped outside and into a small alley. We continued down . When we came across a large bin, the garbage was tossed inside.
We continued to traverse from alley to alley until we came at a crossing. A drunk walked up to Sean, and for a second I thought he was going to punch him. They suddenly hugged and smiled at each other. Sean gave him the car keys and a small envelope which I later learned contained money and car registration for the small sedan.
