It didn't even take ten minutes to drive the distance it had taken Mary almost two hours to walk. I pulled the car up outside the pretty-looking house. The gardens were well tended, the lawn was immaculate, and the wooden shutters that were closed over the windows had probably been painted every year for decades. This was a house that had seen a lot of love.
It was about to see a lot of violence too.
"Stay here," I whispered to Mary as I unbuckled my seatbelt.
"But I..."
"Mary," I said a little more firmly. "I need you to stay here. Please. This isn't going to be pretty, and you don't want to see it."
She looked past me at the idyllic Christmas scene in her garden. The lights were still blinking from their places along the line of the roof, the hints of the Christmas tree could be made out through one of the shutters, and the wreath still hung definitely onto the front door. Under any other circumstances, this would be the last place you would expect such horrors.
She nodded solemnly.
"When I get out, I need you to lay your head in my seat. I don't want you to get caught by a stray bullet if they start shooting."
She looked down at my seat and then nodded again.
"This will be over soon, I promise." I opened the door and climbed out of the car.
I looked out at the garden and rolled my eyes. "
Alright, Jeeves. I give up. What is it with these people and hiding?"
There was a little light coming from a streetlight further down the street, a little more peeking through the slats of the shutters, but otherwise, the area was dark. That made the glaringly obvious glow of the inquisitors waiting for me even more obvious. Two were hiding behind the walls, one on each side of the garden. One was behind me, lying prone at the base of a tree on a small rise overlooking the street. A fourth was just inside the doorway. All of them were breathing soft and steady, each of them was peering at me, and all of them were armed.
"
Seriously, do they not know they glow in the fucking dark? This is embarrassing!"
I meant it. For a group of people who had tracked me so expertly, whittled down my location so quickly, spotted my trap so easily, and found a way to bypass it so ruthlessly, hiding behind a wall,
in the dark,
when they had the equivalent of a Hollywood searchlight pointed at them at all times was, frankly, ridiculous!
"
It is possible, Sir. We have never explored the possibility that they cannot see their auras as we can. No inquisitor has ever said anything to us about them. Perhaps you are right; it would explain why they are so laughably bad at any activity involving a low profile."
I sighed and shook my head. "
Whatever. It's something to think about later. Is the family in there?"
"Yes, Sir, An elderly gentleman and three children are in a bedroom on the upper floor and to the rear of the property.
"Cool. Okay, let's get this over with!"
I turned around to ensure Mary had lowered her head into my seat and had no view of what was about to happen. I felt the Inquisitor on the rise, steadying his breath, no doubt to control his breathing, ready for the shot with the long-barreled rifle that was almost certainly in his hands. These people were nothing if not predictable.
It's not like I could clearly see them, it was still dark, but each of the intruders was silhouetted against the glow of their aura. I could see the air currents of their breath, I could even see the ambient air temperature around them changing, but as usual, their minds were completely blank.
Man-on-the-grassy-knoll was clearly focusing all his attention on me, so much so that he didn't notice the roots of the tree that he was lying next to were un-burying themselves and coiling up behind him like a snake. My power-enhanced hearing was picking up the whispered communications off their radio earpieces.
"Position two, what is he doing?"
"He's just standing there, looking at the house."
"Is he armed?"
"Negative, no weapons sighted."
"Received. Make ready your shot, and be prepared to fire if he acts aggressively."
"Copy that."
The almost silent click as the safety switch on his rifle was flicked off was almost immediately drowned out by the wet, squelching splat as two tree roots, each like a sharpened stake, were plunged into the back of his head. He was dead before he could make a sound. Still, for good measure, the roots ripped themselves in opposite directions and spit his head open like an overripe fruit.
With a deep breath, I took a few steps into the garden.
To the outside observer, not a sound had been made. A few of them may have heard a muffled grunt and a few soft thuds coming from behind one of the walls. But they would never have guessed that an assassin's silenced weapon had inexplicably jerked its barrel upwards in its owner's hands, and the firing pin, without any input from the trigger, had sent six bullets into the skull of the man looking down at it in confusion. Most people wouldn't know that there was rarely a Hollywood-Esque scream after a headshot. The brain's ability to command other parts of the body, namely the lung, lips, or vocal cords, was usually cut off by the sudden and violent introduction of lead projectiles and skull fragments.
Perhaps a few more of them would have heard the gasps of air as the assassin's friend, hiding behind the wall on the other side of the garden, had the shoulder strap of his assault rifle suddenly and mysteriously wrap around his own neck and squeeze with the power of two freight trains pulling in opposite directions. They may not know that woven nylon straps are an incredibly strong material capable of handling massive loads before breaking. The power of those loads, when pressed down onto a human throat, wouldn't just strangle a man but would crush his windpipe, along with all the essential arteries and nerves in the neck, into a mushy pulp against his spine. They may, however, have commented on the fact that the sudden pressurization of blood inside his head would have caused his eyeballs to burst out of their sockets and blood to jet violently out of his nose and ears.
But, of course, these witnesses weren't around. There was only me, striding quietly, calmly, yet purposefully up to the door of the house after already dispatching three of the six men left guarding Mary's family.
The fourth man, the one tucked just out of sight on the inside of the doorway, was hissing desperately into his radio, trying to get a situation report from men who were no longer alive to give one. Of course, by the third attempt at contact, he had worked out that something was wrong.
"One, this is five, contact lost with all sentries. Contact is assumed hostile, over!"
