-Kiromir 7

Niala frothed at the prospect of jumping into a fight. Shivering, her blood boiled for it. It had been like that since her first mission. The second the action started, the scent of adrenaline and ault even touched her nose, her body tuned into its own frequency. We had a blithe relationship with death and destruction; we didn’t kill. We considered this one of our many rules. We deemed whoever paid the toll to be the murderer. We were just a blade.

The setting sun hung low in the sky when I got the call. One of the many phones I kept on me piqued with a polite chirp. I pulled the phone from inside my pocket and pressed a button before holding it to my ear. I didn’t say a word, just listened in silence as the tones went quiet, all save for soft breathing.

A low voice spoke on the other end in muffled tones, reciting a number, six simple digits representing a dollar amount that I accepted or rejected. I accepted. The voice offered enough money to keep the flock solvent for half a year. We had rules, and they knew them before they called. Grimacing, I waited for them to tell us what act of carnage they had in store for us this day while being mindful of the unspoken rules. Had they said but one wrong word, I’d hang up and destroy the phone. I didn’t play games.

Since the advent of cryptocurrency, the federal government frequently made use of our particular services. A longstanding feigned ignorance of what we did in the shadows indebted them to us to a small degree. Since the Kennedy assassination, which we had absolutely nothing to do with, they’d stopped trying to do the impossible. With proper paperwork done and taxes filed, they turned a blind eye to us until the phone chirped, and they needed us to handle something that even they couldn’t.

Humans and their Swiss cheese laws; holy and holier than their gossamer strands of religion and the cloth they wove it from. They made me laugh.

I appreciated the fact that they never called me unless they deemed it a ‘just’ case. ‘Just’ for us often meant anything involving the two greatest crimes; the first of which was against children. The other were atrocities against the flock and family. There wasn’t a contract in existence that we could ever take for a penny that wouldn’t be cursed. Those against the flock and family meant ‘war.’ War had no bidder within the flocks.

I only agreed to terms that matched our goals, mostly simple ones. The phone sent a string of messages, still with that polite and jarring chirp. Pictures, locations, data, instructions, and more came flowing into the phone. Bless their invention, for, in the old days, we had to cooperate with humans and middlemen with the type of people that needed their lack of forgiveness.

They chose a man by the name of William Syllivan, a near-billionaire ‘philanthropist’ that had been in and out of court and lawsuits since the ’90s, as our target. Anyone who watched television knew his smug face. His team of lawyers and a never-ending flow of money slipped through tainted fingers. I’d never taken a contract from him, and I bid my time until an angry john or victim got the cash enough to find us.

Instructions were simple; infiltrate then assassinate from the top down. If William’s network got taken down, it’d leave a network and structure in his wake that would continue on where he left off nearly immediately. One step forward and two steps back. With all of them gathering in one spot, tonight provided the ideal opportunity to strike. Girls were being traded. My aura of fear would only carry us so far. Niala’s treasured oblivion would aid us with the women.

We were gathered, waiting at the fire. Niala showed up in time to hear my briefing. Then, having all the right information, she ran off to get dressed. The men and I steeled ourselves as Thanus spread his aura of calm. His talent with his aura stood far above most of us. We never tried to buck his aura off. I didn’t, at least. It felt warm and easy. He kept me focused; It’s why I made him my second in command.

Dimal and Thanus had their own uses with their emotions. Thanus’s calm met Dimal’s chaos. For the most part, we each had different ones in the group. Of course, we had similar ones, but it’s not until two auras met side by side that you learned the difference between fear and dread.

Niala’s unusual aura cultivated a state of mind, not an emotion. Before her, we made use of panic. Blind panic forgives a lot of things. However, it lacked the easy subtly of just being able to slip in unheeded.

We laid maps down. William had recently bought a new hotel, and, under the guise of renovations and investors meeting, he’d brought most of his network in and a slew of girls.

“Seems pretty open and shut,” Thanus said.

“No. we need someone to take out the cameras. You don’t think they’re going to be watching like hawks and have a back door?” I ran my fingers through my hair. This would have been one of those missions that could stand a bit more planning.

“I get you, Thanus, and I got it,” Dimal said confidently.

“AND NOBODY, I repeat, NOBODY lashes wings, got that?” Then, teeming, I pointed at my men and dished out threatening glares. “And anyone who does loses their share.” But, unfortunately, some of our men did things like that, and I put swift measures into action to start curbing that behavior.

There were nods of agreement and grumbles. Some of the men liked scaring humans with skin and eyes blazing like fire and their wings in full glory before the kill. Since those days, we had grown a lot and had evolved beyond doing such trivial parlor tricks for amusement.