The Age of Embers {Book 3): The Age of Reprisal

by Schow, Ryan

  “Did you hear me?” he said. “You tried to burn me to death.”

  For a second he wondered why he’d asked the question. Why he made that statement. It wasn’t like he was soliciting an answer from the dead man or even hoping for a response from his ghost, if it was hanging around. Maybe he just wanted to know if he was justified in killing this man the way he did.

  He decided he was.

  Standing up, taking one last look around, he knew he was in the right. Downstairs, he thoroughly searched the men for other weapons or extra ammo. He found one other .45, but the weapon was out of ammo, and none of the guys had spare mags.

  Before he left, he gathered what few things he needed, then headed back towards Maria’s house where he set up a blanket in the bushes next to the house.

  From there, he’d be able to hear them leaving from either the front or the rear of the house. And hopefully he wouldn’t be seen.

  He was settling in when he heard the back slider open up. Uh oh. He hunkered down, tightened his grip on the weapon that had no bullets, tried to stay perfectly quiet.

  “Hey,” the girl said, startling him. When he didn’t say anything, she said, “Why are you sleeping here?”

  “I’m not.”

  “I see you right there,” she said. He glanced up, saw her standing over the top of him. “Was that you shooting the guns?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bad guys?” she asked.

  “That lady that killed your mother,” he said, switching subjects. “She’s scary.”

  The child pushed her hair out of her face, then said, “I need to get her some water for when she wakes up.”

  “The guns didn’t wake her up?” he asked. The girl shook her head. “But they woke you up?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Are you that lady’s servant or something?” he asked. It looked like she shrugged her shoulders, which gave him pause. “Is she going to kill you?”

  The girl faced him, looked down at her feet, and then she slowly shook her head. Even though he only saw her silhouette, her physical reaction said so many things.

  “Did you tell her about me?”

  “No.”

  “Good, don’t.”

  “Are you following us?” she asked, her voice innocent.

  “How old are you?”

  “Five.”

  He drew a deep breath, stared at her unblinking. There wasn’t fear or really anything alarming in either her voice or her posture. She was just a girl who was asked a question that she gave an answer for.

  He took out his flashlight, shined the light on her for a second, got a better look. Her lips were chapped and flaky, her skin a bit dry. She wasn’t getting enough water for herself. And her hair was a mess. Clearly she hadn’t seen a bath in several days.

  Finally he got up, gathered up his blanket, the binoculars and the gun and said, “I’m leaving and you won’t see me again.”

  “Can I come with you?” she asked again.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m on a mission,” he said.

  “What’s your mission?” she asked, scratching the inside of her ear.

  “I think maybe I’m going to save the world,” he said, his tone resolute. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s what I’m going to do.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Guillermo Rodriguez, a.k.a. Demon, is, was and would always consider himself a Latin King. The Chicago branch of a gang that was now one of the largest in the nation and almost thirty-five thousand members strong had introduced him to Kingism, the Latin King’s own version of religion.

  The Almighty Latin King Nation (ALKN) took Guillermo into their fold as a child of the ghetto. He had a reputation on the street. He could get high better than most, dish out beatings that made the news for their viciousness and their grotesque brutality, and he had a way with men and women alike.

  Women appreciated his soft voice, his gentle touch (or rough, if that’s what they preferred) and his willingness to make them feel like the center of the universe.

  Men appreciated him because over the years, in his quest to belong to the coronas—or more formally, the 5 Crowns—he’d had taken on a leadership role within the organization. His willingness to ratchet up his game, to be something greater than one man in a sea of ordinary men, all led to one end: being one of the 5 Crowns on the Crown Council.

  Guillermo was a self-prescribed extremist. He needed his name known in both the kingdoms of heaven and hell. So in his zest to make himself seen by the Almighty Lord above, and in his eagerness to have his name laid on the tongue of Satan, he bucked some of the Kingism tradition and formed his own faction within the Latin Kings organization.

  For awhile he rode so high there seemed to be no ceiling to his levels of success. But then one night, the woman sleeping next to him in bed was shot and he was dragged from his bed, blindfolded and beaten. He was then hauled before the Crowns and charged with several crimes against the ALKN. These were crimes each and every Crown found not only reprehensible but in gross violation of ALKN’s rules and traditions.

  “What did I really do that angered the crowns to this degree?” he asked, his face bloodied, his hair tussled, the weight of the dead woman in his bed resting hard on his more logical brain.

  One of the council then asked for a closed door hearing, something unusual amongst the inner courts. When the room was cleared, save for Guillermo and the 5 Crowns, the ranking member addressed him.

  “Why do you call yourself Demon?” he asked. There was no kindness in his eyes, no leniency.

  “Because the work I do would make God cringe.”

  “It has made us cringe, too.”

  “The Latin Kings are ruthless, are we not? Our power comes from our name, but behind our name are actions that inspire respect, fear, subservience, do they not? We are tens of thousands of people. We have our culture, our religion, our traditions and our bylaws, but the cornerstone of these pillars is and will always be men like me. Men willing to step on the necks of children, of the elderly, of wives and daughters…”

  One of the Crowns slapped his hand flat on the desk before him and he said, “And this is why you’ve truly been brought before us today. It is your statement about wives and daughters. The woman in your bed tonight, the one now lying dead in your sheets, her life was extinguished because of you!”

  “That wasn’t right,” Guillermo said.

  “She was my daughter,” another of the 5 Crowns replied, his voice soft and somber, but his eyes rapt. “You are a pestilence, one we’ve tolerated for far too long, but you are also a necessity, as you so aptly stated earlier. But in your quest for power and independence, in your brilliant and somewhat impulsive decision making, you decide to marry your way into the Crowns?”

  “I had no idea she was—”

  The Crown held up his hand, stopping Guillermo from speaking.

  “My daughter told me of your aspirations. I’m sure that surprises you to hear that I know about you. But Guillermo Rodriguez, I know about you.”

  “Then you know I adore my women, and that your daughter would have been treated like a queen.”

  “You put a stain on my family.”

  “You had your own daughter killed!” he roared.

  The 5 Crowns fell silent, as if his outburst was the unforgivable offense. Behind him, fifteen men flooded in. Guillermo knew what this was.

  “After all I’ve done for the Kings?” he thundered. “You would do this to me?”

  The fifteen men waited and the court fell silent. All he could hear was his own breathing, and the flushing sound of his future swirling into the great cosmic toilet.

  “Beat on sight,” were the first words to cut through the silence that now held everyone spellbound.

  “Duration?” one of the men behind Guillermo asked.

  “To be determined,” the man who would never be his father-in-law said.

  And with that, he turned aroun
d and refused to have his name smeared by the likes of these five cowards.

  Fifteen men felt like overkill. Ten would have been enough. As it happened, three of them did not survive the fight, and this sent a shockwave up through the ranks, putting his name on the map, for good or bad.

  He almost died that day.

  When he was beaten so badly he could not stand, let alone form complete sentences, and because his crimes were beyond grievous—having killed three members serving out a court mandated sentence—he was taken to a separate room where he was beaten and raped for hours.

  When he was near dead, his dignity stripped from him, a new batch of men came with electric sanders and went after his ink. The sandpaper not only erased the tattoos from his arm and chest, it put him into a state of pain far worse than the beatings, far worse than the rapes.

  He now belonged to no one. There was no redemption. They would not even give him the dignity of death. But now he had his own crew again.

  A new reason to live.

  As he hunkered down out on that street, the firefight taking a turn for the worse, Guillermo remained unwilling to back down to this one block with its feisty neighbors. His fight was not for dominance, though. It was for the respect of his clan.

  A man named Guillermo would be beaten, defaced, permanently pitched into exile. But a demon defied life and death. To a demon, there was no beginning or end, there were only the deeds he did.

  If he lost this fight, he would be Guillermo. But if he won, he would remain Demon. He would win the fight. That was his determination right up to the point that some asshole blew off half his ear. Startled, unwilling to make a noise, he reached up, felt the missing piece, then found it hanging by sinew.

  The men and women around him blanched.

  He did not.

  Instead, he simply said, “Knife?”

  Someone handed him a knife. Reaching back, he cut off the piece, dropped it on the asphalt like a discarded coffee cup or a smoked cigarette butt.

  “Clearly we’ve got to rethink this plan,” he said. After the abuse the Latin Kings put him through, after all they’d taken from him, an ear was a small price to pay. Another round slammed into the car’s sheet metal beside him, this time rattling him.

  “Fall back,” he turned and said. These two words made him mortal. These were the words uttered by men who had failed.

  To Guillermo, however, he was not quitting or admitting defeat, he was only postponing victory.

  Back at the neighborhood they looted and now called their own, Demon sat around a large dining room table with what remained of his council.

  “We could go around them,” his top lieutenant said.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Do you feel it wise to go through them?”

  “We weren’t prepared for this,” Demon said. “We didn’t know. Now we see them. The girl, the two guys, their two snipers.”

  “They’ll be on the lookout for us.”

  “As well they should,” Demon replied. He refused to get his ear taped just yet. Instead, he splashed some Brandy on the wound then took a swig to dull the pain.

  “Do we have anyone who’s stealth? Someone who could infiltrate them? Thin their ranks?”

  “I can go in,” one of them says.

  “I want recon first,” Guillermo said, not looking at any of them, but instead seeing the battlefield plans forming in his head. “For now, let’s let it cool a day or two. They’ll expect retaliation. We won’t give them what they expect.”

  “So what are you thinking?” his second lieutenant asked.

  “I’m thinking they have the high ground and we need to take it away from them,” he said, working things out in his mind. When his eyes cleared and he looked over his ranks, he said, “Gather everyone in the meeting room. No kids.”

  Without further prompting Demon’s men set out to fulfill his orders. When the group was amassed, Demon stood before them, looking over the faces of some thirty people.

  “As I’m sure you heard, our people were ambushed earlier today. Many of them didn’t survive. For some of you, this is the cold hand of fate. For me, this is a reckoning. For others still, this is an opportunity. A way to take what has become a level playing field and mold it to our advantage. Can you imagine Charles Manson in this day and age? Ted Bundy? Jeffrey Dahmer? All these men were stone cold killers. Mental cases who didn’t hesitate when the time was right. These men were the scourge of society, but they were men who had needs bigger than their restraint. A monster like Jack the Ripper…this entire world would have been his Whitechapel! An unfathomable creature like him could play deranged doctor to his heart’s content.”

  “Why are you talking about serial killers?” someone asked.

  He held up his hand for silence.

  He was coming to his point.

  “I look out at each and every one of you, and do you know what I see?” he asked. “I see a lot of you looking like victims.”

  A few eyes lowered, bodies sagged, the already dampened mood changed.

  “Those of you who feel defeated inside, do not worry, there is a place for you here. You can be useful to yourselves, to me, to the new community. But right now, this conversation is not for you.”

  A few eyes lifted back up, waited to see if he was talking about them. If Guillermo Rodriguez, a.k.a. Demon, didn’t give you a second thought, well then, you were in trouble. A guy like Demon didn’t just sit around talking about serial killers thriving in a climate like this if he was perfectly sane. He wasn’t. He knew that now. If asked, he’d say that his day in the court of the 5 Crowns changed him. Set him on a different path.

  “For those of you with darkness in your heart, with needs or desires you’ve kept locked in you for too long, I give you permission to let these monsters out,” Demon said. “Let these fiends see through your eyes, work through your hands, walk with your feet and breathe through your lungs. This is no time to be shy, no time to consider consequences, no time to trouble your heart over a blackened soul, or the wrongness of your being. Everyone who has this darkness in their heart, please, look at me now.”

  And they did. More than he thought.

  Five of them held his eyes unflinching, their gaze cold, hard and ready to serve the more baseline needs of this group. He didn’t expect this many. Even more surprising, two of those five faces looking back at him were women, their eyes drilling into his.

  This was certainly atypical.

  He felt the smile creep onto his face.

  “Everyone looking at me with those beautiful, dangerous eyes, stay put. Everyone else, please stand and leave.”

  Everyone but the five stood.

  Demon didn’t look at them, though.

  His eyes were on a twenty-something kid with narrow shoulders, skinny arms and a sallow face built to show but two emotions: fear and indifference.

  “You, the boy with the green shirt on.”

  The kid turned around, his eyes lacking any real characteristics, his body almost like a suit left draped on a hanger for too long.

  “I want you to sit down,” he said.

  “But my eyes weren’t on you,” he replied, his voice small and awkward.

  “I know. It’s okay, son. Just take a seat for a moment, then we’ll be all through with you.”

  The other faces now looked at him.

  “Congratulations, you’re the top of the food chain now,” he said, his eyes perusing the five of them. “Unless you’re posturing. If you’re posturing, I’ll know.”

  “How will you know?” one of the women asked.

  This was the one whose spirited gaze held such promise. But with those four simple words, he knew she did not belong.

  “People have a way of wanting to be more than they are. But there are those who know they are too much for this world, that their real aim in life is to keep themselves from others because if their true colors showed, if the world saw and suffered them exactly as they were, there would be a body
count. You are not one of those people. Someone like that would never ask the question you just asked. And now, my dear, you are excused.”

  She stood and left the room, leaving behind one woman, a handful of men and a terrified boy. The men drew his curiosity, but it was the audacious looking woman who drew his interest. She was not attractive in the least bit, and she bore no redeeming external qualities, save for her piercing blue eyes. Ah, those eyes! He was pinned down by those eyes. Held hostage by the secrets buried deep within them. They were menacing at a stand still, sharp enough to cut through steel.

  What many horrors have those eyes seen? he could not help but wonder.

  For a second, his gaze hung on hers—she could be everyone, or no one. He liked that. He hated the very sight of her, but he liked her for this.

  And the guys? They were quiet, unassuming.

  Between the four of them there were no cult leaders, politicians, predatory pastors or barroom brawlers. If you saw these four reprobates in public, you’d forget you saw them seconds later, your mind never catching on a single detail. These were the monsters who snuck into your house at night, took your children from their beds, snatched the very life from you because they could, because they had to. Was it wrong that he felt giddy right then? That he felt like he was earning the name Demon, but in the worst possible way? No, not at all. For amongst the four of them, he’d find one perfect weapon. The breed of killer he needed. One flawless, unholy terror to serve as the tip of his spear, his sharpest most lethal blade.

  Every successful gang had one.

  They didn’t call them serial killers, even though that was the framework many of them thrived on. People like these, they didn’t get a name.

  They got a legend.

  Demon was going a step further. That was how he worked. How he’d always worked. He had guns, people to fire them, enough human resources that killing off a few when the occasion warranted it tended to make a powerful point.

  But he needed his serial killer.

  Just one.

  “Every single one of you in this room is now allowed to thrive, but you will not seek out victims among this group unless I say so, comprende?”