CASSIUS

by Alexi Ferreira

  “How are you holding up brother?” he asks

  “By the skin of my teeth.” I confess, since finding out about everything that the anger hasn’t subsided. Being close to my woman helps a little in grounding me and knowing that she’s nearby, but knowing that she’s in danger is fucking with my head.

  “Hang in there, we’ll find a solution.” Caelius suggests as he takes his seat. A few minutes later Wulf and Bion amble in, like two thunder clouds. As Celmund stands, moving away from Draco, Bjarni and Gunner walk in closing the door behind them.

  “Now that we’re all here let’s start.” Draco calls, “As you all know we have a problem, a big fucking problem and we’ll only be leaving here once we find a solution.”

  “Why can’t we just bring him in and interrogate the asshole until we get answers from him?” Gunner asks

  “That is one option, but we don’t know if he reports back to the Keres. If he does he will miss it and then they know that something is wrong and might activate the devices.” Draco suggests

  “What if we find these devices and Bion extracts them.” Ceric asks

  “If there’s any metal in it, I will be able to find it quickly. If there isn’t we will have to scan the whole body, but once I find it I can figure out a way of extracting it.” Bion says with a scowl. “The trick is to find out if it’s chemical or explosive, before I take it out as the extraction could be different for each one of them.”

  “Won’t that be dangerous?” I ask suspiciously, there is no way he’s touching Scarlett if there is the slightest threat of it going off before he can extract it.

  “Yes, I won’t be able to touch it until I know exactly where and what it is.” He confesses.

  “Jasmine said that Sven was the one to inject all of the women, therefore he knows more than we might even think.” Wulf says,

  “Scarlett said that the women are planning on trying to get more information out of him.” I say, “That might be the only way we are going to find out anymore.”

  “That might be a good option, if we can find out any more about these devices, like whom and how they did it.” Celmund suggests

  “We need to . . .” as Draco starts there is a knock at the door. We all look at the screens on the walls to the one outside the computer room and see that Jasmine, Nova and Scarlett are standing outside. What the hell are they doing here? Ceric stands and moves towards the door, opening it he motions for the women to enter.

  “What is the reason for this interruption?” Draco asks with a raised eyebrow, Ceric stands behind Nova circling her waist from behind he pulls her flush against his chest.

  “We have more information for you, which might help.” Jasmine says but her eyes are on Wulf as she speaks. I look over at Scarlett and stretch out my hand for her to approach me, she looks at me and then a Draco questioningly but then shrugs and walks towards me. As soon as her hand touches mine I pull her onto my lap.

  “The three of us decided that it would be prudent to see what more we could find out for all of you to be able to come up with a solution.” Jasmine looks over at Nova, “Nova, you want to tell them what you found out?”

  “You can’t try to fiddle with the devices; as soon as they’re touched they will disintegrate and kill us within seconds. The chemicals that they release will break down our organs.” She updates

  “Fuckers,” Burkhart grunts

  “Well now we know its chemical.” Bjarni adds with a frown.

  “You didn’t perhaps find out how we can deactivate it or get it out, did you?” Brandr asks, and Nova shakes her head in reply.

  “I did find out who made the devices though.” She says with a slight smile. “A Doctor Spindler from the FBI.” At her revelation we all sit stunned, how would the Keres acquire these devices from the FBI?

  “At least we can find this Doctor Spindler and have him tell us how to extract or deactivate these devices.” Celmund suggests.

  “The devices were introduced into our bodies between our ribs,” Scarlett says, “Sven wasn’t sure about the Keres name that can deactivate it but he says he is one of the Keres Tech guys and that he’s in Cape Town. His name starts with an L, he mentioned Luthier, Locke or Lough. He wasn’t sure.”

  “That son of a bitch,” Celmund says suddenly, “It can only be Leif.”

  “I thought you killed him?” Caelius asks

  “We didn’t have confirmation, Brandr set off the bomb, we didn’t see anyone leave but that doesn’t mean he didn’t survive.” Celmund says.

  “Celmund find out who this tech guy of theirs is in Cape Town, if it really is Leif we have our hands full.” Draco states with a scowl. Leif and Celmund used to be friends before Leif turned Keres, they were both geniuses with technology and had a friendly rivalry going. When Leif turned, he tried to block Celmund at every turn, he started to hack into government institutions leaving hints pointing it to Celmund. That is how we started to work with the FBI, when a selected few were assigned to work in South Africa they investigated Celmund. After finding anomalies that were planted by Leif we decided to go in and convince them that we were an asset.

  “Do you really think this could be him, there has been no sign of him in the last five years?” Ceric says with a raised brow.

  “Let’s hope that it isn’t, but Leif is a patient son of a bitch. If he’s the one responsible for detonating those devices he’s waiting for something.” Celmund says.

  “Maybe he’s waiting for you to find your mate.” Jasmine suggests with a shrug, “wouldn’t that be the easiest and cleverest way to get rid of you?” I see Wulf wink at Jasmine at her suggestion as he nods.

  “Well then, let’s hope that she doesn’t pop up while we still trying to solve this problem.” Draco says, before he stands and walks towards where Jasmine and Nova are. “We were all very fortunate to have such strong and special women amongst us. I promise that we will all do our best to find a solution as quickly as possible.” Jasmine smiles approaching Draco she lifts on her toes and kisses him on the cheek.

  “What the fuck?” Wulf roars as he stands from his chair. Draco’s eyes twinkle as he looks over at Wulf and winks.

  “We will leave you to it now that you know everything.” Jasmine says, stepping towards the door. Ceric let’s go of Nova and turns to go and open the door. Nova takes that opportunity to step up to Draco and also kiss his cheek with a cheeky smile.

  “No way I was going to miss this opportunity.” She teases, Draco throws back his head and roars with laughter when he sees Ceric’s scowl.

  “Don’t even think about it.” I say to Scarlett as she stands, she looks down at me and smiles. Then leans down and kisses me gently on the lips. My woman has a way of calming me that no one has ever done before, as she stands and turns towards the door I smile as I see her hips sway as she walks. Then suddenly she sprints across and also kisses Draco on the cheek.

  “Sorry, it’s just rude if I was the only one not to thank him.” She says with a mischievous twinkle in her eye as she looks at me. I don’t like my woman touching other men no matter how innocent, looking over at Draco I see his grin. The fucker is enjoying this, if he’s not careful he will swallow those white teeth of his pretty soon.

  “Now that they have managed to distract and lighten the mood as they pretended let’s continue.” Draco says as he sits back down in his chair. Only then do I realise that that is what they were doing, trying to lighten our moods. I shake my head in annoyance, darn women, Scarlett has only been around them for such a short time and already she’s catching onto their habits.

  “You know, I take offense to that.” Burkhart says suddenly, “You not the only one trying to find a solution here. If anything we should all have gotten a kiss.” He teases

  “Fuck off” Ceric growls as he shows him the finger. Wulf just grunts as I glare at him making him laugh in amusement. “Those women have you all by the balls.” He states as he shakes his head.

  “You’re just jealous because y
our balls aren’t being handled.” Brandr teases,

  “Now that we’ve let off some steam let’s get back to it.” Draco states

  “I think that we should find this Doctor Spindler and find out if there is any way to get those suckers out.” Bjarni suggests

  “I agree, but we need to find out first how they got this technology or if Doctor Spindler somehow turned crooked.” Gunner suggests, as we talk Celmund is already clacking away on his laptop. “We also need to maybe ask our guys in Cape Town to keep their eyes open for this Leif guy.” Gunner wouldn’t know Leif as he started with us after we thought that we had killed him, but Leif isn’t just good at IT but at disguising himself too. That is why it took us so long to find him the last time.

  “I have an address for Doctor Spindler, you will never guess who he works with.” Celmund says. “The fucker that’s responsible for the enhanced guys that attacked us.” He says as he brings up a photo of the doctor on the screen for us to see.

  “Why is this looking more and more like the Keres aren’t just working with the Catalonian Mafia but with the FBI too?” Wulf asks

  “I think you should have a talk with our Bratva friends and let them know what our suspicions are, they might be able to find something out that we can’t.” Caelius suggests as he looks at Draco, “If the Keres are in bed with the FBI so are the Catalonians.” Draco nods in agreement.

  “I will phone Alexey and see what he can find out, in the meantime, Celmund, Burkhart, Cassius, Caelius and I will make our way to visit Doctor Spindler. Cassius I would like Scarlett to accompany us, she can tell if the doctor is telling the truth when we talking to him.” there shouldn’t be a problem if we are ambushing him at his house, and if Scarlett is with me, I’m fine with it. Therefore I nod in agreement, letting everyone know that she will be accompanying us.

  “Great, we will keep the coms on. Bion you might want to listen in and see if there is anything that we miss.” Draco says, “Is there anything else anyone wants to raise?”

  “I want to have the wedding as soon as possible, I think when Bjarni has the naming ceremony I will marry Brielle.” We all look at Bion as he pulls out a ring box from his pocket and open it.

  “When did you buy that?” Celmund asks with a raised brow. “You never left the hotel until we had to go collect the weapons.” We all look at Celmund with surprised looks. “What? I keep an eye on everyone when we away just in case anything happens.” He grumbles.

  “For your information, I ordered it online and had it delivered to the hotel.” He answers.

  “It’s a nice ring brother.” Brandr says, “Don’t you think it’s a bit big though, she won’t be able to move her finger.” He teases.

  “Yeah, yeah” he quips, “you just worried that your women are going to see how unromantic you assholes are.”

  “What do you need from us?” Draco asks

  “I have a list of things that I need done,” he says with a shrug, “If you guys are happy to help I can delegate.”

  “Of course we’ll help asshole, just let us know what it is.” Ceric says as he punches him playfully on the arm. I look around at my brothers and my heart tightens, we might not be blood related but we’re brothers. There is nothing we won’t do for each other, and even though we’re all worried and angry about this new occurrence with our women we have all drawn together and will fight as one to save them, or die trying.

  SCARLETT 16

  Cassius bundled me into the chopper early this morning, telling me that I was needed to detect if the doctor would tell us the truth or lie. Cassius is sitting to my left side while Burkhart’s on the right, Draco and Celmund are sitting before us and to my surprise Caelius is flying the chopper. It’s the first time I have ever been on a helicopter and the idea is making me nauseous.

  Cassius hand is holding mine as he looks out the window and his thumb is stroking circles on the top of it. Looking down at our hands I see the contrast of his tanned fingers against my white ones, his hand is big, nearly two of mine. I feel tiny between all these men, but most importantly they make me feel safe.

  Cassius was worried about the device detonating with the altitude, but Bion assured us that after analysing the x-rays and sonar that he did on Brielle he’s sure that the only way it will detonate is if someone activates it.

  “Ten minutes till we land.” Caelius voice comes through the earphones; I keep my eyes either trained on our hands or on the floor as not to see how high we are. When I feel that we are starting to descend my fingers tighten instinctively. Cassius looks over at me and then smiles tenderly.

  “Those earphones are bigger than your head, I can hardly see your face.” He says, my head snaps up and I see the others smiling, and then grin when the earphones start to slip forward. I hastily pull them back in place as I smile; some of my hair has slipped out of my pony tail and is now curling around my face.

  Cassius lifts the hand that isn’t holding mine and pulls at a strand of hair playfully. Just then I feel the chopper touch the tar, my eyes widen in surprise and then I realize that he was distracting me so I wouldn’t be afraid of the landing. He pulls his earphones off and then helps me with mine.

  Stepping out of the helicopter he turns holding me around my waist he helps me down, and then starts to guide me towards a SUV that is waiting for us. Burkhart takes the wheel this time, Draco sits next to him in the passenger side. Once again I’m between Cassius and this time Caelius while Celmund sits behind us.

  I look around as we drive, because it’s still early in the morning the traffic is hectic but we soon make it into a suburb where the traffic has calmed down. “You sure he’s home alone?” Draco asks

  “I have a visual of him still sleeping.” Celmund answers

  “Are we going to his house?” I ask

  “Yeah, like that no one will interrupt us. Baby, when we asking him questions if he lies just nod okay?” Cassius says squeezing my hand gently as we pull up outside a high walled house. “Let’s go.” He calls as he opens the door and steps out holding his hand out for mine. I notice that Burkhart doesn’t switch off the ignition as we cross the road towards the high gates. I notice Celmund has his tablet out and is typing away, just then the gates start to open.

  “Did he do that?” I ask as I stare at Celmund

  “Yeah” Cassius says as we hurry inside before the gate closes behind us. “Don’t make any noise now baby, we need to surprise him.”

  I see Draco place his hand on the double wooden entrance doors, I don’t know what he does to them but they swing open as if commanded. Draco, Caelius and Celmund slip inside with their weapons drawn. Cassius pulls me behind him as he advances, his weapon is also drawn but he holds it down as we walk inside.

  I see Draco and Caelius climb quietly up the stairs to the first floor while Celmund waits at the base of the stairs. I can feel my heart racing while we wait; I have never done something like this before. Even though it’s exciting, my nerves are making me jumpy. When we hear a scuffle upstairs and then a groan I look up at Cassius worriedly, but all he does is wink at me as he starts to climb up the stairs pulling me behind him.

  As we enter a bedroom, I see a man that must be in his late forties sitting on his bed with Caelius gun pointed at his head. “Doctor do you know who we are?” Draco asks conversationally as he pulls up the chair that was by the window, and inclines his head for me to sit.

  Moving towards it I see the man’s eyes on me, “I’m not sure.” He says conversationally, “but if I have to guess I would say you are Elemental’s.” I’m surprised at his calmness, if it was most people they would be stressing but the man is just sitting there as if nothing is happening.

  “Do you know why we’re here?” Cassius asks from behind me, his hand resting on my shoulder. I see the man analysing us before he shakes his head.

  “So you have no idea, why we would pay you a visit?” Draco asks

  “None at all.” His lying, I look up at Draco and nod. He knows tha
t we’re here because of the devices.

  “Well, I don’t think I believe you.” Draco says as he walks towards the bed and sits next to the doctor as he inclines his head to Caelius, who steps back and lowers his gun. “Tell me, what do you know about the devices that the Keres are using?” he asks conversationally.

  “If you’re here, I’m guessing they are devices that I created.” The doctor says sarcastically.

  “How did the Keres get your devices?” Cassius asks

  “Well that you will have to ask them, now won’t you?” again he lies; he knows exactly how they got them because he was the one to train them and hand them over. I nod again to Draco, and even though his eyes are on the doctor, I know that he saw my nod.

  “Well doctor, I think that you’re keeping secrets from us.” Draco places a hand on the doctors shoulder, “I believe you like working with chemicals, don’t you?” I see the doctors’ expression tense and then he flinches but Draco holds him tight with his one hand. Only then do I see the fabric of his pyjama top crinkling away, what the hell?

  Suddenly the doctor screams, only then does Draco lift his hand. I’m sure my mouth is hanging open, as I see the blistered shoulder. How did Draco burn him like that? I know these men have certain gifts, but I never knew they were like this.

  “Did you know that the Keres were going to use those devices on our women?” Cassius asks from behind me.

  “No,” he yells, but his truth is that he knew that they were going to use it against the Elementals’ not specifically against the women. I don’t know if I should nod or shake my head, therefore I nod and shake my head. Hopefully the men understand, the doctor is too busy pulling at the fabric around the burnt area to pay attention to what I’m doing.

  “How do we deactivate the device?” Draco asks

  “Has it been implanted?” the doctor asks in a rasp.