The New Magic - The Revelation of Jonah McAllister - Landon Wark (bill gates best books TXT) 📗

at least temporary ones. Worse, it involved the possibility that the replacement might be even worse than the one he was getting rid of. Elections were slightly out of his sphere and even if he could manage to get some benevolent intervention there was no way to be certain that the rigger wasn't rigging for his own benefit.

With wants also came a lack of trust.

He was about to begin the last phase of his nightly ritual: wondering if he could get out with both his money and his life.

A shout from the hallway jolted Serge. At least he thought it was a shout. His hearing was not what it once was."Christ," he groaned.

"The fuck is going on?" Natalia muttered with her face still pressed into the sheet.

They had been married for nearly thirty years and she had never lost the mouth that he had fallen in love with. Unfortunately, that was about all of the women he had fallen in love with that remained.

"I don't know," Serge struggled to kick the blankets off his gut. "Goddamn guards watching the fights."

"Tell them to get the fuck out of my house," Nat slurred.

Serge shuffled to the bedroom door, ensured he was wearing underwear and grabbed Nat's robe hanging on the chair. He had paid for a vintage coat rack that had belonged to some fucking arch-duke or other and she couldn't use it. He grumbled a little, suddenly aware, as he was more often lately, that he was looking all of his fifty-six years and then some. The rigours of maintaining the supply of... entertainment to this city had aged him to the point where he felt the weakness that caused his underlings to salivate when they thought he was out of earshot more and more.

Sounds of commotion from down the hall became louder as he approached the door.

If the children hadn't moved out years prior he might have concluded they were carrying out one of their damned raucous parties with some of their asshole friends.

Serge cracked the door open and stuck his head out into the lights of the hallway. There was no one to be seen at the small desk a ways down where the pair of guards were usually stationed. They were trusted men, mostly, but were prone to watching fights from the west on their phones. Still, the station should have been manned by at least one lazy asshole hunched over a flickering screen.

Serge pursed his lips, furious at the incompetence.

The abrupt bang of a gunshot made him jump, banging his hand against the door.

A hand, holding a pistol dropped to the floor in front of the elevator door. Even with the sudden shock gnawing at him Serge could see part of the gun and even part of the hand eaten away. Behind him, Nat scrambled against the blankets of their bed, pulling herself into a sitting position.

"Serge!"

"Get into the closet!" Serge hissed.

Within the back of the closet was a small hatch that led into the fortified room that was installed in all penthouses in the city. Oligarchs did not submit willingly to the guillotine in this part of the world.

He forced himself into a measured walk to the nightstand and pulled open the drawer with a quivering, but functional hand. He gripped the heavy gun inside with his left hand and the clip to be loaded into it with the right. When he had first bought it he imagined the silver inlays inspiring the same feelings of awe and reverence he had first had watching the powerful men on the curbside, but now he just found them ostentatious.

As the clip slid into the base of the weapon he heard Nat pulling open the hatch, a sound that only barely drowned out footfalls in the hallway.

Serge's mind raced and a bead of sweat dribbled down the side of his aging face. Was it the greedy politician? A rival? One of his own underlings? He shook his head. There would be time to figure out who was responsible later. If he survived.

Fucking guards! You paid them all that money to just lay down and die.

Serge continued his forced march back toward the door, gripping the pistol with his right hand, trying to remember when the last time was when he had actually fired it.

After locking the bedroom door he stood behind it, gun gripped with both hands. His finger hovered just above the trigger. For a moment he considered joining Nat within the walls of the closet, but there was barely enough room for one and worse: How could he survive being known as the man who hid in the wall like a woman when there was trouble at his own door?

He was no coward. His hand may shake a little since losing the coldness of his youth to the daily grinding warmness of family life, but he was still no coward.

Two pairs of footfalls approached the door, soon joined by a third. He caught a few syllables of words before they tried the knob. He inhaled sharply at the rattle.

After a second there were the sounds of more words, strange ones. As Serge's eyes widened the knob of the bedroom door was engulfed by a bright light with a greenish tinge. It grew in intensity and then vanished, taking the knob with it.

His mind cut to faded memories of one of the science-fiction TV shows he would watch as a boy, of a Martian death ray in action. His recognition was interrupted by the door flying open.

He pulled the trigger of the gun as a human figure stepped through the frame. The figure slid against the edge of the door, blood pouring from a wound in his upper arm.

A second figure said something that Serge could not make out.

He pulled the trigger a second time, this time with