Visions of Skyfire

Chapter 25

“I diots!” Parnell muttered darkly as he marched down the middle of the village’s one dusty street. He had to force himself to keep from throwing out enough fire to burn this hellhole to the ground.

He’d missed them by an hour. One hour. And all because his informant had gotten greedy. Parnell’s gaze flicked to the old man lying in the dirt. “You’re lucky you’re already dead.”

When the old fool had recognized Teresa, he’d had his grandson call it in. He’d been told to leave the witch alone. To do nothing.

“But you just couldn’t stand that, could you?” No, Parnell told himself, humans were, at the core of it, greedy bastards. And the old man was no different than most—though he had met his punishment, surely. He’d seen an opportunity to get out of this flea-ridden spot in the middle of nowhere and had reached for it. Hard to blame him. Though Parnell certainly did.

When his satellite phone rang, he pulled it from his pocket, glanced at the number and answered, saying, “No. We don’t have them.”

While the woman at the other end of the line ranted, Parnell lifted one hand to the men who had arrived with him. He waved them over to the crowd, watching the proceedings as if they were fascinated by a television program. Fools didn’t even realize what was about to happen to them.

When one of his men silently signaled a question, Parnell simply nodded and drew one finger across the base of his neck.

The first volley of machine-gun fire erupted instantly. Bright lights flashed and the sound was a cacophony in the stillness. Yet the woman on the phone was shouting so loudly, Parnell could still hear her.

He paused for a moment and wished the guns were trained on her. But then, she would get what was coming to her eventually. As anyone who crossed him did.

“Witnesses are being taken care of,” he told her when she wound down long enough to take a breath.

“Yes, I can hear that,” she snapped. “Very subtle, Parnell.”

He stiffened at the condemnation in her tone. “You wanted me to handle it? I’m handling it. We’ll find the witch.”

“In time for it to do any good?”

The guns fell silent and the night crowded back in. He glanced over his shoulder at his men, moving through the crowd. Kicking bodies out of the way, they were simply making sure the dead were actually dead. He wanted no survivors slipping away to tell stories about strange men asking questions about witches.

He had enough to deal with as it was.

“Let me do my job,” he told the woman and snapped the phone closed. Holding the offending thing on his palm, he called up the fire and held it until the phone was nothing more than a blackened, melted pile of plastic and wire.

Then he brushed his hands free of both the phone and the woman and headed to his car, calling for his men to follow.

He still had a witch to find.