The Northern King's Vendetta

Chapter 3: The Crimson Auction

Silas Thorne crossed the battered doorframe of the house, one hand holding up a handkerchief to cover his nose, the heel of the name-brand Italian leather shoe on his foot tapping against dirt and splintered wood on the floor, and he glanced down at the three corpses sprawled on the ground with an expression that read somewhere between boredom and mild irritation as if they were just some spilled rubbish he had to walk over.

He smoothed the front of his grey tailored suit and glanced up at Caleb, who was still kneeling beside his unconscious aunt, and Silas emitted a brief, sneering laugh that caused his guards to shuffle and further tighten their hold around their submachine guns.

"I have to say, Caleb, I thought you’d look a little more impressive after ten years of playing hero in the dirt, but here you are, looking like a tired man who doesn’t know that he’s strolled right up to a buzzsaw,” Silas said, gesturing to the half-dozen armed men surrounding him.

“You absolutely never should’ve made a return trip to City B, because that city belongs to people with real money and real influence — not to a stray dog who thinks having a little muscle makes him a king.’”

“You’re talking too much, Silas, and the only thing I want from you is a location, so maybe you should start figuring out how much your life is worth before I start losing my patience,” ​Caleb replied in a flat steady voice, and he didn't even glance at the barrels of the guns pointed at his chest because he was already gauging the distance between himself and the closest guard.

“Oh, you want a location? For your sister, Mia?” Silas asked with a smirk as he leaned against the doorframe while one of his guards scanned the perimeter, “she’s actually at a very private function tonight known as the Gilded Cage, where the richest men in this area are throwing money at things that aren’t usually available for purchase, and I believe the last time I took a look at the tablet, the bidding for her was already at half a million dollars, so unless you’re carrying that much cash in your pockets, you might as well grab a seat.”

Caleb did not answer with words but with a sudden lunge so fast and violent it took the guards by complete surprise, and he twisted the barrel of the nearest guard’s weapon so forcibly the man’s finger broke inside the trigger guard, and then using the man’s momentum, Caleb swung him into the second guard and straightened a path right to Silas.

The door was thrown open in chaos, but Caleb wasn't brawling in a bar room, he was fighting with the tactical precision of a man who had dug thousands of trenches, and in at most half a minute three of the guards were lying on the ground with crushed windpipes or broken limbs, and the other three were rooted to the spot because Caleb was already behind Silas with a knife pressed solidly against the man’s carotid artery.

"Tell your men to drop the guns, or I will find out how much blood you can lose before you pass out," Caleb murmured into Silas’s ear, and the smug smile on Silas’ face instantly disappeared, replaced by a white and shaking mask of panic as the cold steel sunk deeper into his skin.

"Drop them! Drop the guns right now, you idiots!" Silas bellowed at his remaining guards, who reluctantly lowered their arms and kicked them across the floor in Caleb’s direction, "Caleb, listen, be reasonable, I’m just a middleman, Isabella Sterling is the one who wanted this, I’m just doing my job!"

"Your life is about to get a lot more difficult, because you're going to be my ticket into that auction," Caleb said as he tugged Silas toward the door, pausing only briefly to look back at Aris, who had just come into the house wearing a tactical radio headset,

"Aris, bring Elena to our medevac and tell the squad to roll out Phase One, I want this whole district in the dark in ten minutes." Aris replied, nodding toward the medics who were rushing in with a stretcher for Elena, and Caleb didn't wait to see more because he was already shoving Silas into the back of one of the luxury SUVs.

As the car darted down the streets of City B, Silas sat hunched in the corner of the backseat, nervously casting glances at Caleb, who was leisurely inspecting the magazine of a confiscated handgun, and Silas attempted to recover some of his lost stature by fixing his tie, despite the tremor that would not cease in his hands.

“You’re making a big mistake, because the Gilded Cage isn’t just a party, it’s protected by some of the best private security in the country, and even if you make it through the door, you’ll never get out of the city alive,” Silas sputtered, trying to find some fissure in Caleb’s resolve, “Isabella has the police and the mayor in her pocket, so you’re basically telling the whole state."

“I’ve been fighting a war for the last ten years that makes this city look like a playground, Silas, so your threats don’t really mean much to me,” Caleb said without raising his eyes from the gun, “and the cops, well, they’ll have their hands full breaking the news to ‘em that their radio systems and power lines are being systematically dismantled as we speak."

]Outside the window, the streetlights faltered and went out as the Northern Phalanx attacked the local sub-stations, and the digital billboards that normally illuminated the downtown began to blink off, throwing the neighboring squares into a dead, unnatural blackness that was starting to cause traffic accidents and bewilder the city folk. Caleb watched the chaos with a cold satisfaction, knowing that his men were moving like ghosts through the shadows to secure the perimeter of the auction house, and he turned back to Silas with a look that made the man shrink back into the leather upholstery.

​"We’re going to walk into that auction, you’re going to act like everything is normal, and you’re going to lead me directly to my sister," Caleb commanded, "if you try to signal anyone or if you even look at a guard the wrong way, I won't kill you quickly, I'll make sure you stay awake for every bit of pain I can cause."

​"I'll do it, I'll take you there, just please don't kill me," Silas whispered, his voice barely audible over the sound of the engine and the distant sirens beginning to wail in the dark city, and Caleb just sat back and waited as the SUV approached the heavy iron gates of the underground club, ready to tear the heart out of the Sterling empire one room at a time.