Seven Demons Aidan Truhen (reading an ebook TXT) 📖

then says that she did in fact like what happened next. I say obviously not that and she says if I do not control a given outcome I should not make statements about it. I say okay and bearing that in mind I go out again and I go to a phone booth and call François Leclerc.

—

“We have nothing to talk about Mr. Price.”

I tell him what we have to talk about and he says he will send a car. I say that I am not getting in his nasty Franco-Belgian ethnosupremacist automobile because number one I do not ride with the enemy and number two more important that is getting taken to a second location at which point he will ethno-supremely torture the shit out of me until I die and I am not at home to that idea. At. All.

“Then we cannot talk Mr. Price because certainly we cannot talk on the phone.”

I could tell him that if he had proper VoIP secure calling from Poltergeist we could talk on the phone like FOR HOURS and all they would know in the many many rooms where such things are intercepted was that dot A and dot B were maybe sexting maybe plotting the end of human civilization. But he cannot have proper VoIP secure calling from Poltergeist because the anarchokobolds who make this happen think he is an asshole.

Instead I tell him where to meet me and I pretend I am bringing someone along to watch my back.

ELEVEN

USED TO BE THE BÄRENGRABEN WERE ACTUAL GRABEN, which is to say pits. There were three of them like circular stone holes in the ground each maybe fifteen meters across and dressed with sad little tree stumps and scratching posts. You went to a kiosk and you bought figs and threw them to the bears in the bottom of the pit and they would stand up and dance for you. You also could buy carrots and the bears would dance also for carrots but not with much enthusiasm because who wants a fucking carrot when you can have figs? I do not know what the interior accommodations looked like but I am guessing they were not the ursine Ritz either. The whole thing looked like medieval because it was medieval it was a reminder of the honored past but a few years back the cantonal government took a long look at itself and decided that actual bear pits were not how you honored your heraldic animal in the era of climate change and Miley Cyrus, so they built a garden for bears, which is like a terraced park with panoramic views on the far side of the river from the old site. It is wide and public and there is absolutely no way anyone can know they are not in the crosshairs of a Dragunov. I am pretty sure I am in the crosshairs of one thing or another but I am used to that. Professional soldiers have rules about not getting into those situations so I am guessing Frankie Leclerc is not loving sitting in row three with a bucket of mineral-enriched bear kibble, which is what the bears get now instead of figs.

I guess some you win some you lose.

I can see some of the G-Wagen guys dotted around the viewing platform and they have little scratches and boo-boos from all the flying glass of their kidnap attempt the other day and I am guessing they are real sore that they got dinged up and a bunch of their buddies got arrested or shot to death by Swiss grocers with automatic weapons training. I guess they probably also do not love having to feed the bears instead of break me in half so I feed the bears a bit.

Then I sit down and say “hi” and Leclerc says we have nothing to talk about.

“Yeah we do.”

“I think not.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Perhaps I just like to see the dawning acknowledgment of death.”

“…Wow that is some fucking Gitanes black polo Jules et Jim gangsterism right there. Excuse me while I get my chessboard out.”

“You are a tedious man Mr. Price. Offer me your deal.”

I think about it. I think about the job and about Volodya and about my people.

The people who are mine.

And I do not tell him to shove it up his Arc de coq au vin. I give him what he wants as if I’m out of my depth. I let him see all my doubts.

Then I swallow the urge to puke or rip his face off and I make a deal—I make a solemnly binding vow—with François Leclerc.

—

After that I call Mozart and I tell her I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch. Mozart says she’s sorry too. I say why is she sorry and she says she has accidentally posted the security footage of me peeing on her plane on G-Bread so now all the low-to-mid-brow criminals in the world have seen my junk.

“…Sure why not. Put me on speaker.”

“You do not give me orders Jack. Plus your lady friend here is a drag she cries all the time and when she is not crying she yells bad words in Italian.”

“You have fifteen million euros you can retire with that why are you still here?”

“I dunno asshat why are you still here?”

“To fuck some guys up who are assholes and make even more than that doing it plus also I’m gonna be faaaaamous. You wanna do that too?”

“Speaker on man.”

“Flavia? Can you hear me?”

—

So here we are at last. Banjo’s event is due and there’s nothing left to do and when that happens you don’t wait. You go. It all comes together now or it falls apart.

Incoming VoIP call Solidcrypt. Accept: y/n?

y

Doc says:

“I’m at the Nordwandhüs.”

This is the name of the house where the security guard she has nominated to be her personal-entry key card lives. In Kircheisen, houses do not generally have numbers they just have names because it