Chapter 9

On Sunday evening, I awoke shortly before sunset. According to the copy of the Lunar Calendar that I had printed out before leaving home for the final time, the new moon would occur tomorrow at approximately 1330, so tonight would be very dark.

Following cleaning up and dressing, I transferred to an area on the north side of Atlanta known as ‘Buckhead’. While there are a number of fine restaurants there, I chose a bar / restaurant instead. It has good food that is always served in large portions, and they always have a television on in the bar area. I used the same glamour that I had the previous night, and I quickly discovered that it was a good thing that I had.

I managed to get a table near the bar area where I could see and hear the television. While it was Sunday night, and they would normally have some type of sporting event on the screen, tonight they had a news channel on. To my surprise, the lead story on the 9:00 PM news was about me! It started with a news conference by the mayor where the two Pentagon MI types, Boudinot and Coley, revealed that I was the one responsible for the hangings, the explosions, and the fires of the last couple of days.

However, the twisted and lie filled story that they told about me was the absolute reverse of what had actually happened. Their accusation that I had killed my own children was nearly enough to cause me to go after them immediately, but I had other plans for this night, and I had no idea where they might be presently. I did decide that I would discover where they were and deal with both of them when and where I would have the advantage.

Still, I was exceedingly upset, and the strength of my Magic increased enough because of that and the accumulated Magic, it cause the table I was sitting at to begin to shake and rattle for a few minutes along with the several other tables around me. A number of people at those tables appeared to be startled before I regained control of myself and damped the Magic down.

“Are we having an earthquake!?” one customer asked a waiter in a panicked voice.

“No,” the waiter answered in a nonchalant voice. “It’s just one of those heavy trucks again. If they pass by at just the right speed and are heavy enough, for some reason it makes some of the tables rattle,” he finished.

During this, the news program had been showing shots of people hanging from street lights, exploded buildings, and houses on fire. That segment finished with still pictures from that morning of the events at the post office parking lot and interviews with a number of those who had been in the crowd.

The final item of that portion of the news was the mugshots of me that had been taken when I was arrested when the boys were kidnapped along with a description of me. Last was an announcement that the City of Atlanta had posted a reward of fifty thousand dollars for information leading to my arrest and conviction. I thought at the time that the city fathers were a bunch of cheapskates, considering all of the money that I had acquired from the various criminals that I had eliminated, and I was tempted to call the news station and add another fifty thousand dollars to the reward, but I only considered it for a few seconds.

I had ordered a large meal tonight, as I had only had breakfast and dinner the past several days, and had expended a lot of energy and Magic in my dealings with the various criminal groups. The use of Magic, especially in the quantity and at the level that I had been using it, takes a lot of energy, and I hadn’t been consuming enough calories lately to compensate for that, so I had a double order of food tonight and a few beers.

It was still rather early when I left the bar / restaurant, and I wasn’t sure if my first appointment would be in bed yet. Since I didn’t really want to disturb his family, after stopping at another big box construction supply store to acquire a partial spool of rope, I transferred to the home of the second man on my list.

This man was an activist and a member of the Atlanta City Council, and was involved in a number of shady operations involving the diverting of city funds to various questionable organizations. When I arrived at his house in an expensive area of the city, I found him in a planning meeting with several other politicians, one of whom was a state representative from a nearby district. It appeared that their meeting had just started shortly before I arrived.

“We’re all agreed on the need for action then, especially after what has happened the last few days,” the City Councilman was saying, as I approached the living room where the meeting was taking place. I had arrived at the back of the house and had checked out the kitchen and the other parts of the first floor before approaching the living room.

“Yes, we can’t allow individuals like this Major to be free to interfere with our plans,” another man who I didn’t recognize added when the Councilman fell silent.

“Yes, very true, but we need a city wide bill to get the guns out of the hands of the citizens, but not our people,” the Councilman added.

“Not just the city,” the State Representative told him in a voice filled with passion. “We need to get my bill approved in the upcoming session of the General Assembly to outlaw guns statewide just as the more progressive states in the northeast and on the west coast have done. All of their guns must be turned in and destroyed. I don’t know if even the police should be allowed to have guns,” she finished, before adding, “and explosives also. No one should have access to them.”

“Yes, the British have had police without guns for a long time now,” the third man agreed.

“Besides that, we need to get rid of these homeless veterans. They have had too much training in war and the use of violence to be allowed to remain in the city,” the Councilman injected into the talks.

“Yes,” the State Representative agreed, “but that should be extended to all of the veterans. They should all be made to register and wear a means of tracking them to ensure they are not planning something against the government, and they would be easier to round up that way.”

“What about the rest of the homeless?” the third man asked.

“The state should take charge of them and keep them away from normal tax paying citizens, in camps perhaps where they could be watched,” the Councilman stated, but I’d had enough of this crap, and cast a partial freeze spell on those in the living room, including the silent man in the shadows who hadn’t said anything, and was apparently a bodyguard. I stepped into the room following that, startling all of them, and this was when they discovered that they couldn’t move, including the body guard who tried to reach for the pistol in a holster under his coat.

“Who are you, and how did you get in here?” the Councilman demanded in an upset voice.

“He’s Hardtrick,” the third man told them, recognizing me despite my beard from my picture on the television.

“That’s right, I’m Max Hardtrick, and I was listening to your plans for the citizens. I don’t believe the majority of them would agree with you. I know that I certainly wouldn’t, and I’m sure the veterans wouldn’t either,” I told them.

“Neither would the gun owners, most of whom are honest people. The people you need to remove guns from are the gangsters and other crooked individuals like the pimps, drug dealers, gangbangers, and mobsters that I have eliminated over the last few days. They are the ones who shouldn’t have guns to use against honest citizens,” I told them before pausing with a grin.

“As for explosives, they are needed on construction projects and for the destruction of older buildings and things that need to be removed, plus they are already only sold to licensed individuals. Besides, I’ve never bought or stolen any explosives. All of the buildings that I have blown up the past few days were destroyed by water and Magic.

“Another thing that you have overlooked is that I haven’t used any guns or other normal weapons against those I have eliminated. I did notice though that you left rope, chain, and handcuffs which ARE items that I have used to eliminate the criminals and the mobsters on my list, and they are what I am going to use to eliminate all of you,” I finished with a grin.

“What?” We aren’t criminals,” the Councilman shouted in disagreement.

“You are the worst kind of criminal. You would rob honest citizens of their rights under the constitution of this country and this state; citizens who elected you and put their trust in your honesty. Getting rid of you and those like you will be considered a public service,” I told them with another grin.

The third man, the one who I didn’t know, looked at me across the table and suddenly a small pistol appeared in his right hand, and he pulled the trigger. Nothing happened, and nothing happened again when he pulled back the hammer to fired the second barrel of the pistol.

“Thank you,” I said with a wide smile. “That saves me from removing your bodyguard’s pistol and using it to initiate the explosion.”

“But it didn’t fire either time,” he said in an upset voice.

“No, it didn’t fire because I cast a spell that keeps guns from functioning. Even if it had fired, I have my wards around me, and the bullet would have only bounced off of them.”

“Now to keep all of you entertained while I check the rest of the house, I’ll adjust your freeze spells and introduce a new one,” I told them, as I changed the freeze spell from a partial to a full freeze and cast the pain spell on all of them. I also added a silence spell around the house so as to not disturb the neighbors.

Leaving them to suffer for a time, I carefully checked the remainder of the house, finding it empty of people but not money which was in a safe in the master bedroom. There were also some very incriminating papers in there along with something like ten thousand dollars. The money, I transferred to the evidence room where the other money was. The papers, I put in a large envelope and addressed it to a reporter at one of the local television stations who I was sure would expose the Councilman for the criminal he was, or at least had been. I would mail it later.

Following that, I prepared the nooses from the new rope that I had acquired that evening. After starting the water running in the bathroom and in the kitchen, I returned to the living room where I manipulated the freeze spells on each of them so that they were all standing before placing a noose around each of their necks and tying their hands behind their backs.

The gun that the third man had fired was left on the table they had been sitting around. When all was arranged to my satisfaction, I cast the water separation spell so the water now flowing across the floor was turned into its component parts, before transferring all four of them outside.

The area where the Councilman lived was a very well-to-do one and had an abundance of street lights. The Councilman was the first to be hung on a street light near his home. The third man was next and the bodyguard followed. This left only the State Representative, and I transferred the two of us to the next street light.

“You can’t hang me,” she told me in a very positive voice. “I’m a woman, and you can’t do that.” She really sounded like she believed her own words, but I just grinned.

“That shows just how out of touch with reality you and those like you really are. I not only can, but I am going to hang you. People like you think the world will be just fine if all of the guns are removed and everyone behaves nicely, or at least nicely as you would define it. Yet you and they have forgotten about all of the other ways there are to kill someone.

“In the final seconds of your life, you will realize just how wrong you have been, but it will be too late then. The world is not a nice place. It is a very hard, nasty, dangerous, and unruly place, with people who give not a damn for what you and your friends think, or the way you would like things to be.

“They have their own agendas and will see them carried out by force, as much force as they deem necessary. If that means wiping out a village to make a point, or assassinating a President or Prime Minister to achieve their goals, they have absolutely no compunctions whatsoever about doing that. They would eat you and those like you for breakfast and not give it a thought.

“You, of course, know nothing about them because you spent your time in college listening to those who subscribe to the same things you believe in. Others like me and the veterans who you so dislike spent our time fighting those same people and know just how treacherous they are,” I told her just before using a spell to hoist her up in the air and attach the end of the rope to the street light. I could see in her eyes that she didn’t believe that I was actually doing this.

“No!!” she screamed when I canceled the freeze spell, which was ten seconds before canceling the spell holding her up. She came to an abrupt stop about four feet or so below the top of the street light, and the noose jerked tight around her throat. She kicked and danced just as the others had as she strangled. Before transferring to the next victim’s house, I canceled the spell on the ammunition in the third man’s derringer. It fired the shells in both barrels instantly, and the house exploded with a roar.

The next politician lived some distance from this one, and in a very exclusive gated community. He was a judge in the juvenile court system and heard cases involving the removal of children from abusive homes by State and County Child Protective Services personnel. On entering the house, I found no one on the first floor, but this wasn’t unusual given the time of night. The second floor proved to be much more productive. The front part was empty with no one in bed, but on reaching the large room at the rear of the house, I found a scene that was shocking even to me.