A Scene from “The Tree”

This is a scene from the draft of 

The Tree: The First Book of the Chronicles of Ana

 

Jacob placed Ana in the bathroom with a game toy and forbade her to come out or take a peek until he called her. From his facial expression, he looked kinda crazy about the eyes. Like Helena’s eyes when she’s angry at her. So, he needed not worry. She wasn’t coming out not with him looking like that. When the door closed she ran herself a hot bubble bath and decided she would sit in this tub as long as she wanted without anyone yelling for her to come out, they had to use the bathroom.

Jacob opened the door with an ever-charming smile and invited the man inside. As he shook his hand to seal the deal, Ted, who waited behind the door, stuck the man in the upper shoulder with a cattle tranquilizer vets used to make cows easier to work on when ill. Ted drove it deep the moment the man walked in. Both knowing the man was a warlock they weren’t taking any chances—who knows what kind of magic he could
do? He had already proven he didn’t hesitate to kill. And with neither of them being warlocks they had to use something to restrain him.

Clint saw too late this was a trap. They never intended to give him the girl. Fighting the rapidly spreading lethargy, through foggy eyes he saw the man’s handsome dark face twisted and distorted into ugliness produced by pure unadulterated rage. Clint
sluggishly tried to raise his hand to freeze Jacob but Jacob punched him in the jaw, sending him flying over his bed landing between the two beds.

Jacob ran around the bed to the space between the bed where he had rolled into; not giving him a chance to defend himself with magic and stepped on his stomach, pushing him back down. He quickly straddled him, digging his knees deep into the man’s
shoulder to hold him down while Ted handed him the disposable gloves. Nowadays they can detect any biological traces on a person’s skin. He kicked and jerked but Jacob punched him again, breaking his jaw. Once the gloves were on he reached down with
much strength in broad shoulders and started choking him. Clint tried to fight for his life. He had done these very things to many others but used magic to subdue them. He clawed the man’s face, his forearms but Jacob squeezed with all his might. Clint’s mind
couldn’t, wouldn’t register, refused to digest it. He couldn’t believe he was actually about to die. This is the sort of things that happened to other people. Not him. He was over two hundred years old. The son of a Nephilim. The grandson of an ancient god. This was all wrong. This wasn’t the way it was supposed to happened. He was supposed to die at home surrounded by his wife and many children.

“M******er, you don’t poison my kids and get the fuck away with it.” Jacob hissed through curled lips and hard clenched teeth to the dying man. “You thought I was just a dumb country hick who couldn’t figure out it was you who did it. It was you who tried to kill my baby!”

Clint tried to shake his head in honest reply to the question. But in the man’s steel vise like grip, his throat contracted when he tried to say, “No that wasn’t my inclination. I only wanted the property, not the child.”

With pleading, bugling eyes he sorrowfully looked into the other angry face peering over Jacob BuFaye’s shoulder. He met the eyes of a killer who never acted on his penned-up desire. His life was draining away. He steadily grew weaker, he softly flapped at the forearms whose owners had his hands around his neck, crushing his thorax. His brain was turning to mush, his oxygen was too low to conjure his mother. The man on him was
so angry his golden eyes were sparking fire. That’s when he realized the father wasn’t totally without a gift. His’ was minor in comparison to the girl’s but it’s there. He saw his plan slip away. But why was he dying? He only intended to hold the girl until they gave up the house and afterward dangle her alive before her distressed parents rescinding his agreement to return her. Sure, he planned to kill her, savor the joy of choking the life
out of the little body until she stopped moving and leave her body on the lawn to teach these proud people a lesson. These were his last earthly thoughts before darkness enveloped him and he closed his eyes in death. Ending a well-privileged life that begun
in another century, a different era so different from the one he expired in. The two men didn’t know they just killed the grandson of a powerful ancient god.

The night was still young and people were still out and about when Ted donned a pair of vet’s colorless gloves and drove the luxury hovercraft across town. He cleaned it of his DNA and left the big luxury hovercraft under an aging, rusty overhead bridge used by drug addicts to hide and do their dope in peace. He looked around the run-down, crime infested area and got out and bribed the druggies to say they never saw him nor did they know how the car got there; one look at the man told them they didn’t
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want no part of whatever he was involved in. Seeing that the way was clear he readjusted his demeanor and walked to downtown, catching a hovercab back to his motel room.

They had put Clint Tidwell in the motel’s closet. He left with Jacob the things from his car, the supplies needed to clean up the death discharge. Being a pathologist as well, granted him access to industrial biological degradable agent. Later that night, they intended to load the corpse into Ted’s SUV when the streets were clear but not well-lit. For this very reason, he and Ted specifically chose a cheap place that had no damn security
cameras watching the parking lot.

After cleaning up, Jac heard Ana splashing around in the tub, probably making a mess but so what? He didn’t have to clean it.

“Ana, sweetie. Come out that bathroom and go to bed. We got a long trip to Orlando tomorrow.” Jacob yelled in case the walls were thin and police questioned the neighbors if they heard anything.