Smoking Power

Chapter 29

My eyes immediately dart over to the other side of the room where Marco is sitting down on a small table with his feet propped up on a plastic chair, "Marco how nice to see you again." I put on my best happy voice that I can muster up at a time like this. I grimace when even I can hear the sarcasm in it.

Marco however doesn't seem fazed by this in the slightest, "I'd like to introduce you to one of my finest officers, Averill. I know the two of you have already met but we have to keep polite now don't we?" Marco waves his hand in front of the man standing respectfully next to Marco.

I gasp when I recognise the guy named Averill immediately. He's the man that attacked us all back at the Big Banana. He was trying to kill us because his boss Magister Dux told him to kill us. Amber managed to get one of his poisonous green spit balls to hit his shoulder instead of us which injured him severely and he hobbled of, never to be seen by us again, until now. Come to think of it, I haven't even heard much about that Magister Dux guy-

My thoughts stop as I take a re-look at Averill and Marco. Averill is one of Marcos best officers and Averill tried to kill us because his boss Magis-

I gasp again and am glad to be sitting down cause I'm sure that if I were standing up then my legs would be wobbling right about now, "You're Magister Dux." I finally manage to mumble out when I'm half over my initial shock.

"Lovely name they call me isn't it?" Marco thinks out loud while absently stroking his stubble covered chin, "It means teacher leader in Latin, you know? When I was first called it, I was a bit apprehensive of it, but now I quite like it to be perfectly truthful. I am their teacher and their leader so it does fit, but I think that I like it most of all because of the meaning that is under it all. To be a teacher and a leader you need to have power, and when you have power, you are the boss. I am the boss."

"Not always," I say as I get up as gracefully as I can when I'm covered literally head to toe with nasty gashes and lacerations, "You may have put fear into the hearts of hundreds, maybe even thousands of innocent families and people, but you don't have true power. And as you so nicely put it, with power you are the boss. But you don't have true power so therefore you're not the true boss." I try make it sound like I know exactly what I'm talking about, but in reality, I'm just saying the nearest thing that comes to mind and hoping that Marco'll buy it.

Marco looks enraged and ready to slice me to a thousand little pieces with that green sword that he had before, but instead of lashing out on me like I'm expecting him to, he relaxes and resumes absently stroking his stubble. I swear something is wrong with men, I mean is it really that interesting to touch the hair on your face? "We'll see." Marco simply says after he stares me down for a couple of long seconds.

"So what's with all of this?" I wave my hand towards the rock pile on the wall and the old room that we're standing in. "And how'd you get here? You didn't have the gifts or the portal."

At this, Marco cackles. He can't even bring in himself to save his dignity but laughing normally, he has to cackle. "How simple minded you are. Did you honestly believe for one moment that I of all people would be so foolish to allow only one entry to this place? Or think that I would forget where I put the weapon after I so carefully hid it? But to answer your most stupid question you asked, Gareth and I have been experimenting with the latest batches of Hogmers so they can have more abilities."

"Abilities?" I question him, all of a sudden feeling slightly nervous.

"Oh you know, things like controlling telepicks and what nots of such. I expected you to know since you did rather rudely interrupt our first testing of them."

"What? I didn't interrupt any testing, this is the first I've heard of any testing."

"So naive again Mckayla? Tsk tsk tsk, you should feel ashamed of your simple mindedness. How about I remind you, yes? I do believe we were in Iraq. We were prepping them under the town before we killed off, oh how many was it again, twenty two maybe? Or was it twenty three? Do excuse the forgetfulness, it gets hard to keep track of how many died where after time."