MORNING SERIAL
“HE is a bounty hunter,” Viktor interjected. “A Cypriot bum doing somebody else’s dirty work.”
“The ones who you are running from?” I said to Evgeny. He nodded morosely. “Why didn’t you kill him before now?”
Evgeny cursed and looked to the sky. “You think you know everything about our world now, is that it? We just go around slaughtering people we think we do not like?”
That brought a silence to the group.
“I don’t know anything about anything,” Lou said eventually. “I just know he hit me for this information. He said he was going to do terrible things to me. I managed to escape and I ran down into Protaras and he came after me and in the end he must have caught up to someone he thought was me.”
She began to weep, and it seemed like the first real unloading since she went missing. I held her.
“Let me come with you,” she said. “Stelly is looking for me.”
“And he is looking for us now too,” Evgeny said. “Because of you.” The tone changed, and Evgeny stepped forward to us both with a look of fire in his eyes. “We cannot take you with us when you put us in danger. I should kill you.”
“Dammit, Evgeny.” I felt anger come up through me – not just anger, a frustration and sadness – and it took me aback just as much as it did everybody else.
“She did not give you up lightly. It is that cockroach Stelly who is to blame and only him.”
Evgeny seemed to take a step back, but I was not done, it seemed.
“In fact, it is not only him, is it? This whole mess is because of who you people are. The only people who aren’t to blame are Darya and Dina. And God knows Lou hasn’t done anything wrong. You may have rescued them, but what did you pull them out from? Your own world, Evgeny. So don’t get all holier-than-thou with us. Lou is coming with us because she needs our help.”
He thought about it, but he gave in. And the four of us set off for Famagusta with our boxes of supplies through the dry heat of the orangery.
> The Golden Orphans by Gary Raymond is published by Parthian www.parthianbooks.com