I threw him a shark grin. “There’s only one solution for that.”
Pop.Pop. Pop.
His dead body slipped off the chair and landed in the mess of glass, a pool of red circling the floor.
“I could do this all night long,” I taunted in a low cadence. “Who’s next?”
The message was crystal clear.
One way or another, I was the next successor.
Michel De la Croix stood up. “It’s time, Zeno.”
There were two kinds of initiations for the De la Croixes.
The first one was a short ordeal for those entering the family business. It involved shooting a traitor and slashing a cross into its chest.
The second one was exclusive to the next seigneurreplacing his predecessor. A longer ceremony occurring at night in the private woods of Château De la Croix—their ancestral home in France—where you had to hunt your prey by dawn or be thrown into the snake pit. It was a test to show your vitality and strength. If you survived, the ritual was complete with a blood oath and a final crowning.
The wind was blustery tonight and the leaves rustling in the forest reminded me of a roaring crowd in acolisée. I tipped my head back, letting it sail through my scalp and fill me with its untamed energy. The moon shining above called to something animalistic within my core.
When the unmistakable sound of the starting whistle sliced into the air—signalling the beginning of the initiation—I glanced down at the gleaming amber stone in my ring.
My legacy called to me.
Rolling my shoulders back and cracking my knuckles, I tore right into the lion’s den.
I loved the chase.
The shot of adrenaline that swept through me was pure ecstasy.
Every leaf that crunched under my heavy footfalls, every heartbeat that thumped in my ears, every breath splaying in the atmosphere fueled my bellicose attitude. As I hunted my prey, my mind funnelled through all the moments leading to this night—two decades into the making—until I weighed them in my bare hands like a bounty. The grueling hours spent in a cage with one opponent after the other to strengthen my fight. The messy kills to prove my loyalty. The sleepless nights where I tortured rapacious men and battled my own demons as I rose to glory with every win.
The darkness of the forest shrouded my vision, but the moonlight breaking through the cluster of tree branches guided me to my quarry.
He heard me nearing and I heard his fear.
Panting. Whimpering. Begging.
I basked in it.
His bare feet slipped on the ground when he took a rough turn to hide behind a tree and that was when I pulled the trigger.
Two bullets landed in each knee.
He cried out in agony. “Je vous en supplie! Non!”
He was a faceless traitor to me. Someone who touched one of my little girl cousins.
I strode towards his frame and kicked him to his back while he shook and covered his face with his arms.
Then I pummeled the wrath of the punisher and the fear of God straight into him.
It neared the Devil’s hour when I dragged the traitor’s dead body by his hair to a large clearing in the forest. The De la Croix men stood in a circle, long black robes covering every stitch of their bodies, their hoods pulled low.
They did not lift their heads, but they tracked my movements as I closed in on them and the large fire goblet they surrounded.
My shoes were bloody. My suit was bloody. And so were parts of my face.