Page 23 of Gideon
“Levi, what’s going on?” I asked, my hand scratching at the back of my head in confusion.
“Just get here. Can you?” he reiterated, that urgency even more evident now than it was a moment ago.
“I don’t know, man. Getting to your place means I’d have to drive on the main road and I’m not sure I want to attract that kind of attention. Could we meet at Kai’s? I could take the truck on the back roads and likely avoid being seen that way,” I offered. If Levi wanted me there that badly, I knew it wasn’t good. I knew I needed to be there, to show up for my brother in whatever the hell was happening.
“Yeah, yeah,” his voice trembled as he spoke. “That’ll work. I’ll tell the others, just get there as soon as you can. We need to talk.”
With that, Levi hung up the phone, disconnecting the call and leaving me standing on top of my boat wondering what in the actual fuck was happening.
I slipped the phone back into my pocket, glancing back at the house. Should I tell her? Should I just leave and pray she wouldn’t notice? More importantly, was there actually a right answer in this situation?
Who the fuck knew?
With a heavy sigh, I left my tools where they were and climbed down the ladder to the driveway. I would be back to use them later. There was no use in putting them all away just to haul them all back out. Plus, judging by the clouds in the sky, there would not be a drop of rain for the next few days. I would bet money on it.
I walked to my truck, throwing open the door and jumping into the driver’s seat. With one last long look at the house, I backed up and sped off. I probably should have told Naomi, but she had said she had things to work on today. So why bother her with this? Especially when I didn’t even know whatthiswas? For all I knew, Levi was all bothered by some stupid thing that happened between him and his wife, or he and someone at Abditory. There were more than a few idiots there on any given night. Who knew?
So instead, I drove down the driveway and onto the main road, but only for a few yards. Then, I turned onto a dirt road, making my way for the treeline where the road became less of a road and more of a rocky adventure. I didn’t often take this route to Malachi’s house; none of us did. There was a far more easily accessed road that led to his large cabin, but it was also one that Father knew well. There was no reason to give any of the Elders a reason to watch us more carefully.
I moved my truck in and out of the trees, feeling each bump and roll of my tires over the rough rocks like a familiar dance, one that I had performed many times before. Finally, the trees gave way to an open space that held Malachi’s home. It was gorgeous. Not as flashy as Levi or Ollie’s homes, but far more than I had, to be sure. An open meadow lay to the left of me, squared off and held in beautiful splendor by a wooden fence Malachi had built. The road I had traveled on leveled out into a nicely laid gravel driveway that led up to Malachi’s house, or to about a dozen other locations on his property, depending on which turn you took.
I pulled up to the main house, a beautiful log cabin that looked so picturesque against the background of mountains and trees that it could have been a painting in a gallery. I wasn’t jealous of it, though. That wasn’t the life I wanted. Far from it. I wanted the open sea and the wind in my hair. Kai could keep his cabin in the woods, for all I cared.
As soon as I had thrown the gear into park, Ollie came bursting out of the front door.
“You made it,” he said with a smile that did not meet his eyes. That was strange. He clapped me on the back as I exited the truck, gesturing for me to get inside. “Best get going. We need to talk,” he stated with a solemnity that I was unaccustomed to, from Ollie at least. That meant trouble. Big trouble.
I made my way inside the house, bypassing the sparse furnishings and decor that Malachi had haphazardly thrown together and finding the rest of my brothers huddled around Levi in the drinking room. Yes, Malachi had an entire room dedicated to his favorite pastime.
“Finally!” Levi exclaimed, standing from his position leaning against the wooden table, a glass of something dark and likely highly alcoholic clenched tightly in his white-knuckled hands. “Thank you for dropping everything and getting here,” he said with a deep sincerity and gratitude shining in his eyes.
“Not a problem. It sounded serious. Of course I’d be here,” I shrugged his kindness off, the warm sensation it gave me making me feel off-kilter and strange. I didn’t really do the ooey-gooey stuff. Especially not as much as Levi and Ollie did. Hell, even Zeke did occasionally. No, I was much more like Malachi in these situations. Leave me alone, let me sip a drink and make snarky comments to my heart’s content. That was much more my style.
Malachi tossed me a look, one I knew well, and answered with a nod. In only a moment, there was a glass of something delicious, spicy, and the color of dark caramel in my hand, ready for enjoyment.
“So, what’s going on?” I asked, deciding to break the strange tension that had entered the room along with me.
“Something happened today,” Levi whispered —- well, whisper wasn’t quite the word. He exhaled the word with such a heavy sigh it was more like a stage whisper than anything else. It immediately caught my attention, my senses feeling on edge and poised to pounce at whatever fuckery he had uncovered now.
“What the hell is it now?” Malachi groaned, taking the words right out of my mouth and splatting them about the room in traditional Malachi fashion.
“There has been a lot of talk going around the last few days, but today was the worst of it,” Levi explained, stopping only to take a sip of his drink. He hissed in a breath at the powerful shot of whatever was in the glass, exhaling loudly as he took in the sting. “Father pulled me aside today, and it wasn’t good.”
“What did he say?” Zeke asked quietly. As much as I wanted to hear the answer, I also didn’t. I didn’t want to think about just how far down the rabbit hole my father might actually go.
He was an asshole on the best of days and a tyrannical maniac on his worst. I was under no illusions as to his madness or his methods. But there was still something about the fact that it was our father. It was the man who had created us, who helped to raise us, in this situation. Was he tangled up in some weave of sinister affairs woven by a psychopathic leader like the Reverend? Or was he in on it, just as much of the web designing artist as the Reverend? My gut clenched tight at the very thought that my own father could be that twisted; that sinister.
Regardless of how it made me feel, facts were facts. If it were true, then I hoped he went down with the ship he had built. I hoped he went down in a fiery, atomic, radioactive explosion; that the very Earth would open up and swallow him back down in the pits of hell whence he came. Because that was the only place people like that could come from.
“They want to bring me in on a project,” Levi said with a sigh that spoke of the bile I knew was likely rising in his throat. It was rising in mine and I wasn’t the brother this was happening to.
“What kind of project?” Ollie asked with a seriousness that was in complete juxtaposition to his normal demeanor.
“That’s just it. He won’t tell me. He hasn’t told me a word other than this randomly high praise,” Levi explained with a perplexed look furrowing his brow. “Father never praises us. I mean, sure, in the presence of the Elders he does, but this was so far above and beyond it was trite and fake as all hell.”
“What do you mean, he was praising you?” Zeke questioned.
“All he would say was that I was born for this job. That it was perfect for me and he couldn’t wait to show me. The whole thing reeked of Reverend Jacob and something bad.” Levi shivered as he spoke, the words disgusting him, just as they disgusted us.
