SWNOVELS Chapter 105
Blood red love
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Charlie looked at the black, sleek helicopter that was idling on the roof of their apartment building. She had just assumed they would be using the plane to go to Vegas. But Vidar had explained it would be more time efficient to take the helicopter. That way they got picked up from their home and would arrive at Henry’s hotel. No need to drive to and from the airport. It was one more thing on her bucket list to check, and she realised she could get a longer
bucket list.
“It will be fine,” Vidar told her and squeezed her hand. He had to raise his voice slightly because of the noise of the wind. She nodded and followed his lead as they walked tot he helicopter. The pilot stowed away their bags while they got in and Vidar helped her strap into her seat. The inside was nothing like what she had expected. Infront were two seats that looked like they came from a luxury car. Behind them was three similar seats. Vidar took the inner seat and helped her into the middle one as Caine took the last one. When Vidar was happy she was buckled in, he reached behind her and put a headset on her head. Both he and Caine had matching ones, as well as the pilot. The pilot looked back at them.
‘Ready to go, Mr Grim?” he asked.
“Yes, let’s get out of here,” Vidar said. The pilot turned to face forward and did a thumbs up. Charlie had a perfect view out of the panoramic front window as they took off from the roof.
She saw the city, now in darkness, spread out beneath them as they climbed. Her stomach did a flutter and then dropped like when she rode the roller coaster. She squeezed Vidar’s hand. He squeezed back and lifted her hand and placed a kiss on the back of it. Charlie turned to look at him and her stomach settled down. “You doing okay?” he asked. She smiled and nodded. “We’ll be there in about two hours,” he reminded her.
“It’s fine,” she told him. After a while, both Vidar and Caine took out their tablets and started working on them. Charlie had her own that she could use, but she preferred to look out through the windows at the dark world outside. Sometimes there were lakes of light when they passed over a town or city, but sometimes the world was black. Things were moving fast. She didn’t know if she had a chance to get a grip on things, or if she needed it. Charlie knew they didn’t have time to stop and breathe, or let things settle down. She also knew if she told Vidar she was overwhelmed, he would find the time for her to catch up. He would create a bubble of peace for the two of them until she had everything sorted. But she didn’t want him. to do it. Because outside of their bubble, the world would continue moving at the speed of
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light and their friends and family needed them. She could use moments of rest like this flight to sort through her thoughts. She was thrilled her bother and Tyson had accepted her offer and they didn’t seem to look at her differently after what she had told them. As they were leaving, the two of them had fussed over her like always, like if she was as frail as when she was human. It felt nice. She worried about what the next couple of days would bring. If there would be war between humans and the magic world, how would it affect them? Could they. and families like them, show that coexisting was as natural as breathing? She wasn’t sure she believed things would be as easy. Then it was the situation with Caine. Charlie was happy they had talked about things. But she still didn’t know what she would do with the feeling of disappointment after everything went back to how it used to be. She knew Vidar was right. They couldn’t push Caine into something which made him feel uncomfortable. But she needed to find a way to deal with the feelings she had towards him which didn’t belong in the friendship category. It was clear to her what she felt for Caine was not the same as she felt for Vidar. But it didn’t mean she didn’t have feelings for him. What she felt for Caine was more along the line of what she usually felt for her boyfriends. It wasen’t the overwhelming understanding that he was the love of her life, like her feeling towards Vidar. It was a softer feeling. Charlie guessed it would go away if she ignored it, like her feelings for her exes had done. It would just be hard to be around him and act like those feelings didn’t exist. But she would take it rather than having him disappear from her life. He was a good friend and family. Charlie jumped as Vidar touched her cheek. She heard his soft chuckle through the headphones.
“Deep in thoughts?” he asked when her eyes focused on him.
“I guess so,” she told him with a smile. He leaned in and kissed her, and she took the moment to enjoy the feeling.
“Look outside the window,” he told her. She followed where he pointed. They were flying over the dark desert, but in the distance there was this ball of light. “Vegas,” he said. It was like nothing she had ever seen. The contrast between the desert and the city was stark. As they flew over it, she could see the suburbs and then the casinos. The Galaxy‘ was a monstrosity of a hotel and even from the outside, it was clear it was over the top. Charlie smiled. There was no doubt in her mind Henry had been a big part in its design. His energy was clearly stated all over the dome like building. The outside was made entirely of glass and lit swirling lights in soft lilac, pink and blue hues with dots of bright white lights. On top of the dome there was a helicopter pad, and they landed there. The rest of the clan, except for Jun, stood waiting at the edge of the pad as they got out and took their bags from the pilot.
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“Welcome to Vegas and ‘The galaxy“, Henry said with a beaming smile.
“Thank you,” Charlie said as she gave all of them a hug.
“Are things moving smoothly?” Vidar asked as they were walking inside the building and into an elevator.
“It is. Most of our guests have accepted. The first ones are arriving tomorrow. Thank you for sending some of you people to replace the human staffing. At the moment everyone in the building is someone we trust,” Henry said. “We have the top two floors to ourselves and the rest is for the guests. Let me know if you need something and I will get it for you.”
“Hopefully we won’t be here that long,” Vidar said. The rest nodded.
“This will be your suite. It has three bedrooms, a living room, two bathrooms and a dining room,” Henry told them and opened a door to a suite. He handed keycards to all three of them. “Jun and Liwei will have the suite opposite of you,” Henry continued.
“It’s confirmed then?” Vidar asked.
“It is,” Nasir said.
“What?” Charlie wanted to know as she put her bag down and just kept her satchel.
“That Liwei will accompany Jun here. First time in a long while the two of them are on the same continent,” Adisa told her. Charlie smiled.
“I’m happy. I’m looking forward to meet her.”
“They’ll be arriving tomorrow afternoon. How about we go down to the command centre and we can get each other up to date? Then we’ll take a tour and get some rest. We should all be in place to greet the visitors that arrive tomorrow,” Henry suggested. They all agreed and went down a floor. Henry explained that Adisa stayed at same floor as them, but Henry and Nasir had suits on the floor below and the two other suits on that floor had been turned into one big room. As they walked into it, it was a larger version of the war room in Vidar’s castle. Men and women hurried back and forth, and some sat at the desks surrounding the outside. wall of the room. Charlie recognised some of them as Vidar’s people. In the middle of the
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room, there was the now familiar round table. In the middle of it a pillar of glass stood. It took Charlie a moment to recognise it as a monitor that would display the image to all members sitting around the table. She had read about the technology, but hadn’t seen it in real life. She walked over to it and studied it.
“You like it?” Adisa asked as he walked up to it.
“I can’t wait to see it in action,” she told him. He chuckled.
“I’m quite curious myself to see how far you have got with your idea,” he told her. They had let the rest of the clan know what she had been working on.
“It’s almost done. Want a demonstration?” she asked. Charlie was proud of the work she and Lucas had done. It may not be legal, but it was beautiful none the less.
“Hey, Charlie want’s to give a demonstration of her software,” Adisa called to the others. They all flocked to the table and soon Charlie’s laptop had been connected to the screen in the middle and she pulled up her tracer program.
“The graphic interface isn’t quite ready, so you have to bear with me on getting the data in written format,” she told them. “We have fed the data we have regarding the persons of interest and their known alias. This is what we have found so far,” Charlie told them and pulled up a long list of locations and hits on websites.
“That is impressing, but how do we use the information?” Nasir asked.
“This is just the first step. This is the raw data we have to work with. We take that and put it through the pattern recognition part of the software and we get this,” she told them and pulled out the result. It was a short list of cities around the world.
“What does it mean?” Cane asked.
“This is where we find most hits on one or more of the individual. The city at the top has most hits, then they are displayed in descending order. Any city with less than fifty hits per week is not included on, the list.”
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“Yes,” Charlie told him and clicked on the name. They came to a detailed list of what pings had been registered for the city. “All three members, or one of their alias, have had hits in the city within the last week. All of them have more than fifty pings. Which is a strong indication they all have been, or still are, in the city. I can pull up in what parts of the city the pings come from,” she told them.
“This is amazing,” Nasir said, looking at the data on the screen.
“In the old days, we would have to hire a coven of witches to practise tracking spells and those were never this accurate,” Adisa added.
“Truly amazing work, love,” Vidar said and kissed her on her temple. Charlie beamed at them all. She felt happy that she finally could contribute to what they did. She usually felt like she was playing catchup to them. It was nice to be the one ahead of the pack for once.
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