Origin Witch - End of the Godfather
The brass eagle head of Mickey Callahan’s walking stick struck a granite ridge and stuck there, quivering, as the old man bellowed at his own men.
Fifty-three years of grease, muscle, and extortion ended under a wet pine branch two miles south of the central creek ford. Mickey “The Mammoth” Callahan stood in a muddy gulley, his tailored dark-gray wool suit ruined, the trousers splattered with yellow swamp mud up to his knees. His combed-back gray hair was wild, sticking to his forehead in sweaty clumps, and his broad, wrinkled face was flushed dark red with rage.
“Move up, you idiots!” Mickey roared, his raspy, tobacco-destroyed voice echoing through the damp trees. He swung the heavy oak walking stick, fitted with its brass eagle head, toward a low granite ridge fifty yards ahead. “Jack’s boys are holding the ridge with two crossbows! Flank them from the left! Marnell, take four men and push through the brush!”
Ten feet behind him, Marnell stood motionless in the shadow of a giant cedar.
Marnell was forty-two, thin, with a narrow, rat-like face and greasy black hair pulled back into a stubby ponytail. He was wearing a filthy leather jacket over a stained t-shirt, holding a four-foot iron pipe in his right hand. He did not move toward the brush. He did not order his four men forward.
Instead, Marnell stared at the back of Mickey’s thick, creased neck with a quiet, unblinking hatred that had been festering for three weeks.
Back in Los Angeles, Mickey Callahan had been a legend, a real-deal mob boss who controlled three docks, two union locals, and forty gambling joints. People bowed when he walked into an Italian restaurant in Downtown. But out here in Kaelum, without his lawyers, his corrupt judges, or his fleet of Lincoln Town Cars, Mickey was just an old man in a muddy suit who could not run fifty yards without wheezing like a broken bellows.
He was going to get them all killed.
Yesterday, Mickey had spent fifty basic materials broadcasting that ridiculous ultimatum on the regional channel, demanding twenty-five percent from every gatherer in Sector 666. He thought he was still running a protection racket in 1990.
And the result?
Corinne Mercer had instantly blacklisted their entire organization from her store. Not a single red health vial. Not a single blue mana vial. While Garrett Thorne’s ridge group and Elodie were walking around with pockets full of liquid magic that closed open wounds in ten seconds, Mickey’s boys were sitting in muddy dirt burrows dying of infected wolf bites and drinking creek water that burned their stomachs out.
Marnell had watched three of his closest lieutenants die of fever two nights ago because they could not buy a single five-milliliter vial of health fluid.
“Marnell!” Mickey barked, spinning around, his brass eagle stick shaking as he pointed it at Marnell’s chest. “Are you deaf, you little bastard?! I told you to take the left flank! Move!”
Marnell did not move. He wiped a drop of cold rain off his nose with the back of his hand, his rat-like eyes flat and dead.
“Jack’s got three men on that ridge, Mickey,” Marnell said softly, his voice barely carrying over the wind. “They have iron-tipped bolts. If we push up that mud slope, two of my boys are going down.”
“I don’t give a damn about two boys!” Mickey snarled, taking a heavy step toward him, his face twisting into an ugly, purple mask. “We take that ridge, we take Jack’s iron stash! I run this sector, Marnell! Me! Not some crippled girl in a tree, and not some West Coast pimp named Jack! Now take the flank before I-“
A tiny, razor-sharp click echoed from a high pine branch forty yards to the east.
It was not louder than a snapping twig, but to a trained ear, it was the sound of a heavy steel bolt being seated into a high-tension cross-slot.
High up in the pine canopy, concealed behind a thick curtain of gray camo netting, Elodie “The Cold-Eye” lay flat on a broad wooden branch. Her left hand was still wrapped in clean white linen bandages, courtesy of the five health potions Jasper Finch had traded her, but her right hand was rock-steady, resting against the oak stock of a heavy, mechanical cross-bow Corinne had supplied.
Beside her the tree fork sat Jasper Finch.
Jasper was wearing a dark, waterproof oilskin coat over his gray suit, his gold-rimmed wire spectacles dry beneath the wide brim of his hat. He held a pair of brass field binoculars in his left hand, his thumb adjusting the center focus wheel until Mickey Callahan’s flushed, angry face filled the circular glass lenses.
“Target confirmed,” Jasper whispered into the damp air, his voice completely calm. “Mickey Callahan. The contract terms are clear: Marnell takes over the southern strongholds, pays off the outstanding iron debt, and re-opens the creek ford to independent traders.”
Elodie did not answer him. Her right eye was pressed against the iron cross-sights of the heavy bow.
She was not using a bullet. Corinne’s sabotaged 9mm round had destroyed her pistol, but this oak crossbow was a different beast. Its iron-tipped bolt was six inches of solid, forged steel, backed by a hundred-and-fifty-pound draw-weight that could punch clean through an oak door at fifty yards.
She aligned the front sight post directly with the base of Mickey’s skull, right where his thick gray hair met his collar.
“Forty yards,” she murmured under her breath. “Wind four knots west.”
She took a slow breath, held it in her lungs for two seconds, and squeezed the iron trigger.
A crossbow bolt snapped past, and the report of a pistol cracked behind it.
The heavy bowstring released with a sharp, concussive snap that shook the pine needles around her hideout.
Down in the muddy gulley forty yards below, Mickey Callahan was still shouting at Marnell, his brass eagle stick raised in the air.
Down in the muddy gulley Mickey Callahan was still shouting at Marnell, his brass eagle stick raised for a punch that landed with the wet sound of a sledgehammer striking a ripe watermelon.
The six-inch iron bolt struck Mickey directly in the back of the neck, shattering his top vertebrae, blowing out through his throat in a cloud of pink mist and shattered bone fragments.
Mickey did not scream. He did not even drop his stick. His eyes rolled up into his head, his heavy body jerking forward like a puppet with its strings cut, smashing face-first into the yellow swamp mud.
The brass eagle stick clattered against a rock, rolling into a puddle of dark blood.
Silence fell over the gulley.
The four mobsters standing behind Marnell froze, their iron pikes trembling in their hands, their mouths wide open as they stared at the motionless shape of their boss face-down in the dirt.
“HOLY SHIT!” one of the boys shrieked, dropping his spear into the mud. “SNIPER! IT’S A SNIPER!”
“THE GREEN WRAITH!” another screamed, backing up three steps in terror. “THE TREE WITCH IS KILLING US!”
Marnell did not scream. He did not run.
He stood over Mickey’s corpse for three slow seconds, his rat-like eyes watching the dark blood pool in the yellow mud. Then, with a calm, deliberate movement, he stepped forward, reached down, and pried a heavy gold signet ring off Mickey’s stiffening left index finger.
He slid the ring onto his own thumb, raised his iron pipe into the air, and turned to the four terrified mobsters.
“Shut your mouths!” Marnell barked, his voice sharp and commanding. “There’s no ghost! Mickey’s dead because he was an old fool who didn’t know when to stop talking!”
He kicked Mickey’s body onto its side with his boot, looking at the ragged hole in the throat.
“As of right now, the Callahan Syndicate is done,” Marnell announced, staring his men down one by one. “We’re the Canopy Defense Unit now. We don’t demand twenty-five percent from gatherers. We don’t mess with Corinne’s potion trades. And we don’t cross the central creek unless Jasper Finch gives us a trade clearance.”
He looked up at the high pine canopy to the east, raising his iron pipe in a silent, brief gesture of acknowledgment toward the dark trees.
“Pick up the old man,” Marnell ordered, turning his back on the ridge where Machinegun Jack’s men were still yelling in confusion. “Bury him near the southern rocks. Then fetch twenty iron ingots from the storehouse. I have a debt to settle with the broker.”
Up in the high pine tree, Jasper Finch lowered his brass binoculars, a thin, satisfied smile playing across his lips.
“Clean,” Jasper murmured, pulling a silver pocket watch from his vest and checking the time. “Twelve minutes ahead of schedule. Marnell is a pragmatist. He’ll keep the southern roads open.”
Elodie uncocked her heavy crossbow, sliding a fresh iron bolt into the flight groove with a dry clack. She did not look down at the dead mob boss. She wiped a speck of rainwater off her cross-sights with her thumb and pulled her ghillie netting tight around her shoulders.
“Tell your potion girl she owes me three vials of health fluid for the bolt,” Elodie said, her voice flat and cold. “Iron doesn’t grow on trees.”
A private message from Jasper Finch arrived for Corinne, relaying the result.
[Jasper Finch]: The southern market variable has been permanently removed. Mickey Callahan is dead. Marnell has assumed command of the southern strongholds and agreed to all previous trade terms. The creek ford is completely open.
In her high tower on the third floor of the Spire, Corinne read the message on her Magic Desk screen.
She did not reply immediately. She hovered on her straw mattress, listening to the rain drumming against her glass balcony doors, while Steelwool preened its gray feathers on her lap.
She reached out, picked up her ballpoint pen, and drew a clean, dark line through the name Mickey Callahan on her yellow pad.
Then she opened her workshop ledger, checked her remaining stock of Anseic water, and prepared her cauldrons for the evening brew.
— Origin Witch —