“Oh jeez I’m full. That was so good.”
Jack leaned back in his chair putting both of his hands his stomach. A burger, fries and a milkshake and even then he stole a bit from Sarah who’s order mirrored his own except she like chocolate shakes and he liked Oreo. She stacked a cleaned plate on top of his and pat his stomach.
“Yeah it was,” she glanced over at Marco who was still picking through his salad but had gotten the majority of it. Everyone else was wrapping up, Kathryn eating the last of Seth’s fries, Seth just sipping from his water and Cal flipping over the check. “It’s been a long time since we just hung out.”
“Way too long,” Kathryn said softly sipping on a hot cup of coffee. Went well with her omelet. “Wish we could be doing this under a better set of circumstances.”
“You can say that again,” Jack rubbed the back of his neck and felt a twinge in his back, grunting lightly. “Please tell me no one has had a run in with them since, right?”
“All calm and no problems,” Seth replied and glanced at Kathryn. “Made sure of it for her.”
“Yes. My very over protective body guard,” she squeezed his leg and smiled. “And I appreciate him.”
“So far so good,” Cal replied, “I’d say I feel left out but I’ll take that.”
“Good,” Marco nodded. “I’ve been thinking. About how this is so different from what we’re used to. We’ve never been attacked before. In the past the Taq-Law just showed up and we went to them. Did our best to stop them.”
They collectively nodded at that, they were the first on the scene to try and stop whatever was going on. Thanks to their stones being an early warning system, they were always there before the Taq-Law could seriously rampage.
“But these guys. They just show up and attack us and we have to be ready to fight back or we’ll be killed. We’ve never been on the receiving end of it like that before,” Marco folded his arms. “And I’ll be honest. It’s scary. Scary as hell really.”
“Yeah it is,” Kathryn mumbled a hard frown on her face.
“Ditto,” Cal added.
“I know we talked about it a bit last night of luring one of them out. But maybe we should. Or at least think about it,” Marco said and looked at them. “The last few times they’ve showed up they’ve been tracking us down thanks to one of us using our stones. So, what if we use them to lure one of them out and then we take them down.”
“One on six doesn’t sound fair,” Jack commented.
Cal shook his head, “Fair or not it would be a solution. If to just even the odds even a little bit.”
“You really think they’re that much stronger than us?” Seth almost scoffed. A police car whipped past on the street and Seth watched it, using that a place to direct his frustrations for a moment.
“No offense Violet but you haven’t fought one of them yet,” Kathryn sighed. “It’s not a good time.”
Cal looked at her and frowned but looked back at the other couple present, “But strong enough to warrant a six on one? It’s not like you’re planning on killing them right.”
Silence fell over the group, as their eyes all fell on Marco. Marco stared at Cal and it was hard to read him, almost impossible actually. Sarah turned to look at him and her face didn’t know what to be right now. “You’ve actually been thinking about this haven’t you? Of killing them?”
“Our options of dealing with them aren’t exactly high,” Seth said. “We don’t know if they have stones, or take pills or if their powers are just in them. We don’t know if we can even reason with them or if they’re going to come after us until we make sure they can’t anymore. And between them and any of you, I’m picking you.”
“I agree,” Jack said softly and sighing. “It doesn’t sit well with me either but if it comes to that I know where I stand.”
“So, we should just go out and try to murder them?” Kathryn said staring at Seth mainly. “That doesn’t make us any better than them.”
“We don’t have a lot of choices,” Marco said.
“We don’t know that,” she replied. “Hell we don’t know what Ley’s twin has told them.”
Sarah raised her eyebrow, “You think they’re brain washed?”
“I don’t know. They could be,” she replied. “The one I fought wasn’t like Hawks or Vixen. I can’t explain it.”
A trio police cars went past, the siren loud enough to distract Cal. He looked down at his phone next and raised his hand slowly. “Team I think we have a bigger problem.”
“What now?” Kathryn asked but she also picked up her phone and saw the alert that had flashed a little while ago.
“We’re supposed to avoid main street?” Sarah repeated reading the very simple but bright red words. Jumping onto twitter she looked at the trending and saw a bunch of tags, the most prominent one being #AlienAttack.
“Looks like we’re not going to have time to go back and forth on this any longer,” Seth said watching a short video. He watched as a group were running away as blades rained down from the sky and explosions that followed. He could barely hear barking in the background of the clip before it finally ended after forty seconds.
Cal glanced away from a video and shook her head, “What are they doing?”
“They’re trying to draw us out,” Kathryn said seeing a video of the trio together.
Seth folded his arms and looked at everyone else though he was pretty sure of the answer, “Are we going?”
“Of course, we’re going,” Sarah said.
Cal nodded in affirmation, “We have to at the very least stop them.”
“But are we going to kill them?” Seth asked.
Jack and Marco looked at one another and Jack just shrugged his shoulders, “It’s your call Marco.”
Marco rubbed his eyes slowly and nodded, “If it comes to that yes. But first we need to get as many people out of there as possible. They don’t need a flash back of last year. Let’s go to work team.”
The Harlequin Library 