Chapter Twenty-three
~Nikolai~
“A bomb?” Nikolai uttered as Jessie finished setting the bumper on a table they set up inside the shop. The sun was rising behind their backs, and they didn’t have much time.
“It’s not a bomb-bomb. It doesn’t have explosives and or gun powder,” Rex paced behind the bumper. “But I saw these in those night classes I was taking—you know the ones, Jessie. Where I was learning the new electrical innovations for engineering class?”
“Yeah-yeah, focus, Rex. What do you mean bomb?” Jessie grunted as he pulled the metal free of its bolted together mate to show off a hollowed-out bumper…full of things. Nik furrowed his brows as he stepped up beside the minotaur with a dumb look on his face.
“So, it’s an electromagnetic pulse bomb.
It uses a little bit of mechanical engineering and mixes it with runes that are powered by the vehicle.
Look here,” Rex stammered a bit as he tugged at the wires poking out of the bumper, clearly meant to be plugged into the back of the car.
Wires that don’t usually go there, nor like that.
Especially not for the type of car Bobby drove.
The only thing in the bumper should be empty space.
But Nikolai was looking at a maze of wires with large runestones clamped around them like little nodes.
Rex pointed with one hand while the other flapped about with anxiety.
“You essentially plug in the main device, where the raw magic is stored plus where the commands are set. Then you have all this that leeches power from different things in the car to fuel the device. One minute, you’re driving, the next, you hit a button on the steering wheel, and you’ve… ”
“You’ve what?” Jessie blurted out. Rex’s face fell and if a minotaur could pale, Rex lost all color. His eyes widened and his ears dropped all the way down to his skinny neck.
“Kid?” Nikolai reached out a hand.
Rex whimpered, “You could take down a shield. Like the kind that protects King’s Fall or the Maylor Kingdom…or any shield.”
“Nah,” Jessie wheezed, laughing slightly nervously as he shook his head rapidly. “Nah, that can’t happen. The Lich put up that shield. Everybody knows if you wanna tear it down, you gotta attack the dead guy.”
“It wouldn’t take it down for long, but it would basically disrupt it.
A total system failure. If not the shield, you could drive one of these into the council building and fuck up all their charms. You could completely dismantle the city!
” Rex threw his hands up to his head. Then the younger Bonesaw whined, “And you beat up the guy who built it!”
“Bobby didn’t build this!” Jessie snarled, grabbing his brother and dragging him closer to the table.
“We did beat him up though,” Nikolai reminded the pair who stared at him. Rex with wide, panicked eyes, and Jessie with a ‘you’ve got to be shitting me’ glare. Nikolai shrugged, “What? We didn’t fuckin’ stab him, but we did rough him up.”
Jessie groaned, rolling his eyes. “That fun fact aside, Rex, Bobby didn’t build this. Guy couldn’t even change his windshield wiper fluid, let alone do math in his head. He’s not got the brains you do. He couldn’t have made this. Fund the device, sure! But not build.”
“So, who made it?” Nikolai folded his arms over his chest, walking around the bumper with curiosity.
“I don’t know,” Jessie straightened up onto his hooves.
“But whoever made it or whoever wants it, went to go get it from Bobby. My money is on the little shit let them ransack the house, snuck into the garage, grabbed the device and booked it. Bleeding out or not, he got the fuck outta dodge. Now, whoever tossed Bobby’s and stabbed him thinks we have it.
And likely paid Pierre to come and get it. ”
“Pierre, who left empty handed and in cuffs,” Nikolai added with a huff of irritation.
I really ought to spank that girl for that!
He knew that Katarina had a different relationship with the Enforcers than Nik or Jessie did.
She came from side of the street where the Enforcers were these gleaming protectors.
They were the ‘good guys’. But, soon that illusion of them would fall apart and she’d realize the Enforcers were just the guard dogs for the council.
They didn’t care about the regular people of King’s Fall, at least, not collectively.
They weren’t designed to protect people; that guild was designed to ‘keep the peace’…which is vastly different. It put boots on the necks of people who didn’t deserve it and chased out his parents.
“Yeah, about that,” Jessie groaned, “Rex, you and Nik drag this down to The Backroom. I can’t have the Enforcers sniffing around and finding that.
They’ll think it’s mine and this mystery person will get what they want anyway.
Until we know who built it and why the fuck Big Bobby of all people had it in his bumper, no one can be trusted. ”
Nikolai spoke before the thought even fully formed in his skull. “Why not Bobby?”
“Huh?” Jessie and Rex glanced at him with snorts of confusion.
“Well, think about it. He’s got an entire lot of cars that they can plug these things into.
Let’s say we make these, right?” He motioned at the bumper before moving to one of the bays to continue his example.
“You have the devices made, then you give them to Bobby to be planted in specific vehicles. You have buyers lined up for this kind of device, and they show up to the lot and buy the car. A perfectly legal process. You just set the car to the price of the device. They pay, and the money is clean, because it’s buying a car. ”
Jessie and Rex glanced at each other, then returned their attention to Nikolai.
“And, you know, the Enforcers don’t know what’s in the bumper. Who the fuck looks in the bumper?!” Nikolai threw his arms out to the side.
“Fair point.” Jessie nodded at the bumper once more before grabbing up his keys from his pocket.
“Get this locked down. I’m going to go see the girls and pretend like everything’s normal.
You two open up the shop. We’ll make an appointment with the Devil after work. How’s that engine he wanted coming?”
Nikolai made a non-committal noise, “If the Enforcers didn’t ruin the party yesterday, I’d be a lot further.”
“Once the shops open, I want that to be your biggest focus. Rex, unless there’s a tow or we get fucked before I get back, Nik’s only job is that engine. You hear me?”
“Aye-aye!” Rex saluted his brother, who rushed out the back door toward the vehicle graveyard.
Nikolai helped the younger brother pick up the bumper, the pair carting it from the garage down through Bay 1.
After a few yelled ‘pivot! No! my left!’ and Nikolai having to put in the pin backward, they got the thing into the backroom.
Rex let out a grunt as the pair hoisted it up onto a table.
Nikolai panted for air, clapping Rex on the shoulder.
“You did good, kid,” Nik swiped his moist forehead with the back of his arm. “When we get the doors open and the shop going, I’ll go run across the street and grab us energy drinks.”
“Can I get the Blue Tornado flavor?” Rex stared at him with puppy dog eyes.
Nikolai snorted, shaking his head. “Yeah, for your good work I’ll get you the shitty, teeth rot bubbles.”
“Yes!” Rex pumped his arms in the air as the pair climbed out of the backroom.
Nikolai locked up before letting out a winded breath.
He leaned back against the firm, icy door and stared up through all the greasy sliding plates that covered Bay 1.
Rex twisted, beaming at the other mechanic. “You good there, fluffy?”
“That name’s not sticking!” Nikolai snarled.
“What! Bella calls you that!” Rex huffed.
“She’s five, she’s allowed to call me fucking twinkle toes all she wants.
” Nikolai raked his fingers through his sweaty hair and brushed the salty droplets away from his eyes.
Waggling a damp finger at Rex, he warned the kid with a glance to watch himself.
However, as they started climbing, Rex spoke up again and nearly knocked the wind out of the bugbear’s lungs.
“I think I want to be a magical engineer,” Rex confessed as they stepped out into the frosty, hollow shop.
Nikolai spun to face him with his eyebrows in his hair.
Rex shrugged shyly. “I don’t know, man, I think I’m good at it.
It’s like it just makes sense to me and I feel like if I had the chance to learn more, maybe I could make stuff. ”
“Yeah, okay.” Nik eyed him suspiciously.
“I think I want to go to Ark-U for Magical Engineering. I keep looking at these pamphlets about going in for the master’s program.
Not just the night classes I take for fun or the one-off courses offered at the community center.
I think I want to do this, for real, Nik.
” Rex let all the words out like they physically weighed down on his shoulders.
Nikolai’s lips curled around his tusks a smidgen before he nodded again.
With a hum of acknowledgement, he turned on his heel. “Then do it for real, kid.”
“You really think Jessie will let me?”
Nikolai stopped at the fence, glancing over his shoulder at Rex with an incredulous look.
Jessie let you? If you told him you wanted to learn to fly tomorrow, he’d buy you fucking wings.
But, then again, Nikolai knew the real complication between the boys.
Jessie was older than Rex, and now king of the castle.
Elliot was oldest but so far removed it was like he was unreachable, but Jessie was a second dad now…
and Rex was the reason all this happened.
If Rex never got sick as a kid, the shop might not exist. If it weren’t for what Titan Bonesaw was willing to sacrifice to keep his family afloat, Nik might just be a regular mechanic.
But then again, who knows if Titan wouldn’t have done it on his own. If there wouldn’t be some other reason? If there wasn’t a breaking point that if it wasn’t Rex, maybe next it would have been Jessie or Elliot. Maybe this was always bound to happen.
Who knows.
Nikolai raised a brow. “Gotta ask him.”
“Yeah…yeah I am.”
Nikolai jabbed a thumb at the office and Rex scurried off to open up. Let’s get this figured out, kid…find out who’s messing with the family, then I’ll drop hints to your brother on what you want. Help you along…cause that’s my job.