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  “There are things you have yet to learn daughter,” Apollo said. “Paradigms of our society that, to the common eye, to minds that know no other sphere of that, appear as freedom. In reality, they are just constructs of oppression. That is what we are doing in the city of New York Christine and soon the world. Showing people that the people in power are fallible and, once the smoke clears and they are all dead, the people can lead.”

  Christine laughed but said nothing. She was studying his movement, noting every weakness she could see. There were many, especially around the knees.

  “One more arrow,” Christine muttered to herself. The wound was bleeding but not deep. She would survive. She waited for Apollo to push the bank.

  “Where are you hiding down there by the river?” Apollo shouted as he advanced. “Show yourself. You never used to be this…”

  Apollo caught Christine’s last arrow in his left knee. He screamed toward the heavens and dropped to the ground, kicking with his good leg to get away. Christine wanted nothing more than to pounce and take his throat, but she waited. She needed to be patient. She listened to the snap of the arrow shaft and his continued screams as he pulled it out of the bone.

  Then, Apollo started to laugh. “You think pain is going to stop me from finishing what I’ve started. My entire life has been pain. I was born into it!”

  Christine rose and climbed over the bank of the river, surprised to see Apollo already standing though obviously limping and leaning onto one side.

  “What did I teach you about a wounded coyote?” Apollo asked Christine, but she didn’t hear him.

  At last, Christine was seeing her father for who he really was - someone afraid of love. Through all the trials he had put her through, all the tests and exercises, Apollo was, in his way, trying to push her away. Not out of disgust or anger, but out of fear. Apollo was afraid of Christine’s unrequited love. Why, Christine would never find out. She saw it though, and it answered everything.

  With knife in hand, Christine side-stepped and stalked Apollo like a wounded deer. He struggled to rotate away from her. He could see the drive in her eyes, that void of emotion or empathy; that look of the killer instinct.

  “You never take your eyes off of them,” Apollo continued.

  Apollo suddenly dropped to his left and pulled a knife from his boot strap, nearly striking Christine in the shoulder, but she already had him mapped. Christine pivoted barely an inch in the other direction and caught the blades handle as it flew by her ear. Apollo, on his back, knee shattered, felt the blade of his own knife as it entered his heart. Warm, thick blood flowed from his chest as Christine’s shadow overtook him.

  “The power should and will always be with the people,” Christine told Apollo. “Even if the trust is broken, it is still there.”

  Apollo smiled, blood eking from his choking throat. “You have such faith in humankind. Why? You will live a life of disappointment.”

  “I have lived a life of honor,” Christine said, putting her blade to Apollo’s neck. “I wish you could have seen it. I wish you could have been a part of it. I wish…” Tears filled their eyes. “I wish things had been different.”

  “How?” Apollo asked.

  “With love.”

  Christine’s knife slid across Apollo’s neck as she took his hand in hers. In dawns sunlight, Christine said goodbye to the man that made her, good and evil. After, she listened to the rushing of the river, seeing herself and thus her father in the battling rapids.

  As Christine drove back to New York City, she realized that she was back in phone service. Immediately, she heard her cell ring. It was Thompson.

  “You’re alive.”

  “I am,” Christine said. “A little dinged up but alive.”

  “Where are you? Are you coming home?”

  Christine thought about the word. What did it mean? Was it the things inside? The comfort and security it provided? Or was it the people? She realized that she had never had one. Home was the next case, the next criminal, the next crime. Those things she saw wasn’t a home, they were a goal to keep her from it. For the first time in her life, Christine was allowing herself to go there.

  “Yes,” Christine told Thompson. “I’m coming to you, I’m coming home.”

  END

  Also by G.O. Grason

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