Page 275 of Seer Prophet

He watched the city approach out of the periphery of his vision, but didn’t stare, or do anything but exhale in boredom as he kept his eyes aimed at his shoes.

By then, he was deliberately not thinking about what Dalejem said to him on that platform. Whatever else the seer had said, he was right about that.

Now was definitelynotthe fucking time.

Chapter50

Presale

Efrail almost didn’t take the call.

He was busy, he told himself. Overworked.

It was auction day, the largest of these for the month, being the third Saturday. Moreover, it was December, and many large bidders were expected to come out in December, looking to expand their households and work forces for the coming year.

Therefore, when the distinctive, atonal melody disrupted the long line of interested buyers who had already flooded Efrail’s personal communications queue, the seer’s instinct was to simply blow it off. Pretend he missed that particular call.

He knew the specific set of off-kilter tones all too well, however.

More importantly, he knew the male on the other end.

As he hesitated, wondering what excuse he could give, reality returned to his mind. One did not fuck with a man like Dalcius Dontan.

In their last quasi-social meeting, a drunken, stoned Dontan told Efrail he’d had a suit made of the skin of his last lover.

He’d laughed like a hyena as he told the story, explaining how she displeased him by fucking his chauffeur, then compounded the insult by giving a sub-standard blowjob in apology. Efrail was beyond words as the story unfolded amidst the seer’s half-coherent cackles, joined by the nervous laughter of two naked humans coiled around him on the leather sofa.

All of them had been downing champagne from chilled, crystal glasses?champagne that used to cost thousands of American dollars per bottle.

Enough cocaine had been piled on the glass table to kill a small water buffalo.

One did not fuck with such a man, indeed.

In particular, one did not fuck with one crazy enough to share such a story openly, laughing about it over drinks in a public establishment while watching seer and human females strip for him. Such a man knew he was untouchable?above the law.

That same establishment, in addition to being owned by Dontan, was frequented by princes, businessmen, ex-heads of state, leaders of organized crime syndicates, investment bankers. Many of them owned assets exceeding the previous gross national product of developed nations.

Many counted Dontan as a close, personal friend.

While it was certainly true Efrail himself had grown more cynical over the years, he never lost sight of the difference between a profit-driven business practice, stone-hearted or not, and full-blown lunacy.

Dalcius Dontan was a psychopath.

Further, he was a psychopath under the protection of their king.

That cold splash of realism jarred Efrail’s mind back to the present. Once it did, he could not answer that connecting point on his queue quickly enough. Mustering a magnanimous smile, he accepted the transmission with a snap of his fingers the next time that off-kilter set of tones filled his ears.

“Sir, I am overcome?” he began, the smile plastered on his face so it would reach his voice.

The other cut him off, as was his wont.

“What have you for me today, my fat, greedy little friend?” The seer smiled through the exquisitely drawn lines of his virtual interface, inclining his avatar’s head.

Even the eyes of his avatar didn’t look sane, Efrail noted.

“…I have been waiting for you to breathe your oily little words into my ears, lo the morn, brother Efrail. Yet silence has been my only companion. You did not call. You did not write. I began to feel quite lonely.”

“Sir, I… I…”

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