Death of an Assassin (Saint Roch City Book 1) (17 page)

“We had kittens once,” Thomas says, fumbling in the crumbling seams of the sidewalk to pick up a small piece of the concrete. He cocks back his wrist and tosses it across the road like he’s trying to skip it over water. “Well, we
had
them. We weren’t ‘sposed to.”

I lean back against the building, hearing the echoing nothingness beyond the broken window over my shoulder.

“I still remember her voice,” he says, turning back to me with the dull grin of a man reminiscing, his memories far more than the alcohol making him happy now. “Angie. She came into my room. Our room,” he corrects himself. “We had separate rooms, but we always snuck into each other’s at night. Mom hated it.”

I slump down to the ground, sick of standing. My sweatpants dampen from the fine layer of rain collected where the building met the sidewalk. “I never had any siblings.”

Thomas turns back to the street after a vague nod. “She came in and said in this whispered squeal, ‘Tommy, Tommy, you gotta come see!’“ His imitation of her voice has his own going soft. He reaches out for another rock and throws it across the street again, not even crossing the double yellow of the center.

“It was Christmas break,” he continues. “I don’t know why, but she went out to the pool house that morning before I woke up. Found the litter of kittens in there. Three of them. I guess the mother cat went in there to get out of the cold or something. We never found her.”

He turns around, dragging his feet like they’re beyond his control. I watch him, my eyes taking a few extra seconds to focus in the dull streetlight flickering overhead.

He shakes his head. “You have any idea how to take care of newborn kittens?”

I shrug. I know how to take care of older cats, thanks to my mother.

He laughs. “Neither did we. But Angie insisted. She had this way about her, y’know? She could convince me to do the dumbest things.” He rolls up his pant leg to show a scar running up his ankle. “Rollerblading in our pool earlier that year when they drained it. Ya’d think that woulda taught me to rethink following her.”

I try to smile and chuckle at it, but it’s forced, because yes, I did think he would’ve learned.

“We got them into the house and hid them in her closet. Went on the Internet and found out how to feed them, take care of them, all of that. We were ten back then, I think, so it’s not like we could go to the store for what we needed.” He picks up another chunk of sidewalk and passes it back and forth between his hands.

I take the silence as a cue to try and get him to finish up his nostalgia. “How long did it last?”

He grins, morose. “Two days. If their constant noise overnight didn’t let our parents in on it, the fleas they brought into the house definitely did. We had to stay in a hotel in the city while they fumigated. Dad was furious. Mom was annoyed, but… sympathetic, I guess?”

The streetlight overhead flickers off and takes its time coming back on. “And the cats?”

He cocks his wrist back and throws his latest rock across the street where it cracks through one of the few unbroken windows of the warehouse. “Angie cried the whole time we were at the hotel. I guess I did, too. We had named the three of them after some TV show we used to watch. One of those cartoons with the talking dinosaurs or dragons or whatever. Mom said she brought cats to the shelter in the city to be cared for and adopted to families who had the time to take care of them.”

I have to appreciate the caring mother figure I’ve only ever viewed at a distance, and I smirk at the parent who would so obviously lie to her kids to spare them the pain the rest of the world was so eager to dish out. My mother may have been a homicidal psychopath, but at least she was a realist.

“Dad didn’t talk to Angie about it again. At least I don’t think he did.”

“He talked to you, I take it?” I say, hoping the story is over.

And it is. Thomas stands up, brushing off his pants, releasing a few skittering pieces of cement. He looks at me until I stand up as well.

“So where we going?” he asks, face sobering but still drawn.

I can’t hold in the glare. “You’re the one who turned down a roof and a curly Scotsman who knows how to use an axe.”

Thomas laughs and deadpans in the same breath. “An axe?”

“Just be glad no one tried to hit on me tonight.”

He laughs again, louder than I’m comfortable with. “Yeah. A bar full of sleazy dudes and you couldn’t get one of them to want you.”

I whirl and shove him. Hard. His smile pops like a bubble. “I’m sorry,” he mutters in a vaguely sober tone. “I didn’t…” He stumbles back, tripping on the curb as he backs up. It’s more out of momentum, but the predator deep inside me hungers for fear.

“If I had wanted to, Tommy, I could have had every one of those men shatter bottles on the bar and slit your throat. At a word. A hint. An eye movement.”

Thomas glares at me. Point made.

Not nearly.

“I could have you dead right now. I could. And maybe this would be over.” I shake my head, the broiling heat in my chest subsiding.

Beneath a flickering streetlamp and unsteady beside the brick wall of a long since abandoned warehouse, Thomas watches me as I put a hand to my eyes, hoping to wipe away a bad dream.

“So why don’t you?”

“Why don’t I what?”

“Kill me. Do it.” He holds his hands out wide, presenting an apparent target. “I mean, I’m screwed either way, right? Someone wanted me dead before. They must still want me dead. Enough to kill my whole family to get to me.”

I groan. “This is not the time…”

“No, I’m serious,” he says, words only partially slurred with intoxication. “The only chance either of us has is for me to die, right?”

“You’re drunk. Let’s just find a place to sleep it off. Regroup tomorrow and figure out what to do then.” My thoughts, blurry under the drowning of whiskey I’ve put myself through, flit to Cassie and her proposal. I slip my hands into the pockets of my hoodie and shuffle down the street toward some promising abandoned buildings off on their own.

Ashamed though I am to admit it, I sprawl on the ground when Thomas pushes me from behind, and I land with a sharp pain to my shoulder as I twist to try to break my own fall. “What the hell?” I screech.

“Come on, do it. Show me this great, amazing power of yours.” Thomas taunts me, his words coming out clearer now. With each throb of the streetlight, I see his face growing more intense. Whether in pain, anger, or desperation, I can’t be sure.

“Yeah, that’s real attractive. Lying in the gutter. I’m ready to shoot myself now,” Thomas shouts at me, putting his fingers to his temple like they might do anything near what I had planned for him the first night we met.

My arm tingles a bit at the memories of the snowflakes.

“No wonder you screwed up. Can’t even kill someone like me. You’ve got to be the worst assassin in the friggin’ city.” He chokes on his words as he rears back and gives me a kick to the ankle.

The pain rips up my leg and the wave of red flashes over me as my hands clench on the grime of the Saint Roch pavement and the shards of glass from a long since discarded bottle. Blood pours from the wounds as I leap to my feet, bringing my hand across his face. The streaks of red over his cheek drifting down over his lips are entirely my own blood. Even in my anger, I fail to break his skin.

He winces and the loud crack of my assault echoes from building to building, making the once quiet night seem less so. Abandoned mausoleums of a forgotten manufacturing piece of the city bear witness to our poor excuse for a dance of death.

“Well, that’s a bit better, isn’t it?” Thomas laughs. He moves to bring his hand up and slap me. Or punch me. I can’t be sure which.

But it doesn’t really matter. My hand whips out and wraps around his wrist with the strength of a pair of cuffs. I squeeze, and he bites his lip at the pain of it, locking eyes with me.

“Come on.
Bitch
.” He snarls at me. He thinks he’s still dealing with Layla. Not the animal that only gets to come out to play when the rent is due.

I push him back, stepping bodily over the curb as I slam him to the eroded bricks of a factory, shattered windows flanking either side of us. And as I move, my body shifts. Only subtly. Only just so. It doesn’t take much to leap from undesirable to any man with a pulse to the fix of a junkie.

Ratty, matted hair blends to a soft hazel color, falling down the sides of my face to my shoulders as I pull back my hood. Skin, once pale and blemished, clears but not entirely. I can feel freckles bloom over my cheeks, dotting my nose. Eyes, once a color that evoked feelings of sickness, burn as they fade to blue, near gray. I shrug out of the hoodie to pin Thomas to the wall as the rest of my body shifts, unnecessarily so, beneath sweatpants and a dirty T-shirt. Thomas is a simple boy, and apart from my body managing to rid itself of the filthy smell of fetid laundry, all it has to do is become totally focused on its prey. Vicious and longing. I scrape Thomas’s arm over the brick as his eyes peer into mine and his faint resistance, only playing a part to begin with, grows even less so.

His eyes wander over me. The imperfections and the absolutes that I’ve grown for him. Specially catered to his tastes. How my body knows that Thomas longs for a dirty blond girl with somewhat average looks is far beyond my conscious mind. But it does. And he’s nothing more than a fish dangling from my hook.

I release his hands and move closer, pinning him to the wall in a very different way now. His arm stays up, his mind focused on anything but his own body. He stammers, words lost on him, his mind blank. Just the way I like it.

“Are we happy now?” I whisper to him as I lean in, so close my voice rippling goose bumps down his neck and along his shoulder.

His head bobs like a spasm. Oh yes. He’s mine now.

The predator in me smiles, and I slide a hand along his stomach up to his chest, surprisingly toned for a rich boy with perfectly clean fingernails. I let him dangle on my line as I breathe to his ear. Slipping my hand along to his back, I press my body to him, letting him feel every curve of his specially crafted killer. The only bullet that would ever be needed to put him into the ground.

My cheek strokes along his skin, and he shudders as I bring my face to his, our eyes meeting again. The streetlight gives a particularly sharp throb, and I look into the darkest brown eyes I’ve ever had the pleasure of devouring. I move my free hand up and bring cropped fingernails along the skin of his neck, eliciting further shivers from him. His sheepish grin fades as I feel his body move against me, wanting even more than he’s getting.

His eyes flit to my lips. Soft. Inviting. The faintest tinge of red to them that my body knows he’ll love.

He lifts off the wall in spite of my pressure on him as his face moves toward mine. My hand slips around to the back of his head; my fingers grasp his hair. I pull at his shirt with my other hand, digging nails into his lower back and lifting him to me. His husky breath dances over my skin. His own hands reach to my hips, and he brings me to him. I let him think he’s in control. That he’s steering the ship. That he means to set upon the rocky shore.

And drown.

His lips brush over mine, and I taste him. I entwine my fingers in his hair and let him in as my lips part and he kisses me deeply. The heat growing within me at this is unexpected, but delicious. My heart speeds, threatening to burst from my rib cage at the ecstasy of ripping the life from someone so deliberately. The entanglement between our two beings is thunderous, and I find my hands digging into him, wanting him even more. His own grip tightens, pulling at me, guzzling the poison that he so willingly drank.

Ensuring that, when I release him, he’ll finally be what I’ve needed him to be since the moment he shuffled to me on cobblestones an eternity and a half ago.

Dead. Very dead.

And when I finally let go of him, the flood of warmth and faintness I had felt melts away like an easily forgotten dream.

And the ghost of acceptance flashes over his eyes, before it, and he, are gone.

t’s a deep haze that I’m in, never having kissed a man before. Never having kissed anyone, actually. Even in the shadowed reality, I feel a twinge of shame for being just like all of those teenage girls I despised, fretting over boys and kissing and popstars. The brief image of myself in too much makeup and a miniskirt wraps me up and chews on me for a moment. A boy kissed me!