Death of an Assassin (Saint Roch City Book 1) (23 page)

“What brings you here, she-devil?” he calls down to me. He’s never met me, but rumor has it he can spot us pretty quickly. The inhumanity we carry.

It takes me a few moments to recover from the wind being knocked out of me, and even more to overcome the pain of my wound. “I came with a proposition for you… Tim.”

The dog growls at me, but Tim reaches down and pats its head. She promptly sits, but keeps glaring at me through opaque bursts of air from her huffing and puffing.

The man, done up in more tactical gear than the entire Saint Roch Police Department owns, lowers his crossbow slowly. I breathe a sigh of relief as I try to sit up. But I relax too soon. Tim pulls out a pistol instead and a second laser sight traces its way up my thick jacket to find my bare neck before he pulls the trigger and everything goes black.

’ve never been shot. In my line of work, that’s a badge of honor. I’ve killed 126 people. Twenty-seven with Andrew Donahue, actually. And none of those got me shot.

And here it is, Thomas Donahue. Supposed to be my 128th, and I’ve been shot. Twice. Bran’s summation of him being a whelp crosses my mind as being incredibly accurate as I come to. The smelling salt beneath my nose burns up into my eyes, making them water as they snap open. My cuffs rattle against the pipe as Tim sits back, cross-legged just out of my reach.

Tim. The one person in Saint Roch City I was certain I’d never cross paths with if it were my choice. The word traded in hushed breaths on the street or in ethanol soaked conversations in the bars is that Tim is a deranged psychopath. The kind of fellow high school kids joke will catch you and kill you if you try to get laid on one of the back roads on the city’s fringe. An urban legend.

A bit of my own work dug up that he ran through the same foster system I did before he snapped and murdered the family that had taken him in. Burned their apartment building to the ground at the age of eight. He turned up again some ten years later and is always blamed when one of us wound up dead.

Inhumans. He’s got a thing about us. And it’s not a good thing.

“I wouldn’t bother with any of your tricks. Those cuffs are bio-keyed. Only I can unlock them,” he says off-handedly in a thick, motorized voice. He touches the pair of goggles and a breathing device over his mouth. “And there’s not much you can do to entice me when I’m wearing these. You are a siren, right?”

I duck my head to my shoulder, my jacket gone but the gray undershirt Bran stole from his brother’s house still there. The thin shoulder strap helps me clear my eyes as I try to respond.

“Yeah, I gave you a decent dose, too.” Tim holds up a feathered dart. “It can put down a full grown lion. I figured that’d be enough for the likes of you.”

“Came to… make an offer.” I manage, blinking at him through bleary eyes. The dog growls, and I can only just make out the blur of it sitting on the far side of whatever dimly lit room we’re in.

Tim laughs, grim. “A deal with an Inhuman. Yeah. That sounds great.” He stands and walks across the room before returning with his crossbow. “You’ve got thirty seconds.”

I cough, my body very unhappy with what I’ve been putting it through. “My name’s Layla.”

“Twenty-eight.” He loads an arrow, pulling back the mechanism that I assume will make me die.

“I need your help. There’s… I have… a friend. In trouble with the Serpents.”

Tim leans forward a little. And in a moment, “Twenty… three.” He sounds doubtful of his countdown.

“He’s a human?” I offer. He doesn’t respond. “Han Tzu snatched him up yesterday… morning? I think they’ll keep him alive, and I need to find him. He’s… important… to me.”

Tim sits back, my hesitation likely looking more like lying to him. He raises the crossbow and points it at my face.

“You’re a killer. I know your species. They’ve caused me enough pain. I should’ve just put this bolt through your eye the moment you stepped into my domain.” His finger rests on the trigger, and it clicks just enough.

Don’t hold back. Let it go. Let it out. Forget everything you’ve been taught. Think about what you
feel.

“No! No, wait. Please. It’s my fault. His name’s Thomas! He’s in trouble because of me. I’m trying to get him out of there.
Please.
”

“Trying to finish the job, you mean? Five seconds.”

“Please! I… I love him!” The lie is a strong one. But I feel a twinge in my throat that it’s not as strong a lie as I would’ve thought.

Tim looks down the barrel of the crossbow. Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

“Well, I’ll be.” He lowers the weapon and sets it down. He moves toward me and pulls something out of one of the pockets on his vest. His hand whips out, grabs me by my hair, and tugs hard, scalding my scalp as he does. I resist the urge to struggle, knowing that any movement on my part would solidify my death.

He holds up his new weapon. A pen flashlight. He flicks it over my eyes. One then, the other. His thumb reaches up and pulls at my cheek, examining me closely. He leans back and grins.

“You kissed him, huh?”

Now I’m blinking away tears from his light. “How did you―”

Tim sets down his crossbow and moves toward me. He grabs my wrists roughly and unlatches the cuffs before tucking them into his vest. With a curt grin he pulls out a rag and tosses it to me. “Clean yourself up. But I want you to remember this, okay? I’m not going to kill this guy, whoever he is. Repeat that back to me.”

I grab the rag, put it to my eyes, and try to clear them. “What the hell does―”

“Say it. Tell me you know I won’t hurt this guy.” He stands, putting his hand on the gun at his side.

My eyes now seeing considerably better, I can tell the gun isn’t the tranquilizer firing kind. It’s more of the hand cannon kind. I’m not looking forward to getting shot a third time. “You won’t hurt Thomas.”

He holds a hand out to me. “Good. So what’s your plan?”

Tim listens as I push a few of the pictures across the table, which is covered with spare crossbow arrows, and many, many, many boxes of ammunition. As I explain, he’s flicking a butterfly knife back and forth, thoughtfully nodding. His face, which might’ve once been quite attractive, is not so much now. Lined with scars and deep wrinkles, he probably only has a few years on me, but looks like he might have decades.

“I figured, you hate our kind more than anyone in the city…”

“The world,” he corrects. “Your kind of scum ruined my life.” He keeps flicking the knife about. Perfectly timed, perfectly moving, never once risking a cut to himself.

“Well, I thought if anyone would be willing to take down a few dragons, it’d be you.”

He grins like a kid in a toy store and nods. “Oh, I’ve been dying to put a few of those scaly freaks in the ground. Even had your boy Han in my crosshairs before. But it will be tricky. If we don’t move fast enough, they could shift to their less-than-friendly bodies.”

I’ve never seen it happen, but I’ve heard about it in idle chitchat at the various bars. A good portion of the truce between the Westies and the East Passage people is to keep the secret. The hidden fact that dragons were a very real thing in centuries past, but through some twisted series of events, they managed to hide in human skin.

I wonder if Bran still has his fuzzy red beard when he’s a dragon…

“Yeah, that’s the other problem. I don’t know how to make sure that doesn’t happen.”

Tim leans forward, jabbing his knife into the table and resting his chin on his hand in the same motion. His mouth tweaks to one of contemplation. His fingertips scrape across the bristles of days-old stubble, and in the sharp desk-lamp light, I see a patch of his cropped black hair that doesn’t look like it’s grown right for a while. His free hand wanders over the pictures and maps littering the table.

“Your plan will definitely get us in the door. Han has no idea what I look like, and we can do our best to make sure he has no idea who you are. But there is likely going to be more than a few draggers in the room. And even if they’re not, best-case scenario they’ll be armed-to-the-teeth humans.”

“Is that a problem for you?”

Tim laughs and leans back, lacing his fingers behind his head and grinning like a Halloween decoration. “Not really. I’ll put down a human if they’re working with an Inhuman.”

“Umm… but you’re―”

Tim glares. “Yes. I realize the irony. Let’s move on.”

The dog, warming up to me surprisingly quickly, sits beside me and puts her face in my lap, staring up at me and panting.

“That stuff you shot me up with. You said it can take down a lion?”

Tim nods and smirks. “Oh, you’d be shocked to find out the selection of chemicals I have.”

“Are you a fast shot?”

“Fast enough that I got you.” He barks a laugh and the dog follows. Tim stands and starts walking around the old train car, gathering up supplies. He tosses my knife and gun back to me. “Let’s do it.”

I’m bouncing around in the back of the van, trying to get dressed for my role as Tim drives down the streets of Saint Roch. After breaking into a store on a high-class avenue to get some clothing for our disguises, we’ve set out for the East Passage and Han Tzu’s club. Tim insisted on leaving several thousand dollars in cash at the store to pay for the merchandise and the damage.

“Didn’t realize vigilantes made so much,” I call from the back of the van, my bare skin freezing on the cold metal floor as I struggle to fit into the tight clothing that’s nothing new for me.

“Family money. All the way back to my great-grandfather Abraham in the 1800s.” I’m well aware of his psychosis. “Not to mention the cash I get from your kind,” Tim calls from the front, cutting the wheel to get there faster and fit the part. “You’d be surprised how much money you freaks carry on your person.”

A spasm of cold cuts through me. I’m certainly missing the warm fire of the Dawson castle and the thick mass of Bran’s coat now. But I need to look the part.

“Light?” I ask. Tim slams on the breaks at the next stop sign and turns back to toss me his penlight. I use my legs to pin myself between the side door of the rickety van and the built-in shelving unit on the opposite side. I slip out the mirror I stole from the store and the batch of makeup, hastily using it to cover up what my shape shifting can’t seem to handle. The scarred cross-stitch hole peering out above my left breast stares up at me, easily giving away that I’m not just some street trash. I put the flashlight between my teeth, but with the bouncing van and my ineptitude with covering wounds with makeup, I start to pray that the club has incredibly poor lighting.