Death of an Assassin (Saint Roch City Book 1) (7 page)

My body burns, and the sensation of being lifted off my feet returns.

No one will ever save you, Layla. They’ll kill you given a moment’s chance.

But I was still alive. And though I’ve been grabbed hundreds, even thousands of times, just as roughly, and with just as much need, it’s still different. The feeling still lingers.

Probably because when someone grabs me like that, they never live to see the next morning. I’m having pangs of panic while he’s probably sleeping just fine in his mansion on the outskirts of Saint Roch overseen by concierge doctors.

I roll over to make it sixty-eight, and my polo shirt, shredded and muddy, tugs at my body in annoyance. It would rather be hung up in my closet beside my other hunting apparel and trophies. But I’m exhausted. More than that, I’m depressed.

I’ve never failed before. Never. Something going so right went so wrong so quickly.

I jump as a barrage of knocks falls on my front door. It makes me think either someone wants me very badly or the city is suffering from its first earthquake ever. Without thought, I’m already gripping my boot knife, ready to charge my potential attacker.

Couldn’t have that reaction last night?

The knocking comes again, the miracle of wonderful craftsmanship keeping my door from rocketing from its hinges as the hounds of Hell bay. I peel myself from the bed, drop my knife on the mattress, and reach beneath the bed for the 9mm pistol I keep stashed beside my safe. It’s been months since I’ve fired it, and that was at a gun range on the Westside. Hardly combat.

Padding across the hardwood floors, I approach the door like it could blow at any moment, and I jump a little as it shakes against another knocking assault. I step lightly to look through the peephole.

I consider, seeing the person on the other side of the door. Clicking the safety off the gun, I slide the deadbolt open. They don’t wait for me to reach for the knob, the door opening instantly, and I leap back, bringing the gun up to level it at my visitor.

“What the hell happened?” Malcolm sputters, his face bruised and bleeding, a slow trail of red seeping from a gash on his lip.

An hour and a full first aid kit later, Malcolm is sitting at my never-been-used kitchen table, sipping from a mug of tea with shaking hands. For an assassin’s broker and a very gay man, he doesn’t seem to have any balls at the moment.

“They came to my home.
My home
, Layla. They didn’t knock. They broke the door down.” He takes a swig from his cup like he’s got the strongest drink known to man seething beneath the chamomile.

I still have the gun in my hand, and though I’ve now clicked the safety back on, I wonder if that was the right move. Leaning against a counter and holding a mug of my own tea that I have no intention of drinking, I stare him down.

“So? What the hell happened? You seemed to have no problem killing one of them? Why aren’t they both dead?”

I swirl my drink, watching the fine particles of tea moving like a small cyclone. “I told you it wouldn’t go well.”

“Oh, don’t give me that. It was an easy job, and you fucked it up! You fucked it up royal.”

I put my mug down. “What’s the damage? They want their money back, right? I’ll get it to them.”

Malcolm laughs. Straight out laughs and shakes his head, the condemnation of a pet owner when the dog pisses on the rug. “It was my money, if you recall. And no, Layla. They’ll get their money back when they come here and gut you like a fish. These are not the kind of people you screw with.”

“Okay, so I’ll bail then. They don’t even know where I live.” I pause and grip my gun tighter. “Unless you led them here, of course.”

“No. I’m not stupid, Lay. I wasn’t followed. I’m here because they’re giving you twenty-four hours. They want the youngest dead by tomorrow. Cause an explosion at the hospital. Tweak some drugs. I don’t care. But by tomorrow he better be nothing more than a stiff.”

He doesn’t even crack a joke at his own line, and I realize that he’s not the flamboyant Malcolm I’m used to.

“And yes. I’ll take the money and give it to them. It’s payment for you not making this clean. If we’re lucky, that will be the end of it.” He stands and walks to the door, leaving his tea still steaming. “You really screwed this one up.”

He leaves, plenty of his tension sticking around after he’s gone. Playing with the grip of my pistol, I know with absolute certainty he’ll give me up the first chance he gets. Looks like I’ll be in the market for a new handler when this is done.

Not to mention a new apartment. New appearance. New everything.

I glance down at the damp mess of my shirt that looks like more of a sodden rag on my body now. Stripping it off, I go back into my bedroom, the stuffy feeling coming back to me. Even the rogue beams of light flitting through the curtains of the room don’t bring any source of levity to the situation, and I flop down onto the bed, wishing I could literally fall into sleep. Unconsciousness would be amazing right about now.

moke clings in the air of Naja. It might as well be a third person in every conversation, weighing in by simply weighing down. As I sidle up to the short marble bar tucked in the corner, waiting for my unreliable contact to show up, I can’t help but take deeper inhales as the fog of the place settles in. It’s not an unpleasant aroma, quite the opposite actually. The woman at the far end of the bar is sucking ash out of a delicately wrapped cigar, and the teens in the booth at my back are taking hits off a hookah. The smells seeping from those sources are not overpowering, and they’re not what puts a mind at ease here.

Sophia, the owner of the club and mother to my neighbor, pipes in intoxicating scents on a light mist. Bundled up in my hoodie of unendurable stench so as to dissuade any admirers, I can smell my attempt failing. My body and mind are swept away in the bliss of perfumed air. I give a silent prayer to a God I don’t believe in that no one will think to look my way.

The air of Naja is but the soft chord that begins the song of the place, though. A piano player strokes the ivories on a stage behind me while the saxophone player, taking a breather, sits at a stool down the bar from me, gripping a glass of scotch tighter than he would his instrument. The bartenders are quiet but attentive young women, moving up and down the sleek granite counters, handing customers drinks or the specially crafted cigars. The brunette with serpentine eyes, likely a relative of Sophia and Cassie, gives me a short glass with ice and golden whiskey without my having to ask.

“Now that is a drink,” a young man a few seats away says, leaning toward me. His unruly black hair sits atop a pale face like a soiled mop. “If you don’t mind me saying so.” His voice is spiced with an accent I can’t place but sounds familiar nonetheless. I ignore him, instead looking past the cavalry line of vodkas, scotches, and tequilas behind the bar.

A mirror stretches away from the corner on both walls, and behind me, to the left of the sparse stage of the club, is the VIP area where Sophia always takes up residence. She’s puffing on a cigarette herself, the tobacco a foot or so from her lips, dangling from the grip of an emerald-shaded holder. Her eyes alight at the young bodies moving about the club. Drinks in hand, smoke in the lungs, and they retreat all too slowly from a dance floor they were swaying on moments ago when the saxophone player was wailing on the brass instrument that now leans against the elegant piano.

“You can tell a lot about a woman by her drink,” the man says, getting off his seat and walking toward me. My back stiffens in reflex and I hunch over my scotch. He sits on the stool beside me, bringing his own glass of green drink with him. “I chose the drink of the house.” He raises his glass in the direction of Sophia and gives a jovial nod to her, his reflection in the bar mirror mimicking his movements. If Sophia reacts, I don’t see it.

The man leans over his own drink, his breathing heavy but not as inebriated as the other customers of Naja. He sniffs his drink and tosses it back. Holding the glass out, he studies it as if in doubt the alcohol is really gone.

“You’re aware that Mama Sophia frowns on people doing business in her club, yeah?”

I chance a look at the man, certain that I’ll see some scaled imprint. Chilling eyes. Perhaps even venom dripping in a mouth of broken-glass teeth. But I see none of this.

“It’s a strange phrase, innit?” he says with a grin that flashes pearly-white, perfect teeth. He sets his glass back down and raises a hand to one of the women sliding along behind the bar.

“What is?” I ask, still trying to place this man, and why he seems to know what Sophia is. Maybe even what I am. Though he seems not to be of the Inhuman persuasion.

“Sophia frowning on something. As though she’ll slither out from her table and press her face on you and yours, a big ole frown there. Note to self: find out where that whole ‘frowning on’ phrase came from.” A quiet and sharp laugh escapes his lips as he pulls out a ratty pack of cigarettes, an onyx-haired bartender tipping more absinthe into his glass. He puts a smoke in his mouth and snatches a nearby pack of matches, then tears one out and lights his cheap cigarette.

I cough at the foul scent of it, a far-removed cousin of what many in Naja are enjoying tonight.

“I’m waiting for someone,” I say, turning away but knowing the brush-off won’t do it.

He takes a long drag off the cigarette, the ashes sizzling at the end. “Hence my statement. Mama Sophia doesn’t like people doing business in her club. She’s killed prettier girls than you for it.”

I scoff and sip my drink.

“Oh, a snarky one, eh? I like ‘em snarky. Always have.” He laughs and taps some of the loose ashes off his cigarette onto the bar, ignoring the ashtray only inches away from his hand. “I’m Garth.” After tucking his smoke back between his thin lips, he extends his hand toward me. When I don’t take it, he pulls it back with a snicker. “Still, you look like you’re on the hunt. You may want to take your business elsewhere.”

It doesn’t ring with the sound of a warning, nor a threat. If anything, it strikes me as a casual amusement.

“Let me guess,” Garth says, taking another drag. “Are you one of those uptown succubuses? Succubi? Succubistresses? One of those flashy girls Nox keeps up at the Crux?”

I take my drink in hand and slide off the stool, determined to shake the flea.

“No, don’t run away. How about one of the merfolk? We have those right? In the river? Or are they mermaids only, no merdudes? Merwomen? What’s the politically correct term?”

I push past him as the saxophone player makes a renewed jog to the stage. A trumpet player comes from the far recessed part of the stage, blowing out his spit-valve on his approach to the dance floor. “I have legs, if you hadn’t noticed,” I mutter.

“Hmm… good point. Well, you’re not of the human stock. That much is obvious. So what are you? I give up. I admit myself stumped.”

I prepare to swing around and smash the glass into the side of his face, hoping that I can deter the flirting and eventual throwing of himself at me. I’ll have to find another place to meet my seller or find what I need elsewhere.

A mountain dressed like a man steps into my path, throwing me off-balance. Bald-headed and stern-eyed, he glares down at me and my unwanted admirer. The piano begins its tinkling, the saxophone its baying. A man’s voice croons through the speakers of Naja. Garth comes to a halt beside me, cigarette dangling on his lip and glass still in his hand, its green contents sloshed about from his attempt to continue the conversation.