The Assassin's Prayer (20 page)

Tears
glistened in Rene Perelli’s eyes. “No, you can’t,” she said softly. “I loved my
husband, and you took him from me. My little girl loved her daddy and you took
him away from her. There is nothing on the face of this earth that you can do
to atone for that day. I want you dead, Kain. I want you dead so bad I can
taste it.” She paused for a moment, as if savoring the thought of him rotting
six feet under, then said, “But instead, I’m going to give you a choice, a
choice you didn’t give me.”

Kain
asked, “What kind of choice?”

“The
impossible kind.” Rene’s fingers rubbed the stem of the rose. “Fourth floor,
sixth window to the right.”

Kain
looked at the hospital building in front of him until he found the window Rene
wanted him to see. He instantly forgot all about his pain as horror locked its
terrible, choking grip around his throat.

Larissa
was pressed up against the glass, gazing down at him. A large man stood behind
her, arm encircling her neck like a python. One flex of his muscles and
Larissa’s neck would snap. With his free hand, he pressed a silenced pistol to
her head. Kain couldn’t make out the model of the gun from here, but it didn’t
matter; at that point-blank range, an air-pistol would probably be enough to
kill her. He looked into her eyes, felt her fear and terror, a crushing weight
that nearly buckled his knees. Without taking his eyes off Larissa, he said to
Rene, “You heartless bitch.”

“I
called you a heartless bastard the night you executed my husband,” Rene reminded
him. “It didn’t stop you from blowing his brains out, so do you really think calling
me a heartless bitch is going to save your girlfriend up there?”

“Then
tell me how,” Kain said. “Tell me how to save her.”

Rene
caressed the petals of the rose. Dried blood flaked off, staining her fingers.
“One of you lives, one of your dies,” she said. “But I leave the choice up to
you. A signal from me and my man up there will put a bullet in her brain. You’ll
live, but it will be without her. Or I pump
you
full of bullets and
Larissa gets to live, but she’ll have to do it without
you
. Any way you
look at it, the story of Kain and Larissa will not have a happy ending.”

Kain
didn’t even have to think about it. There was no choice at all. He knew what
had to come next. It was the only way, maybe even the right way. “You know what
my choice is,” he said to Rene. “Do what you want to me, but give me your word
that Larissa lives.”

Rene
gazed at him for several long, silent moments, then gave a slight nod. “You
have my word, but on one condition.” She stepped forward and handed him the
rose. “I want you to hold that as you die.”

Kain
took the rose and nodded. He owed it to her. Maybe he even owed it to himself.

Rene
stepped back, hesitated for just a fraction of a moment as she looked at him
with eyes that seemed almost sorrowful, and then motioned to her gunmen.

The
red dots on his chest blossomed into crimson holes as five submachine guns
emptied their magazines into his flesh. Through a haze of blood, Kain saw
something white flutter up in front of his eyes and realized it was the
remnants of the rose, ripped apart by autofire. The bullets shredded the
delicate flower and then punched into his chest, dozens of them, over and over
again.

Kain
fell backwards against the car, struggling to stay on his feet. But the bullets
just kept coming. The merciless impacts pounded him, flesh and bone dissolving,
blood flying everywhere like a butcher gone berserk. He wanted to scream but
couldn’t, his lungs now nothing more than ruptured meat and tissue.

His
legs suddenly failed him. The converging lines of fire followed him to the
ground, continuing their ripping, tearing assault on his body.
Stop!
he
wanted to scream.
Oh God please make it stop!
The pain made it
impossible to think clearly. Bullets heaped pain upon pain in a relentless,
never-ending tide. Again he tried to cry out and again he failed. Bright,
frothy blood spilled over his lips and down his chin.

Time
ceased to exist. The guns continued to spit death but for Kain there was
nothing but a series of wrenching sensations. Blood spurting from his wounds.
His silent screams. The smell of burnt cordite. The relentless impact of the
9mm slugs chopping away at him. In those terrible seconds, Kain knew he had
found his hell, a place where the guns forever thundered and the bullets
forever flew.

Then
he saw Larissa, pressed against the window of her hospital room, her lips
screaming
Nooooo!!!
over and over again as the guns cut him down. He
wanted her to turn away, but knew she never would. The gunman was no longer
beside her. Rene Perelli had kept her word.

An
eternity later, the guns finally stopped, bolts locked open on empty chambers. Kain
laid there and felt the life flowing out of him as he gazed up at Larissa. He
longed to hold her close and tell her she would be all right without him. For
just a moment, he felt no pain, no sense of death’s sure approach. For just a
moment, there was only Larissa. He imagined he could feel her heartbeat, a
steady rhythm that grew stronger as his own ebbed away.

And
then the moment was gone and agony jacked him with a vengeance, as if punishing
him for his few short seconds of peace. He arched his back against the pain
until he thought his spine would snap. Wet gurgles filled the air and he
realized it was himself, trying to scream and strangling on the blood that now
filled his chest cavity. He felt death-sweat on his brow, hot and cold at the
same time. His eyes sought Larissa again.

She
had surrendered to the inevitable. She no longer pounded on the glass. Shoulders
slumped in hopelessness, she just stood there, alone, staring down at him. Her
lips moved silently, whispering the words he needed to hear.
I love you.

Somehow,
Kain found the strength to smile and his pain drifted away. It was time to go
but he would leave knowing Larissa loved him, and not even the fires of hell
could take that away from him. He felt death, cold and yet somehow calm,
hovering all around him. But he couldn’t go. Not yet. There was one more thing
he had to do.

Summoning
every last ounce of strength left in his body, he raised a trembling hand to
his crimsoned lips and dipped his fingers into the blood like an artist dipping
his pen into an ink well. Then he reached out with his bloody fingers and on
the blacktop wrote the words his mouth could no longer say. When he was
finished, his hand fell, limp and exhausted, back to his side. He could no
longer feel his wounds, only the agony of a broken heart, and that hurt far
worse than a hundred bullets ever could.

He
looked at Larissa for the last time.
Goodbye,
he said, and though he
never spoke the word, he knew she heard him. He imagined kissing her with his
final breath. Then, as his broken heart beat one last time and the rain fell
around him like the weeping of angels, his eyes closed forever.

Beside
him, the words
I love you
that he had written in his own blood began to
fade, washed away by the rain until they were no more.

THE END

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Allen writes
hard-hitting fiction that slams like a bullet between the eyes or a punch to
the guts, but never loses sight of the heart and soul. His writing is tough and
uncompromising and he uses words like a scalpel, carving through the surface
layers to rip open the bleeding secrets beneath. He currently resides in the
Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York with enough firepower and ammunition
to make sure he is never bothered by door to door salesmen.

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