Page 7
Story: Rogue (Assassin’s Magic #7)
I wake to the sound of rain and a far-away scream.
Even on Mount Greylock, where I live in a secluded cabin with my sisters, the darkness and violence of the world bleed through. Especially when it rains. It’s as if the water in the air provides a conduit that wouldn’t otherwise exist, magnifying cries for help.
There is no peace for me and my sisters.
I jolt upright, immediately checking on them.
They’re wide awake where, only moments ago, they were lying on rugs around the fireplace, fast asleep. Each of them is now sitting, their heads tilted and their gazes distant.
Their senses are honed by hundreds of years of sensitivity to evil. It seems I might have been the last to wake, and I’m not surprised, given my newness. Even if I was only seconds behind them.
They don’t have names, so I call them Rose , Gilder , and Sable , after the colors of their hair—crimson, golden, and black. They’re tolerant of my need to name them, although to each other, they are simply Fury .
To them, I, too, am Fury . They don’t call me Peyton, and I’m not sure if they ever will.
Rose’s thoughts sound within my mind as if they were my own. Pain. Terrible pain.
Fear , Gilder adds, her golden hair falling around her face.
“Despair,” I whisper aloud, the scream that woke me creating a sensation within my chest like a stabbing knife. The sensation speaks to the emotion behind the scream: a despair that is soul-destroying.
My lips press in an angry line. “We will end it.”
My sisters immediately rise, levitating silently to the side of the room, each of them retrieving one of the four protective suits that hang from hooks.
Clothing doesn’t mean much to us. More often than not, it gets in the way. But it would have been foolish to reject these suits when Hunter brought them to us during my first month here.
She risked her life approaching this cabin.
My sisters weren’t exactly happy to see her, given that the first time they met Hunter, she had come to steal a dangerous object from them—and succeeded in doing so.
This time, Hunter brought four suits, one for each of us, and held them out like a peace offering.
Sable was the first to accept, and I was the last, warily taking the suit from Hunter. Gifts are to be carefully assessed, since the giver often wants something in return.
Since then, Hunter has visited me once a month. I expect her to ask me questions—to try to glean information from me about our activities, since we often get to a target before the assassins do—but she doesn’t. She just sits with me on the porch.
We sip herbal tea. When we’re done, she gives me a searching glance. Then she leaves again.
I’m not sure what she’s looking for in my eyes.
Maybe a hint of the person I used to be.
I’m no longer sure who that person was. Peyton… I … was broken into so many pieces that I don’t think I could ever pull them back together into the same form.
It’s the only way a Fury can come into being.
We shatter so badly that our past selves no longer exist.
But from that oblivion, we rise. Instruments of pure vengeance.
My sisters don’t speak of their own creation, and I will never ask.
Now, I follow them to the wall and take hold of my suit, quickly shedding my T-shirt and pulling on the protective costume, fitting the suit snugly to my body.
I’m yet to encounter a supernatural or a weapon that can hurt me, but even so, injuries are an inconvenience I don’t need.
Of course, Hunter knew better than to bring us boots.
I will plant my bare feet in the grime of the world and bring retribution to the hateful, the cruel, and the devils who call themselves saviors.
I will fly out into the world, into the filthiest places, the gutters, the broken buildings, or worse… Sometimes into the shiniest rooms because the most heinous acts can occur under bright lights.
It’s my purpose to tip the balance back in the favor of justice.
My impulses meld with my sisters’ thoughts, a perfect hive mind, as we retrieve our whips, hook them to the belts we’ve wound around our waists, and exit the cabin.
Within minutes, we soar up above the surrounding trees and into the cloud cover.
The rain has eased, but the night sky is heavy with darkness. A storm flickers on the horizon. The scent of rain is thick within my chest, seeming to hold the echoes of the scream we heard.
I wish I could say that our purpose was to save the victim, but we’ve yet to reach a location in time to do so.
We don’t have the power to transport ourselves exactly where we need to go within seconds of an event happening.
Many witches and warlocks have the ability to translocate supernaturals instantly from one place to the next, but they need to know where they would be taking us, and our power doesn’t tell us that. Not right away.
We’re forced to follow the trail of pain to its source. We’re forced to find the bodies, forced to confront the torment, and then we’re forced to bring about retribution.
Even though vengeance is hard-wired into me, it’s deeply frustrating to me that I can’t stop harm from happening.
I can only punish the perpetrators. And fuck… It isn’t enough.
It’s never enough.
As we fly closer to Boston, the wash of pain becomes stronger, but this time, it’s joined by all the other threads of danger rising from the buildings and streets, those threads becoming so intense that it takes all of my concentration to focus back on the original trail of pain.
My sisters are more practiced at blocking out the mess of emotions coming from the city, but I know they feel every stab of hurt and grief as strongly as I do.
Oh, there is no peace.
Never any peace…
My eyes fill with angry tears as I turn toward a home in a suburban street with an immaculate garden at the front. Gentle lights gleam around the front windows, which are covered in curtains, while a fresh shower of rain shimmers across the neat front porch.
We keep away from the streetlights and stay in the shadows as we descend into the home’s backyard.
The level of evil pouring out from the building hits me squarely in the chest. It is a cunning evil. The kind that hides behind a well-kept lawn and a pretty porch.
My sisters’ impulses flow through me. Go in, Fury. We will remain outside. If there is trouble out here, we will stop it.
It isn’t the first time they’ve sent me in on my own. They will see and hear everything that I see and hear, and right now, their instincts are the same as my own: This situation needs one of us, not all of us.
I gain entry easily and without making any noise.
I’m strong enough to break the locking mechanisms in door handles, and my claws can cut through even the strongest wire mesh.
This home is located in what the humans might call a ‘safe’ neighborhood.
There is no CCTV. But then, the owner wouldn’t want anything caught on camera…
I step inside a laundry room, assess the hallway opposite it, and quickly make my way through to the kitchen, where I sense the two occupants of the house are currently located.
A man and a woman. There’s nobody else in the house.
I’m one step from entering the kitchen when the man says, “The police will be here soon.”
As the entire kitchen comes into view, it takes only a split second for me to see everything.
First, I see what the human police will see, every careful detail.
The woman appears unharmed, even though she’s pale and shaking. She’s holding a knife in her outstretched hand. It’s one of those knives that’s used to chop meat. Big enough to cause serious damage. It looks like she plucked it from the knife block sitting on the table behind her.
Her free hand is clenched and pressed to her thigh, dragging against her jeans. Her hair is messed up, and her makeup is smeared. Several half-full bottles of wine are lined up on the other side of the kitchen bench behind her.
The man is collapsed to his knees on the floor, bleeding from a wound across his temple, his eye on that side closed to keep out the liquid. He holds one hand outstretched, palm up, as if he’s trying to ward the woman off.
A cast iron saucepan lies on the tiled floor between them. It’s tipped over, bottom side up, blood visible on one side of its smooth surface.
I know what the police will conclude from what they can see: the woman is the aggressor.
After all, she’s the one holding the knife.
She looks deranged. Probably drunk, judging by the wine bottles and the scent of alcohol in the air.
She must have lost her mind, attacked the man with the saucepan, and is now threatening him with the knife.
They’ll knock her to the floor and have her in handcuffs within seconds.
But I see what the humans won’t see: a clear trail of pain that manifests like shadows repeating what happened before we arrived.
I see her chopping tomatoes, carefully preparing a meal. Making sure it’s just right. Just the way her husband likes it. Because he already grabbed her once tonight and made her cry—the scream that my sisters and I heard—and the pain in her shoulder is still intense.
I see him come into the kitchen and start pulling out wine bottles, emptying them partially into the sink, seeming not to care when he splashes alcohol across the pristinely clean surface.
I feel her rising anxiety because why is he doing that? But she can’t ask. She isn’t allowed to question him, or there will be consequences.
I see him take out his phone—which used to be hers, but he changed the fingerprint and locked her out—and reach for the saucepan hanging from a hook over the stove, and, without warning, he slammed it against his own head.
She had cried out in shock. “What are you doing?”
As the blood gushed down his face, he grabbed her hair, making her eyes leak and her mascara run while he held the saucepan close to her cheek, but not near enough to leave a mark.
He smiled and told her, “You shouldn’t have worn that skirt.”
He let her go and stepped away.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7 (Reading here)
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46