Page 64 of Wraith (Deviant Assassin #1)

Kiera

S team curls around my ankles as I step out of the shower, the cheap soap leaving my skin feeling tight. The kind that’s overly floral, sickly sweet, and faintly reminiscent of something artificial. It’s an upgrade from the metallic tang of blood that usually clings to the air in safehouses.

Hopefully the guys come back quickly from the perimeter check.

The air is still, but the steady, slow drip of the faucet pricks my senses.

I pause, a tingle of unease creeping up my spine.

Maybe it’s just the remnants of a recent storm outside.

I take a deep breath to steady myself. I suppose the jitters are natural, now that I have two alpha males stomping around my life.

The mirror is fogged, a hazy reflection of the woman I thought I was staring back at me. I reach out, clearing away the condensation, but the face staring back… isn’t me, I blink a couple times and look again.

No, it is my reflection. Every detail identical, down to the small scar above my left eyebrow from a job in Moscow from a few years ago, the slight asymmetry of my lips.

Every detail is perfect, but these eyes hold knowledge that doesn’t belong to me, and an edge of coldness I’d never direct at myself.

I’m not moving, but the reflection behind me and slightly to my left is.

“Hello.” A voice— my voice—comes from behind me. It slides across my skin, raising goosebumps on my arms.

I spin, water droplets flying from my hair.

And there she is. Me. Standing in the bathroom doorway, wearing my favorite black tactical pants, the ones that hug my hips just so, and a tank top.

Her— my— wet hair plastered to her shoulders.

Even our stance is identical: weight on the right foot, left hand loose at our side, ready to draw a weapon.

I fight the confusion swirling through my mind. She’s dressed. I’m not.

“What the fuck?” I manage, the words a dry rasp past the tightness in my throat. “Who are you?”

“Who are you ?” she repeats, her voice a perfect mimicry of my own as she closes the door behind her and steps closer.

I’m stunned, frozen, as she stops inches away, close enough to see the flecks of lighter brown in our eyes lit with delight at my confusion.

Close enough I can feel the heat of her body that clashes with the ice running through my veins.

“This isn’t real,” I whisper trying to convince myself. To push away the confusion and doubt gripping my gut in a vice.

What if it is?

“Is it?” she breathes, tilting her head to the side, a calculated mockery of my confusion. She reaches out, her fingertip trailing down my arm. “Touch me. See if I’m real.”

Her touch lingers, a phantom sensation that tingles even after she pulls away watching me. Analyzing; as if I’m a science experiment.

I stumble back, certain I don’t want to do anything she says, heartbeat pounding in my ears until my back meets the cold tile wall.

There’s an unsettling familiarity about her, but also something deeply wrong. I glance at the door, the only way out, but the steam and heavy air make me question if it’s an illusion. Like when a person lost in the desert sees a pond of water.

“You’re not me,” I scramble for proof. “I have memories. A childhood. Donna… Blade…” Even the names feel distant and hollow, like whispers in a dream.

“Ah, yes,” she mocks, her voice a cruel, a mimicry of the tone I use on the most moronic of my targets.

“Dear old Mom. The mother who let Rick…” She doesn’t finish, but the pity in her eyes says it all.

“Or wait,” she continues, tilting her head, eyes gleaming with perverse amusement.

“They’re our memories. I know it’s all so confusing, isn’t it? ”

“What do you want?” I demand, trying to keep my voice steady, but the tremor gives me away.

Wake up, Kiera. This is a freaky-ass dream!

“I want to play,” she says, and with a swift movement, she reaches into a pouch slung over her shoulder.

My eyes widen as she pulls out a handful of shimmering blue powder, the colors glinting like precious gems under the low light.

“Don’t!” I protest, but it’s too late. She blows the powder in my face, and it disperses in the air like a cloud of fireflies.

A sneeze jolts through my body, the sound echoing through the quiet room.

I shake my head, blinking against the haze.

The powder prickles my nostrils with a sharp, sweet scent that burns like cinnamon.

My throat tickles insistently, but I laugh, the sound bubbling out unexpectedly. “Is that all you’ve got?”

Her eyes narrow, surprise flickering across her face. “You’re supposed to be unconscious!”

“Sorry to disappoint, Memorex psycho,” I reply, a smirk breaking across my face.

“I’ve developed an immunity to a lot of poisons.

Mitigating a hazard of my profession. Once or twice I thought I was going to die,” I say, but the amusement in my voice feels like a mask, a thin layer of confidence cloaking my rising dread.

“But I already took an insurance policy out against you.”

She smiles—my smile, the one I practice in the mirror to look genuine around all the assholes in this fucked up world.

This is some fucked-up shit.

“Cognitive dissonance is a bitch, isn’t it? Don’t worry, it gets easier. Well, it did for me. Can’t speak for the others, neither can they.”

Others. The word hits like a punch to the solar plexus.

What others?

“You’re good,” I say, buying time as I catalog the room’s weapons. Towel rack: removable. Shower curtain rod: too flimsy. “Some kind of surgical modification? Must have taken years to get the details right.”

She laughs, and the sound makes my skin crawl because it’s perfect. The exact way I laugh when I’m about to kill someone.

“No modifications needed. Though I suppose that raises the question of which one of us is the real Kiera? Let’s try to figure it out, shall we?”

My fingers find the edge of the towel rack.

“You’re not me.” She closes the distance between us, the scent of my shampoo on her hair.

“Rick made me pose for those pictures. I remember every disgusting second. Do you, too? It gets so confusing sometimes. Tell me, do you remember what happened after I killed Rick?” I do.

I remember the blood, the way his eyes bulged as I— “Because I remember it differently,” she continues.

“In my version, they extracted me that night and activated you to replace me. To kill him. It’s so hard to keep track of which of us is the original and which is the replacement, isn’t it? ”

The towel rack comes loose in my hands. “You’re lying.”

Her smile widens. “Am I? Think hard. Those gaps in your memory—the missing time between kills, the way you sometimes wake up knowing things you never learned. Haven’t you ever wondered why you’re so perfect ?

Why you never fail ?” The rack clatters to the floor from my shaking fingers.

She moves like liquid mercury, closing the distance between us. “You’re not really Kiera, hun.”

“The fuck I’m not, bitch,” I say, but there’s an uncertainty I can’t fucking shake.

My fist connects with her jaw… my jaw… and she responds with my favorite combination: jab, cross, uppercut. We move in perfect sync, mirror images locked in combat. Every strike I throw, she counters. Every defense I mount, she penetrates. I’m fighting my shadow.

The shower curtain rips free as she throws me into the tub, my spine protesting as it slams against the porcelain.

But I ignore it. My body moves on pure muscle memory—the same way it did that night in Prague when I killed the diplomat in his bathtub.

The same way it did in Dubai. The same way as in…

Wait. Was that me? Or her?

“Getting confused?” She catches my ankle as I kick, using my favorite takedown move against me. “Remember Budapest? The way you sliced open that priest’s throat while he was blessing the communion wine?”

I remember. But the memory feels wrong now, like a photo negative of itself.

“That was me,” I snarl, driving my elbow into her sternum. Our bones crack in harmony.

“Was it? Because I remember the weight of the blade. The little choking sound he made.”

She slams my head into the soap dish. My vision blurs, but my body keeps moving. We crash around the small space together, a tornado of identical limbs and matching savagery. Mirror-image blood spatters the tiles.

“Remember your first kill?” She catches my wrist before I can drive my thumb into her eye… my eye… our eye? “Sweet sixteen, Daddy dearest with his wandering hands?”

“Shut up!” I drive my knee up, but she’s already countering, because of course she is. She seems to know what I’ll do before I do it, because she’s me, because I’m her, because?—

“Or was it the ballerina in Vienna?” She slams my face into the sink. “She screamed opera notes while she bled out. The one whose daughter walked in at the end?”

The memory hits like a physical blow—the girl in her pink tutu, standing in the doorway. But something’s wrong. In my memory, she’s holding a teddy bear. In this new version flooding my mind, it’s a raggedy doll.

Which is real?

“Fuck you, I’m Kiera. I don’t know what the fuck you are, but I’m going to kill you, so it hardly matters.”

The full-length mirror shatters as she throws me into it. I glimpse our reflection, multiplied infinitely in the broken shards. Hundreds of versions of us, thousands, an army of identical faces, all screaming in unified rage. Seven years of bad luck, times two.

“The best part about being a copy,” she pants, her blood or my blood slicking the tiles between us, “is that they can always make more. How many of us do you think are out there? How many missions are we completing right now? How many men are we fucking, while they think we’re totally devoted to only them? ”

The towel rack comes loose in my hands… again?

Still? Was it ever attached?

I swing it like a baseball bat. It connects with her temple with a satisfying crunch, but she’s already got the shower head ripped free from the wall, water’s now spraying everywhere like colorless arterial spray, soaking the floor.

“Remember the night Blade proposed?” Her words hit harder than any physical blow. “The way he slid that ring onto your finger under the bright stars? The way he whispered, ‘you’re the only one for me’ ?”

“What? How do you know…”

I falter, and she strikes. The shower head catches me across the eyebrow, and for a moment, the world goes dark. When it returns, I’m on my knees in a pool of water, looking up at myself.

“But here’s what you don’t remember,” she crouches down, her smile like a knife wound, “All the years we spent together, loving each other, fucking each other.” Blood runs down our faces.

“The best part?” she pants, “Is that I remember everything. Every kiss with Blade, every kill, every secret moment. But I have memories you don’t. Want to know what they are?”

“Shut up!” I slam her head onto the toilet tank cover, cracking it.

She laughs through bloody teeth and spits on the floor. “Want to know why you really can’t remember your parents? Why?—”

The bathroom door bursts open. Blade and Wild freeze in concert, staring through the doorway, guns drawn, faces pale, trying to make sense of two identical versions of me.

She grins my grin, my blood on my teeth.

“Take her out, she’s impersonating me,” we say in unison.