Tanned Hide (5 page)

At least everything was peaceful. Soft
light, the smell of burning candle wax and incense, the quiet
sounds of conversation and monk plainsong behind me. One last
moment of peace. Maybe I could calm my nerves.

I sat down in the second
pew from the front, pulled the kneeler down, and positioned myself
in what I hoped was a worshipful pose.
Draso, if you’re really real, if you really hear me, please,
please, protect my family. Protect me.
I
paused, thinking about how Mom prayed.
But
your will be done. Amen.

The door behind me shut.

It took all my willpower to freeze my
joints in place and keep myself from turning around.

The unmistakable click-clack of deer
hooves on stone echoed in the room. My ears twitched. Two sets from
the left. One from the right. I slid further into the pew and
dropped my hands, fumbling for the saber, eyes still shut against
the threat I knew approached me.

If this was how I went, here and now,
I’d fight. Maybe I’d take one or two of them down before I go down
myself. I gripped the saber’s hilt.

The one on the right entered my pew. I
counted one heartbeat, then stood facing her, whipping my saber
from the scabbard.

But I never stood a chance. Before I
ever got the sword out far enough to do damage, the doe in front of
me grabbed my hand with both of hers and ripped the weapon from me,
tossing it aside with a clang. The two behind me gripped my arms
and held me tight. I opened my mouth to scream, but the doe in
front covered my snout, pressing an almost seductive finger to her
black lips with a tiny smile.

“
Quiet, Mr. Black,” the doe
said. “Wouldn’t want to invite unfriendly guests here, would
you?”

Panic gripped me. I tugged, pulled,
tried to bite her hand, claw someone, anything that might get me
free or at least tell my brain that I was trying to escape and I
needed more adrenaline.

“
Calm yourself, Mr. Black,”
one of the does behind me said. She snuck her face by my left
shoulder and I saw a calm ice blue eye staring at me. “We’re not
here to hurt you.”

The words should have been comforting,
but they felt like a punch to the gut. I stopped squirming and
forced myself to be still.

The doe in front loosened her grip on
my snout. “There, there. See? It’s fine.”

I took in the sight before me. The doe
wore a floor length, slim black dress, sleeveless, with a choker of
expensive pearls around her neck. Each ear had five pearl studs
lining it. She was pale gold, much like the Matron, but with pale
blue eyes and a much darker nose. I could almost call her beautiful
if she wasn’t so damn dangerous.

“
What do you want with me
if you don’t want to kill me?” I snarled, baring my
teeth.

“
We only wanted to thank
you,” the doe said.

I frowned, unable to comprehend.
Trecheon’s optimistic thought about thanking me floated through my
head. “Thank me?”

“
Certainly,” the doe on my
right breathed into my ear with a disturbing sensuality. “You took
all the information and bait just perfectly. We never would have
been able to take down the Matron without your help.”

Electricity burst from my chest and
shocked all my muscles at once. Bait? “Wait, you planted all that
information?”

“
Once we saw your initial
interest, yes,” the doe in front said. “It wasn’t
difficult.”

“
Researching other
assassins--”

“
Paying the right people to
spread information--”

“
Setting up the business
deal with the Matron--”

“
Completing the deal in the
right building--”

“
Recommendations about your
business to the right apartment complexes--”

“
And, of course, making
sure you had the right partner. . .”

I cursed internally. They knew about
Trecheon. “How did you do all that without getting caught by your
own Matron?”

“
We’ve been doing this a
long time, Mr. Black,” the doe on the right said. “We are very,
very good at our jobs.”

“
But. . . but
why?”

“
For the same reason you
told the White Assassin,” the doe on the left said. “We want out.
We want to settle. We want to stop this pointless game of cat and
mouse. If you’ll pardon the expression, sir puma.” She pressed her
cold nose on the inside of my ear, stunning me. I tried to pull
away, but her grip was too strong.

“
With the Matron out of the
way, dissolving the Family will be easy,” the doe in front said.
“Then we can settle and use this corporation for something useful.
Just as you wanted. Aren’t you proud? You got that famed magic
hit.”

Not if I didn’t survive this. “If you
wanted that, you could have just hired me rather than played
around.”

“
And leave a trail?” the
doe on the right said. “We may be an extension of the Matron’s own
limbs and highly respected in the Family, but even we have our
limits. If word got out that we ordered her death, we’d be instant
targets. Much simpler this way.”

“
And you aren’t going to
kill me.”

“
Certainly not!” the doe in
front said. “In fact, we’d like to pay you. Discreetly of course.”
She reached into the clutch purse sitting on the pew next to her
and pulled out a tiny envelope. She walked up to me, pulled back
the front of my jacket and pressed the envelope into my inner
pocket, running a finger across my chest. “A good assassin deserves
good pay, yes? And you were a good assassin.”

I didn’t allow myself to relax. “From
one assassin to another?”

She touched noses with me. “Now you
understand.”

I pulled my face away. “So that’s it
then? An elaborate set up, pay off, and I just go free?”

“
Go free?” the doe said,
with a false shocked look. “Now who said anything about
that?”

Fresh panic ran through my
spine.

“
You will be fine,” the doe
on the right said. “That’s how we operate.”

The doe to the left breathed in my
ear. “But your family may not fare so well.”

I flattened my ears and pulled on the
does’ grip. Mom, Dad, Philip! “No. No, not my family. Please. Kill
me instead!”

“
Oh, sweetie, that’s not
how it works with The Triple Danger,” the doe in front said,
running a hand under my chin. “We take from you what you took from
us.”

“
Thus,” the doe on the left
said. “You take our family. We take your family.”

“
No!” I tugged hard,
marveling at how strong a pair of doe could be. “No, please, I’m
begging you! You can’t do this!”

“
Oh, but we can,” the doe
on the left said. “And we will. Sorry, sweetheart.”

I opened my mouth to yell, shout,
scream, whatever, but a hand pressed a wet rag to my face.
Everything went blurry.

“
Take a little nap. You
could use it,” one doe said, though her voice was faint in my
ringing ears. “But hurry fast if you hope to save them.”

Before I could say anything, the world
went numb and faded away completely.

Six

By the time I woke up, it was already dark. Mona’s statue
blurred into focus, a haunting image against the moonlit stained
glass. My limbs were stiff and sore, probably from the fall. The
grogginess stayed, but I forced myself to focus.

Wake up, brain. Focus. Be
alert. Your family depends on it.

But my family was probably already
dead.

I pushed myself up and shook my head,
stumbling to my feet. Some distant part of myself reminded me to
check my inner pocket. I didn’t know what was in that envelope, but
it could be a bomb or a tracking device just as much as a
payoff.

The envelope contained only cash. A
level ten payment, in big bills, the highest level I have ever
taken.

But it wasn’t important. Wasn’t worth
it. I forced my body to move, snatched up my saber, and stumbled
out of the prayer room. I dropped the cash in the offering box on
my way out of the cathedral.

Mom. Dad. Philip. I needed to get to
them. Now.

As I floundered out, I briefly
considered calling Trecheon and warning him. I reached into my
pockets, and was only half surprised to find them completely
empty.

Damn, they took my phone. There was no
helping it. I had to save them myself.

A lone motorbike stood in the back of
the lot, a sports bike of some kind. I swaggered over to it,
practically drunk with fear, and didn’t even question why the key
was still in it. I straddled the bike and turned the key, then
raced as fast as my mind would let me.

Nothing would be fast enough. Nothing
would get me there in time.

I don’t know how long it took me to
get there, but it felt like a century. Mom’s old banger was in the
driveway next to Dad’s ancient chopper, as innocent as could be. I
pulled up into the lawn, dropped the bike on the grass and ran for
the door.

The door opened, which in itself
wasn’t a good sign. Mom kept the door locked obsessively to keep
Philip from doing anything stupid. And it felt heavy too. And there
was some scraping sound that followed when I opened it.

“
Ugh. . .”

Trecheon. I slipped in the house and
saw him on the floor behind the door. His clothes were battered and
he had a swollen eye. I didn’t see any blood, but his bionic hands
had been nailed to the door like some sci-fi Jesus.

“
Christ, Trecheon!” I
leaned down in front of him.

He kicked at me. “Not me,” he coughed.
“I’m fine. Your parents. Down the hall. Hurry!”

I left Trecheon where he was without a
second thought and ran down the hall.

I had always hated movie scenes
showing the aftermath of an assassination. They portrayed them as
messy. Fallen vases, broken picture frames, trails of blood, all
leading to some climactic end scene, usually in the bedroom or
bathroom, where the victim barely clung to life in order to impart
some final words to the discoverer, either to lead him to the next
scene or make him feel horrible for what happened.

Real assassins don’t do that. Not if
they’re any good. A real assassin would leave no trails and death
would come as fast and clean as possible, leaving no chance that
the victim might be able to name his killer. Bloodless deaths were
preferred because blood opened the potential for fingerprints,
footprints, evidences stuck to drying plasma. Blood was an
assassin’s enemy.

It was an insult to our skills, and
our profession.

So as I ran down the perfectly ordered
hallway, I didn’t expect to hear a quiet moan for help.

“
Mom!” Mom was in Philip’s
room sitting on the floor under the window. She looked relatively
unhurt, except for the fact that her hands were tied together and
hanging off a nail on the windowsill.

Oh, and the puddle of blood under
her.

I ran to her and pulled her hands
down, looking over her person for the wound. “Where is it? Where’d
they hurt you?”

Mom looked at me blankly, only a faint
moan escaping her lips. I shook my head and continued searching. No
dice. Mom continued moaning and eventually I caught the word “leg.”
I examined her legs and sure enough, there were three large cuts on
the undersides of both legs.

Shit.
Shit.
Mom was in deep trouble. I
pulled the ropes off her hands and snatched the blanket off
Philip’s bed, wrapping her legs in it, desperately trying to stop
the bleeding.

“
. . .Your. . . your father
is dead.”

I pressed my eyes shut a moment, but
then applied myself to my task. “Don’t talk, Mom. Let me help
you.”

“
I’m. . .
dying.”

“
You’ll be fine,” I said,
my voice cracking, but looking at the size of the puddle, watching
the blanket gorge itself on Mom’s blood, I knew it was too late.
“Just stay quiet. I. . . I have to help.”

Suddenly she gripped my arm with a
surprising amount of strength. I looked her in the eye.

I never knew people could look at you
with pity, anger, and fear all at the same time. How she managed to
put all those emotions into one expression, with her sad eyes,
hanging jaw, splayed ears, and furrowed brow, I don’t
know.

“
Philip ran. He’s. . . out
there. . . somewhere.” She paused to take a deep breath. “Leave me.
Find your brother.”

I frowned. “Mom--”

“
If you don’t. . .” she
whispered, tears running down her cheeks. “I will die. . . hating
you.”

My muscles locked into place. The
shock was so powerful it blurred my vision and made my ears ring.
“Mom. . .?”

“
Find. Philip. Now.” She
leaned back against the wall and stared at the ceiling.

What could I do? How does one respond
to their own mother threatening something like that? I took one
more look at Mom, staring and blinking slowly, then stood up and
walked out the door.