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SORCHA WAS KEPT BUSY with assassinations for a couple of nights, but she sensed something was off. She hadn’t seen Malachi in a while, but she figured he was just as busy as she was. He hadn’t reported back to her about how the new potions she’d made were working out for him.
Her sense of unease increased as she searched the Vampire District for Sebastian after she’d completed her latest kill order. The sorceress headed home early and waited for Malachi in the living room of their house. When dawn neared and the incubus didn’t come home, Sorcha’s gut told her something was very wrong. She climbed the stairs to the second floor with a horrible sense of déjà vu shadowing her. Somehow already knowing what she would see, she looked at the door to see the image of the dagger was missing. “No,” she whispered in dread, then pushed the door open.
All of Malachi’s furniture was gone. She checked every room to see his clothes and other belongings were missing as well. Racing downstairs to the training room, his weapons had also vanished. Agony and grief ripped through her and she held both hands out and pointed them at the wall. Her undine magic that was locked away behind a barrier leaked out to merge with her sorceress power. She blasted her rage and pain at the wall and a mural became etched onto the surface with ice.
Sorcha dropped her hands to see what she’d created this time. Again, the Immortal Triumvirate were depicted. Their expressions were defiant and desperate. Six faceless beings stood behind them. They seemed to loom over the trio dangerously. Three were male, with two of them wearing hooded cloaks. The third appeared to be wearing a suit. The other three were female. All had shapely bodies and two of them seemed strangely familiar.
Spent after venting her emotions, the assassin saw other beings crowded behind the rebels. One was instantly recognizable with her deadly staff slung over her shoulder. “So, Xiara Evora really is on the rebels’ side,” she said dully as the ice slowly began to melt. Even after the ice was gone, the images would remain, at least until she was slain during one of her missions. Once she was gone, the entire building would become empty. It would no doubt be allocated to someone else eventually.
Sorcha trudged upstairs to her apartment. She didn’t bother to take a shower, or to get undressed. She fell into an exhausted sleep that was plagued by nightmares. In her dreams, the sorceress was all alone and had to kill the enemies of her evil overlords by herself. She saw herself hunting her targets down night after night, all night long. The assassin didn’t have any time to rest. All she knew was death and loneliness.
When Sorcha woke, she was wearing pajamas and she was clean. Even her hair was nice and shiny. Her only friends were dead, but the magic of Nox hadn’t abandoned her. She forced herself to get dressed, then shuffled to the kitchen to make herself some dinner.
She’d barely finished eating before a letter arrived to order her out to kill. The spell settled into place in the back of her head, but she just sat at the table. Her dreams came back to her and she knew they weren’t just nightmares. This was her reality now. She was the only member of the Assassin Guild left. The sorceress was going to have to take on all of the executions herself.
Rebellion stubbornly reared its head and she crumpled the letter in her fist. The fortune teller had told her she could be free from her masters. All she had to do was trust a complete stranger and join forces with him. Sorcha didn’t know what sort of bond he would want to form with her. She figured it couldn’t be worse than the link she had with the fairy, the master vampire and the alpha werewolf.
Filled with grim purpose, the sorceress vaporized the letter with fire before it could disappear by magic. The ashes and envelope vanished as she rose to her feet and headed for her bedroom. She pulled a coat on over her clothes, then chose a nondescript glamor spell to hide her identity. Her target was in the Shifter District and she wanted to get the mission over with as quickly as she could. Once her job was complete, she would focus on finding the mysterious magic user she’d apparently already met.
She left the mansion and walked a few blocks away, then teleported to the Shifter District. Her mark lived in a wealthy area, so he was probably a prominent figure.
Sorcha cast the shield that nullified her scent and sound. She followed the insistent prodding in her head to the large stone house where her target lived. She jerked in surprise when she saw a letter coming her way. Thinking fast, she cloaked herself in camouflage, so she blended in with a hedge.
The letter stopped in front of her and she grabbed it before it could draw any attention to her. Shifters had keen hearing and the letter wasn’t cloaked in her noise muffling spell. It was another assassination order, this time for someone in the Fae District. “Uh, oh,” she muttered when the second spell kicked in. She couldn’t hear her own voice, thanks to her shield.
Now that she had two missions to complete, they began vying with each other for dominance. They were trying to pull her in two different directions. The incessant tugging made it hard for her to concentrate. It was interfering with her being able to identify her current target.
“Nice job, guys,” she said with heavy sarcasm, aiming the thought at her lords and masters. They knew she was the only assassin they had left, but they couldn’t be bothered to coordinate their kill orders so she only had to deal with one at a time. It was yet another sign of how little regard they had for their lackeys.
Sorcha had to concentrate hard to ignore the second order that was tugging her northward towards the Fae District. She could dimly sense her target in the house across the street and focused on the shifter. He wasn’t alone and seemed to be hosting a gathering. A low headache began at the back of the assassin’s head where the two conflicting spells were concentrated. Being so close to one of her marks had the usual effect of amplifying the prodding. It began to feel like a tiny man was hammering her skull from the inside.
The assassin felt her target move away from his guests towards the back of the house. She took a chance and ran across the road and let herself in through the gate. The property was well-maintained and the grass had recently been cut. A path took her down the side of the building to the back, close to where the shifter had moved to. He was only a few feet away, but she had no way of entering the house to reach him. It would be a bad idea to knock on the back door. Everyone in the building would hear her and they might come to investigate. It was getting harder and harder to concentrate with the spells vying for dominance. She just wanted to get this done before her skull broke apart.
Spying a small window a couple of feet above her head, Sorcha figured it led to a bathroom. Her nose wrinkled in distaste as she realized she was about to catch her target with his pants down. This was her best opportunity to take him out, so she looked around for something she could stand on so she could reach the window.
Rain began to fall lightly and she drew the hood of her coat up. There was nothing she could use to boost her height. Remembering the ice murals she’d created, she came up with a desperate plan. Touching the wall, Sorcha reached deep inside her mind and dredged up her undine magic. Using the water that was falling from the sky, she formed it into a narrow ledge of ice that was attached to the wall. She enlarged it until it was just wide enough for her to stand on.
Mentally crossing her fingers that the ledge would hold, Sorcha gingerly put her foot on it and used it as a step. She grabbed the windowsill and peered down to see the shifter sitting on a toilet, reading a book. His pants were around his ankles, covering his shoes. “I guess he’s in there for the long haul,” she said with a grimace. She sent a thin spear of fire through the window. It cut through the back of his head, killing him instantly. His body hit the floor, but she was already teleporting away. The ice ledge had held her weight. It would melt long before anyone could discover it.
The assassin let out a quiet sigh of relief now that only one spell was prodding her mind. She hoped the Immortal Triumvirate wouldn’t screw up like that again. She might be a sorceress and possess far more magic than most, but that didn’t mean her mind could withstand the strain of conflicting spells.
