Final Kill (Cain University Book 3)

by Lucy Auburn

  Closing my eyes, I do the empty white room thing again. This time, the room isn't completely empty, though. There are wisps of fog around the corners, places where the atmospheric light doesn't penetrate at all. It gives the inside of my mind a kind of heavy feeling.

  Taking in a deep breath, I imagine the bell. It's covered in condensation where the fog gathers at it. I grit my teeth and make it ring, appreciating the way its enthusiastic swinging clears the air around it. For a moment, the pealing of the bell fills the room so thoroughly that I forget about the gathering of fog everywhere and what it might mean.

  In the brief moment of empty space, I imagine the man who murdered my mother.

  His dark clothes.

  The curve of his back as he bent over Mom and Herb's bed.

  How he moved, so strange and fast, the air around him cloying and thick like molasses.

  Then, as I lunged for him, he turned into fog and escaped out the window, never to be seen again.

  I sense his darkness. I feel his presence. I smell the strange scent he left in the air, that made my limbs move slow and my heart beat heavy.

  I may not see Marcus Junius Brutus in the room right now, but I know that he's here. And, with a wrench of my foresight that feels like jerking an 18-wheeler onto a thin country road, I point it right at him and reach through the fog for his future.

  It's just a moment.

  A brief vision of a slice in time.

  But he's there, standing in front of us as my eyes fly open, Mason's hand woven with mine: Brutus. Standing in the middle of a darkened room lit only by a single, tapered candle. The expression he's wearing makes Carter's face look older and more sinister; he's holding a thin sheet of paper in his hand.

  Blink, and it's gone. And useless—we don't know when or where any of this will happen, or if it's of any consequence at all. We've learned nothing new from what I just managed to see.

  Which is why I'll have to do it again.

  And again.

  Until I get my hands around the asshole's neck and wring so tight he dies without getting the chance to hop into another stolen body.

  Chapter 20

  "I'm exhausted." Flopping down onto Eve's obnoxiously modern sofa, I stare up sightlessly towards her ceiling. I've memorized the number of steps from her door to the sofa, but there's still something strange about relying on senses other than my sight. "I wish we'd seen something useful. I want to just... get this over with. Go back to normal, whatever that is."

  Taking a spot next to me on the sofa, Mason cradles my hand in his, and the world appears in front of me. Sight unfurls, much like show curtains being drawn aside to reveal an entire set and actors onstage. There's something magical about it. I don't think I'll ever get tired of this feeling, no matter how many steps I'm able to count to make a map of the world around me. Seeing is like nothing else.

  In an amused voice, Mason asks, "What exactly is normal for us? Assassin classes? Walking through magical doors to kill people a mysterious and shadowy organization has decided are worthy of death?"

  "Sounds pretty boring and banal to me," I joke, while it's anything but. "You've been here longer than me. Does it ever feel normal?"

  "Hmmm." He leans his head in my direction, his long braids tickling my cheek as he lines his point-of-view up with mine. "I guess it starts to feel routine. But as for normal... no, I don't think it ever exactly feels like that. Maybe one day, when we're members of the Shadow Fold, it'll be like any other job."

  "So we'll complain about paperwork, you mean."

  "And that one coworker who never closes her mouth when she coughs."

  "Or that guy in accounting who hits on everyone."

  "Our managers will send us peppy catch phrases to improve morale."

  "There'll be a picture of a kitten holding onto a clothesline with the phrase 'Hang In There' on it in bold letters."

  "Half the mugs in the break room will have terrible slogans written on them, and the other half will be kids' arts and craft projects abandoned at work by their parents."

  Looking at each other, we burst out laughing. I have no idea if what we're picturing is a normal office—my part-time job at the theater didn't exactly expose me to accountants and banality, since everyone who worked there was an actor or a singer of some kind. But we both know that becoming members of the Shadow Fold will be far from normal, no matter how many filing cabinets they keep in their secret headquarters.

  "We kill people with magic," I say aloud, sitting up and glancing around the room; Penny is in one corner of Eve's apartment, grooming herself methodically. "Eve is out there somewhere killing somebody with magic right now. If that ever becomes normal to me, slap me with a frozen fish."

  "Not a fresh fish?" Mason jokes. "Maybe even one I caught myself?"

  "Oh, hush."

  My mouth curves into a smile as I lean forward to kiss him, and he tugs at my hand, drawing our woven-together fingers into his lap. I feel as if I'm at the precipice of something, standing at a cliff's edge, and I'm as sure that I'm going to jump as I am that it scares me more than anything.

  After so many years of violence and resentment from the man I loved, who I thought loved me, somewhere safe to land feels like the most dangerous place of all.

  Mason doesn't pull me tight or hold me against him, though. He lets me pull out of the kiss and stare at his face, memorizing every line here and now, through my own eyes, appreciating the slightly jaunty look the scar across his face gives him. Watching me, he loosens our hands enough that I could pull my fingers away from his without any effort at all, keeping his touch just close enough to mine to ignite our connection.

  He stares at me with naked curiosity in his eyes. "What are you thinking about? I mean... if you don't mind sharing."

  Opening myself up to him is hard. But closing myself off feels even harder. I've resisted for so long that I have to admit, I don't even remember why I started in the first place.

  "I'm thinking about..." It takes a moment, a deep breath, and a big lump of courage for me to tell him, "About how much I regret pushing you away. Because to tell you the truth, whether I'm ready or not—and I don't think I ever will be ready—I'm falling for you, Mason Kincaide. And it frightens me more than anything, including facing Marcus Junius Brutus himself."

  His callused fingertips pass over my skin as he tucks my hair behind my ear, face open and relaxed, everything in him steady and centered. I'm a mess in comparison, perpetually off-kilter and unable to deal, which just makes me wonder how I ever came to deserve him in the first place. Lady Fate has a sick sense of humor, putting a mess like me together with a kind and humble man like him.

  "You don't have to be ready," he tells me, his voice as soothing as a bedtime story, unwinding every clenched muscle in my body. "I won't push you. And I realize now that it was wrong of me to ever try in the first place. I got so caught up in my own feelings that I forgot you might need time and space. Measuring where we are in comparison to others hasn't helped. Whatever you need, I'll give it to you—without jealousy or fear. No matter how long it takes."

  I tell him, "Out of the four of you, you're the one who makes me feel like my heart is in the most danger, Mason Kincaide. You scare me in ways I didn't know I could be scared of before this." His face starts to close off, so I hasten to add, "In good ways. I'm not sure I'd be ready for anyone or anything if you hadn't been the first man to hold me close and make love to me after... after Jack. And all that entailed. Being with you taught me that men could be kind and gentle."

  He swallows, looking like I've punched him in the face with my words, deep and unfathomable emotions in his brilliant warm eyes. "I'm glad I could be a soft place for you to land, although... I wish it'd never been that way for you in the first place. I'd give anything for you not to have gone through that."

  "Our scars make us who we are," I tell him, reaching up to trace a gentle fingertip across his scar, which bisects his face at a diagonal. "If it weren't for Jack, I
wouldn't have my first kill, or my powers. I wouldn't be here with you. There's no trading all that, even though I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. My past is part of who I am—just like your past."

  Mason kisses me, his lips gentle and passionate at the same time, stealing every unspoken word and fearful thought from my skin. I melt into him, swinging my legs up onto the sofa and across his lap, twining my fingers with his and reaching a hand up to cup the side of his face. He's gentle yet strong, his muscles yielding to my touch, every part of him curling around me like a protective cocoon.

  As he pulls back from the kiss, his face takes on a serious expression, and my heart does a little flip flop behind my rib cage.

  "Before we go any further," he tells me, "I want to make sure you know everything about me that there is to know. Including, obviously, my past."

  It takes me a moment to realize what this must be, and the enormity of the gift he's about to give me hits me all at once—along with the fear that it'll change things. "You don't have to tell me anything you're not ready to tell me."

  "I know. But I want to."

  "If that's the case." I lick my lips. "I'll try to keep an open mind. And just know that whatever it is, it won't change anything between us."

  "It might," he corrects gently, grimly. "But that's okay too. Relationships have to change and grow. Including ours."

  I don't know what to say to this, so I don't say anything at all. Into the silence, he tells a story. One that I fear might be big enough to shake the newborn foundation of our bond. I listen to it anyway, hoping that I'll be able to accept him just as he's accepted me.

  Whatever he did, it can't be that bad. I know him—and I truly believe that he's a good person. That can't change.

  "So... I want to tell you about my first kill."

  He sounds tentative, so I murmur, "That much I gathered. Whatever it is, it can't be that bad."

  "It can, and it is." He grimaces, and the expression carries years of buried pain with it. "Just know... what I'm about to tell you is a lot. But it doesn't change anything. At least I hope it doesn't. It all happened before we met, and I've been trying to make up for it for years. Will be trying to make up for it the rest of my life."

  Thinking of Eve and the little girl, of Jack's mother crying on television, of Grayson's bowed shoulders when he saw the ghost of the brother he killed, I nod and steel myself.

  Maybe what I'm about to hear will change everything.

  Or nothing.

  Either way, I can't let myself fall off the edge of this cliff until I've seen the rushing waters below and know what lurks beneath the surface.

  "I had a friend," Mason starts, stops, turns away from me a little, as if to hide even as he reveals everything. "No, a best friend. I cared about him more than anyone in the world. If he were still... well. Childhood friendships come and go, but this one shaped who I am today. For better or for worse.

  "His name was Dan." His eyes close, long dark lashes casting shadows across his face, stretching and fluttering with every breath he takes. "Everyone called him Danny until he was too old for that, or so he said. Then it was Dan... maybe it would still be Daniel if he were alive today."

  Mason's voice falters. I squeeze his hand. He clears his throat. Like a man fighting invisible demons, he goes on, and I do what I can to stay at his side despite all the fear churning in my gut.

  This can't change a single thing.

  He'll still be the same man after I hear all of it.

  No matter what, I vow to stay by his side.

  Unless he's another Jack in disguise...

  I shake the thought off as Mason gains the courage to continue, telling myself that I can't see the shadow of my ex in every dark place. Jack is dead. It's time to face new romances in my life without his presence looming over my shoulder.

  "We were sixteen when Dan got sick. It was leukemia."

  A haunted expression crosses Mason's face, and for a moment his hand loosens from mine enough that my vision fades away. He hastily corrects himself, twining our fingers together tightly, the squeeze of his skin against mine beating back the darkness and uncertainty that's become a part of my daily life.

  "I should back up," Mason says. "Tell you about Dan, who he was. He was a daredevil. His mother was Cherokee and his father was a race car driver. No one ever told him 'no' and lived through the fire he spit in their face. There was a whitewater rapids near his house with a tire swing on an old tree near the shore, and he was always the first kid to jump off it every spring when the thaw came. I never knew anyone braver."

  Thinking of Mason in the middle of battle, how he's faced countless blades and terrible powers, I tell him, "You're brave."

  "Not like Dan was." He shakes his head. "Cancer changed everything and nothing. His mom wanted to wrap him up in blankets and keep him inside. His dad... his dad wanted to run away and pretend it wasn't happening. Dan wanted treatment. He got everyone in town and then some to sign up for testing, to see if their bone marrow was a match. It wasn't enough. None of them could cure him, fix him.

  "Then the cancer got worse..."

  I can hear the things Mason doesn't say: watching a friend get sick. Learning how real and impossibly close mortality is at such a young age. I didn't lose anyone close to me when I was a teenager, so I can only imagine how it must've felt to watch someone so young weaken and die.

  Because I'm sure that Dan died.

  The thing I don't understand yet is what Mason had to do with it, and why he blames himself so much that he's afraid telling me will change things between us.

  "Anyway." Mason clears his throat, sounding pained. "It's funny how the past can overwhelm you even years later, isn't it?"

  "You don't have to keep going if you're not ready," I reassure him, despite the burning curiosity inside of me. "Whatever happened, I can wait to hear it."

  "No. I want to tell you. It's only fair. I know your story, after all."

  Him and half the world. Even Dr. Phil has talked about me stabbing Jack to death. I'm pretty sure Law and Order: SVU had a special episode inspired by my first kill. It would be impossible to hide it, so I've had to learn to live with the brand of killer next to my name.

  "So. Like I said, Dan got worse." He takes a deep breath in, then out. "The cancer weakened his immune system. That and the chemo—I'm not an expert, but it seemed to drain the life out of him more than his diagnosis. Dan grew weaker and weaker. Until one day, they admitted him to the hospital and wouldn't let him leave. Infections were ravaging his system. There was no hope coming... the chemo wasn't working, and a bone marrow match hadn't shown up. His parents and sister were told to prepare for the worst."

  I can't imagine. For someone so young to lose so much all at once—it's impossible to reckon with. We all take our health for granted until the day it's taken from us, and by then it's too late to appreciate our good fortune.

  Probing him, I ask, "What happened next?"

  "He invited me to visit him. Alone. Without his family in the room." Mason's voice grows hollow, his hand reflexively squeezing mine like he's looking for comfort and courage to push through to whatever he needs to say next. "I knew something was up, I just hadn't figured out what it was yet. No... no, that's not true." He shakes his head, takes a shaky breath in, a grimace forming at the corners of his mouth. "There was a part of me that knew, and went anyway. God forbid me, but I didn't tell anyone. I just did what he said."

  Mason falls silent for a moment, as my mind starts to put pieces together, forming a horror show of intuition. It's hard to ask, "What did he want, Mason? Your dying friend."

  "For all of it to end. For his life to end." He closes his eyes, and I don't need to be a mind reader to know that he's back in that place, where someone he loved asked the unthinkable of him. "I didn't want to do it, but I couldn't say no. He begged and pleaded with me. Pointed out that he had weeks left, that he was just going to die of an infection in the hospital, and his parents wouldn't let him
check himself out. He was afraid of going into sepsis or a coma and being brought back as a vegetable... he looked me right in the eyes and told me I was the one person he trusted to do what he wanted. Dan was my bravest friend, my most vibrant—he didn't want to waste away on a ventilator, shitting himself into a bedpan. So he told me to help him. How could I say no?"

  I can picture it now, and wonder what I would've said if Eve asked the same thing of me. "It was his choice, Mason. That doesn't sound like killing to me."

  "It was, though." His gaze is bleak as he turns to me, his eyes rimmed with red even though no tears have fallen from them. "There were other options, things I could've done instead. If I'd just told someone... but instead I helped him get out of his room, up to the roof, and I... I pushed him off."

  Eyes closing, he sighs as if a great and terrible burden has been lifted from his shoulders—and put on mine instead, as the judgment falls to me.

  Mason adds wryly, "Dan didn't want to be suffocated to death by a pillow, you see. He thought going out flying through the air would be better. And he didn't have the strength to jump off the roof himself. So he made me promise to do it, and... to get away without being caught. Fucking hell, Ellen, that's exactly what I did."

  "You were just a kid."

  "Not that much of one. I knew what I was doing. And you know what the worst part is?"

  I'm afraid to ask, but I can't turn away from the way he's showing me all of himself. "What is it?"

  "Later that same week, Dan's parents were notified that he'd gotten into an experimental study. There was a drug—one with promise, that helped a lot of people with Dan's type of leukemia. A bunch of kids who enrolled in the study lived long enough to find a donor whose bone marrow matched theirs, and they were cured. But not Dan. Because I killed him."

  A hollow feeling rings out inside me, like the bell emptying the white room of all thought. I want to tell Mason it's okay, it wasn't his fault—but it isn't and it was, in the end. He made a choice, and he'll have to live with never knowing what would've happened if he hadn't made it.