by Jack Porter
I was planning to kill him. Every step I was able to take nearer to him increased my odds.
But sooner or later, he would either come into view, or he would step out into the open. When he did, it would be to kill me, and I would have to move fast.
“Don’t worry,” I said to the girls. “It’s nearly over.”
Tim barked a laugh. “You’re right about that!” he yelled, and that’s when the shadow stepped out to confront me.
As fast as I could, making use of every last ounce of my Azrael-enhanced reflexes, I dropped and rolled to the right, bringing my rifle to bear as I did. A howl of bullets thudded into the ground where I’d been barely moments before, and I squeezed my trigger.
My aim was true. The shadowy figure I hoped was Tim caught two in the chest and one in the throat, and that was it for him. He made a choking noise and sank to his knees, and I made sure of the deal. I let off another burst, the rifle feeling like an extension of my own arm.
The shadowy figure’s head exploded in multiple directions, and he toppled over.
I paused for a moment, feeling surprise and relief. I’d done it. Me, an untrained nobody with my only advantage being demon-enhanced attributes. I had taken out a team of killers led by an assassin with military training. It was almost unbelievable, and I couldn’t help but wonder what I might be able to do once Azrael was able to power up even more.
At that moment, the whole world seemed to be filled with possibilities. If I could accomplish this much with so little from him, what could I accomplish with more?
And this was only the start. Physical enhancements were the least of Azrael’s skills. How long would it take to unlock others, whatever they were, and what then would I be able to do?
I felt like I could become a living god, striding the earth like a true titan, controlling the very elements with no more than my thoughts, answerable to no one.
With a sense of giddy anticipation for the future, I slowly stood up.
But the danger wasn’t over.
“Is there anyone else?” I demanded.
Of course, there was.
I didn’t even hear the bullet when it came. But I felt it. It hit me square in the chest and knocked the wind from my lungs. It was immediately followed by one, two, three more, and all of a sudden, I was no longer standing.
I was flat on my back, looking up at the sky, listening to the muffled sounds of Rachel and Sandy trying to scream my name.
Chapter 38
Fuck that hurt.
Somehow, I’d lost my grip on my gun. I could barely breathe. It felt as if I’d been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer.
For long moments, I just lay there, stunned, waiting for it all to end.
I couldn’t tell if my bullet proof vest had worked, or if it had let the bullets straight through.
All I knew was that Azrael was howling on the inside of my brain. “Get up! He’s coming! Stop being a pussy-ass bitch and move!”
But I couldn’t. All I could do was lie there, gasping for breath, and retch.
And then Megadeath#4 was looming above me.
It was my first look at the man. I hadn’t even seen pictures. He was shorter than me, almost, but broad and powerful, with a flat, hard face that he had darkened with grease. He stared at me with an expression of disappointment. As if he’d expected something more.
“Just a pretender, after all,” he grated. “You don’t even look like a killer.”
I hated him with a passion. Even now, even after I’d come so close to beating him, he still felt he could pour scorn my way. If I’d been able to, I would have sprung back to my feet and done my best to tear out his throat, regardless of the gun he held pointed at my face.
As it was, it felt like Thor’s hammer was resting on my chest.
I knew by then that the vest had done its job, but the bullets still had impact. If I was to survive this confrontation, I would end up with a bruise the size of my entire chest. But I didn’t think any of the bullets had got through.
Motivated by my anger, I finally managed to draw in a deep, shuddering breath.
At the same time, I tried to sit up, but Tim raised a leg, placed his foot on my chest, and pressed me back down to the ground.
“Still trying to win, are you? Well, a bulletproof vest won’t save you this time.”
With terrifying calm precision, the Syndicate’s leading killer took careful aim at my face. But he didn’t yet pull the trigger. He had more to say.
“Oh, and I’ve changed my mind again. Once they watch you die, I am going to kill your women as well.”
In the darkness–I’d somehow lost my night vision goggles as well–I watched as Tim’s flat, humorless face broke into a nasty grin. He waited half a heartbeat longer, just enough to make sure I understood there was no hope left for me, and pulled the trigger.
A few days and a million years earlier, I’d asked Azrael about the benefits of putting all my points into luck. He had counseled against it on the basis that luck was a transient thing, and skill was consistent and ongoing. He’d said that luck would have to roll in my favor.
And, as he’d so often proved to be, he was right. The points I’d put into strength, endurance, and stealth had kept me alive until then, where luck wouldn’t have been able to.
But I’d still dropped a bunch of points into that attribute, raising it to something useful.
I would never be more pleased I had done so than I was at that instant when, instead of blowing my face into the dirt, Tim’s gun jammed.
He uttered a curse and very quickly moved to unjam it, but the brief moment of hope was all I needed. Tim was unbalanced with one foot on my chest, and I did the rest. I grabbed him by the shin and rolled as hard as I could, taking Tim down on top of me. Then, using every ounce of my speed and coordination, I drew another of my knives from its sheath at my back, and jammed it into his skull with all of my strength.
Tim made a noise of surprise. It was as if he couldn’t believe he’d been hurt. He tried to struggle, even with my knife buried in his brain, although much of that may have been no more than reflex.
I snarled at his flat, humorless features, wrenched my knife free from his skull, and jammed it back in place two more times, forcing the hardened metal tip through the bone and into the soft tissue of his brain.
Then, just to make sure, I wiggled the handle of my knife so that the blade inside turned his brain into mush.
All of the strength left Tim’s limbs. Just like one of his men had done, he coughed once, then relaxed, the light leaving his eyes.
For a moment, I stayed as I was, arms and legs entangled with this those of the killer. I took several deep breaths to let go of my rage, and started to relax.
Tim was dead.
With deliberate malice, I wrenched my knife out of his skull one last time, and cleaned it on the man’s clothing.
“I choose option three,” I snarled at him, and then stood up over his corpse, holding my arms wide and turning in a slow circle.
“Is there anyone else?” I asked the night sky again.
This time, the only answer was silence.
I had to admit, I was relieved that no one took the opportunity to shoot me in the head. I didn’t know if there were more men still around, but I didn’t care either. All that mattered was that Tim was dead, while the girls and I still lived.
After what felt like more than enough time, I lowered my arms back to my side and knelt to take Tim’s thumb, because I didn’t have one of those from my victims yet.
Then I headed over to untie the girls.
Chapter 39
Rachel and Sandy were both incredibly relieved, not only that they had survived, but that I had managed to find a way to defeat the Syndicate’s best killer. Together, we made our way back to Big Bob’s mighty beast of a vehicle, and I drove the machine back to my apartment at a sedate, grandmotherly pace.
When we got there, we spent considerable time cleaning ourselves up
in the shower. At first, I tried to give the girls their space since they’d just been through a traumatic ordeal. But when both of them got in my shower and then left the door open, they’d made it clear I was to follow.
When I walked in, the bathroom was already steaming, and Rachel and Sandy were standing under the water naked. Quickly stripping of my clothes, I joined them in the shower, and we laughed as we all got soapy.
Then, when we were clean, we made it to my bed. But just barely.
Sandy pushed me backward until I was on my back. Then she straddled my face. I tasted her as I felt Rachel move down to take me in her mouth. With a groan, I sucked on Sandy while inserting two fingers into her. She rode my face then, and for a few moments, the three of us were lost in panting and moaning.
By now, I had much better stamina during sex, so when Rachel lowered herself onto my cock to ride me, I held on even after she came. In fact, Sandy got a turn, too, and climaxed very quickly. After she finished clenching around me, it was my turn, and I flipped her over and took her from behind, thrusting fast and hard. Smiling deviously, Rachel scooted beneath Sandy, and they began to tentatively kiss. But that was finally too much stimulation, and I came with a grunt. Surprisingly, Sandy cried out once again, her walls spasming around me as she gripped the sheets beneath us. And I made a mental note about that position for the future.
And then we got drunk. At some point, we must have dragged ourselves back to bed because the next morning I woke up buried in naked, female flesh.
It was a new day, but it was far from business as usual. Somehow, Tim had learned where I lived and who I was. I couldn’t risk that happening again, so I set Rachel to work to figure out how it could have happened. And I sent her a second task as well.
To the victor go the spoils. Such was the way of things. I had my car from Bob but hadn’t taken anything from Steve Daniels.
No one had come looking for Chad yet, but I thought it was only a matter of time. For my part, I had my story ready about him breaking under pressure. And, since there was no body to discover, I felt reasonably sure I was safe. None of his so-called office buddies had even stopped by to check in on him, which made me wonder how good of friends he really had, and if everyone he’d known had recognized him for the douchebag he had been. I supposed I would never have the answer to that question, not that it mattered anymore.
And as for Tim–he owed me everything.
I set Rachel to locating Tim’s property. And then I logged into the Contracts app, more out of curiosity than anything else.
What I saw there surprised me. Not only did the Steve Daniels job display as completed under my name, but there was a new entry in the Vendettas section. Apparently, Tim liked to keep everything neat and tidy. There were ways of doing things within the Syndicate, and that apparently meant no random killings.
Tim had taken out a vendetta on me, Simon Kingman. And, just like the other contracts, this one was marked as complete. But instead of Megadeath#4 being listed as the victor, my name, SimonSaysDie, was in its place.
Somehow, the Syndicate knew what had happened. And if there were any consequences to come, only time would tell.
Except, there was already a message in my inbox.
Out of curiosity, I clicked on it, expecting some missive from Tim from beyond the grave. Instead, it was from someone whose name I didn’t recognize, but who was clearly a high-ranking person from within the Syndicate.
Effectively, they were my employer.
The note was simple and straightforward. “Congratulations on your recent success,” it said. “I would like to meet with you at your earliest convenience. Please reply to this message and my assistant will schedule a time.”
I sat staring at that message for longer than I should have. To me, there were several possible reasons why a Syndicate boss would want to meet me in person. But, they all boiled down to one thing: my status was improving in leaps and bounds.
I decided not to respond to the message right away. I had other plans for that day and figured I’d earned a little time to myself.
One of the coffee date women had got back to me. Heather. The one who I thought might be interested in taking things a step further. I was going to meet her a second time today, and maybe she would end up being added to my growing harem.
I grinned at the thought even as I felt Azrael’s approval in my mind. And this time, instead of putting all my points into practical attributes, it was time to do something for me.
I wanted to be a little taller. A bit slimmer. And instead of being no more than a collection of mismatched features, I wanted to find out what it was like to be handsome.
Keanu Reeves handsome. Or the guy who played that Witcher dude, Henry Cavill. It didn’t matter much to me, as long as it was an improvement on my current self.
I was moving up in the world and figured I should look the part.
And besides, it would make leveling up so much easier as well.
I couldn’t wait to see what the future might hold.
~End Book 1~
Thanks for reading! Simon has more missions on the way and more leveling up to do. Things are only going to get bigger from here. Even though Simon is a bit unconventional, he’s really a ton of fun to write.
If you enjoyed this book, please leave a review for it. It really does make a difference whether a series gets to continue, and one or two lines is all it takes to let other readers know about the book. Reviews are getting increasingly hard to leave on Amazon, so each one is valuable.
Beyond that, if you want to follow me, sign up for my newsletter on my website or check out my Facebook page. That’s where you be the first to see new release announcements and cover reveals.
Hope to hear from you soon,
Jack
Other books by Jack Porter
Wraith King (Amazon US link)
Wraith King 2