Cameo the Assassin

by Dawn McCullough-White

  Black Opal looked as if it pained him to do so, but he managed to mutter something like, “Sleep tight.”

  “Hmm, I get the bed.” She brightened and moved toward it.

  “You aren’t going to sleep so soon, are you, my dear?” Opal said, taking her hand in his.

  She turned and found his body in close proximity to her own. The ruffles of his shirt brushed against her chest as he took one more step toward her, which in turn forced her to step back against a wall. If he hadn’t been so very irritating lately she might’ve been vaguely interested.

  “Aren’t you tired?”

  He smiled, “Not at all.” He glanced over at the dirty white mattress. “How about it, love?”

  She raised an eyebrow. “How about ... what?”

  He smiled at her playfully, his hazel eye looked eagerly into her cold gray eyes then found the sad line of her mouth.

  “You don’t want me.”

  “Oh, I assure you that I do.”

  “No.” She pushed him back with a little more force than she had intended slamming him against the wall on the other side of the room. “You don’t.”

  “You’re... very... strong.” Opal picked himself up off of the floor, not quite offended. He brushed off his pants and straightened his jacket as if he had done this hundreds of times. “It’s that Kyrian, isn’t it?”

  Cameo moved away from Opal.

  “You want someone young and pretty.”

  “You are all younger than me!” She growled as she spun around to face him.

  Opal sobered. “What?”

  “You are all younger than me.”

  “Not I—”

  “Yes, you too, Opal.” Her eyes were dark, “And why are you so down on Kyrian? Is it so terrible that I chose to spare his feelings a bit? That I wanted an abandoned house on the outskirts of town for us to hide out in for a while, rather than butcher some family and take their things? Eat their food? That I spared him some of that horror? Is that what’s really bothering you, Opal? That I showed Kyrian an ounce of mercy, an ounce that I wish someone had shown me when I was his age? Instead I got—” she broke off.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  He glanced at the floor for a moment, taking all of that in. “He is still very attractive....”

  Her irritation returned anew. “It’s funny. I always thought you had a thing for Bel.”

  “Uhh.... What a silly idea,” Opal blushed. “Anyhow you’re missing the point.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so.” She sat down on the end of the mattress, then shot him a look of warning, which made him stop in mid-step, as he had been following her lead to the bed.

  “Well, then....” he said.

  “Yes, I’m going to sleep.”

  He sat down on the dirty wood floor. “If you had butchered that family, then we might have some nice furniture to get some sleep in.”

  She laid down. “That’s not really the face you want me to show you, is it?”

  “That tomb was a bit more pleasant,” he grumbled, unbuckling his belt and laying it beside him.

  Cameo hissed something about being out of alcohol.

  * * * * *

  She fell into sleep almost instantly. The mattress may have been old and moldy, but it was better than the ground. About an hour into her peaceful rest, she felt something jab her in the side, through the mattress. Exhausted, she dismissed it and tried to ease herself back to sleep, but then she felt it again, then all across her back fingers were prodding her. She turned onto her right side, blaming it on an uncomfortable part of an old mattress, but the prodding continued, under her back and legs, and then under her head as well.

  She sat up and could see fingers poking through the linen from within the mattress.

  “What the—”

  Then a hand broke through, and another—

  Cameo drew a dagger.

  Haffef’s entire body pulled through the mattress, and yet the mattress was undamaged.

  “Master!” she gasped.

  “How dare you!” He roared and woke Opal from his spot on the floor.

  “How did you find me?” Her voice was that of a child’s.

  He took the blade from her and launched it through the window behind him.

  The dandy leapt to his feet, rapier in hand.

  Haffef turned to look at Opal. The intruder’s face was ashen, and his hair touched the ground as he spun to meet the dandy’s gaze. Haffef looked like a man who had just been cleaned and dressed for his own funeral.

  “Ah, the man you’ve been traveling with. I see.” When he spoke, Opal could see he had fangs.

  For a moment, Opal looked from Cameo to the vampire bewildered.

  “You’re not planning on using that toy on me, are you Black Opal?”

  “You...know me?”

  “He’s reading your mind,” Cameo warned.

  Haffef turned to face her now. “This does not look like Lockenwood. You have not done as you were told!”

  She backed away from him as he crept closer.

  “Why, you have a whole collection of new friends, don’t you, Gwen? Do you know what could happen to them if you don’t do as I wish? I could kill them, Gwen. Every...last...one of them, and then I could kill you, too.”

  He seized her neck and shook her violently.

  “Not very likely,” Opal swung his rapier so fast Cameo didn’t see it connect with Haffef, but a moment later the vampire was just holding it in his hand. A drop of blood dripped down the blade. He grinned at Opal and tossed him to the floor with a flick of his wrist. He released her and was about to send the rapier across the room like a spear when Cameo tackled Haffef, and he knocked her back and sent her flying onto the mattress.

  Opal scrambled over to his rapier, which lay discarded near the vampire’s feet.

  “You dare attack your Master?!” He grabbed her by her hair and dragged her to him.

  Black Opal thrust his blade at the undead creature before him, but Haffef merely turned and looked deeply into his hazel eye. “Put your foot there,” he pointed to a spot on the floor in front of Opal. “Now,” his voice went from sheer anger to a rather lazy tone, “take that rapier, and pin it to the floor.”

  The highwayman was compelled to do as he asked. In one swift motion he drove the rapier through his foot and embedded it into the dirty, wooden floor.

  “No!” Cameo screamed.

  Opal gasped.

  Someone scrambled up the stairs.

  “I could have killed your little friend. You see, I can be merciful, Gwen. I have always shown you mercy now, haven’t I? Even though you were a nothing when I found you, half dead...clinging to life. And how do you repay me?”

  She couldn’t take her eyes from his.

  “You don’t do as I ask.”

  Bel lifted his pistol.

  Haffef turned around annoyed. “Put down that pistol, sit down, and be silent.”

  Bel set down the pistol, and sat down on the floor.

  “Forgive me,” she breathed, “I’ll finish the task—”

  “I know you will. Why you put yourself through all of this, I have no idea,” Haffef said.

  “Just leave them out of it, they are innocent.”

  “So?”

  “Please, Master—”

  He struck her face hard with the back of his hand.

  “Don’t touch her!” Opal wrenched the rapier from his foot.

  Haffef nearly laughed, “Thinking of attacking me again... you mutilated coxcomb?! You incendiary! You’ll die trying.”

  Cameo lunged at him again.

  Haffef took a swing at Opal, but she grabbed his wrist and forced his arm down, exerting all of her strength to do so.

  “Gwen, Gwen,” he chided her for her efforts and threw her violently into a wall, making a depression in which she hung for an instant and then slipped, lifelessly back down the wall, onto the moldy mattress, leaving a trail of blood behind her.

  Opal’s
eye widened as he beheld her face. Her jaw was turned at an odd angle. There were pieces of her scalp and blonde hair stuck in the broken wall ...

  “Who are you?” Kyrian’s voice was full of wonder as he crept up the steps.

  The minute Haffef met the boy’s eyes, he became translucent and waved as he slipped through the floor feet first.

  As soon as Haffef had gone, Bel was able to stand up.

  “Cameo,” Opal stumbled to reach her. “Kyrian, you’re a healer; you can fix her!”

  “I can’t.” The lad said wide-eyed as he walked over to her.

  “Yes you can.” Black Opal turned to Bel, “He did it before, he can save her.”

  “I can help you, Opal, but I can’t bring Cameo back to life.”

  Bel crept toward her shattered form. There were so many parts that seemed bent the wrong way. “She’s not dead! She’s still breathing!” He grabbed Kyrian’s shoulder and forced him forward, “She’s still alive—”

  “No, you don’t understand,” Kyrian said. “She’s not alive. She’s a zombie.”

  “What?”

  “I can heal you, Opal, but I never saved Cameo....She healed herself. She’s not alive, and she’s not fully dead.”

  “She’s a zombie?” Bel repeated, not able to fully grasp that concept.

  “An undead.” Kyrian supplied.

  Blood trickled from her mouth onto pale flesh. Her dead eyes stared, fixed, at the ceiling.

  “I can heal you, Opal, if you’ll let me.”

  Bel took his friend by the shoulders to steady him and sit him down but Opal slid to the floor unconscious.

  * * * * *

  Black Opal awoke on the floor in the pantry. He had no idea if it was day or night, but he had a fantastic view of the rat droppings under the bottom shelf. He touched his face a bit, self conscious of his eye patch which was missing.

  Kyrian appeared in the doorway. “I thought I heard you waking up.”

  Opal covered his left eye with a hand and tried to sit up with his right arm. His foot felt fine, but his body was more sore than he expected it to be.

  “What time is it?”

  “It’s morning, well, probably close to noon.” The lad stepped into the room with a cup in his hand. “Did you want something to drink? I can help you sit up—”

  “I’m fine,” Opal said, forcing himself into a sitting position. Now he was really able to see his foot, and it was completely mended. “You can barely see a scar....”

  “Oh, this is yours; it fell off when we carried you downstairs, after you passed out. Your boot was full of blood... I guess you were weakened by the blood loss- or the sight of it.” As Kyrian passed the patch back to him, Black Opal realized that he was no longer hiding the white orb, and he snatched the eye patch, and a little of his dignity, back from the boy.

  “Are you hungry?” Bel stood in the doorway. “ I went on a little scavenging mission last night and brought back a few things.”

  Opal didn’t even want to make eye contact with his old friend. He didn’t want to hear some lecture about Cameo right now. He kind of just wanted to lay down and die. “Yes, that would be admirable of you, dear boy.”

  Kyrian offered the water to him once again, and Opal took it, feeling a bit humbled by the situation.

  “You really are a healer. Perhaps I should have you take care of some of these scars,” he laughed bitterly as he motioned to his face.

  Kyrian looked at his face clinically, as if he were considering it, and smiled gently at Opal, “It looks as if it’s healed just fine. Very clean.”

  “Except that most of my body is scarred, and I can barely see. Thanks lad.”

  “You’re very brave. You took on that vampire....”

  Opal stared at the charm hanging around Kyrian’s neck, it was a pendant of the sun. “Cameo was the brave one; I was foolish. I nearly got myself killed,” he said as he handed the cup back to Kyrian. “Instead, Cameo threw herself between that monster and me.”

  “And she’s very pretty for being a zombie, too,” Kyrian grinned.

  “What in the world do you mean?”

  Bel crammed into the little pantry with the two of them and said, “Look what I have, some hard-boiled eggs and some smoked meat I borrowed from a smoke house. Can you believe that luck?”

  “Well, this is the country,” Kyrian volunteered.

  “All right, well, you’ll need all your strength, Opal, so eat up.”

  “I’ll go check on Cameo.”

  “Good idea, lad.” Bel dismissed him quickly and turned back to his injured friend. Only Opal noticed that boy winked at him as he scampered away.

  “That little letch!”

  “How can you say that? He just healed you.”

  Black Opal grumbled something else that turned into a groan as he reached for his shoulder pack. “Oh, how I detest that lad.”

  Bel retrieved his pack for him soberly. “How are you feeling?”

  Opal wondered if Bellamy was actually being serious for a moment. “Well, fabulous, couldn’t be better,” he flashed a smile.

  “Sarcasm from you, Opal?” Bel was genuinely surprised.

  “I’m not being sarcastic. I’m just ... hungry that’s all.”

  “Hmm. Well, once you’re feeling better, we can get out of here, anyhow.”

  “What do you mean?” Opal said.

  Bel brushed some loose soot from his jacket. “I mean we can get out of here.”

  Opal took a bite of an egg, “How is Cameo doing?”

  “Well, she’s a zombie—”

  “Don’t call her that!”

  Bel rolled his eyes. “You aren’t going to stick around for her, are you? We’re safer without her vampire friend close by.”

  He ate the food Bel found for him quietly.

  Bellamy watched Opal for a few moments in silence, then moved into the other room when it became apparent he was being ignored.

  * * * * *

  She watched, a soul caught in an empty shell as Haffef had vanished, then Opal passed out, and Bel and Kyrian carried him downstairs. The ceiling in the sparse room was made of plaster. It was white and bumpy, and pieces of it were chipped and dangling. She watched night become day. She could feel her broken jaw resetting itself, and her ribs reassembling within her chest.

  Kyrian appeared and looked into her eyes as if appraising the situation. He glanced at the wall and the hair and scalp she had left embedded there. With a bit of a look of disgust on his young face, he probed her hair to see what kind of mess he had been left with.

  She wondered if this was what her death would be like.

  The lad left, and the day wore on. She watched the changing sunlight streaming in through the broken window and lines of shadow changing the shape of the room a bit.

  Black Opal sat on the floor across the room from her; he seemed pained.

  Hours seemed only a moment to her, and when she was aware again he was gone. It was night again. Kyrian stood at the window, basking in the cool moonlight.

  Cameo clenched and unclenched her hands as the sensation began to return to them.

  The moon’s light shifted in the sky, and the lad was asleep under the windowsill.

  She touched her mouth and felt to see if she still had all of her front teeth. Her tongue confronted the missing and broken back teeth on the left side of her face.

  Early the next morning, Kyrian returned with a basin of water and a sponge, which he used to dab away some of the blood on her face.

  “I’ll do that.” Opal slid off his gloves and took the sponge from Kyrian.

  Cameo’s eyes stared up at the ceiling, milky and corpse-like. Her skin was pallid, with dried blood caked over her face. He dabbed her cheek with the sponge and the blood ran off her jaw-line, revealing a thin scar where her jawbone had broken through it only a day ago. He paused, feeling hopeful and yet horrified.

  Opal sat back and took a deep, uneasy, breath.

  “If you have everything he
re, I’ll get out of your way,” Kyrian said walking out the door.

  “Uhh...yes, that’s fine, lad.”

  Cameo’s eyelids fluttered.

  Opal wasn’t certain if he had really seen what he thought he had seen. He set the sponge back into the basin.

  “Cameo?”

  Her eyes looked at him suddenly.

  He nearly knocked over the basin and had to recapture it as it was sliding off the bed.

  “I’m sorry....” Her voice was raspy, and barely audible.

  “Oh no, no, no. I’m the one who is sorry.” He moved closer to her face. “I should never have picked a fight with your ... friend.”

  She exhaled a breath of laughter, which was all she could muster. “He’s not...my friend.”

  Opal smiled, “Yes, that was a joke.”

  Cameo touched the left side of her head. It felt clumpy still, and Opal pulled her fingers free.

  “It’s still healing,” he said softly.

  She lifted her eyes to look over at the wall. “I must be in bad shape this time.”

  He gave her a thoughtful look. “Your friend—that man—threw you into this wall. And by that I mean he literally threw you into the wall.”

  She looked over at the wall, there was a large hole, large enough for a human body where the plaster was missing now, and the wall was down to bare boards, covered in blood. Cameo realized that was what Opal meant, that was why she was lying there on the moldy mattress now. She’d been thrown with such a force against the wall, by Haffef that her body had spent a full day repairing itself... at least a day... She wasn’t certain of the time now. She sighed, “Remember when you asked me about abandoning the job that my Master wanted me to do?”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, here you go,” she said. “I guess he was upset.”

  He glanced down, remembering what that conversation actually consisted of. “I’ve been a terrible cad lately.”

  She closed her eyes. “You smell good.”

  “Well, that’s good, I suppose.”

  “I have no idea why you’re still here.” She looked up at him.

  “Oh, did you want me to go—”

  “No. I mean, you saw what my Master was,” she said.

  “A vampire.”