Up ahead there were corpses of the dead assassins that Cameo had killed, decaying in the meadow; their bodies dusted with snow.
Cameo brushed past her with Opal and the others trailing behind her.
Chapter Eleven
THERE WAS A DARK FIGURE gazing down at the black waters of the Avon. At that height, it looked like a curving black ribbon, he thought as he took a step back from the tower window. Chadvick surveyed the room that Cameo had lived in at Wick’s tower for...years; he wasn’t certain quite how many exactly. He was a man in his mid-twenties himself, and he remembered his parents telling him to stay away from the tower even when he was a child. So perhaps even twenty years. He had seen her on occasion wandering through Lockenwood.
He opened up her dresser, which had a few items in it, and proceeded to tear it apart, looking for any stashed weapons or information, but there was nothing within. Chad had seen her often enough to question whether she was really human. It wasn’t just her pale eyes that made him wonder; it was the way she moved, almost too fast, too silently. She wasn’t just a powerful assassin; there was something odd going on. And he certainly had the time to ponder who she was, being that his parents had died when he was young and left him nothing but a life on the street, and the ability to watch her from the rooftops. Another gift of being penniless and hungry: great agility, which allowed him to get away with a great deal of theft. He really had the bird’s-eye view of everything going on in Lockenwood.
Chad sat down on her bed for a moment; it had been left in disarray, and he noted that there was gunpowder spilled on one of the blankets. He took it upon himself to rip the mattress apart in a quest to discover what was inside. Any clue to Cameo’s origin and the hope of possibly finding some sort of cash diminished in a rain of feathers.
He did know that Cameo liked to drink, and she had her flask refilled at the tavern at least once every day. She also spent a lot of time taking the coach out of town. Sometimes she returned by coach; sometimes she would just reappear. He assumed she took the ferry back, but now as an adult, he wasn’t so certain.
Taking a lantern with him, Chadvick poked his head into the fireplace, but it was pretty bare as well.
He fingered through the books in her bookcase, but like most everyone else in Lockenwood, he couldn’t read, so he tossed each one onto the ground after he thumbed through it, looking at the bold woodcuts.
He really envied Cameo that tower room; sleeping in a barrack with thirty bloodthirsty rogues made rest quite elusive for him. That was why he had decided to leave that night and embark on the job at hand, which was killing or capturing Cameo and bringing her, or her severed head, back to Wick. Easy enough.
* * * * *
Cameo stood just outside Toppers, a tavern at the end of Haberdasher Street in Lockenwood. From there a person could get quite a nice view of the palace, up on its hill-fort to the right, and straight down the road was the assassin’s tower sitting on the canal. She took a deep breath as she stared at Wick’s tower, now a little over a mile away, and exhaled her steamy breath into the cold air. Now that her flask had been refilled only a few minutes ago, she gulped it down without hesitation, studying the posters plastered all over the front of the inn.
The rickety door swung open.
“Whatever are you doing out here, my dear? Standing in the rain?”
“Yeah.” Her voice was deep; she seemed captivated by the wanted posters.
“Why don’t you come inside, into the ... relative warmth?” Opal said as he assessed the shanty that passed for a tavern. The large, green sign outside with the name of the place on it certainly proclaimed that Topper was at least quite proud of this endeavor into entrepreneurship.
She tilted her head to the side, then looked over at him, “Have you read these?”
“No,” he said, rain dripping from the ends of his hair. “Is there something I haven’t seen before? A fair rendering of my face, perchance?”
“No,” she smiled, “but we have been implicated in the assassination of the king.”
“What?” Opal hastened to get to the posters now. “When did this happen?”
“Something strange did happen when I was in Lockenwood talking to that other vampire. Maybe it happened that night.”
“You were actually here?!” he hissed.
There was no reply.
“That’s regicide. Do you know what they do to people who kill kings? We could be drawn and quartered.”
“Well,” she said, never taking her gaze from the tower, “that Francois Mond character seems to have gotten away with murder, murders really, without ever being caught.”
Opal paled.
“And he incited that whole revolution. If anyone deserves to be drawn and quartered, I suppose it’s him, and he’s pretty much gotten away with it all.” She took a sip of whiskey and added, “He’s probably sitting around the table right now with his family having a lovely dinner.”
He looked down at his newly acquired gloves. “He was a boy when that transpired; he has to be an old man by now.”
“Old?” She smiled, “Not that old. I remember when it happened—”
“Oh, you do?”
“Uhh ...,” she glanced over at him getting rained on in all of his dandy finery. “Well, certainly...I mean, I would’ve been a little girl, of course.”
“Very little.”
She grinned at him, “Yes, in the scheme of things.”
“That’s very cryptic of you.”
She caught his eye, “I would think you remembered the revolution yourself. You must’ve been...what? A teenager, right?”
“Uh, yes...yes, nearly. I think you’re aging me a bit, though. I’m going back inside for some brandy. Are you coming?”
She watched the rain running down his hair and into his face. There was a fog rising off the icy ground, capturing them there in some strangely beautiful moment. “I guess.”
Inside was a dimly lit single room. The walls were unpainted and coated in a slick black stain from pipe smoking. Cameo ordered a bottle for the table from Topper, the rather decrepit owner.
“When are we going?” Lorelei said in a hushed voice to Kyrian.
The lad looked around the little room at a few locals. “Won’t be too long.”
Her body was turned in his direction.
Opal sat down beside her with a shot glass. “The lad bothering you?”
“No,” she grumbled at him.
Kyrian looked over at Opal with a smile on his face.
“I’ll see where our dinner is.” Kyrian walked over to the makeshift bar.
Opal checked his appearance in the back of a spoon.
“Did you want some of this, Lorelei?” Cameo offered the bottle of wine, but the girl refused it. “We could leave her here. It’s fairly safe.”
“Here?!” Lorelei whispered harshly.
Cameo poured herself a drink. “We aren’t planning on dropping you off at your house.”
“Fine, leave me here.”
“We could leave Kyrian with you,” Cameo suggested.
“Great,” Lorelei said sullenly.
The assassin pulled a clay pipe from a canister at the center of the crude table. “When I was your age, my sister was murdered too—”
“Save it.”
Opal held his breath for a moment.
Cameo’s face darkened. “Sometimes it’s so hard to be a good person.”
“I don’t care. Kill me. Who cares at this point! My whole life is ruined,” she trembled.
Kyrian took a step toward the girl.
“Say away from me, you buffoon!”
Opal reached for her hand, “Please calm down, my dear—”
“And you,” she jumped back from the table. “You are all the things Bel said! Some sickly libertine—you disgust me more than that zombie!”
“Sickly libertine? Bel said that?”
“Shut up, little one,” Cameo warned.
“I hate you all!”
<
br /> The crowd took their drinks and moved further from the group.
“Please, no fighting in Topper’s,” Topper pleaded.
“Yes, let’s all leave this place in one piece,” Kyrian said cheerfully to Lorelei, trying to lift her mood a bit.
“One piece?” said Topper. “I should hope so.”
“Ah, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“If you hate us so much, feel free to leave us,” Cameo opened the door for her and as she did so someone hit her in the back of the head.
Opal leapt to his feet, pistol in one hand and a rapier in the other.
There were two Association members standing over Cameo. One had his pistol aimed at Opal, and the other had his pistol resting on the side of her face.
“Come along quietly,” one said.
The dandy looked over his shoulder at Kyrian, then back at the two men. Sighing, he set the weapons on the table.
* * * * *
“Yeah, yeah, the money’s yours if you can catch up with Chadvick.”
“How much did you say was in it for us?”
“Well now, is that really important, Rance? You and Veth just kill him and you’ll be adequately rewarded.”
The back of Cameo’s head felt like it was going to explode for a moment, then she opened her eyes. She was indoors. The room around her was dark, there were animal heads hanging from the walls, and there was a great, thick smoke clinging to the antlers of these poor dead animals.
“Well, would you look at that. She really has white eyes,” one of the assassins commented.
She realized she was lounging on one of the extremely gauche couches in Wick’s office. She was in Wick’s office? She felt herself panicking, trying to sit up, then she fell back down again.
“Well, well, well, Cameo,” Wick readjusted her weight on the opposing couch. “I have to admit I never thought I’d find such an imposing person as yourself brought low by a mere blackjack.”
She turned and found Black Opal and Kyrian with pistols pressed against their backs. The expression on Opal’s face seemed almost numb. Perhaps he was expecting that their days in the sun had run their course.
“You left the girl behind,” Cameo said flatly. The pain at the base of her skull was beginning to subside, but she wondered how long it might’ve lasted if she had been merely human. She thought briefly on the knock to the back of the head that Opal had taken when he fought Gail. Obviously he was a bit more stoic than she had given him credit for.
“Girl?” Wick muttered, intent in getting the tobacco from its pouch into her pipe. “Little Lady Vanvinck? She was here. When I discovered her identity, we made certain the Duke’s, I mean King Avamore’s guard took her straight home.”
Cameo hadn’t realized just how connected to the king Lorelei had been. She wondered if Opal knew...then she wondered why he hadn’t told her if he did know.
“Tsk, tsk, can’t have the nobility involved in things like this,” the witch said as she lit her pipe. “Can we?”
“The King of Shandow is now the King of all Sieunes?” Opal spoke out of turn.
Wick signaled for one of the assassins to remind him who was in charge. Veth happily obliged by kneeing him in the kidney. This sent Opal to the floor, then he was scraped back up and forced to stand just as he had been a moment earlier.
Cameo flinched, and Wick saw it.
“Yes. Avamore is the new king,” Wick said nonchalantly. “Much easier on the eyes than his brother was, at any rate.”
“What do you want from me?” Cameo said.
“Politics too boring for you, assassin?” Wick chuckled. “Well, leave it to Black Opal to find interest in the King of Shandow.”
He met her eyes, defeated.
She smiled at him. “Yes, Black Opal always was interested in politics.”
He opened his mouth as if to speak but Wick stopped him with the wave of her hand.
“Don’t tire me. I’ve heard you speak before, Opal...many times,” she said cryptically. “I’m too old to listen to you pull out your soapbox now. Open your mouth one more time, and I’ll have you beaten half to death, then I’ll hand you over to Avamore myself for the bounty.”
Cameo looked at Opal, wondering what the old woman was going on about.
Black Opal lifted his chin. He pursed his mouth indignantly.
“Black Opal,” she mocked. “Where did you come up with that one?”
Cameo raised an eyebrow after witnessing the little exchange.
Pindray, Wick’s secretary, appeared with a decanter and several glasses and set them down on her antique desk with much care.
The old woman motioned toward Cameo.
“A glass, Cameo?” Pindray offered.
She took the brandy glass and drank it down. “Another.”
Pindray sneered as he watched her pour the drink down her gullet and ask for seconds. “Certainly, have as much as you would like.”
Cameo polished off the second one neatly. It was a very good brandy.
Wick also seemed delighted that she had chosen to imbibe.
There was definitely some sort of poison in it, but she shook it off as she felt the liquid burn her throat. “Why did you bring me here? Are you collecting bounty?”
The witch and her secretary watched Cameo from behind the desk silently until Wick nudged Pindray.
“More?” He offered her another glass. “We also have cake.”
“Why don’t you just hand me the bottle of poison?” Cameo hissed.
A cup of liquid hit her in the face suddenly, and she rose, angrily wiping her clothes.
The cup itself rolled over toward the prisoners and came to rest at Kyrian’s feet. On one side of the container was the symbol of the rising sun.
“Holy water?” Kyrian murmured.
“Edel was right,” Cameo said to herself. All those years she thought that Wick really knew something about witchcraft, about her being a zombie...she had no idea who Cameo was. She didn’t know as much as Cameo did about the supernatural. She had given her too much credit, given her too much power for far too long.
One of the assassins hit Kyrian in the head, and for a split second she saw a trickle of blood before she moved Kyrian out of the way and turned the pistol on that assassin.
There was a pistol shot; it seemed to bellow ten-fold in the small space, and Rance slumped against the door.
Veth, who was caught off guard by her supernatural speed, aimed his pistol at her as soon as he realized she was standing next to him.
She grabbed the barrel of the gun and pushed it from her as he pulled the trigger.
On the other side of the room, the ball caught Pindray in the chest and he collapsed, spraying the wall behind him in blood and gore.
Opal hit Veth in the back with a dagger.
Cameo jerked the dagger free before Veth was able to touch it.
Wick hefted her girth over Pindray’s wrecked form and made a dash for the back door that led to her bedroom.
Cameo was suddenly standing in front of her.
Wick staggered backward and looked down at the Cameo’s bloody fist pressed against her stomach. The dagger had entered with such astonishing speed that she didn’t feel it until she was looking at the hilt.
The expression on the assassin’s face was stern.
“Free of you,” Cameo uttered bitterly as she jerked the blade free and let the woman fall.
Wick’s body hit the floor with a dull thud, then Cameo turned to Opal, “Politics?” she began, intrigued.
Black Opal removed a rapier from one young assassin and tested it’s balance. “You came to his defense and not mine?”
Kyrian staggered into her, dazed.
“Kyrian? Are you all right?”
He put a hand to a gash on his forehead that was bleeding into his eye.
“It doesn’t look too bad.” Opal handed her a rapier and Kyrian a handkerchief, “It’s just going to bleed a lot.”
“I’m fine,” he sulked
. He glanced over at the corner of the room toward the men, now lying bloodied and dead.
Cameo swung the rapier a couple times. It wasn’t her favorite weapon, but it would do. Opal was busily going through Pindray’s pockets.
“Politics?” she said, leaning in.
He met her eyes. “I think she most likely had me confused with someone else.”
“Oh, I see.”
He fixed his jacket. “And just why didn’t you come to my defense anyhow? Why, why his?”
She looked over at Kyrian who was wiping blood out of his eye. “That’s a rather sarcastic tone. Has it been such a hardship traveling with Kyrian?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You are terrible at avoiding questions.”
“You have blood on your face.”
“So do you.”
“Well, I...” She glanced down at Wick’s dead body. The floor was littered with the slain bodies of her enemies, their blood pooled here and there. It was a gruesome sight. Cameo looked over at Opal again, his interest was still piqued. He was still waiting attentively on her reply, looking incredibly handsome and jealous. She wiped a drop of blood from the corner of his mouth, and then without warning she leaned in and kissed him. A light, gentle kiss.
Opal pulled her closer into a deeper kiss.
“Uh... what was I saying?” She pulled away.
“Somewhat exhilarating in here,” he said.
“You like my dark little world?”
He smiled mischievously. “You know that I think you’re wonderful.”
Kyrian grumbled in disapproval as he leaned up against a wall. The bodies of the two dead assassins were right in front of him, their eyes staring out of dead sockets, and the pair of them just lying there pale and lifeless.
Cameo glanced over at Kyrian with a sudden realization that he was in the room, then turned back to Opal, smiling. “You smell good.”
“Thank you,” he breathed as they parted.
She grinned at him.
There was a shade standing in the doorway, and as she stepped over the bodies, it moved down the corridor with the same stride as a human.
Cameo the Assassin Page 18