Infinite Assassins: Daggerland Online Novel 2 A LITRPG Adventure

by Peter Meredith

  He paused in the darkened foyer, a gun in both hands, listening, his nerves taut and his muscles ready to spring. Music was playing in one of the upstairs rooms; it was loud, but not so loud that it covered up the sound of a couple having sex.

  This pleased Roan. It would make the killing easier. He ghosted through the foyer and out into the spacious living room. The entire first floor was dark except where light seeped from beneath a door down the hall from the living room. The guards would be sleeping away from Arching and his mistress. If there had been servants quarters, they’d be there, instead they were in the guest bedrooms.

  As Roan left the living room, he picked up one of the throw pillows on the couch and walked directly to the room with the light beneath it. There was no reason to pause or hesitate. Roan wasn’t going to change his mind; he was there to kill. Holding the pillow in front of him as if it were a shield, he opened the door.

  One of the guards, a lantern-jawed hulk glanced up. His eyes widened when he saw Roan. Too late he reached for his gun. Roan raised his from behind the pillow stopping him. “Where are the other two?” he asked in a whisper, shutting the door behind him. When the man hesitated, Roan said, “This is your only chance to live.”

  “One’s on patrol. One’s across the hall and the last is upstairs outside their door.”

  “Good. Turn around and get on your knees, and realize this: you’re not fast enough.”

  The guard slowly turned, all the while craning his head around. “I told you the truth.”

  “I didn’t,” Roan answered as he pulled the dagger from its sheath and cut the man’s throat. The guard choked on his own blood as he knelt with red hands, clutching at the five-inch gash. Eventually, he slumped to the side and gazed dully at Roan until his eyes dimmed of life.

  Still, Roan didn’t feel a thing. Not a second of remorse. The man had seen his face; he had to die. It was as simple as that. And besides, this was what the assassins were all about. “Live by the stab in the back, die by the stab in the back,” he said as he crossed the hall, still holding the pillow and the knife.

  Guessing that the room was in the same formation as the last, Roan burst in with the dagger cocked in his fist. The guard was on his stomach under the covers—he didn’t stand a chance as he simultaneously reached for his gun and stuck out a defensive hand. Roan landed on him with all his weight, pinning him so that his target couldn’t move. He stabbed the man eleven times, each with purposeful intent, the first five to the neck were to silence him, the next six to the torso were to kill him quickly.

  “Now there are only three,” Roan said, looking up to the ceiling where the sex noises had picked up in volume.

  Chapter 42

  Center Island, New York

  Roan was a bloody mess. He looked like something out of a horror movie and he felt like it as well. He felt mindless as well as soulless. Sheathing the dagger, he picked up the pillow. It would be his silencer, if one was even needed. Arching and the woman were going at it like something out of a porno.

  For some reason, the crudity of it got through and made him cringe. It would be his pleasure to shut them up for all time.

  First, he would have to deal with the one remaining guard. There was a main staircase in the center of the house. It was wide and carpeted with a deep plush. Roan went up like a wraith, unseen, unheard, and filled with an all-consuming hate. His hunger for vengeance nearly overcame his assassin’s instincts.

  The guard sat on a folding chair thirty feet down the hall, too far to just begin shooting. The pillow would throw off the trajectory of the bullets and a sure kill wasn’t guaranteed. He had to get closer, only it was a dead-end hall that was extremely well lit. No disguise in the world would get past the guard’s sharp eyes.

  If he couldn’t get to the guard, he would have to come to Roan. Though he couldn’t resort to such simple ruses as calling for help or making noises that would induce wary curiosity. Roan had a better idea. As none of the guards had used ear pieces or radios, he guessed they communicated by phone.

  He slithered back down the stairs to the main floor and hurried back to the guest rooms, where he grabbed one of the guard’s phones. It was a Droid and had a dot configuration as a password. It took Roan only three tries to break the code which was nothing but a Z pattern.

  Pulling up the texts, he saw that there was an ongoing group message between four rather crude men. The guards, no doubt.

  Roan typed, Hey, I thought I heard something outside. But lights still out. What’s going on?

  He hurried through the house and back to the stairwell before he wrote: I heard it again. Why isn’t anyone responding? When he hit send, he could hear the last guard’s phone buzz.

  A second later, a message came, I’m good. Where’s Jack and Lar?

  IDK. I swear I heard something in the house this time. Do you hear anything?

  Closer than expected, the guard’s phone buzzed again as it received Roan’s message. The man was falling for the trap. Roan could picture him slowly heading towards the staircase, staring down at his phone, reading instead of paying attention.

  Roan pulled the Sig and came up the stairs and did indeed catch the guard just looking up from his phone. He jumped in shock as Roan kept advancing, the pillow in front of the barrel of his gun.

  “Who are y…” he asked as Roan fired twice from seven feet, knocking the man off his feet. He thought the gunshots were loud, but the sex went on and on in the other room.

  The guard was still alive and reached feebly for his gun. Roan knelt on his chest, pinning the arm. He brought out the knife. It was as bloody and horrible as Roan was. The man opened his mouth to scream and Roan sunk the dagger deep into his throat. It was a bad way to die.

  “Sorry,” Roan said and actually felt a touch of sympathy. He tried to bite down on the feeling, but it remained. “I’m losing it,” he said to himself, sheathing the dagger and slipping it into the back pocket of his slacks. His desire for vengeance and his hatred could only stand so much bloodshed, and it was already waning. He wasn’t truly like Corvo or Chandler or Tarranon. He wasn’t a true assassin.

  “Two more and I’ll be done.” They would be the easiest. Their “love making” was going full tilt and now there was no need to be quiet. He could kill with impunity. “With justice,” he corrected.

  Walking to the door, he touched the knob and found the door unlocked. Opening it, he paused in the doorway as his eyes tried to adjust to the darkness and his ears to the sound. Something was out of place. The music was thumping as were the sex noises, but the bed was still. The blankets were tented but unmoving. His assassin-honed reactions were faster than his mind and he was diving away from the door before he realized he was walking into a trap of his own.

  A canon-like gunshot went off and there was a stab of lightning from the dark. Roan was hit in the chest and left arm by something that had the kick of an elephant. He went sprawling, stunned and shaken, unable to breathe. His blood mingled with the blood of his victims, which in its way was its own poetic justice.

  Hurt as he was, he struggled to bring his own gun to bear only he was too slow and before he could the woman he had seen earlier had her foot upon his chest and had a double-barreled shotgun pointed at his face.

  2—

  Curls of grey smoke crawled out from the inside of one of the barrels and was gently sucked into the unfired barrel. He tried to pull his eyes from that second gaping black hole of death, but could not. He would have stared into the bore until she pulled the second trigger only she removed the gun from view, knelt on his chest just as he had the last guard. Instead of stabbing him in the throat as he had she took his guns and kicked them away.

  When she stood, she seemed like a giant to Roan and now he had trouble tearing his eyes away from her towering over him.

  “Look at you,” Arching said, stepping into Roan’s view. He still wore the same suit and his smarmy look hadn’t changed. “Look at you, all bloody and gross. Did yo
u really think that a level one assassin could really take me out? Please. You’re an embarrassment is what you are. I invented the neural coupler. Did you think I would not notice one with a GPS unit stuffed inside?”

  Roan could barely breathe just then and couldn’t respond. Arching enjoyed watching Roan struggle. He knelt and daintily touched wet blood on the side of Roan’s face. “You would never have beaten me, Agent Roan. You are too weak, too…good.” He laughed. “I watched you every step of the way while you were in Daggerland. I watched and I laughed as you thought you were succeeding. As you thought you were getting closer to me. It was all just an illusion to get you here. To get you lying on my carpet bleeding to death.”

  He sighed, contentedly. “You see this was all a set-up; a great big surprise.” He produced a vial of blood from the inside of his coat. Roan knew whose it was before Arching said, “Poor Amanda’s blood. Sad. The story that will be leaked to the police is that you killed her in a rage and then came for me.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Roan said. He could breathe better now, but his voice was only a whisper.

  Arching leaned closer. “Are these really the last words of a dying man? Son of a bitch? Come on, you can do better than that. Make it count! Don’t you realize that every charge against me has zero chance of succeeding? That should rate more than ‘son of a bitch.’ Come on. This is for posterity. The dying words of the last man to stand up against the Infinite One should be better than ‘son of a bitch’.”

  Roan closed his eyes and summoned all his strength before mumbling a few incoherent words.

  “What was that? Dianne, I can’t hear a thing with that ridiculous movie going.” She left and seconds later, the porno that had been playing was turned off, as was the thumping music. “That’s better,” he said. “Now, what shall it read on your tombstone?”

  “Who said I was dying?” he asked. Roan wasn’t dying. He should have been. Arching had outwitted him yet again. Roan had been fooled by the music and the movie. He had been fooled by the ignorance of the guards, who had been heartlessly sacrificed. And he had been fooled by his own arrogance in thinking he was a bad man, a real assassin.

  Road had truly been a fool. At the same time, Arching was proving with every second that passed that he was just a man, one capable of mistakes. To start with, he had put his trust in Dianne. On the other side, she was a frightfully powerful witch—not an assassin or even a fighter.

  The shotgun she carried had not been loaded with buck shot which could take down a hundred and fifty pound deer, but with bird shot that was designed to kill ducks without turning them into a flying casserole.

  When her first shot had struck his ballistic vest, it had taken a hell of beating but had stopped most of the shotgun blast. Because of the proximity of the shot he was bleeding and probably had a broken rib or two, but he wasn’t dying.

  At first Arching looked confused that he wasn’t; then he looked alarmed and tried to pull away. In one fantastically quick move, Roan grabbed him with one hand, reached around with the other and pulled out his dagger. He had moved with a dexterity that few could match and Arching, for all his talk was not one of them.

  Before he could squawk Roan had the blade a centimeter into his flesh. It took an act of will not to drive it deep. “Stand up,” Roan hissed.

  Slowly, Arching stood, his face grim and lined. “You will regret this. I can guarantee that.”

  “Actually, I’m going to enjoy this. I’m going to enjoy this immensely.” Arching’s blood was already trickling onto the collar of his thousand-dollar suit when Dianne came back to stand in the doorway, the shotgun at her shoulder. Ten seconds of silence passed between the three of them as each calculated the odds of survival.

  Arching must have realized that his were the slimmest. “Shoot. Kill us both,” he said, in a surprisingly calm voice. When she hesitated, Arching actually smiled. “Don’t worry my child. This was all foreordained. I will come back and when I do, it will be as a true god.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” Roan said. “Put down the gun. It’s not too late to save yourself.”

  She shook her head and sighted down the barrel. “I do not take orders from the likes of you,” she said. “I am the loyal servant of the Infinite One.” She pulled the trigger.

  3—

  She was indeed the loyal servant of the Infinite One; she was also an idiot. Her monologue, brief as it was, gave Roan all the time in the world to prepare himself to dive out of the way when she pulled the trigger. Just like in Daggerland, he “felt” the shot coming and thrust Arching forward as he dodged to the side.

  Arching’s head exploded like someone had stuck half a stick of dynamite in a soft cantaloupe. His corpse dropped with an ugly thud as Roan scrambled for the Sig Sauer Dianne had kicked away.

  She tried to reload the double-barreled shotgun, something that was easy and quick to do when wearing a bandolier, but when the shells were shoved down into pockets of too-tight jeans, it took a second too long.

  “Don’t,” Roan said before she could close the break. He had the Sig pointed straight at her forehead. Arching had been correct about a good many things. Roan wasn’t an assassin. It had taken everything he had to kill those men in cold blood and even though he hated the drow with a fiery passion, he didn’t think he could shoot her when she was technically unarmed.

  Slowly, deliberately, she closed the break. Now she was armed. He even waited as she hauled the gun up to her shoulder as if it were a cannon. Only then did he put two into her head, knocking her off her feet and spraying the wall with blood.

  Groaning, Roan got to his feet and gazed around at the scene. It looked like a war zone. It was horrible and yet he had seen worse. Far worse. Still his eyes teared up. He cried for Amanda and for himself. His life as he knew it was over.

  There were sirens in the distance. Even if he wanted to, he didn’t have time to scrub his presence from the crime scene. His blood was on the carpet and on the wall. The bullets from the gun would match Covington’s Sig and she wouldn’t cover for him and he wouldn’t ask her to.

  His life as an FBI agent was over. He would forever be a criminal. It hurt to think that this was true, but he had broken the law and in a way, he deserved to be hunted and if he got caught, he would deserve the prison sentence he received.

  “And I would do it all over again,” he said. He had stopped a killer, maybe the deadliest killer that ever lived. And it was likely that with the information he had discovered on Corvo, Chandler and now Dianne, the FBI would be able to round up the rest of the Infinite Assassins.

  It was worth the sacrifice to his career. He could live the life of a hunted man, satisfied with that and although Amanda’s death burned his heart with a pain that almost sent him to his knees, he could at least start his life as a fugitive knowing he wouldn’t be charged with her murder.

  Covington would know what know what the vial represented and with Arching’s prints on it, she would pin her death on him. In the great scheme of things, it wouldn’t matter, but she would do it anyway, Roan was sure of it.

  After a final glance around, Roan waked down the plush stairs and stepped over the guard, who was just beginning to blink his eyes. The man started reaching for a gun that Roan had taken. When he realized that he was unarmed, he whispered, “Don’t kill me.”

  “I won’t,” Roan said, stepping over him. “I may not look like it, but I’m the good guy.”

  The End

  Author’s Note

  Thank you so much for reading Infinite Assassins I sincerely hope that you enjoyed it. If so, I would greatly appreciate it if you would, please, take the time to write a kind review on Amazon and your Facebook page. I will also choose my favorite reviews and send the reviewers a signed copy of the book as a thank you.

  Peter Meredith

  PS If you are interested in autographed copies of my books, souvenir posters of the covers, Apocalypse T-shirts and other awesome swag, please visit my website at https://www
.petemeredith1.com

  PPS A special thanks to the LIT RPG Society on Facebook!

  PPPS—Thanks also to my editors for doing such a good job: Joanna Niederer, Tracy King, Michelle Sewell, Lisa Hillman, and Toshia Yates.

  Yes, there will be Daggerland part 3, but while you are waiting, you’re probably wondering what to read in the meantime. You could go with my Undead World novels that have over 2,000- five-star reviews. A lot of people seem to like them. Or you might try my new series: The Gods of the Undead, but be forewarned: there is an obscene amount of blood spilled and skin flayed and love lost and all sorts of sadness. On the other hand, there are also heroes and heroines, bravery and sacrifice. And there’s adventure that spans the world as two people fight the undead from New York to darkest Africa.

  As many stories do, it starts small with just one man.

  The Edge of Hell

  Gods of the Undead, A Post-Apocalyptic Epic

  Prologue

  Alex Wilson

  Officer Alex Wilson had to pull his cruiser over. He didn’t need to, he had to. It didn’t matter that he was in the middle of a southbound lane on the FDR Drive. He had to see and he had to hear for himself what was happening.

  He pulled over and cut the siren. He left the lights on, whipping around, cutting the night in blinding red and blue. At first, all he heard was the insane babble of the dispatchers—in three years on the force, he had never once heard fear in their voices. Normally, they spoke in lackluster tones that suggested they were bored to tears with their jobs.

  Now, they were screaming into their mikes, ordering units from all over the city to converge on the bridges that spanned the East River, connecting Queens to Manhattan.

  “What’s happening?” someone demanded over the radio. “Dispatch, say again, what’s happening?”