Luc Bertrand- American Assassin

by A. F. Grappin

  But it had kept Luc very far away from him, in Virginia Beach.

  Even though the roads were deserted, Luc knew he had to keep his eyes on them. The snow was thick in the air, reducing visibility to nearly nothing. Still, Luc couldn't help but check his car's clock every few breaths. The sense of something counting down had settled on him, so heavy he felt his posture suffering from it. Was it midnight he was afraid of? Dawn? Or was it simply the worry that no matter what time he reached the nearby city, he would still be too late?

  At 11:53 PM, he merged onto I-64 and hit the gas pedal just a little bit harder. Gritting his teeth against the storm working desperately to make his car go into a spin, he sped up even further. It was still a creep compared to how quickly he wished to be going. But wrecking his car and possibly injuring himself wouldn't help Thomas.

  The huge thud of an impact came so suddenly Luc almost didn't react at first. Only once it registered to his frantic mind that something big and heavy had struck his windshield did Luc slam his breaks. That was a mistake; the Audi lacked the traction he needed to stop properly, and after a harrowing eternity out of control of his car, Luc found himself motionless, facing what he thought was the wrong way. He had no idea if he was in a lane, the shoulder, or the median. Another daring motorist could come along at any second and plow into him. He'd had to stop, though, despite how it curdled his blood. The way the obstacle had hit his windshield, he'd wanted to dismiss it as an insane bird out for a blizzard-flight. It couldn't be, though. He was sure he'd just hit a person.

  Since no oncoming traffic had hit him yet, he pressed his luck and put the Audi in park. He left the ignition, heat, and lights all on, though, if for no other reason than to help him find his way back to it once he'd found what--or who--he'd hit. The whipping, negative-degree-wind-chill air stung his face as he stepped outside. Even his skinsuit seemed daunted by this storm. Or maybe it was that his blood was frozen. A brief survey of his position told him he'd spun out into the shoulder and that there didn't seem to be any other cars coming in either direction. Slim chance of being hit as he backtracked to find what he'd collided with.

  A slim figure was getting to its feet. Its form was so lithe that Luc at first thought he was right. This was some sort of bird that had gone crazy and ventured into the terrible weather. A great crane or heron, he thought, and never mind that they were rare enough to see in summer, much less this time of year. But the figure straightened, and Luc saw the arms and hands, the human knees, the shoes, and the image of wing sprouting from his head.

  No, from his hat. The man had wings coming from a metal cap that covered his hair. They appeared to flutter along with the wind, eager to take up flight again.

  "Who the fuck are you?" the man asked. His voice seemed older than it should have. Before Luc had a chance to respond, the young man leaned forward, squinting to see through the blizzard. "Artie?"

  "Excuse me?" Luc said, not really pausing to consider his response before giving it. The young man seemed unharmed by having just been toppled by a moving car.

  More startled, and sounding as if he was uncertain of his own ears, the young man said, "No, you're not Artemis..." The edge had left his voice, but it came back twofold as he straightened himself. "Mortal, why hast thou summoned the Winged Messenger, the Divine Guardian of Doors and Roadways, the son of Zeus and Maia, the--"

  "Merde, I didn't summon you. You flew into my windshield," Luc interrupted. He turned and started back to the Audi, determined to get to Thomas, wherever he was. He was not ignorant of Greek mythology, and if this man really was Hermes--which Luc hated to admit was likely--then the god could take care of himself.

  "Wait, mortal! Hold on!" The two sentences sounded as though they came from two different mouths: the first harsh and commanding, the second the plea of a confused teenager. "Who are you? Where are you going? Why am I here?"

  "Luc Bertrand, to Newport News, and I don't have a damned inkling why you were out in this storm," he said sharply over his shoulder. The Audi's door opened, spilling a wave of warm air that made Luc sigh with relief. He slid into the car, but before he could even buckle his seat belt, the other door had opened and the wing-capped youth had slid into the passenger seat.

  "Whoa, nice! Cushy," Hermes said, wiggling his bottom into the leather seat to get slightly more comfortable. "I feel like your name is one I should know." The wrathful god veil had completely dropped. If not for the stereotypical Greek god getup, the young man could have been any teenager, holding his hands up to the heating vent.

  Not wanting to waste the time it would take to argue for Hermes to get out, Luc put the car into drive and got himself turned the right way down I-64. If there was nothing else he'd learned from Insidia, it was that the gods came and went as they pleased. There was no driving them away until they were ready to go.

  "Well if you don't recognize my name, I can't help you. Buckle in."

  "What's in Newport News?" Hermes asked.

  "Thomas Statford. I think."

  "Oh, shit, the Keeper?" Out of the corner of his eye, Luc saw the young messenger god go pale. "Um...is that why I'm here now? Oh, shit!"

  Hermes grabbed the steering wheel and jerked it to the side, nearly putting the Audi into another spin. Luc barely caught a glimpse of who they'd almost hit. A bow-wielding, fur-clad man howled after them, but Hermes shouted at Luc to keep driving.

  "Dude, that was Ullr. You do not want to mess with Ullr when he's mad. And especially not in his own domain. Can you go any faster?"

  "Who's Ullr?" Luc asked.

  "Norseman. Hunter. Ice-god, to them. And he has the Viking temper. If his arrival here was anything like mine, he's definitely pissed."

  "But you don't know why you're here," Luc said.

  Hermes was quiet for nearly a full minute. "If something is going on with Statford...that may be the reason why. And if Ullr is here, too, then..."

  "Then what?" Luc asked.

  "Then I think...this might be more serious than we originally thought."

  Luc dared take his eyes off the road long enough to glance at the god. "And... what did we originally think?"

  Hermes had scrunched his eyes shut and didn't appear to have heard Luc. But he seemed to be concentrating very hard on something, so Luc let him be. A few moments passed, gaining Luc fewer miles towards Newport News than he liked. When Hermes spoke again, it was in a language Luc didn't understand. Even so, he knew swear words when he heard them.

  "I can't get back home," Hermes said softly. Real regret and worry tinged his voice.

  "What does that mean?" Luc asked, adding, "For me? For mortals?"

  "I'm...not totally sure yet, but it can't be good. Your friend was... growing very frustrated with us of late. He's the only mortal I know who may have brought about an event like I suspect happened."

  "And what is that?" Luc felt like he and the messenger god were circling around something that would clarify it for Luc, but they kept dodging the answer. It was getting frustrating.

  "I think we fell. All of us."

  "Fell? Is that why you hit my windshield? You were falling?"

  "It's a figure of speech. Fell from grace, fell from Heaven, that sort of thing. It might be literal for some of the Conclave, but other have nowhere down to fall, if you understand my meaning."

  Luc pondered that for a moment. "The underworld?"

  "That's just for starters. If we're all here, then we're coming out of the woodwork. Everywhere. The air, the sea, the earth. Everywhere." Hermes paused. "Man, that hurt."

  "Falling from..." Luc searched his mind for some more Greek mythology. "Mount Olympus?"

  "No. I mean, yes, that hurt, but I was talking about hitting your windshield."

  "Oh."

  They rode in silence for a time. As they drew closer and closer to Newport News, Luc noticed the god in his passenger seat growing more and more fidgety.

  "What's wrong?" Luc asked.

  Just like a ruffled teenager, Hermes shru
gged his shoulders. A moment later, he must have decided holding back wasn't in his best interest. "It's all too... real, here. I mean, my shoulder actually hurts from hitting the windshield. And I feel... deaf."

  "Deaf? We've been talking fine."

  "I mean to, like, everything. My followers. I mean, I know I'm not a big shot like Jesus or Ganesh or, hell, even Thor after the movies with the Australian guy started coming out, but it's not like I don't have followers. But it's like their voices are muffled, suddenly. I don't know where they're coming from, or what they're saying."

  Luc braked gently to take a curve a little less insanely. "You're saying you're human."

  "No, I don't think so. I mean, I never was. I'm not now. It's just... dampened. Like my divinity is gone. My...me-ness. Okay, maybe not gone, but dimmed."

  "And you think Statford will know what happened?"

  Hermes went tight-lipped and looked out the window. A few breaths later, he said, "I... don't think I can face a pissed off ex-Keeper right now. I can say you're headed in the right direction. Warehouse district, I think. But, uh... I'm out." Without any warning, he flung open the passenger door to the Audi and tumbled out of the car onto the street. Luc skidded as he brought the car to a halt. Hermes was nowhere to be seen.

  After a few moments, he continued driving. The warehouse district. He was nearly there.

  It didn't take long for Luc to recognize one of Statford's vehicles outside one of the warehouses. Rather than rushing in, the way his gut was telling him to, Luc fell into professional habits and inspected all sides of the structure and parking lot around it. Another car Luc didn't recognize was parked around the corner, out of sight of Statford's. It made him relax to know that someone else, likely another friend--possibly even Statford's mother--had been with him. Then a heartbeat passed, and the worry renewed itself. If things had gone well for Thomas, then why had the gods fallen, as Hermes had described it?

  Limbering his every muscle, ready for any possible ambush, Luc entered the warehouse. Immediately, the sickening, sweet metal smell of blood assaulted him. Luc was no stranger to the smell, but this was more than even he'd ever come across before. His stomach churned.

  Against all good sense, he called out Statford's name. His path took him through a small, windowless office and then into a main warehouse floor. Shelves had been placed in the least efficient method possible, creating walls that blocked him off from the interior of the room. Trying to ignore his raising heart rate, he did another circuit of the building, this time tracing the outer wall from the inside. Except for a single entrance in the shelves, the room was completely blocked off. Dreading what he was going to see, Luc followed the path.

  The scene that finally greeted Luc at the center of the warehouse had him on his knees and fighting a heaving stomach. All the deaths he'd brought about, those peaceful and those decidedly not, had not prepared him for a visual like this.

  Susana Statford lay dead on an altar. A red robe covered her, but some few parts of it told Luc that the robe was supposed to be white. The color had come from what Luc could see right from the beginning: a gaping hole in her chest, where her heart should have been. Dozens of men in crested headdresses, clearly some sort of cult attire, scattered the floor around the altar. Sharp, bloodstained knives were at hand for each of the bodies. And every one of them had a hole in his chest. Dozens of human hearts lay about the floor and in dead grips.

  Thomas was nowhere to be seen. Yet there was evidence he had been there.

  Whatever had happened, Luc had been too late. And now Susana was dead.

  "Thomas? Thomas!" Luc called. His voice sounded hollow as the sound waves hit the shelves and corpses. It just died without reverb or depth. "Thomas!"

  He didn't know how long he called, but there was not a whisper of an answer. His throat scratched and grew raw. For a good handful of minutes after his last call died, he stared over the room of death, searching for a break or variance in the corpses that might be his friend.

  Nothing caught his eye. He considered picking his way through and doing a more in-depth search, but his stomach was lurching, and a new, nagging voice was speaking in his mind.

  Again. You did it again.

  Feeling again like he might throw up, Luc turned from the scene of massacre and fled.

  17

  He'd done it again. He'd fucking done it again. A half-dozen time zones, 7,200 kilometers, and a decade hadn't changed him. The horrible mistake he'd made that had lost him Gilles in Vienna had now lost him Thomas. More than just Thomas. Susana, too. TJ. And more than that. His own self-respect.

  Because he'd done it again.

  Luc had allowed his vengeance to blind him to what was truly important. He'd promised he'd investigate Thomas's issues personally. How abruptly he'd fallen into old habits, caring only about himself to the detriment and damage of others. His obsession, which had apparently been sitting close under the surface, had made him abandon everything else that mattered.

  "I hope the answers were worth it," he mumbled to the night air. Rather than be torn away by the freezing wind, his words seemed to linger in a clump in front of him, echoing in a way only he could hear.

  Esme was alive.

  His sister was alive.

  He still doubted what he'd seen. But it had been her? It couldn't have been anyone else. The girl he'd grown up with, competed against, been overshadowed by, and often resented for her capabilities and energy had been in the women before him. As much as he wanted to, he couldn't doubt it. There was enough difference to show she'd trained. She'd grown and polished her abilities. But it was Esme.

  Too much memory pounded at him from all sides. It had been years since Luc had thought seriously of himself by the professional name Gilles had given him. Stopper of Thought. After Vienna, Luc had mostly given up that perception of himself. It had been a shield to protect himself from the trauma of his past. Now, though, he would have given anything for the old trance that overtook him when he carried out a contract. It had been a release, a block to the pain. Blood and death in the present masked over the old murders like a heavy air freshener in a smoker's car.

  His parents, their throats slit while they slept, with Luc's baby sister Inez in bed with him. His younger brother Henri, just a boy, also murdered before his body burned along with their house.

  He'd never seen Esme's body.

  Esme was Order of Hell.

  His mind seized on what he decided had to be a fact. Esme was a member of the Order that the Guild didn't acknowledge. But she was assassin trained. Frantically, his brain began working to put the final piece into the puzzle.

  Esme was an assassin. Had she been the one creeping in the hall outside his room, the movement and sound that had alerted him to something not right that night? Could it be?

  Had Esme murdered their family?

  Henri was first. And easiest.

  A wave of dizziness struck Luc so hard he had to sit down. The windswept concrete was cold, even through his skinsuit.

  It all made too much sense. Maybe she hadn't been Order of Hell from the beginning. She'd only been twelve when their family...

  When she murdered our family.

  A final exam.

  Bits and pieces of memory began to sort themselves out like an anagram suddenly revealed. Every Order's final exam involved killing someone important to the assassin. For Luc, it had been his lacrosse coach, the last man from his old life he'd known and respected as a mentor. He'd had to assign some horrible final exams for his students, but luckily, most of them had no family left. The Guild took in a lot of orphans.

  But not every initiate was an orphan. The exception...

  Esme's final exam had to have been to kill their family. All of their family.

  And she'd used a fire to mask it. She'd destroyed their home.

  Had she, perhaps, been testing into the Order of Destruction? It would make sense. Destruction viewed targets as blemishes in the fabric of life that had to be dest
royed. They weren't afraid to turn their work into a spectacle.

  They also brought in young initiates and tested them young. A twelve-year-old Destruction assassin was not an unusual thing.

  Luc put his face in his hands. It all made sense. It fit too well and threw so much back into question. The ache of old hurts returned, scars he'd thought he'd finally accepted as part of him. But now those answers he didn't have stung like lemon juice being rubbed into a gash. And they brought with them what-ifs.

  He'd already known the Order of Hell and the Knights Templar worked with one another. If that partnership predated Luc's own life--which was highly likely, considering how old both organizations were--then...

  What if Ahimoth, a Templar who had years ago tried to recruit Luc into their number, had done so in an attempt to save Luc from the oncoming slaughter Esme was planning? It was a stretch, he thought, but a possible one.

  But then, why had the Templars and the Order of Hell both tried to kill him since then? Because he'd refused their invitation, of course. He'd escaped their influence and become a prominent member of not only the Order of Release, but of the Assassin's Guild itself. He'd found himself guarded by capable assassins and, eventually, by a goddess.

  Another piece of Luc's past clicked into place.

  I saw Esme in Vienna.

  Luc felt sick. The incident that had been the final wedge between himself and Gilles. Against Gilles's advice, Luc had gone to meet with the person who had been sending threatening notes to him, who claimed to have been the one to kill his family. The voice of the person he'd met had belonged, he'd thought, to a woman. It had sounded vaguely familiar, but not so much so that he could put a name or face to its owner.

  That was because Esme had grown up, but he'd thought she was long dead. It had been her. Who else could it have been?