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Aunt Marche had meant well. She only wanted to remove the spell the principal had put on me so the veil on my eyes would lift, and I could See. But Marche, the High Priestess, was too powerful for her own good. As well as removing the spell that fixed me as Sweet Dumb Chloe, she removed the veil on my eyes, letting me see the supernatural creatures around me. Then she went a tiny step too far and removed another veil by accident; a barrier that wasn’t ever meant to be lifted.
Some people might call it a gift, but being able to see people’s thoughts was just an extra layer of torture on my already-overloaded psyche. It sickened me, and it made me more dangerous. Nobody on this earth had ever had this ability, and nobody ever should.
It made my job easier, though. And, once my mission was over, I’d remove myself from this plane of existence. Problem solved.
I was almost done. There was one name left on my list, and I’d left him for last for a couple of reasons.
First, he didn’t live in one of the major cities like most of my marks. He lived in the middle of nowhere—in a little town hidden between the California Badlands and San Bernardino National Forest.
That’s why I was here, getting drunk, numbing my unbearable pain in a dive bar. I was on my way to Castlemaine to kill the last person on my list.
There was one other reason I’d left him for last. Out of all the men I’d murdered in the last two weeks, he was the one who was most likely to kill me first.
He was the man who trained me.
There was an odd poetry to it all. I’d started with the man that built me; the man who put the monster together. And I was going to finish with the man that taught the monster how to kill.
Chapter Four
Cherry filled up my glass again. “Don’t puke on my bar,” she muttered. “And if you’re not gone in an hour, I’m throwing you in a cab and sending you back to the valley on your own dime.”
She was worried about me again, and she hated me for it. She didn’t want to have to protect me. She couldn’t even protect herself.
I looked up at her blearily. Someone unfamiliar suddenly appeared in her thoughts. A child—a little girl, seven or eight years old, maybe. Someone she loved more than life itself. An innocent girl who was no longer in her life. Her child?
I peered closer at the images swirling in her aura. Yep, it was. Cherry had a kid.
It was easier to watch her thoughts now that I was so drunk; I could view them more dispassionately, like I was watching a drama on TV. Cherry had a little girl who had been taken away from her, and she wanted her back desperately.
She couldn’t get her back, though. She couldn’t protect her daughter. The square-jawed monster rampaged through her thoughts, and Cherry shoved her daughter away from him.
Maybe the monster was a metaphor for addiction or something. I’d already clocked the old track marks on Cherry’s arms.
“Hey.” She tapped the bar in front of me. “You hearing me, Anna?”
“I’ll be fine,” I slurred. I was really seeing double now. Sweet Chloe could never handle her alcohol, which was ironic considering Child Assassin Chloe could out-drink a sailor at twelve years old. Being able to function while wasted was important; it was something I’d trained for. I’d lost count of the number of times I’d been drugged almost unconscious and still managed to pull off a job successfully.
New Chloe hadn’t managed to build up a tolerance, yet. I was grateful for the small mercies. The screaming in my head was quiet for now. At some point—as soon as the storm died down a little—I’d stumble outside and go to sleep in my car. It was only another hour or so to Castlemaine. I’d make the drive easily in the morning. Then, either I’d kill my mentor, or he’d kill me.
I wasn’t sure which one I wanted more. Both, preferably.
A weird hissing noise jolted me out of my fuzzy thoughts, and I glanced behind me, almost falling off my stool in the process. The werewolves were bellowing with laughter. One had lifted the corner of the blanket covering the cage on the table and was poking a plastic knife at the animal inside.
I caught a flash of bright-white feathers. What was that? A chicken? A duck, maybe?
Why did a bunch of werewolves have a duck in a cage in this bar?
One of them saw me looking. He caught my eye and leered at me. I was having trouble focusing now; the edges of my vision were blurry, but even from across the room I saw his thoughts projected in his muddy-green aura. He imagined himself walking up to me, turning me around roughly, yanking down my jeans, and holding me down on the bar, one hand fisted in my pretty blonde hair. He visualized taking me from behind while his friends watched and hooted with laughter.
I’d seen worse. My stomach lurched, and I turned back around so I wouldn’t have to look at him again.
One more to go. One more name on my list. After that, then I could pick fights with werewolves and try to get myself killed.
The thing in the cage let out another odd hiss; my ears pricked up, but I forced my curiosity down, and didn’t turn to look. To my chagrin, I heard the squeal of wood on linoleum—the sound of a chair being pulled back—and a man’s voice muttering something to his friends.
The others guffawed loudly in response.
I sighed. It sounded like the werewolf who I had accidentally made eye contact with was coming over to chat with me.
