Bearly alive

23

Roman

If everything else fails in her life, Autumn could do well by acting, I have no doubt. Though, her little operation of turning humans into vampires seems to have ceased forever, so she could really go for it.

With Stella promising not to try and escape, since her promise is all I have seeing as the little minx turned out to be clever and resourceful the last time I locked her in the house, the vampire and I set out to catch a ghost. The Ghost.

The best way to do it, as again Stella of all people suggested, was to be genuine.

“Can’t she pretend she’s fallen back into her own ways and is trying to… turn people? That would get his attention right? If she was on his radar?” Stella had said during my brainstorming session. As Autumn clapped, excited and impressed, I remember grumbling something that made Stella go into the kitchen and start pulling s**t out of the cupboards, never coming to give another input.

Did it annoy me that I found her idea brilliant? Yes, it did, and even if we literally used the plan that Stella suggested, I'm not going to apologise for snapping at her when she voiced it. Maybe relying on her promise not to try and escape wasn’t such a smart move. I shove away the disappointment threatening to grow in me if I got home and she wasn’t there waiting for me. If she wouldn’t offer me a bite of whatever she managed to cook with the limited supply of groceries we are running on. s**t, I need to go shopping, I never planned to have to feed myself and Stella, not to mention the unwelcomed guest that’s now my bait for smoking out The Ghost.

And speaking of the fucker, he doesn’t disappoint. After only a couple of hours of Autumn trying to set up her new operation in the human town close to my house, I started seeing signs of him, and then, right when Autumn shook hands with her new client, I noticed the man’s hand clasping around the vampire’s a little too tightly. I didn’t miss her frown even from a distance, and it doesn’t take me long to put two and two together. That bastard is with The Ghost. He’s keeping her in position for a shot.

As the man holds Autumn, I check for anywhere that The Ghost could be hiding. Based on the way that man is facing, I get a pretty good idea of where my target is, so I used the comms system that the vampire and I are both wearing and tell Autumn to brace herself just as I deliver a single shot right to that fucker’s temple. Luckily the vampire is far from stupid because she used her other arm to help keep the weight of the body upright, so no one could even tell she was essentially shaking hands with a corpse.

But The Ghost did notice that his little plan didn’t go the way he wanted, so I now have a chase ahead of me which I am not in a mood for.

After trying to shoot at me and missing, then me trying to shoot him and barely grazing his forearm, I watch the figure I’ve been chasing being side tackled to the ground. Autumn moved like a shadow, I don’t think The Ghost knew what hit him. Unlike my bulky frame which is hard to miss in a chase, the vampire was practically invisible. She nearly got stabbed with another bloody stake, but I got there before it even touched her chest and removed it from her assailant’s hand. I almost removed his hand too, but I thought it wouldn't be smart with all the blood and potential yelling that might incur after. So I settled for a well placed blow to the head with the butt on my gun.

It didn’t take long to get The Ghost to where I found a good spot in a foreclosed house with no neighbours nearby. It’s the part that comes after that I don’t particularly enjoy, the getting information, accurate information out of them when they know they will die anyway. And especially someone in my line of business. We know the reality of our fate if caught by an assassin, it doesn’t matter if you give every bit of information you hold. You will still die.

He wakes up soon after we arrive and I start my interrogation, disappointed to put a face to the name. He’s a werewolf, but a low ranked one if he even had a rank. And as it turns out, I was wrong, and I really don’t like being wrong. Getting what I needed from The Ghost was f*****g easy and I didn’t even have to remove an eyeball.

It’s been four years of not being wrong about anything, my instincts never failing me, and then I got the job that required k********g Stella and the streak was broken. I have been wrong about her being an Omega, I have been wrong about her trying to escape the first chance she got, I may or may not have been wrong about the vampire and I was wrong about Alpha for a day Benjamin. He never did find out about Stella being a lycan, the fucker couldn’t care less about her. All he knew was that for some reason, which he didn’t find curious at all, the King of beasts wanted her. It’s no wonder he didn’t last long as Alpha. Or stayed alive for that matter if that didn’t strike him as odd.

Apparently, he was ballsy enough that when the King told his father, the actual Alpha of the Thunderbolt pack, that he wanted Stella, Benjamin jumped in and struck a deal. He offered up Stella in exchange for his girlfriend to come back to his pack. I connected the dots and remembered Stella talking about Margo. But the twist of luck that sealed the one minute Alpha’s fate is that Margo was very happy with her fated, one of the King’s Gammas. She was not interested in going back to the Thunderbolt pack, at least not to be with the Alpha of the week. Of course, that was a detail that the King of beasts didn’t find important enough to share with Benjamin, so loverboy was making plans to get back his chosen Luna, hence the cheap charade of sending Stella with the note to greet Margo.

Whether the bastard knew I was lurking in the shadows, waiting for the perfect opportunity to grab Stella, I couldn’t find out. The same goes for where he managed to get that piece of paper with the King’s markings. Honestly, I couldn’t care less about those details. This whole thing resembles a f*****g telenovela way more than I like and somehow it's even worse than The Ghost knew way more than I did. But again, Benjamin did narrate everything before he took his last breath, a poor attempt to save his life, I reckon. The Ghost should have learned from that, though I'm glad he didn't and instead in trying the same tacting as the bastard he killed. It will have the same result.

I finish cleaning my gun and my silencer and look for a plastic bag to dump the rags in. Even though we are in a human populated area, or maybe because we are in a human populated area, there wasn’t much chance for anyone to hear the gunshots, but I secretly like the discreet sound the gun makes when I pull the trigger and I have the silencer on. I shrug even though I’m not talking aloud, but the thing is, I enjoy my job.

The guy that is now the new owner of two bullet holes in the back of his head will probably argue that this hit wasn’t a job per se, but it was related to a job and he had always pissed me off anyway. I was just looking for a good excuse to kill him.

I will never admit it, but without Autumn I wouldn’t have caught The Ghost, nevermind kill him. As lazy as that fucker was, he wasn’t called The Ghost for nothing. You saw traces, proof that he was there, you had the body that never bothered to stage or clean of any trace that might back to him, yet he was never caught. Hence the name, I guess.

Walking back to the room where my fellow assassin met the Goddess, I see Autumn hunched over his cooling body. I furrow my eyebrow, not understanding what’s happening initially. Is she kissing him? I look closely and no, that’s not a kiss.

“For f**k’s sake, that’s disgusting.” I say, though squeamish is not something that would describe me as.

“What? I didn’t want all this blood to go to waste.” She lifts her head up, fangs still poking out while a few dribbles of blood outline her mouth. “I’m basically doing you a favour. He’ll weigh less and you can move the body easier.”

I roll my eyes like a teenager for lack of a better reaction, then turn on my heel and get all the crap that could potentially lead to me. I don’t need any humans or shifters to come knocking at my door with questions.

Autumn finds me a few minutes alter, looking a little red in the cheeks and with a smile that honestly gives me the creeps. She tells me that she didn’t leave any traces on the body, though I refrain from pointing out she literally bit into it and it’s practically a DNA haven. The Police in these parts of the country don’t see much crime, I bet they’ll light that body up like a Christmas tree with all the things in their arsenal. On second thought maybe we should take the body and burn it.

I go back to check the vampire’s handy work and have to do a double take. The smell of burnt skin is so pungent that I’m surprised I didn’t sense it earlier. I guess that’s what I get for being too tired and for choosing the worst moments to dissect things in my mind. I look around and there is no smoke, nothing to indicate a fire.

“Admit it, you’re impressed.” The blood sucker appears with a smug grin. “It’s acid.” She shrugs at my imminent question.

“Where did you even ge… You know what? I don’t give a f**k. Looks like it’s all taken care of here, so I’ll take my leave.” I shake my head and grab the plastic bag, then I start walking out. "I expect my fee to be wired into my account before I get home." I say before leaving the vampire behind.