by Amity Cross
“What do you care?” Lorelei asked, narrowing her eyes.
“I was just wondering who killed him.”
“Luckily for me he had a son ready to take over daddy’s business.”
“A son?”
“Damien Allaire,” she stated. “I have the code word that will allow me a meeting, and from there, I will be able to get to Lafayette.”
It sounded like Lorelei had it all wrapped up in a neat little package with a pretty bow. The instruction manual was set out for her in easy to follow steps, but she of all people should know that the best laid plans rarely went as they should. X had taught me that.
“Just say it,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“Say what?”
“Whatever you’re thinking. I can see you’ve got something to say, so just say it, Mercy.”
I took a deep breath. “You make it sound easy, like it’s just some random thing on a shopping list. There are no guarantees that once we get inside Allaire will want to play once he knows who we are. With or without the code.”
“I understand,” she spat. “It’s more than just walking in the front door.”
I didn’t even know how to begin with this whole stupid plan. No thought had gone into it at all.
“We need data,” I said, my mind mulling over Allaire and his own network. “A way into Allaire’s circle. A way for him to think we’re legitimate.” I glanced at Lorelei. I couldn’t be sure that the younger Allaire knew her, but we couldn’t take the chance.
“They will be expecting me,” she said after a moment of silent deliberation.
“I suspect so.”
“Then we send X,” she said. “He’s a ghost like me.”
“X killed Allaire’s father.” Her brow creased as she mulled over this new piece of information. “I don’t know if he was identified, but he certainly was when we eliminated Sykes. It isn’t a stretch to put together the pieces. Word would have gotten back to his son a long time ago.” Being a ghost was probably the only thing saving us both from Damien Allaire’s wrath.
“You didn’t know, did you?” Lorelei asked.
“Know what?”
“That X killed Julien Allaire. He kept it from you, didn’t he?”
“So?” I asked, sneering at her. “What does it matter now? It’s done. Do you tell Vaughn everything you do? Have you told him everything you’ve been remembering?”
It was a step too far, but she was acting all high and mighty, and I’d had enough. Yeah, she was a highly trained assassin, who was currently on the verge of insanity, but I still had to poke the hornet’s nest.
Lorelei stood, her expression one of complete rage. “What’s it to you?”
“You’re acting irrational. You need to slow down and plan this hit. Not just go in blindly.”
She took another step toward me. “Are you telling me how to do my job? The job I was created for?”
“I’m telling you, you need to take a deep breath,” I said.
Right then, I wasn’t sure what was going through her mind—it must’ve made complete sense to her—but she lunged at me, a wild look in her eyes. A look that said she wanted to see the life bleed from my eyes.
We crashed to the floor in a heap, Lorelei astride me, and her hands wrapped around my throat. “I should’ve put you down in that cage,” she hissed, squeezing.
The door burst open, and Vaughn came rushing in, X hot on his heels. Diving on Lorelei, Vaughn wrapped his arms around her waist and heaved her off me.
“Let me go!” she screeched. “I’ll kill you!”
“What the fuck did you say to her?” X exclaimed, helping me up off the floor as I rubbed my neck with my free hand.
“I questioned how much she was really remembering,” I said. “She’s all gung ho. Wants to shoot up the place like we’re in a kung fu movie or something.” I rolled my eyes. “She ain’t you, X.”
Lorelei was still thrashing violently in Vaughn’s arms. He was doing his best to calm her, but she seemed lost in the haze of her own anger.
Looked like I’d have to whip out the big guns. I glanced at X and nodded toward the door as Lorelei tried to break away from Vaughn. His eyes narrowed, but he turned and left the room. If there was a chance that the words that had been encoded into X’s programming could also be the thing that would calm her down, then it was in all of our best interests to give her a little peace and quiet. Also, my ability to breathe would thank me profusely.
X couldn’t be here when I spoke them aloud. He was free from a lot of things, but that part of his conditioning would probably be inside him forever. I couldn’t chance him falling victim to that part of himself ever again.
Taking a deep breath, I said the words I’d vowed never to utter…unless it was a last resort. I hoped to God that it worked because calming down that without them would be a feat.
“Monstrum in tranquillitas postulat. Et obliviscere sanguinem alium diem.” Going by my rusty high school Latin, it meant something like, ‘The monster demands calm. Forget the blood for another day’.
Immediately, Lorelei ceased struggling, her gaze fixing on mine.
“What the fuck?” Vaughn exclaimed as she stilled in his arms.
“Lorelei,” I murmured. “We’re here to help you. Our goal is one and the same. Okay?”
She slid to the floor at Vaughn’s feet and nodded. “I don’t know what came over me.”
“Your mind is changing,” I explained, sitting cross-legged before her. “It’s trying to reorganize itself into something it can understand. Things might be a little…unpredictable for a while. At least, until it sorts itself out. It happened to X too, but we helped him through it.”
“You did?” she asked, looking hopeful.
I nodded, offering her a reassuring smile. “You’re a free woman now. We’ll help you get your answers and your revenge if that’s what you desire. Vaughn will help ground you when things get rough.”
She looked up at him, and he nodded before turning his confused gaze to mine.
“It was the same with me and X,” I said as much to him as to her. “You just have to let him. It won’t work any other way.”
Lorelei frowned as she thought over what I’d just told her. After a moment of silence, she seemed to have made up her mind and pushed off the floor and onto her feet.
A knock sounded at the door, and X poked his head into the room. “I just spoke to Hawkes,” he said, watching Lorelei. “We’ve got a hit on Allaire’s location.”
“Good,” she declared. “Let’s start planning right away.”
As she pushed past him, he glanced at me. “All good?”
“All clear,” I replied, letting him know that The Watchman had embedded the same code into her conditioning. Just when you think you know all the ins and outs of your stock standard crazy psychopath, they go and forget to change the password.
X grimaced and followed Lorelei. I went to join them, but Vaughn grasped my arm, holding me back as the others disappeared into another part of the cottage.
“What did you say to her?” he asked, his blue eyes full of concern.
“It was a phrase in Latin that I learned during my time with The Watchman,” I said, keeping my voice low. “It has certain…properties.” I didn’t want to say too much, knowing that it could be used against X if the knowledge ever fell into the wrong hands.
“It’s a fail-safe?” he asked.
“How much of it do you remember?”
“Fuck, Mercy,” he hissed. “You came out of nowhere spouting some fancy language that’s not been spoken in hundreds of years and you expect me to remember it?”
“I’ll take that as a tick in the ‘no’ box,” I said dryly. “And before you ask, I will not teach it to you. It’s best those words die with me.”
“I wasn’t going to. I just wanted to understand.”
I smiled up at him, knowing that I’d never understand the depths of what they shared…just like I’d never grasp all of wha
t X and I were bound by. In many ways, we were the same.
“It’s tough right now,” I said. “I get it. X wasn’t exactly Mr. Cool, Calm, and Collected. He was meant to kill me, but he kidnapped me instead, so the fact that Lorelei isn’t trying to decide whether or not to do you in is an advantage in my book.”
“I’m not reassured,” he said dryly.
“It’s fucking scary,” I admitted. “Seeing her like that. But have faith, Vaughn. X had a lot of things to fall back on that even he didn’t know. Lorelei had a different beginning. We’ll get her the answers she needs, and then hopefully, she can find her path.”
He sighed. “What about MI6?”
Turning to face him straight on, I stared him in the eye so he would understand that what I was about to say was the complete and utter truth as I knew it.
“I haven’t forgotten what you did for me,” I said. “Giving up your revenge on Sykes so I could have mine. When it comes time to shove, we’ll do whatever we can to spare you both. You have my word.”
“And X?”
“My word is X’s word. We’re one and the same.”
He held my gaze for a moment before nodding. “Understood.”
Smiling, I clapped him on the shoulder. “Then let’s go bag us a scum-sucking asshole.”
Chapter 22
X
“We have a location in North London,” I said, relaying what Hawkes had told me while Mercy had calmed down a volatile Lorelei.
“And?” Vaughn prodded.
“He’s home.”
“Then we need to go,” Lorelei exclaimed.
“What’s the first stage, Lorelei?” I asked her, playing to the protocols we had both followed to the letter.
Her shoulders sank. “Planning.”
“We’ll get our shot,” I reassured her. “But first, we need to plan. This whole thing means nothing if we miss because we didn’t take the time to make it watertight.”
She nodded, casting her gaze down like a submissive puppet. “Understood.”
Frowning, I said, “Lorelei, I’m not your master here. We’re an equal team.”
Her gaze came back up, but it was Vaughn who spoke. “What do you suggest?”
“We need equipment if we go by the intel Hawkes has provided from his scouting.”
“Equipment we’re cut off from,” Mercy said.
“That’s right,” Vaughn drawled. “You’ve already pissed off Her Majesty’s finest.”
I snorted. “There’s an in we haven’t exploited yet.”
Mercy’s eyes lit up as her wavelength matched my own. “Jackson.”
“Who’s Jackson?” Lorelei asked.
“A motherfucking wizard,” Mercy exclaimed, clapping her hands together. “Who’s that guy in the James Bond movies with the stuff and things?”
“He likes you,” I said to her. “Especially when you say shit like that. We should go pick him up, and ask nicely for some gadgets.”
“I’m lost,” Vaughn said with a scowl. “We need as few eyes on this as possible. I don’t want explosions, X. I want covert. In and out.”
“This is the point where you just nod and trust us,” I said to him. “We all want the same thing here. We’ve all got shit to lose if we balls it up.”
“We want to get inside the egg without cracking the shell. Jackson can get us everything we need,” Mercy explained. “He’s a good guy. On the side of justice, so he just needs some kind words. Like pretty please with sugar on top.”
“Well, we’re screwed then,” Lorelei said, rolling her eyes.
Ignoring her, I turned to Mercy. “We’ll grab him on his morning commute.”
“Good idea,” she said in agreement. “That way he’s in and out with no extra suspicion.”
“Then you should rest before heading out,” Vaughn said. “We have a guest bedroom upstairs. Lorelei and I will stay here and review the intel from Hawkes. We will reconvene once you have what you need.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Mercy said. “Now where’s this bed, and where’s the food at?”
“I can see you’ve become much happier since our last meeting,” he said to her, then pointed to his cheek. “Despite the souvenir you picked up after I left.”
She rolled her eyes and edged him toward the door. “We need to have a discussion, you and I.”
Vaughn shot me a look, and I hung back, waiting for Lorelei. I could see her restlessness and knew it had more to do with her changing mind than her eagerness to be on a mission.
Stepping in front of her, her gaze met mine, and it was full of swirling emotions verging on the brink of total overload. Vaughn had been right to be worried. I recognized the same look from all those times I’d stared at my own reflection wondering if I was going to make it or not.
“Lorelei,” I murmured as Vaughn and Mercy left us in peace. This wasn’t going to be an easy conversation, but it was best had between those who understood.
“Vaughn says you’re better now,” she said, the firelight casting a warm glow across her features.
“As well as I can be considering.”
I gestured for her to sit, and she folded herself onto the couch, tucking her slender hands underneath her thighs like she didn’t trust herself.
Taking a spot next to her, I stared at the fire, watching the flames flicker and spit as they devoured the logs that had been tossed haphazardly into the hearth. Vaughn knew how to carve a man up with skilled precision, but he sucked at building a fire.
“You can tell me about it,” I said.
“I don’t even know the right words,” she replied. “How can I explain what I can’t understand?”
“That’s the thing that got me. Understanding is control and for us, control is everything. Control over ourselves, over the mission, over the kill…” I shook my head.
“I don’t know what I’m meant to do without it.”
I glanced at her and found her staring at me with desperate hope. Whatever she was experiencing, the memories Greggor had taken from her were trying to devour her whole.
“Was it better when you were with Vaughn?” I asked, knowing that Mercy and our relationship had been the thing that had seen me through the darkest moments. The moments where I thought I’d be swallowed whole by the beast inside of me.
She scowled and turned away. “What are you implying?”
“I’m implying that being with Mercy was the thing that helped ground me in reality, Lorelei. She was the thing I cared about most above all else, and I couldn’t have her, I couldn’t be with her, if I wasn’t fighting. Do you remember what I said to you when we first met?”
“When you stood over my father’s bloody corpse with his heart in your hand?” she asked, facing me again.
I raised my eyebrows. “I’ll never apologize or feel guilty over that. He deserved his fate.”
“He was still my father…” It sounded like something she’d been telling herself over and over like a mantra, trying to justify all the horrible things that had happened to her…and all the things Greggor had commanded her to do.
“Listen to yourself, Lorelei,” I exclaimed. “He may have been your father, but he had you tortured and brainwashed. He turned you into a monster. Don’t you think it would have been kinder if he’d sent you away to live a life free of violence? Why didn’t he do that? Why did he feel compelled to turn you into a killer?”
She flinched, wrapping her arms around her stomach like a shield.
“You care about Vaughn,” I said, turning my gaze away. “If you didn’t, you would have killed him back in Bristol. It doesn’t matter about before. All that matters is now. Fighting it because you don’t understand will only make your mind worse.”
“Did you fight?” she asked quietly.
“Yes. Mercy did, too.”
“She fought against you?”
“No,” I murmured. “She fought for me. I was commanded to kill her, but…” I trailed off, the memory of the night I found her in her a
partment flashing to the forefront of my mind. I’d held a gun to her head, a bullet in the chamber ready to put her down, and I just… I’d hesitated.
“But you loved her instead?” she asked, her mouth dropping open.
I took a deep breath and told Lorelei what she needed to hear. “Let him in. Allow yourself to care. It’s the only thing that will calm the storm inside. You’ll remember horrible things, things that will haunt you forever, but you’ll learn to live with them just as I have.”
“What did you ever do that was so bad?” she asked, her stubbornness really starting to grate on my nerves.
“I killed my entire family,” I said. “My brother was first. Then I broke into my parent’s home and shot my father in the head, twice, then I went upstairs and shot my mother. I almost killed the woman I loved in the exact same way. That’s a demon I will never be rid of for as long as I draw breath. Believe me when I tell you this…let Vaughn in and care.”
She stared at me for so long I began to wonder if I’d triggered something inside of her, but after a pause, she mouthed the words ‘let Vaughn in and care’ over and over until she seemed satisfied she’d absorbed the message.
Rising to her feet, she took a deep breath. Then she turned to me and smiled before leaving me alone to sit and wonder what the hell had just happened.
The morning was clear but cold, the heavy fog of winter having skipped today in favor of an icy wind.
We sat in the car on a quiet little street full of traditional row houses, waiting for Jackson to leave for work. Each one looked exactly the same as the last, and the blandness was mind numbing. I could never live in one of these homes. I could never understand how people dealt with it.
Mercy told me that Jackson caught the bus every morning from the stop near his house, got off at the tube station, and rode a train the rest of the way into the offices. Our best bet was to grab him on his way to the bus. It was a quiet residential area with little traffic, and I could hardly comprehend how he put up with such a long commute every day. I supposed he dealt with it for his son.
“What time did you say he left again?” I asked, glancing at my watch.
