Cameo the Assassin

by Dawn McCullough-White

  She shrugged. “We should get moving.”

  “You’re joking, right? How about a moment to catch my breath?”

  Cameo walked over to the tomb several yards away, “I need to get going.”

  “Well, I need something to eat, and a change of clothes.” He dashed the empty bottle against a tombstone.

  She turned swiftly to look at him.

  Opal was up and was closing the space between them rapidly, “Ow....” He held his lower back but kept moving in on her.

  “Look, if you want to work alone, fine.” He brushed past her and back into the mausoleum.

  “If you work alone, you are just a walking target for the Association,” she hissed as she came in behind him.

  Opal was going through his shoulder-pack; there were paints, food, and clothes strewn on the floor. Cameo looked down at the pitiful mess, and at Opal who was ripping off his jacket angrily.

  She took a step back, uncertain.

  “Does it really matter? You’re a target, too.” He faced her, trembling with rage, “Will I be less of a target without you tagging around?”

  “Me tagging around?”

  “Yes.” He folded his arms in front of him.

  Cameo raised an eyebrow, her mood lightened. “All right.... I’m sorry I rushed you; take your time getting ready.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Yes, yes, take your time. I’ll wait outside for you.”

  Black Opal sat back down and began to collect his things, “You could always massage my shoulders a little.” The tenor of this voice changed, “I think that would help me hurry things up.”

  She released a bit of muffled laughter.

  When she had gone, he looked down at his things, all over the dirty floor of a tomb, and sighed. He missed having a washbasin and a hot cup of coffee.

  * * * * *

  “G’morning. Get your luggage for you, sir?”

  A tall, slender young man looked at the wanted posters at the coach stop in Lockenwood. Smoke from a delicate clay pipe encircled his head as he turned to acknowledge the coachman.

  “Get your luggage?” The man repeated.

  The young man with the long, straight, dark hair and the black Association cape nodded, as if his mind were somewhere else, then went back to perusing the poster of Cameo.

  “Met her once myself.”

  “Oh, really?” The assassin glanced over at the coachman.

  “Yeah, about a week or so back. She was a little thing, skinny, ‘bout so tall, but had these eyes—really creepy, almost like they had a filmy look—you know, like the dead? Yeah, didn’t help us much when our coach was hijacked by these two highwaymen.”

  “Oh?” He cocked his head to one side clearly interested now.

  “Yeah, no help at all. Just stood there and got robbed like the rest of us, but she left us after that. I think she probably wanted to kill them two,” he shrugged. “They did take her money.” He stood there with his hands on his hips for a moment, “That any help to you?”

  The young man dropped some coin into the coachman’s hand as he boarded. “Is this the same coach?”

  “That she took? Yes it is. We have only two, and this is the one with the purple cushions, so I know it’s the one.”

  The man from the Association didn’t even crack a smile, just sat back in those purple cushions beside the local doctor.

  * * * * *

  Opal smacked his lips together liberally, attempting to evenly apply rouge to his mouth, then with a rather serene look on his face adjusted the black hat that matched his black duster.

  Cameo caught a glimpse of his preening from the corner of her eye as they continued their trek through the graveyard. “You look rather smart in that coat.”

  Opal grinned at her, “This old thing? I just found this at the bottom of my bag. I was thinking of donating it.”

  “I see.” Cameo rifled through her pack. “Well, I think you should keep it.”

  He smiled at her, “Oh, do you?”

  “Do you have any more wine with you?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” The dandy preoccupied himself with his shoulder-pack, trying not to mess up the contents too much or he would have nothing but wrinkled suit-jackets.

  “It’s getting colder. I hate the winte—”

  The sound of a cannon blast rang out, and Opal looked up just as Cameo collapsed in front of him.

  Opal was on the ground at her side an instant later.

  “Winter....”

  He pulled her behind a row of headstones nearby.

  “Cameo....”

  “Who was that?” she demanded.

  They both glanced around the stones and noticed an open grave about ten feet from them.

  “Two men.” Opal said squinting.

  “Shot by a couple of grave-robbers,” she spat, almost amused by the irony in that.

  “Where are you hit?”

  “It’s not bad.” She pulled her Association cape around her shoulder protectively.

  Black Opal leapt up, his duster whirled with a flourish, and he took a shot at one of them.

  The man in the distance actually watched the shot pass quite far off the mark and hit a mausoleum to the left and behind him. Then he turned and seemed to be talking to the other grave-robber.

  Cameo met Opal’s gaze, “You aren’t much of a shot, are you?”

  “Why? What was wrong with that? Did I miss?” He ducked back down behind a blackened stone.

  She pulled her pistol and a dagger.

  “Where are you going? You’re injured. I can handle this.”

  She moved out from behind the headstone. Opal was following her, his rapier drawn.

  “It’s Cameo!”

  She shot the man whom Opal had just missed, and in a plume of white smoke, he fell back into the open grave.

  The man just beyond his wounded friend pulled his pistol.

  “Ha ha!” Opal got to the second grave-robber as his attention was focused on Cameo, and he ran the man through before he realized what had happened.

  The assassin jumped down into the grave with the wounded man. He was already bleeding from a stomach wound when Cameo plunged her dagger into his throat and chest several more times.

  “Cameo, darling?” Opal was perched at the top of the grave; he reached for her.

  She lifted several blood-stained wanted posters off the thug and handed them to him.

  “What’s this, then?” He held one of the posters close to his eye and squinted as he read it, then incredulously said, “The so-called Black Opal fellow is wanted for murdering Prince Leon?”

  Cameo bounded up and out of the grave, crawling further on the grass. She glanced over at the second robber, bloodied and lying dead on ground several feet from her.

  “Well, this is all wrong. I’ve never killed anyone that...important before.”

  She looked over the posters for herself, Bellamy, and Gail. “Apparently we’re a gang now.”

  “Bel will love that one.”

  “Can’t they ever get my face right?” He strained to see, “This looks nothing like me!”

  “You are blind.”

  Opal looked up, “What? Oh, most certainly not.”

  “Uh huh,” she clasped her shoulder. “This explains a lot.”

  He folded up the poster and stuffed it into his shoulder-pack, then turned back toward her. “That seems worse than you led me to believe.”

  She sensed his gaze on her face as he came close and felt his hand on her arm, but she was collapsing, the edges of her vision were getting dark. She made one feeble attempt to push him back as she fell forward, her head pitched into his shoulder.

  “Cameo?” He caught her. There was blood on his coat, his hands.

  He rolled her onto her back gently in the cold graveyard. She had been hit in the chest not the arm at all. “Oh, my dear....” He bend over her and felt her breath against his cheek; it was somewhat labored but quite strong. “Cameo, can you hear me?
”

  She felt someone’s hand pressed firmly on her chest. She opened her eyes slowly. For a moment she thought she would see the black sky overhead, the stars...the face of Haffef.

  “My dear?”

  She flinched at the sight of a man’s face over hers, then as she focused, she realized she knew him.

  “You said you weren’t badly wounded.”

  “I lied,” she rasped.

  “Yes.” He studied her face, gazing intently on her mouth. Biting his own lip, he put her hand over what was left of her shattered breast. “I’m going back to get our things.”

  Cameo just remained there on the ground, nearly dead. She remembered being like this before, a number of times. Opal was probably more worried than he needed to be, and she wasn’t certain how she was going to explain this one away in a few hours, when she no longer had an open wound.

  “All right,” he pulled one of his shirts from his bag and turned it into some sort of haphazard bandage. “Well, let’s see, we’re quite close to Lockenwood now, we could keep going north and walk right out of here just as we planned.” Opal got up, with both his shoulder-pack and hers over his shoulders. He lifted her to her feet.

  She took a couple half-hearted steps while leaning against him, “I can’t do this. Just let me lie down; it will be fine.”

  Opal looked around with her limp, bloody body pressed against his; it was daylight, and they were still in the middle of the cemetery.

  “Afraid I can’t do that my dear. I hope you’ll forgive me,” he said as he lifted her into his arms.

  She felt herself pulled close to his sweet-smelling body, exhausted.

  “Why did I wear these boots?”

  “You’re much stronger than I assumed you were….”

  “Ah.”

  Her body went limp and suddenly became much heavier.

  “Yes... well then...” Opal struggled with her unconscious form.

  Chapter Four

  IT WAS DUSK WHEN OPAL stumbled out of the graveyard. He rearranged Cameo’s body again and again as he moved forward at a labored pace.

  The cemetery spilled out into a wooded thicket; it was quite misty as the sun was setting, and cold. Suddenly the thicket opened up, and there was mowed grass and a rather small, white marble temple. The stained-glass windows were glittering in the sun’s fading light. It was the type of temple used to hold funeral services in and only used on the occasion of someone’s demise; therefore, Opal assumed this was probably an empty building. He stood stunned for a moment, then, staring at the place, took several staggered steps forward, and thumped the door loudly.

  To his utter amazement, the door opened and within it was golden. A glow of candlelight nearly blinded him, and when he could see more clearly he realized there was a young man standing before him. His hair was pulled back tight, and he was looking at Opal with such blue eyes it took his breath from him.

  “Hello, welcome to the Temple of the Moon at Yetta Graveyard.”

  “My friend is badly injured. May we come in?”

  “Yes, come in.” The lad stepped to one side, his white robes billowing around him.

  Inside there was a fairly small main room that had some piles of chairs in the corners, an altar, a table pushed to the back, and several candles in the sconces lining the walls.

  Black Opal took several steps into the hall.

  “Can we be of assistance?” asked an old man appeared from a doorway at the side of the hall. He appraised the dandy and his friend, both covered in blood and black powder.

  “Sir, my friend is badly injured. Do you have a doctor here?”

  “No doctors.” He took several brisk steps forward to meet them. “You can call me Cyrus.”

  Cyrus looked down at the woman in the rogue’s arms. Her eyes were cloudy and fixed, yet when he felt for a pulse, she still had one. He lifted his eyes, “She’s still alive. Bring her to the meditation room. What happened?”

  “Someone was shooting at us.”

  “Hmm....” Cyrus muttered.

  “Sir—Cyrus, is there a local doctor nearby?” Opal said.

  “Kyrian is a healer. He can heal your friend.”

  “Healer ....” Opal bit his lip uncertainly as he had just laid Cameo’s body down on the marble floor beside an empty altar. “That sort of thing isn’t a very proven science, is it?”

  Cyrus smiled at him as he maneuvered Opal out the door. “It will be all right. Kyrian will lay hands, then we will bring you some dinner. Go and sit down at the table and rest yourself. You look weary.”

  * * * * *

  Once Opal had been locked out, Cyrus turned back toward the woman lying there, bleeding on the floor of the sanctuary.

  Kyrian moved forward, but Cyrus waved away his efforts.

  “But, she is very ill. I should at least try—”

  “Go prepare that man some food and get him a towel. I will see to her.”

  Kyrian hesitated but turned and exited as the priest wished.

  Cyrus gazed down into the gray, sightless orbs, fixed and dead. He pulled back the dressing Opal had prepared for her wound, and that was when he made the discovery that he had suspected. Although still very bloody, her flesh was actually knitting itself back together.

  * * * * *

  Bellamy’s long, brown hair cascaded onto the desktop. A candle warmed his face in a golden glow as his quill scribbled away at the paper. The fire in the hearth had long gone out, and Charlotte was asleep in the bed nearby.

  ‘Round and ‘round the Maypole

  twist and turn a fable—

  He ran his ink-stained fingers through his hair. He said the words aloud, “a fable ….”

  There was the sound, loud as a cannon downstairs, then a scream.

  Bellamy and Charlotte startled out of their dreamy states.

  “What was that!” Charlotte said.

  Bel grabbed his pistol and his coat.

  “What was that?” Charlotte repeated as she forced her dress over her head.

  There another blast from beneath them in the tavern, then heavy footsteps on the stairs.

  “C’mon Charlotte, out the window.” Bel tried to push open the window, but it was stuck shut.

  There were footsteps on the stairs, someone was nearing their room.

  “I can hear him,” she hissed.

  Bel picked up the desk and smashed through the window with it.

  The door moved as someone pulled on the latch—

  Charlotte’s eyes widened in terror.

  Bel took her upper arm firmly and pushed her toward the window.

  The door shuddered as someone tried the latch repeatedly.

  Charlotte climbed out the window and onto the sloped roof, and Bellamy followed her out.

  The sound of the black-powder pistol rang out just behind them. The highwayman could not mistake that sound. He steadied Charlotte with one hand, and in his other, held his pistol.

  “You’re no poet, Bellamy!” A man called from the broken window.

  Bel turned. How did this madcap know him?

  In the moonlight he could make out only a toothy grin before Bel took his shot at him. It blew a chunk of wood off the windowpane, but missed whomever was chasing him.

  Bel half ran, half slid down the roof and helped Charlotte down.

  “Who was that?”

  “I have no idea. Keep running—I think he’s after me!”

  Behind them at the tavern they heard a man calling out for help, and then the sound of the man’s blood-curdling death cry.

  “Oh my lord, Bel, what kind of trouble have you gotten yourself mixed up in?”

  Bellamy had no quick answer for this one as they ran out of the only little town in Yetta, in the cold...without his belongings...his money. “Damn.”

  The dirt road was slick with frost; it glittered here and there whenever the moon came out from behind the clouds.

  A shot rang out from behind them.

  “That wasn’t that far away
!” Charlotte gasped.

  “I know.” He glanced down at her bare feet and started to wonder if there might be a house to hide in. “Let’s get off the road.”

  They ran blind in the darkness, through the tall, wet grass.

  * * * * *

  Cameo’s eyes focused on a face above her: a pair of the bluest eyes she had ever beheld were looking into hers. The room seemed very white around this boy; his auburn hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and he wore a look of concern.

  “She’s awake,” he said to someone else in the room, then turned back and said reassuringly, “Don’t worry. You’re going to be all right.”

  An older man’s face replaced the other’s. He motioned Kyrian out of the room.

  Cameo reached for her shattered chest.

  “You seem fine...now.”

  She glanced over at a nasty scar that now covered the spot where only hours ago a messy wound had plagued her then lifted her unimpressed eyes to look at this new individual.

  “How did I get here?”

  He flinched at the raspy sound of her voice. “Your...friend carried you.”

  Astonishment flashed across her face, followed by a fleeting smile. “And where am I?”

  “The temple at Yetta graveyard.”

  “A temple?” She sat up and turned away from the old man.

  “That’s right. And my young acolyte healed your grievous injury.”

  She smirked, and looked about absently for her shoulder pack, hoping for a swig of whiskey. “Oh, did he? Well he certainly deserves my thanks and a hearty handshake for that.”

  “That is what, I presume, you would like us to tell your friend.”

  “What do you mean?” She stopped searching for her pack.

  His blue eyes twinkled a bit as she met his gaze. “I mean, you wouldn’t want him to find out your body just healed itself in a matter of hours now, would you? He may think you are...possibly not human.”

  She glanced over at the door, then back at this old man. “Would he?”

  “From the look of the skin on your torso, you’ve been wounded several times before...the number of scars, and notches, and words carved into your body.... I guess you’ve been lucky not to have a wound on your face. You can still pass for something alive .... Not many zombies are so lucky.”

  “You are lucky I was unconscious.”