Like a Thief in the Night

by Bettie Sharpe

  The gods cursed the Thief to guard the key. In time, the gods’ statues crumbled. Men forgot them and their heaven shattered when it fell to earth. But the key to Life and Death never faded, nor did the Thief who guards it still.”

  Chapter Three

  The next morning, Aniketos’ prisoner stabbed him in the back with a steak knife while he was eating breakfast. She was silent in her approach, as befitted a professional. When she struck, the blow was sure and true. She pierced his lung and he coughed blood into his coffee before he reached back to pull the knife out.

  He turned from the dining room table to find her watching him, dark eyes alert for any sign of weakness. She was naked and feral as any animal, and beautiful because of it. She was taller than average for a woman, but slightly built. Her body was lithely muscled and long of limb, with high breasts, a narrow waist and slim hips. Her wrists and ankles were delicate, and her elegant neck was bracketed with a string of bruises in the shape of his hand. He wanted her again.

  Aniketos looked down at the knife he had pulled out of his back and shook his head. If he remembered correctly, these knives were part of a set of eight. She had four more clasped in her left hand.

  “It has been more than a day since you came here. You must be hungry.” He turned and walked to the platter of cut fruit on the sideboard. He scooped some into a bowl, and cut a piece of brown bread to go with it. “You have likely been over the flat several times looking for a way out and found nothing. Sit down and eat. You can try to kill me again later, if you like.”

  She didn’t like to be patronized. He dodged the first knife she threw, but the second glanced off his shoulder, cutting a shallow gash that healed before the knife even hit the ground.

  “Coffee?” he inquired, pouring a cup.

  She set her remaining knives flat on the blue-green glass tabletop and regarded him in silence. He slid the bowl and the coffee cup across the table to her. She sniffed the food as though she suspected it was drugged.

  Aniketos poured himself a new cup of coffee, cut a slice of bread, and sat down to eat. She watched him, dark eyes assessing. Finally, she gulped down a couple of bites of bread and drained the coffee cup in a matter of seconds. A drop of coffee spilled down her chin and onto her bare breast.

  He kept his face impassive, but beneath the table, his cock stood at attention. What had possessed him to keep her naked? He shifted in his seat to accommodate his growing erection. Question answered.

  He undid the buttons of his shirt, shrugged it off and tossed it across the table to her. “Cover yourself.”

  She nodded and shoved her arms into the sleeves. Her hand caught in the tear on the shoulder that her knife had made but her face remained impassive. If she felt any remorse for attacking him, she kept it well hidden. She took another bite of bread and watched him.

  He drank his coffee and finished his bowl of fruit. She watched him the whole time. Her gaze wavered at times, falling from his face to his bare chest. Her chewing slowed, her breathing quickened. He wasn’t sure if she wanted to kill him or fuck him, though he wouldn’t have been surprised to discover she wanted both.

  She broke the silence. “If Sevastien Aniketos is just a name you created as bait to trap me, then who are you?”

  “A thief, a trickster, a dishonorable man—the kind your mother warned you about.” He winked and gave her his naughtiest smile.

  “Mother?” She laughed. “Cold-blooded bitches like me are hatched, not born.” She crossed her arms in front of her. The sleeves of his shirt fell past her hands. She looked anything but cold-blooded.

  He regarded her for one long moment before he spoke. “Tell me about Darkriver’s Hatcheries.”

  “Hatcheries?” Arden shook her head.

  “You said it yourself, you were hatched. It is not an accidental phrase. One of the founders of Darkriver Corporation was a former CIA behavioral psychologist named William Payne. A memo Payne wrote to his superiors at the Agency contains the phrase, ‘True killers are hatched, not born’.”

  “Fascinating.” Arden leaned her chin on her hand and stared wide-eyed at him in an exaggerated imitation of rapt attention. The next second, the expression slid from her face like rain from a windowpane. “I thought you said you were a thief. Why concern yourself with the CIA and spy business?”

  “These days, information is a treasure well worth stealing.” Aniketos smiled as he spoke. He always smiled when he spoke of thievery.

  He schooled his face into a sterner expression before continuing. “I know about Payne’s plans to use behavioral and cerebral modification to create the perfect killer. I know the CIA cut him loose because his process only worked on children and young adolescents who fit certain rare physical and cognitive parameters—and even the Agency couldn’t countenance that.

  “When Payne left the CIA, he teamed up with a billionaire arms dealer and a former Agency handler to start an international private security firm headquartered in Dark River City, in the U.S. He used his new funding and autonomy to set up his Hatcheries, and began to steal children who met the necessary parameters for his program.”

  Arden looked away and muttered, “What part of I don’t know, don’t you understand?”

  “He stole you from your family, Arden. You, and countless others. And he got away with it because he stole children from ordinary families who did not have the knowledge or the resources to undertake a global search. But three years ago, he fucked up. He stole the wrong child. He stole the son of a man with the contacts, the resources, and the ruthlessness to declare war on Darkriver and win.”

  “I don’t care if this guy Payne stole the baby Jesus. I’m telling you, I don’t know a thing about it.” She fidgeted in her seat. There was no conviction in her protestation of ignorance. The Hatcheries were not just a subject she knew, they were something she feared.

  He could see her façade of bravado crumbling. It showed in the uneasy movements of her body, the shy way she avoided his gaze. She was, perhaps, beginning to realize that he knew more about her employers than she did.

  “I want to know where you were hatched, Arden. This boy’s parents have been searching for three years. Information you possess could reunite them.”

  She turned to face him, her brown eyes narrow and shrewd. Perhaps she had finally decided to drop her unconvincing mien of ignorance. “What makes you so sure this child’s parents would want him back? In the three years he’s been gone, Darkriver’s doctors have mapped the neural pathways of his brain, eradicated links in his memory and excised all but the most necessary degree of empathy.

  “He won’t remember his name. He won’t remember his parents. He won’t be their child anymore. He’ll be a monster—without remorse, disdainful of love, craving only physical sensation and the satisfaction of a clean kill.”

  “Is that all you are? A monster?”

  “Darkriver casts all its killers in the same vicious image. I’m no different.”

  Aniketos suppressed a smirk. He knew Arden was lying—but did she know it? She was not like Darkriver’s other killers. If she had been, he would not have wanted her so fiercely. “You say you are not different, but you have lived where countless other of Darkriver’s assassins died—most by their third or fourth mission. There must be something different about you.”

  “I belong to Darkriver, same as all the rest.”

  Aniketos regarded his prisoner for a long moment. He had lived eons, minutes meant nothing to him. But minutes were life for her, time ticking away from a finite span of years. She fidgeted in her seat, struggling to hold his gaze. Her cheeks were pink, her lips were rosy. Her nipples were hard little points beneath the soft fabric of the shirt he had given her.

  He wanted her again. He wanted her body beneath him, fighting him, yielding to him. He wanted her loyalty and her ferocity. He wanted every second of her—up until the very last. He wanted her the way Darkriver had her—soul deep and to the marrow of her bones.

  And he would
have her. But first, he needed the information.

  “Tell me where the Darkriver Corporation keeps its stolen children.”

  She looked away, yielding though she didn’t know it. “I’ve already told you too much. Anything else, you’ll have to pull out of me.”

  He stood. “Come. We both know you can withstand any method of physical torture I devise. What you cannot endure is the dissonance between your training and your desires. When you tell me what I want to know, it will be by your choice.”

  He turned to leave the dining room. He heard the muffled whisper of her footsteps rushing toward him, and then she was on him.

  She knew where to strike. Her small fists slammed into his back, above his kidneys, like rubber bullets. She broke his knee with a sharp kick and he fell to the carpet. He waited for the bite of the knife, but her hands were empty.

  He kicked her feet from under her and she landed on the carpet beside him. Her advantage was her speed and agility. She should have rolled away from him and delivered darting blows from a distance. Instead, she launched herself at him, wrestling him even though he had the advantage of size and strength.

  He pinned her to the carpet with his body. His face was inches from hers. He could feel her heart pounding in her chest. “This is becoming a familiar position.”

  She struggled, but didn’t answer.

  “You could have brought the knives, Arden. You know I have an advantage in hand-to-hand, yet you chose to face me unarmed. Did you want to lose?”

  She tried to head-butt him, but he leaned aside, rolling her over until she was atop him with her legs straddling his hips and her naked pussy pressed against the place where his erection strained against his pants. She made a sound that was a little like a moan and he rolled her under him again.

  He levered himself up with one arm and ran his free hand down the length of her torso. He pushed the edge of the shirt aside to bare her shaved pussy. He traced her cleft and plunged his finger into her. She was slick and hot. He crooked his finger and her body trembled.

  Her reaction told him she had been ready for quite some time. Even as she had glared at him over her breakfast, she must have been wet. Even as she had declared herself a monster, she had wanted him. He could have taken her right on the table, spread her out on that hard bed of blue-green glass, that small piece of heaven.

  She writhed under him and he pressed his mouth to hers. She tasted of bread and coffee—his food—and she wore his shirt. Still, he would be a fool to think she was his. Claiming Arden would be like closing his fist on a handful of water. Too bad knowing didn’t stop him from wanting.

  He tore the shirt open now, baring her breasts to his gaze again, taking control while he could. He grabbed her wrists and pressed her hands into the carpet on either side of her body. He braced his weight on his hands, immobilizing her arms while he bowed his head to take her berry-like nipple into his mouth.

  She shuddered at the first touch of his tongue and groaned when he began to suckle. She was sensitive, despite her brutal nature. She responded to the softest touches, trembled at every new exploration of his tongue. He licked lower, tracing a trail down over the smooth skin of her belly. He wanted to torture her with tenderness, to break her with licks and kisses.

  She wrested her left hand free of his grasp and yanked his head up by his hair.

  “No.”

  She lifted her chin and bared her bruised neck to him.

  He was tempted to take what she offered, to close his hand around her throat while he fucked her, to feel the panicked palpitations of her body as she suffocated. But he knew the power she offered him was merely an illusion. She was fast, ruthless and trained to kill. She could free herself at any moment.

  She wanted him, but she didn’t want to admit it. She had attacked him in order to let herself be caught.

  He shook his head and sat back on his heels. “No. This is not your preference. This is not what you do with the men you seduce on Saturday nights.”

  She reared back, eyes wide. “You really did watch me.”

  “All the better to catch you.”

  “And what did you see?”

  “I watched you pick up men. You catch their gaze and lick your lips. You approach and they are lost.

  “You take them home and fuck them. You kiss their lips and bodies. You suck their dicks and ride them until dawn. You have never made them fight you, choke you, hold you down. Do you think taking it rough means you did not want it? Your hungry eyes and wet cunt tell a truer tale.”

  She pulled his shirt closed over her breasts and glared at him. “Oh, yeah, I begged you to take me prisoner and fuck me.”

  “You are not in control of the situation, but you are still responsible for your desires. I have taken many things that do not belong to me, but I have never taken a woman against her will.”

  He stood and walked to the doorway. The next time he fucked her, Aniketos vowed, he would make her beg first.

  He turned and met her eyes. “The choice is yours, Arden. Come to me when you are ready to tell me about the Hatcheries. Come to me when you are ready to give me what I want.”

  Arden watched him go, unsure what to do next. She clutched the shirt more tightly around herself, only to be discomfited by the way the soft fabric slid across her sensitized skin. It smelled like him, like sandalwood and smoke.

  He had finally revealed what he wanted from her, but it didn't make him any less of a mystery. Aniketos didn’t strike her as a sentimental man. If anything, she suspected his emotions were as warped and stunted as her own. Why would he go to such trouble to find a stolen child? Why did he want information about the Hatcheries?

  She had precious little information to give him. She had returned to the Hatcheries only once after completing her training, and that visit had been quite against her will.

  London

  Three years earlier

  “Why the hell was I called in from Macau?” Arden demanded as she paced the length of the elevator car. “I didn’t spend a month cozying up to that fat old gambler just to be ordered back to headquarters the day before I’m set to wrap a rope around his wrinkled neck.”

  “You’re needed here at the Hatcheries.” Eden had never been long on explanations.

  “The Hatcheries? Have the little vipers been chewing on their babysitters again? If so, don’t think to use me to fill the position. I bite back.”

  “We have a special case.” Eden’s voice was calm as the doldrums and as sweet as poisoned syrup. “The kid has been through the treatments, memory modification, cerebral restructure, but it didn’t take the way we expected. There’s something odd about his brain. The programming isn’t sticking. We need him to make the Choice.”

  “And all of a sudden, I’m some sort of specialist?”

  “The programming didn’t take so well on you, either. The psych team was this close to putting a bullet in your brain when I convinced them to let you make the Choice.”

  “Ah yes, the Choice.” Arden shook her head as she watched the floors tick by on the elevator’s display panel. Down, down, down.

  They had set her up to kill—to believe she had killed—and then offered her the Choice to join Darkriver. By the time she discovered the deception, she had become the killer she’d thought herself to be when she’d Chosen. There was no going back.

  “There’s no more zealous a sinner,” Eden once explained, “than a fallen saint. Convince a decent man that he is damned, and he will make a devil of himself to ease the pain of Hell.”

  The best of Darkriver’s assassins were special cases like Arden who’d had to make the Choice. The programmed agents lacked creativity, determination. They followed orders because they were unable to disobey. They were easily caught, easily killed and easily replaced. But the assassins who had Chosen Darkriver, they were clever devils, one and all.

  The elevator shuddered to a stop and the doors slid open. An antiseptic white hallway awaited them.

  “Yo
u’re an old hand at the Choice, Eden. What do you need me for?”

  Eden grinned. “You’re my protégé, aren’t you?”

  Arden shook her head. “You know I don’t work with kids. They give me the creeps.”

  “I wasn’t asking.”

  Arden sighed. “Lead on.”

  White hallways led to more white hallways. The air smelled of disinfectant. The hums and beeps of medical machinery were the only sounds. Arden suppressed a shiver as a ghost of memory washed over her. She had been here, she knew it. The memory had been excised from her brain, but the emotions of the experience lingered. Pain, fear and confusion.

  Could she bring someone else into such a life? She had already made her Choice. She had lied and killed and broken every law of human decency. Why quibble at this? And besides, this choice, like every choice Darkriver had offered her, was really no choice at all. If she refused, they would kill her.

  They would kill the kid, too. Perhaps she was doing it a favor. Saving the kid’s life…by turning it into a killer.

  Eden led her into an observation room and gestured to a pane of one-way glass. The boy was sedated—laid out on a white bed beneath a white blanket in a white room. His thin brown arms were above the blanket. Someone had set him up like a corpse at a funeral parlor and folded his hands atop his chest. Someone had a sense of humor.

  His left hand was covered in a wash of red. An injury? Arden looked closer. Not an injury—a birthmark the color of dried blood.

  “You’ll have to remove the birthmark,” Arden observed. “It’s too distinctive.”

  “It doesn’t respond to laser therapy,” Eden replied. “His attending physician said the only way to get rid of it would be to take off the hand.”

  “Identifying marks are against protocol.”

  “Don’t think you can get out of this by citing protocols. Talent trumps protocol. The kid won’t be the first special case we’ve had, and his birthmark will be a hell of a lot easier to hide than that knife Keris has tattooed on the back of his neck.”