Heart of an Assassin (Circle of Spies)

by Laura Pauling

  The ancient rolled parchment clutched in his hand gleamed under the dim light, calling for me, asking for me to steal it. The list. He had the list. Time for my negotiation skills because I had to get Malcolm out of there fast.

  “What would you trade for it?” I asked.

  His voice turned solemn. “No trades. We need this. After we take care of the guilty parties, we will turn it in for quite a profit. Enough to make sure that all these precious scrolls are taken care of properly.”

  The lost scrolls? I searched for my pen taser but instead found a hole in the deep pocket of my robe. I remembered Will’s lesson about using what you had. Unfortunately no sharp or heavy objects were nearby, but I had words and questions.

  “This is about these old scrolls? Why?”

  He shook his head. “You are like everyone else. The world hunts for these lost scrolls but not to preserve them. They want to get rich.” He stepped closer, one foot at a time, and his words were as carefully measured. “But it is more than just the scrolls. It’s the loss of life your families have brought to the world. We stumbled upon this list and fate brought our paths together.”

  I swallowed down the bitter pill that in many ways he was right. I didn’t know half the stories filled with bloodshed and betrayal from the past two hundred years or longer.

  He pointed a finger. “No one cares or they are greedy.” He strode over to us. “These scrolls date back to Alexandria!”

  I must’ve looked puzzled because he kept talking.

  “The first library? Don’t you know the story?” He paced, tapping the scroll I wanted against his hand. “Julius Caesar set the library on fire. Later, after Christ, many scrolls fell victim to the raging battle between Christians and Jews…”

  He kept on with the history lesson, his words taking on a momentum of their own, his passion evident in the way he talked, the rush of breath, the shaky voice, but we were running out of time.

  His words buzzed in my ear along with the urgency to do something, anything, to get Malcolm out of here with or without the list. His life, the beating of his heart, his family, and our hopeful future together was more important.

  Any anger trapped inside at his disappearing act faded in light of the blood dripping onto the floor and the smell stinging my nostrils and the back of my throat. The time for words was over. I shot forward, aiming for the monk’s legs.

  He sidestepped and with one swipe of his leg, he took me out and I pitched forward. I turned in the air and my back hit the ground, breath shooting from my chest at the impact. He dug his knee into my stomach.

  He pulled a long sharp knife from his robes and placed the blade to my neck. The cool metal felt like a light kiss against my skin. I didn’t dare breathe. “We are very serious about our work here.”

  “What do you want?” I whispered.

  He leaned close. “Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord. And we are the Lord’s right hand.”

  “No, you’re just completely nuts,” I gasped out.

  The monk pulled the knife away from neck and lifted it above my chest.

  Malcolm’s face twisted with pain as he stood behind the monk. He brought the weight of his fists down on the back of the monk’s neck. The monk fell forward and the knife sank into the hollow of my shoulder.

  I cried out. Searing pain ripped at my body and the room blurred. Malcolm threw the monk to the side and their bodies twisted and writhed. I struggled for breath as the jabbing pain shot through my shoulder.

  “Malcolm!” I croaked out, panic shooting through every nerve ending.

  The extra effort caused more pain. I had to deal with the knife jutting out of my body. Blood coated my arm and the metallic smell singed the air. Tears wet my cheek, mixing with dust and sweat, slipping into my hair and falling to the ground. This wasn’t how it was supposed to turn out. Memories flickered and faces of the people I loved flashed before my eyes.

  I wrapped my fingers around the handle of the knife, and my breath quivered from my chest in anticipation of the fiery pain to come. With a grunt I pulled ever so slowly, the blade sliding from my flesh like a dull knife through butter and I threw it. It skittered across the floor and hit the metal bookshelf with a dull clang.

  “Malcolm,” I whispered, a sob releasing from my chest.

  I rolled over with a grunt and noticed the tip of the pen poking out from beneath the shelves filled with dusty scrolls. I crawled over, ignoring the pulsing pain that told me to quit, to just lay down and accept my fate, Malcolm’s fate.

  With a shuddering breath, I stood, the pen gripped in my bloody palm. I zeroed in on the monk as he and Malcolm continued to struggle, one on top, then the other, their bodies a blur of movement.

  My window came, a brief second, when the monk pushed Malcolm against the wall, trapping him, but leaving the back of his neck exposed.

  I lunged and jabbed, pressing the top of the pen. I felt the vibration as the zap of power discharged into the monk’s neck. He was stunned and spun around, a look of shock and distress on his face before Malcolm gave him the final push. He collapsed to the floor, his body twisting at an odd angle, his robes fanned around him.

  I grabbed the list which had fallen to the dirt during the fight and shoved it into a pocket of my robe that didn’t have a hole. I turned in a rush and almost slammed into Malcolm but stopped inches from touching him.

  “Are you okay?” he whispered, his face pale, with streaks of dirt on his cheeks.

  I swayed forward and our lips met. What started out as a gentle kiss turned deeper and I crushed up against him, the throbbing pain dulled for the moment. I took everything out on him, my fear, my love, my frustration. I poured every single emotion into that kiss and I couldn’t get enough of him. The sweet taste of him, the feel of him, the Malcolm-scent hidden under dust and sweat and blood. I didn’t care about anything except the feel of his hands on my body and his lips on mine.

  We didn’t move, leaning against each other and a bit in shock over how the easy mission had turned into a fight for our lives. Seconds, maybe minutes passed. Time floated around us as we breathed each other in and tried to ignore the pain. Until we heard the scrape of rock against rock and the monk slipped through the secret entranceway.

  Leaving us behind. And the exit sealed.

  Forty

  I bit down on my lip and crushed it between my teeth until the pain was too much. The pen taser didn’t have as much juice as I’d thought. The monk had left through the same hole we’d entered and then closed it off. I patted the list in my pocket but the victory was hollow. After starving or killing us, they’d prance in and take it back.

  Fear knotted in my shoulder and caused more pain.

  Malcolm’s breathing was labored as he struggled to manage the pain. His chest rose and fell. His eyes were slits.

  “Come here,” I gently held his arm and led him over to the wall. “Let’s sit and rest.”

  We slid our backs down the gritty wall until our butts landed on the floor. My shoulder throbbed and the blood slowed, drying on my arm. A crusty trail pulled and itched my skin. Malcolm’s wounds had slowed but the blood still seeped through the rough material of the robe.

  I tilted my head back against the wall. So many thoughts, ready to be spoken, but exhaustion covered me and it was all I could do to battle the panic rising in my mind, like how in hell would we get back to the boat. Malcolm seemed to sense my thoughts and squeezed my hand.

  A whooshing sound echoed throughout the room followed by a clattering. I jumped and screamed, waiting for a round of chambers to be fired at us from secret holes in the wall but only dust floated in the air like dandelion fuzz in the spring. It filled my throat. We both coughed.

  I searched the room. All the cubbies to the left of us had collapsed. All the scrolls and parchments were gone and the wooden structure lay almost flat against the wall.

  A second whooshing sound followed and all the cubbies to our right collapsed, the scrolls disappearing.

/>   “Holy hell,” I said.

  “Through the floor.” Malcolm’s voice was dull. “They released the bottoms of the cubbies and the scrolls dropped into a storage container underneath.”

  “What are they going to do with us?” I whispered. For some reason talking in a normal voice seemed wrong, like they could hear us and the very echo of our words would condemn us.

  “Nothing good, I’m sure.” He leaned his head back against the wall too and muttered, “There’s got to be another way out.”

  Silence wedged between us, the fear of death very real. I needed to speak my mind. I took a deep breath and the words tumbled out.

  “Our families are a disaster, complete psychopaths,” I hesitated, kicking myself at how horrible that sounded. “I mean we’re separate from them. We don’t have to be them or part of the mess that comes with them. Not saying we should completely desert them.” I huffed, frustrated at my lack of clarity.

  “Say it in English,” Malcolm prodded. Pain crossed his face, his lips twitching or his eyes squeezing tighter.

  I closed mine too and tried to clear my mind so all that was left was the simple truth. That I wanted to go back to the morning on his boat before I sneaked out, before it blew up and he disappeared. I hadn’t been rejecting him but choosing my family, and Will had made an offer I couldn’t refuse.

  “I’m sorry. I never should’ve asked you to betray your family,” I finally said.

  “Savvy,” he interrupted.

  I held my breath and a tremor started in my arm and stretched to my fingers. He didn’t reach for my hand, and my chest hollowed, all my hopes whooshing out, leaving nothing but my beating heart.

  “We have so much to talk about.” His voice was raspy and he breathed harder with the effort.

  Before he could say more, the stone floor shuddered beneath us, sending ripples through my body. Deep in the ground, the choking sound of gears grinding and sputtering to life after years of inactivity vibrated the back of my legs. Hot prickles spread across my neck.

  “Um, what was that?” I asked.

  “Damn,” he whispered, causing the prickles to run down my back.

  The floor shuddered again and the wall pressed against my back, pushing me forward inch by inch. The wall was moving. My butt slid across the ground. I snapped my attention to Malcolm and the sudden stiffening of his back and the fear in his eyes.

  Another shudder and groan and more grinding of gears and the wall across from us started moving toward us. Both walls were moving toward the center of the room. Inch by inch, slowly, the once square room was turning rectangular.

  They had rigged the room with secret passages galore and fancy gizmos to protect their scrolls. They also rigged it to crush any intruders.

  “Holy crap. Holy crap. Holy crap!” I whispered. Fear of death went to a whole new level.

  He pushed to his feet, letting out a grunt of pain. I could see the influence of his family in the way he took charge, ready to find a solution. “I’ll start on one side. You start on the other. Look for any kind of lever or switch to open a secret door.”

  Somehow, I managed to stand, adrenaline surging and overtaking the pain. The groan and creak of the moving walls pushed me to find escape. I shuffled along the wall, searching its surface for any kind of crack or crevice. I pushed, pulled, pressed and pounded. I tried to go slow but panic increased as we lost inches on the room every minute that passed.

  “Any luck?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  We kept at it, feeling and forging ahead. I coughed every few seconds at the dust stirred up by the moving prison walls. The grinding became a buzz in my ear as my frustration grew. This wouldn’t work. The monks were too smart. Finally, we met on the other side, the room long and skinny, only a few feet wide. Our hands touched and we were slow to look at each other because then we’d have to face the fact and the fear that death was imminent.

  “Savvy,” he said, resignation in his voice.

  But I wasn’t ready to hear his words. I glanced at the other wall, only two feet away and closing. I’d never been claustrophobic but I trembled in the confined space. “How much time do we have?”

  “Minutes,” he said and finally reached for my hand. Just his gentle, warm touch brought a dull ache to my chest.

  Scenes flashed through my head, all the ones I’d never experience. Seeing my family back together, safe and happy. And Malcolm and I, together, enjoying a regular date with dinner and casual flirting. Okay, and probably some kissing.

  I did not want to die. Then I kicked myself. Since when had I given up on anything? “Where’s the one place in the room, they’d absolutely want a way in and out?”

  The answer came to us at the same time. “The scrolls!”

  One foot away from being crushed, we scrambled to the end of the room where the oldest of the ancient scrolls had been kept. Frantically, we ran our hands over the wall.

  I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  The gears kept grinding. The walls touched my arms and we had no place left to run. No time left for regrets, good-byes or an I love you.

  Forty-one

  Malcolm and I looked at each other, fear rising between us as the walls moved closer. His eyes were troubled and in their depths I caught a glimpse of the boy I loved, the one who rarely showed his true feelings. His guard was down in the moments before death and love, caring, fear, compassion all rolled together. He grabbed my hand while the other one kept groping at the wall.

  “It’s impossible,” I said, the last of any hope draining out of me.

  He moved his hand to the back of my head and pulled me forward. His lips crushed mine in a dizzying effect. The fear of dying and the thrill of his kiss crashed. If the taste of his lips was my last sweet thing on earth, I’d die happy.

  He broke off our kiss, the cool air stinging my lips.

  “Savvy!” His eyes widened and excitement flashed.

  The floor dropped out from under us. My face scraped the sides of the wall as they closed together the last few inches. I screamed. Darkness swallowed me. My stomach pitched as I whooshed down some sort of slide, the air rippling through my hair and clothing. The cold, rough edges scraped at my skin and every time I bumped against the slide, pain shot through my shoulder.

  I landed hard on my back. Stunned. I sank in and out of awareness. The pain was constant. Sharp. Shooting. Ebbing. Flowing. It changed but never left, constantly there, tearing at me.

  New blood seeped from the closing edges of my wound, wetting my arm and leaving a cloying smell that mixed with the dank dusty scent of where I’d landed.

  A scratching sound. Rough bristles brushed against my arm. I tensed, sending waves of pain.

  “Malcolm?”

  He had to be here. I moved my good arm and patted the dusty ground. Nothing.

  “Malcolm?” I asked louder, my voice swallowed by the walls and smothering air.

  Still no answer. I got to my knees and holding my hurt arm tight against my body, I crawled, feeling for the touch of warm skin, the touch of his clothes. I started to work out in circles, moving faster and faster.

  The scurry of little feet of what were probably big rats would normally freak me out but I didn’t pay them any attention. What freaked me out was that Malcolm was nowhere to be found. Nowhere. I spent minutes, pawing and clawing at the dirt, hoping, praying.

  Finally, with my fingers sore and raw, I crumpled into a ball. My insides screamed. I sobbed and tears and snot flowed. My eyes swelled and I wanted to die right there. His family would never forgive me.

  And when I could cry no more, I lay there, numb to the pain and the dark. And in that silence, the people I cared about spoke to me. With no fight left, my heart remembered. Malcolm whispered in my ear to not give up, that he hadn’t sacrificed his life for me to die in the depths of a monastery. Edith’s voice crackled in the air as she scolded me. A true heroine with grit wouldn’t die alone. Adamos spoke to me. The soft tones of his voi
ce spoke to my mind and soul, prodding me to fight. The memory of his voice soothed me.

  And then my mom whispered to me. How could I let my dreams wither and fade when she still needed me? She needed me. She was on the outside, waiting.

  I pushed aside the numbing hurt and pain engulfing me and dug my fingers into the hard-packed dirt floor. The monks always had an escape route. I started to the left and moved along the wall, swiping away cobwebs and ignoring the imaginary feel of spiders running their legs across my shoulders. As I moved around, the wall grew damp and when I moved farther my fingers came away with a bit of slime.

  Water.

  Where there was water, there would be a way out. Hope blossomed and I continued until the ground sloped upward. An opening? I pushed up, and slightly hunched, walked blindly through a tunnel with my good arm out in front.

  Eventually a bit of light crept into the air and I inched forward, anxious for sun and the feel of fresh air against my skin. I moved one step at a time until small drafts hit my face. When the draft disappeared, I retraced my steps and felt the wall until part of the ceiling moved.

  Dirt dislodged and dribbled onto my face and into my mouth. I turned and spit, while pushing. More dirt crumbled and slid to the floor. With one last big push that almost made me pass out, a trap door opened. Rain and wind rushed through, pelting my skin and whipping my hair about.

  I found steps built into the wall and climbed out, then stumbled forward, trying to make sense of the sudden onslaught of noise and light. A figure rushed toward me, his arms outstretched as if to grab me, and I started running back to the hole in the ground. Darkness was better than a fight with monks.

  “Savvy! It’s Will.” He whipped me around, the rain streaming down his face and dripping from his hair. “Where’s Malcolm.”

  A sob blubbered up from my chest and I hiccupped, trying, but not able to speak the words.