by Ian Somers
‘I don’t know. I really don’t. She wanted everything, all the paperwork and all the computer files, gone by morning. That makes me think they’ll come for you before dawn. You don’t have much time, Edward. Run!’
‘Thank you, doctor. I owe my life to you a second time.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Hidden Gift
I slid my arms into the coat lined with Deflexus plates and zipped up the front right to the point of my chin. I went to the window and stared out at the dim surroundings. There was no movement in the garden or amid the trees that lined the pathways of the nearby hills. The shadows of the landscape were frozen and not a sound could be heard. I still had time.
I went upstairs and turned on the taps of the sink and bath in the bathroom, then did the same for the sink in the kitchen before hurrying to the back door. I pulled it open by an inch and watched the hedge that ran along the back of the lawn. All was quiet and now was the time to make a run for it. I stepped into the pouring rain and gently shut the door behind me. I took another glance at the dark surroundings before bolting for the gate at the end of the garden. I did not stop until I had reached the crest of a hill nearby, one that overlooked the property that Golding had allowed me to use. From the hilltop I had a panoramic view of the area. I could see the house, both the front and rear gardens, and the two pathways as well the narrow road that led to the property.
I eased down on my stomach, with my face just above the overgrown grass, and watched for any movement towards the house. Sheets of rain were sweeping in from the north, but I remained dry; water simply rolled off my clothes thanks to my gift of mageletonia. I was quite comfortable lying there, waiting for the Guild’s assassins. The rage had been building all day long, and now it was in full flow because of the excitement and the danger inspired by the call from Dr Walters. My power was rising to an entirely new level. This is why I was not fleeing into the night. I was waiting for the assassins. I had already set up an ambush that they would walk straight into.
For almost an hour I waited in the grass, motionless and barely blinking, before I noticed a shadow creeping towards the house. It appeared on one of the little winding pathways that cut through the fields to the east and it quickly disappeared into the trees near the front garden. Then another followed it. More came from the pathway to the west. I counted nine in all. I was too far away to identify any of them but I was confident that they were the cream of the crop. Some of the best killers in the service of the Guild were down there, sneaking to the house and surrounding it. Walters’s warning had been accurate. Golding had betrayed me.
I slowly crept forward, moving through the grass like a giant snake. The assassins had surrounded the house and were moving to the doors at the front and back. I slithered all the way to the bottom of the hill, into long grass mixed with weeds and small bushes. There I waited until the assassins made their move.
They burst through the doors and marched into the house, leaving only two outside; one at the front and one at the back. I got to my feet slowly and shuffled forward as quietly as possible. When I reached the rear garden I identified the lookout. It was Josef Vorn, a very talented pyrokinetic who had once given Ania a few lessons. I knew him not as a teacher, but as a man who had killed dozens of people over the years. But for all his experience and skill and power, Vorn could do nothing to save himself.
I pointed at him with my index finger and fired two small but very precise darts of psychokinetic energy at him. Vorn’s heart seized up and he fell onto his back without as much as a whimper. I was scouting around the side of the house before Vorn even hit the dirt, and gradually made my way towards the front lawn. I could hear a racket from the other side of the wall as the assassins in the house pulled the rooms apart looking for me. The clamour made my approach easier than it should have been.
Standing under a tree at the end of the garden was Miranda Jacobs, who I had met on a few occasions over the years. She was a gifted assassin, but too inexperienced for a mission like this. She seemed strangely complacent, leaning her shoulder against the trunk of the maple, watching only the façade of the house, and paying no attention to the flanks. She failed to see the decapitation slice coming. I was moving to the front door before she hit the ground.
I kept close to the wall and slid along it to the open doorway. There were voices inside, and the sounds of feet slashing through water. The entire house was flooded from the taps I had left on which meant I had an advantage over the seven remaining assassins. I focused on my mageleton gift before taking my first step inside. When I used the gift I could actually feel the water around me, as if it were a part of me and now with his my heightened powers I could manipulate every last droplet within the house.
The water rushed from the bathroom floor and the landing, pouring down the staircase as if it had a mind of its own. Then the water from the kitchen was lifted off the floor and was channelled through the doorway into the hall where the stream from upstairs flowed directly into it. The hallway was filled from wall to wall, floor to ceiling with icy water and the unfortunate figure of Emilia Metz was caught in it. I watched her struggling for a moment. I would have liked to see her drown slowly, but I had not the time for that, and I used my gift to force the water into her mouth until her chest practically exploded.
‘Three down, six to go,’ I whispered.
I summoned the water to me and it surrounded my body on all sides as I strode to the sitting room. There I found Jennifer Jones, a veteran mageleton. She attacked me on sight, but her efforts were weak and she could not tear open my watery shield no matter how hard she tried. I stunned her when I shot a portion of the water at her face. She stumbled backward and I used psychokinesis to crush her heart. Her death was instantaneous.
I then moved to the door leading to the kitchen, but was attacked from behind before I reached it. Someone fired a powerful blast of energy at me and my shield collapsed momentarily. Water dashed the sitting room floor and created a thunderous crash.
I saw a sleek figure pass in front of the window then raise a hand above her head. A shot of energy struck me in the shoulder and knocked me straight through the door and onto the kitchen floor. It should have been powerful enough to kill me but the coat lined with Deflexus padding deflected most of the force and saved my life.
I drew the water from the sitting room and struck the woman with it, knocking her off her feet. I then summoned it through the doorway and it surrounded me once more, and just in time. Wolfgang Platz entered from the hallway and fired a wave of energy at me that almost broke the shield of fluid once more.
This time it held fast and I sprang forward and ran straight at my attacker. The water consumed Platz and I grabbed hold of him, countered his psychokinetic power with my own – rendering him powerless. I held him within the giant glob of fluid until he drowned.
By this time I was under attack again from the female assassin. She was close to the sitting room door and was using her energy to pull my shield asunder. I held it long enough to muster my psychokinetic powers once more. I allowed the water to collapse then fired an energy spear through the wall. A part of the brickwork was obliterated and the assassin was thrown through the air and smacked violently into the granite fireplace. She was still alive and was groaning quietly. She would pose no threat to me now so I moved out into the hallway again. The real test of my strength was still to come. I recognised all the assassins so far and although they were very skilled, they were not master assassins and none would be given the job of leading an attack on him after what I had done in Portsmouth. I was sure there were even more able killers upstairs, but I felt no fear in facing them.
‘Prepare yourselves as best you can,’ I shouted from the hallway. ‘Or simply pray to whatever god you worship.’
I heard hurried footsteps from above as they got ready for me to make my move. I waited in the hallway as the water wrapped around me in coils until I was enclosed in it completely. I allowed more of it to
flow up the stairs ahead of me. When it reached the landing I formed it into numerous walls that skated forward like pawns to block his enemies’ assaults.
As I climbed the stairs I saw a shadow moving behind one of the walls of water. I used mageletonia to lash the figure with water. The assassin remained unharmed but was forced back into one of the empty bedrooms.
Suddenly a bright flash went off to my right and blue fingers of electricity spread across the walls and consumed my shield of water. The electricity scattered across the outside of the shield and pulsed around me. I was unhurt, but if the shield gave way, even for a fraction of a second, I would be electrocuted and my Deflexus clothing would not aid me.
There was a loud blast from above and part of the ceiling came down and smashed into the shield. Then another blast that shattered part of the wall next to me, sending pieces of plaster spinning rapidly through the darkness.
The shield was hit directly from someone else and the force of it sent me backwards and I almost lost my footing on the staircase. I was under constant attacks now and my shield was being stripped away gradually by two of the assassins.
I felt panicked and the power within me surged. I gathered the water in the house around me and fired it onto the landing, knocking everything out of his way. I paced upward and reached the landing while weaving an energy shield around my body. I was hit from one of the doorways, but I remained unscathed. I reacted instantly and sucked energy towards me and the assassin was drawn out and rolled across the landing.
‘Ah, Mr Fan,’ I laughed at the figure sprawled on the floor at my feet. ‘How appropriate that a trick you once taught me should prove to be your undoing.’
Fan tried to speak, but was crushed by a layer of energy that snapped his bones then the floorboards beneath him.
I mustered a terrifying amount of energy and sent all of it towards the back bedroom. This was where the electro-psych had been hiding and the room was totally destroyed, even the heavy joists from the ceiling came crashing down and no one could have survived it.
Only one assassin remained. The master.
‘I counted you and your colleagues as you approached the house,’ I said as my gaze crossed each doorway on the long hallway. ‘I’ve downed eight assassins, leaving only one. You are alone and you are going to die. Save us both the bother and come on out here so I can give you a warrior’s death.’
There was only silence.
‘Who am I talking to I wonder. Mendez? Carrizo? Sakamoto? Armitage? I would be insulted if Jim Sterling sent any lesser than one of the big four. Surely he would not send a mere foot soldier. Surely he recognises how dangerous I really am. Come, it is not befitting for a warrior to hide from his quarry. Are you afraid?’
‘I am unafraid.’
I stared down the landing at the tall figure of Sakamoto. I would have preferred someone else. Sakamoto was an extremely dangerous assassin, possibly the most lethal the Guild had available. Sakamoto was a pyrokinetic, psychokinetic and a siren. Three deadly gifts and he had mastered all known techniques. He was more skilled than I. Did he have the raw power that I had?
‘Finally,’ I buzzed, ‘someone who is deserving of my respect.’
‘The respect is not mutual,’ Sakamoto replied coldly. ‘You have used a sacred gift to maim and to kill innocent people. For this you must be executed.’
‘That is easier said than done, old friend. If you have not noticed, I have killed your entire team in less than five minutes.’
‘I noticed.’ Sakamoto fell into a very dramatic stance. One arm was pulled tight against his ribs, the other extended fully in front. ‘You will find killing me much more complicated.’
‘I am sure you would love to kill me, Sakamoto.’ I grinned at the challenge and readied myself for the duel. ‘But you cannot beat the devil at his own game.’
Sakamoto closed his fists and the walls on either side of them were instantly set alight. I reacted by cocooning myself with a wall of water, thinking it would protect me from the flames. Sakamoto was undeterred and moved his hands about in circles, and the fire on either side of him leaped from the walls and spun around my shield, covering it completely. The blazing cocoon became more and more intense and started to evaporate the water that was protecting me. The hallways filled with boiling steam and I lost sight of my enemy. All there was to be seen was the circle of fire that raged on, brighter and hotter as each second passed, until suddenly the sphere of liquid burst spectacularly and doused the flames.
I was defenceless and Sakamoto tried to take advantage of this momentary vulnerability. He fired two shots of kinetic power along the hallway that severed the cloud of steam. One shot hit me in the arm and the other went askew. The Deflexus armour had saved me once more, this time from having my arm cut off.
I replied by firing a wave along the hall that tore up some of the wooden boards of the floor and scratched the charred walls. Sakamoto had a protective shield in place and had hardly broken sweat. I tried to hit him again but with no success. Sakamoto’s response was to strike me so hard that I was knocked through the window at the end of the hallway; I fell face-first into the grass at the side of the house.
I scrambled to my feet but by the time I turned around Sakamoto was standing right in front of me. I threw up my arms and water from the sodden ground shot up and deflected what would have been a killer blow from the master assassin.
Sakamoto then employed the use of his third gift. He was a siren, more commonly known in the Guild as a pitch-shifter.
‘Die,’ the assassin said softly. As the word left his mouth the pitch heightened to a deafening scream. The sound was so strong it penetrated the watery orb and almost crushed my ear drums. It then became a hum that seemed to split into every note imaginable and my mind began to numb. I knew I would fall into a coma within seconds if I did not react.
The water collapsed to the ground and left me open to attack. Sakamoto reacted instantly by launching a strong shot of energy at me. My newfound strength enabled me to actually catch the energy in mid flight and take control over it. I spun around and shot the energy back at Sakamoto, who could not respond quickly enough.
He was blasted into the air and smacked the side of the house. He was badly injured, but still he tried to get to his feet to continue the fight. I gathered a dense ball of energy in my hand as he rose then fired it at his chest. The infamous Sakamoto fell silently into the grass – dead.
I took some moments to gather myself then walked to the front of the house. There was still one assassin alive – the woman I had thrown against the fireplace.
I strolled back inside the house and through to the sitting room only to find one body. That of Jennifer Jones. The other woman had gone. I quickly paced through the hall then to the kitchen and to an empty room at the back of the house. Frustrated I ran back to the sitting room and to the window. As I scanned the front lawn I heard a faint scratching. It was coming from the fireplace. The chimney of the old house was big enough for an adult to climb through and that was where the last assassin was hiding. I drew water from around the house and allowed it to slowly fill the chimney. The level rose sharply and enveloped the fleeing killer.
I kept the water at a high level for over a minute before relinquishing my control over it. The water came crashing down on the hearth and flowed out across the floor. With it had tumbled the assassin, chocking and coughing, writhing in agony as she tried to suck air into her sizzling lungs. I grabbed a handful of her long raven hair then dragged her across the floor and threw her into the armchair.
‘Take the weight off your feet, Ms Farrier,’ I said mockingly. I stood in front of her, watching as she coughed and hunched over. ‘I remember you were kind to me once. Back when the others in the Guild treating me in a most cruel fashion. For that I thank you. For your part in this plot I must kill you. A gesture of kindness is not enough to save you.’
‘Stick it, Zalech,’ she panted.
‘Mind your manners!’ I slappe
d her across the cheek and loomed over her. ‘Be nice now, as you once were, and I may grant you a swift death.’
‘Save your speeches and get it over with.’
‘You spent too much time with your Scotch brute of a boyfriend. You used to be quite an eloquent woman, but it would appear you have inherited his foul tongue. And his lack of respect.’
‘I have absolutely zero respect for you, murderer!’
‘We are all murderers, Ms Farrier. Even you.’
‘Why are keeping me alive?’
‘Oh, do not worry; it is not for the conversation, Ms Farrier. No. You will prove most useful before I put you to death.’
‘I won’t tell you anything. Even if you torture me.’
‘Torture is too time-consuming. And I know you would not spill the beans.’
‘Then kill me!’
‘Right after I look into your mind.’
Now I could complete my masterpiece of revenge by revealing my third gift. I had kept it hidden my entire life. Not even Ania had known about it. I pressed my hand over Farrier’s mouth and the other I clamped on the top of her skull. I took a firm grip then used my hidden gift. The gift of time-scanning.
I scanned into Farrier’s past and saw all that she saw that evening, heard all that she heard. I saw her entering a large house with the other assassins. Inside were more people from the Guild, including Ross Bentley. I was stunned that Bentley had survived the tsunami, but there would now be an opportunity to rectify that. Also present was Cathy Atkinson, who looked very close to Bentley. It dawned on me that she must have been the one who controlled the panther that had done so much damage to me in the north-east. I then listened to Jim Sterling’s speech in its entirety. I now knew my enemy’s plans in fine detail.
I released the scan then snapped Farrier’s neck before walking to the front of the house and climbing onto the Kinetibike. I waited before leaving the garden. Would I go north or south?
