Assassin (Starlight Book 1)

by D. N. Hoxa

  The long cobblestone road that led to the castle of Lyndor was pretty boring. Large white walls at both sides, so tall not even vampires could jump them. I tried not to think about the eyes that were probably on me while I made my way to the entrance.

  Instead, I wondered why on Earth McGraw had called me over. He had my email and my phone number, which was what we normally used when he gave me my targets. But the day before, while I was still after George Allister, I’d received the letter from McGraw requesting my presence at the castle of Lyndor. Strange, to say the least. He knew how much I hated that place.

  I’d spent almost three bitter years in there, learning, training, becoming the Council’s best assassin. I’d been beaten, tortured, left to starve, locked up in cells for nights at a time, but that was nothing compared to all I’d heard and seen. The screams while McGraw tortured supernaturals from the Red Rebels for information—the old man had a wild imagination that fuelled mine whenever I set foot inside that place. I was barely at the door, and I couldn’t wait to leave already.

  The inside was pretty much the same as the outside. Stone. Wood. More stone. Candles. The classrooms were on the ground floor, as well as the kitchen and the dining hall. The dormitories on the second, third and fourth, and the teachers’ quarters were on the fifth. The three levels below were used for “punishment” and for other business the Council decided to attend to in the castle. The outside was used for training. They had a huge stadium and the biggest arsenal you’d ever seen. All in all, it was a pretty scary place.

  Nobody came to greet me, which was fine. Not that I missed any of them, except Kai. My best friend—or the only sup close to a friend that I had. A were-leopard. A Royal Guard, assigned permanently to Lyndor at—check this out—her own request. So fucking beyond me, I can’t even say. Who wants to spend their whole life inside that goddamn castle? They didn’t even allow phones in there, for God’s sake. Unless you were Principal McGraw, of course.

  Anyway, she was older than me by a decade and a half but she was the only person I spoke to that didn’t want to kill me straight away. The professors that taught at Lyndor did not like me—except my kickboxing professor, Arturo Garibaldi, Mr. Tall, Dark and Half Angel I’d lost my virginity to. Everybody else hated my guts as if it was my fault that Master Samayan and the Council decided I remain in the academy for almost three years.

  Since there was no elevator in there, I had to take the stairs to the fifth floor and to McGraw’s office. It was at the far end of the hallway, right next to the teachers’ lounge, where I was sure I’d find Kai together with the teachers who spent most their time in Lyndor, even during summer when there were no students there.

  I straightened my leather jacket and made sure my hair was in place before I knocked on McGraw’s door and heard his voice, asking me to come in. Nothing had changed about the place, not even the old man. He was a warlock. His specialty was potions, and I’m pretty sure he used them regularly to stay in such good shape. What I never understood was why he was bald. He could probably make potions that could grow hair.

  “Welcome back, dear,” he said when he saw me, a small smile touching his thin lips.

  I dragged my feet over to his huge cherry wood desk that held what looked like thousands and thousands of files on it. “Hello, old man.” He didn’t like to be called that, but then again, I didn’t care. I was uncomfortable in that place. Always had been.

  “You look well,” he said and waved for me to take a seat across from him. I did so reluctantly.

  “I would’ve looked even better away from here,” I mumbled.

  He sighed. “Don’t be difficult, Star.”

  “I’m not being anything. You know how much I hate it here.” It wasn’t a secret.

  “I do, but I need you here. Master needs you here.”

  Just like every other time, when Master Samayan’s name came up, shivers washed over me. He was a vampire, one of the fourteen members of the Council that managed the supernatural world on earth. The most powerful being I’d ever laid eyes on, though I’d only seen him twice and in the fifth dimension.

  “Well, here I am, so you might as well tell me what’s going on.” Asking him how he was would probably just make him laugh so I skipped right to the fun part.

  “Your target?” McGraw asked instead, a thin grey brow arched on his wrinkled forehead.

  “Eliminated.”

  He meant George Allister, the half I’d killed in Miami the day before. McGraw flinched.

  “What? I’m an assassin,” I said with a shrug for what must have been the thousandth time.

  I was right. McGraw always wanted me to try and bring back the targets to Lyndor alive. But my job title said it all. That wasn’t my job. And even if it was, I would never bring back sups to Lyndor. Like I said, McGraw had a wild imagination, and screams had kept me up many nights while I still trained at the castle. I wasn’t going to do that to anyone, even if it was a Red Rebel.

  “You could have at least tried,” he said, his voice ice cold. I could have, sure. I just didn’t want to.

  “I did try. He was strong. I couldn’t.”

  It was a big fat lie, and he knew it. Luckily, he decided not to comment.

  “We’ve had quite the situation this past week,” McGraw said as he searched for something on his messy desk. “We’ve lost a vampire, two nymphs and three shifters.”

  My eyes almost popped out of my skull. “Excuse me?” Six supernaturals? What the hell?

  “And that’s not all—the Rebels have recruited more than one hundred of ours.”

  It was ridiculous, really. I almost laughed.

  “You lost me here,” I said in all honesty.

  What he said made no sense. Council sups were well trained. Each had to spend six months in Lyndor to train for combat and in lots of other schools and ways to train their magic. By the time they were twenty, they were more than capable of handling sups like the Red Rebels, who were some rogue sups that hated the Council for some reason and caused trouble just to spite us. They’d never before managed to kill so many of ours. One, maybe two, yes, but six? Unlikely. And they’d been recruiting ours?

  “We’ve got confirmation from the inside. One of Vladimir’s was a traitor, and Vladimir caught him right after the Red Rebels recruited him.”

  Vladimir was The Asshole Extraordinaire, a thousand-year-old vampire, Captain of the Royal Guards, soldiers trained to perfection with almost unlimited power to chase the bad guys anywhere at any time. Almost as good as I was, actually. Except for Vladimir, who may or may not have been a tad bit stronger than I was. Just a tad. Not that I’d ever admit it, though. To anyone. Ever.

  “And they’re doing it again. Tomorrow night in New York,” McGraw continued.

  “Doing what again?”

  “Recruiting. From what Vladimir’s vampire said, they were going in rounds all over the country, meeting in secret and recruiting our supernaturals.”

  Silence for a few seconds while I let it all sink in. The Council’s power was absolute. The Red Rebels were nothing but a bunch of bored sups causing troubles. There was absolutely nothing I could think of that would make a sup switch sides and risk the wrath of Master Samayan.

  “They must be giving them something,” I said in wonder. It was the only thing that made even a little bit of sense.

  “They are,” McGraw said with a nod.

  “Didn’t you ask Vladimir’s vampire?”

  McGraw pressed his lips and looked away from me. “Vladimir killed him before we could ask all the questions we needed the answers to.”

  I almost grinned. Like a little girl, I had hated and envied Vladimir since day one. He was what I one day wanted to be. If he ever died. Hopefully. He never screwed up, and when he did, on rare occasions, I liked to think that Master Samayan would kick him out and name me Captain of the Royal Guards. Childish dreams.

  “You said the next meeting is tomorrow.” There was the reason he’d called me over there
.

  “It is.”

  “So what am I doing here?”

  McGraw smiled. “The Council fears we might have been compromised. We are not to use electronic devices to communicate anymore. This is too important. I had to give you your next assignment in person.”

  Oooh. Compromised. Someone had a serious death wish, it seemed. Because if Master Samayan suspected that there was a snitch among us, there probably really was a snitch among us. And I lacked the imagination to come up with things the Master would do to this snitch.

  “When do I leave?” I asked next. It had been a while since I fought more than one guy, and frankly, I missed the excitement.

  “In the morning. Get some rest tonight. There will be more than thirty supernaturals at the gathering tomorrow, according to our Intel,” McGraw said.

  “Who’s giving you this information?”

  Uncle Sam was their computer guy, but I knew of no other undercover individuals that worked for the Council in the shadows. Except for myself.

  “Classified.” He handed me a manila envelope. “Here are all the details about tomorrow.”

  “Where is Vladimir? Why aren’t you sending the Royals in?”

  Not that I minded. Thirty was a lot, but I could handle a lot. The thing was that every other time there were more than ten sups, the Council sent the Royal Guards.

  “You ask too many questions,” McGraw said, and with a weak wave of his hand, he dismissed me. I rolled my eyes.

  “I’m going to need more details than that, McGraw.” I didn’t like to go in blind, and this was the strangest, vaguest job I’d ever received from the Council.

  “You will find all you need in the envelope. I have things to do, Star, and you need to rest. We’ll talk more during breakfast.”

  I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was definitely something more going on. Something he wasn’t telling me, which wasn’t anything new. They just loved to keep secrets from me, maybe because I asked too many questions. But I never saw the harm in wanting to see the whole picture. What they gave you was just crumbs.

  “You know, I’m the one who’s going to risk her life to go in there and figure out what the Red Rebels are up to. So why don’t you cut me some slack?”

  It was the truth and he knew it.

  McGraw sighed loudly. “This is all the information you are going to get, Star. Do not make this more difficult than it already is.”

  The look in his grey eyes said it all. Didn’t know how I didn’t see it sooner. The reason why he was being so vague was simple: he didn’t trust me. Holy shit, I was a freaking suspect!

  I jumped to my feet, and the chair fell to the floor behind me.

  “Have I ever, in the four years that I’ve put my life on the line for you, given you even one reason to doubt my loyalty?”

  A second. Two.

  What the hell did you expect? I asked myself in my head when McGraw said nothing. With the envelope in my hand, feeling as pathetic as I always had in Lyndor, I stormed out of his office.

  It was stupid of me to even get mad—I knew that. Of course they’d suspect me. I had never truly been one of them to begin with. Instead of going to the teachers’ lounge, I headed downstairs to the second floor and to my old room. Like I suspected, McGraw had it prepared for me. Clean sheets and towels waited for me. The space was small, round, with one window, a desk and a twin bed inside. Empty and boring, just like the rest of the castle.

  I jumped on the bed with a loud sigh. “I shouldn’t let it get to me,” I said to the darkness. This wasn’t anything new. I was just going to have to learn to live with it.

  5

  ——————————

  After a terrible night of dreaming about McGraw making me drink something green and nasty, my eyes finally popped open. What a fucking night. I shouldn’t have even bothered. Now I was more tired than I had been before I went to sleep.

  The good news was that it was still five in the morning. Another couple of hours before everyone else—or whoever else was at the castle—woke up. I could go down to the stadium and train for an hour. Throw some dagger at some dummies. Maybe kick them till I destroyed them.

  That ought to take the negative energy away, I thought, as I made my way down the stairs and outside to the white sand stadium with the nice, half-hidden arsenal room we called the Cottage to its left. The sky was beautiful in that time of the morning—more orange than blue. It made me think of magic, the bright kind of magic, the one Uncle Sam had shown me when he first told me about the supernatural world. Flowers and rainbows and unicorns.

  Unfortunately, I’d already seen too much, and I knew that there was no such thing as good magic. Or bad, for that matter. It did what the supernatural wanted it to do, and that was that.

  Feeling unusually numb, I turned to the yellow dummy I’d placed in the middle of the stadium and began to throw my daggers at it. It was a good feeling to never miss—not one single time—but not enough to lighten up my mood. So I took off my leather boots, and I got close and personal with the dummy before I hit him with everything I had in me. The thing was broken to pieces in fifteen seconds.

  I pretended not to notice the air that changed behind me while I picked up the pieces to take back to the arsenal room. That kind of energy was only given by creatures of the night. Creatures that had no business coming out under sunlight. But he wasn’t exactly out…

  “You’re getting better and better, little birdie.” The Captain of the Royal Guards hid in the shadows of the castle not twenty feet away from me.

  “And you’re getting paler,” I said, though it probably didn’t escape his attention that I didn’t even turn to face him. I was still collecting pieces of my dummy.

  “I didn’t know you were so worried about my complexion. I’m flattered.”

  I hated the way he spoke. His voice was deep and rough and just so damn inviting. He was a predator in every sense, and everything about him was designed to help him complete his tasks to perfection. I hated his fucking guts.

  “What do you want, Vlad?” I could go at it with anyone, except Vladimir. He got under my skin like no other.

  “Just watching you flex, that’s all. Haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “Don’t tell me you missed me,” I mumbled, but with that super hearing of his, he caught it clearly.

  “You know I would never lie to you like that, little birdie.”

  I wished I could slap that grin off his face. Couldn’t keep my eyes off him as I made my way back to the cottage to drop the daggers and the dummy. He looked every bit the scary bogeyman that kept you up at night. He was big—huge!—and his face was scarred in three places, the tissue of the cuts whiter than his already white skin. Vampires healed extremely fast so I had no idea who had given him those scars or with what, but I would make his fucking day if I asked, so I kept my mouth shut.

  “Stop calling me birdie,” I hissed for lack of a better thing to say.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Raven.” He laughed a throaty laugh like he couldn’t have been happier. To my delight, just then a small sunray fell on his left foot, and smoke started to come from it while his flesh burned. He jumped back, terrified.

  It was my turn to laugh. “Karma’s a bitch, isn’t she?” I grinned brightly just before I entered the cottage to put the weapons back. But when I walked back to the castle he was still there, waiting for me.

  “McGraw tells me you’re going to New York for the next RR meeting,” he said, not so amused anymore.

  “He told you right,” I said proudly.

  “You know you’re going to get yourself killed, right? There will be thirty sups in there, most of which are Council’s.” Which meant they were much better trained than the Rebels. I still wasn’t scared.

  “I fought five of your Royals and won. Do you really think thirty sups can bring me down?” He knew I was right, and that was why his hands pulled up in fists. I thought he was g
oing to stop following me, but when he came up the stairs right behind me, I became really curious. Vlad had always loved to tease me. He always mocked me and made fun of me, but he never seemed so desperate to talk to me before.

  “This is different,” he said through gritted teeth. “We’re not exactly sure what you’ll find in there, Raven.”

  There he went again. Raven was the name the Red Rebels had given me. Probably because I always wore black. Regardless of the reason, it was okay when they called me that. They were terrified of me, and that’s was the perfect reaction for an assassin like me. But when one of my own kind called me by that name, it made me want to throw up. But, asking him to stop calling me that—as witness minutes before—would only make him mock me more, so I didn’t.

  “How is it different? And can you just say what you want to say to me and be done with it so I can move on?”

  I was already at the door. I was going to get my towel and some clothes to go grab a shower. My stomach was growling with hunger, and I wasn’t exactly patient about Vladimir’s bullshit.

  Vladimir swallowed lowly. Vampires didn’t need to swallow—or breathe for that matter—but they always did. Guess stuff from the days when they were alive remained with them as habits. And when he finally spoke, I couldn’t believe my ears.

  “I think I should come with you.”

  Fucking historic.

  “Can you…can you repeat that?”

  Smoke came out of his nostrils the second the words left my mouth.

  “Don’t play games with me, Raven.”

  “Not playing games! Not at all. Just that I didn’t hear you. Can you say that again?”

  It was all I could do not to start laughing.

  “I should come with you to make sure that they don’t get away with this,” he hissed.

  I was gonna laugh—honest to God—but the look in his colorless eyes was so serious, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. No, this wasn’t funny.

  “So why don’t you?” I asked, though I already knew the answer. The Council wouldn’t let him come spy on me—because that’s what he wanted to do—so he was hoping to get me to invite him. Sure, after I died. He could go with me to my grave. Until then…