The Assassins of Light

by Britney Jackson

  Rose looked up at them, clutching the phone. “Kara,” she said worriedly.

  Kara didn’t even look at him. “He’s pointing a gun at me, isn’t he?”

  “Read the message. Out loud,” Isaac told Rose, “stupid, smartass bitch.”

  “I don’t think he’s pretending to be our friend anymore,” Rose muttered.

  Kara lifted her eyebrows. “No. He’s also pretty masochistic, apparently.”

  Rose watched his labored movements. Despite his painful injury, he managed to lean forward, until the gun pressed against Kara’s back. Even with a gun against her back, Kara looked completely at ease. As a matter of fact, she seemed amused by the threat. Rose, on the other hand, couldn’t have been less at ease. Her heart thundered inside her chest, and adrenaline coursed through her body at a speed that left her lightheaded. “I’m not taking my eyes off of you.”

  Isaac laughed at that. “Why? Because you think you can stop the bullet?”

  Kara watched Rose, her intense, piercing, blue eyes boring into Rose, as if she were seeing straight into her soul. “Don’t worry. I have this under control.”

  Rose raised an eyebrow. “It doesn’t look like you have it under control.”

  “My methods always look like chaos,” Kara said with a cocky smirk. “I am the Daughter of Loki, remember? Don’t worry. It’s just a gun. No big deal.”

  “No big deal?” Isaac said. “Do you know what kind of bullets these are?”

  Kara smiled. “I do now. Thank you for volunteering the information.”

  Isaac frowned, puzzled by the unexpected direction of the conversation. “I didn’t volunteer anything. I didn’t even tell you what kind of bullets they are.”

  “The ones with poisoned blood,” Kara told him, enjoying the frustration in his voice. “You wouldn’t have asked that otherwise.” She laughed, “Wow. A vampire with a gun that kills vampires. The Assassins of Light must be proud.”

  “Read the message,” Isaac snarled at Rose, “or I’ll pull the trigger.”

  Rose clutched the phone tightly, her heart racing. She worried that he’d pull the trigger as soon as she looked away. “If you could just lower the gun…”

  “No,” he growled, his hazel gaze darting toward her. “Do you want to test your power? Do you want to see if you can stop the bullet before the poison enters her bloodstream? It’ll happen in the blink of an eye. Are you fast enough?”

  “Okay,” Rose said nervously. “I’ll read the message. Just don’t hurt her.”

  Isaac purposely shoved the gun harder against Kara’s back. “Hurry.”

  Rose glanced down at the phone. “It’s just numbers. It’s…” she trailed off. She looked up at Kara, her bright blue eyes widening. “It’s our coordinates.”

  Kara breathed out shakily. “Rose, I need you to run. Now. I’ll catch up.”

  “If you think I’d leave you,” Rose said, “then, you don’t know me at all.”

  A small smile tugged at the corners of Kara’s lips. “It was worth a try.”

  “There are Assassins of Light in every major city in the world, and even some in smaller, insignificant cities,” Isaac told them, “and they know where you are now. It doesn’t matter whether you run now or later. They will still find you.”

  “You’re a vampire, Isaac, whether you like it or not,” Kara said. “What do you think the Assassins of Light will do to you, once they’re done using you?”

  “They’ll kill me,” he said. “I’m an abomination. It’s only right that I die.”

  Rose lifted both eyebrows. “And I thought I had problems,” she scoffed.

  “You should say your goodbyes,” Isaac warned. “They’ll be here soon.”

  “Ah, yeah,” Kara said, nodding, “but first…” She spun around, suddenly, and with one hand, she knocked the gun out of his hand, and with the other, she twisted his arm behind his back. Rose had the gun in her hand, pointing it directly at Isaac’s head, before Isaac could even look her way. Isaac cried out in pain as Kara shoved a dagger up into his stomach and twisted it. She jerked the dagger out, creating an even deeper, jagged wound, and she forced him back against the back of the seat. He froze, watching her warily, as she climbed onto him and pressed the tip of her dagger against the bottom of his chin. “For the record, I did warn you not to insult her.” She shoved the dagger up through his jaw, into the roof of his mouth, watching as he tried to scream, blood gurgling in his throat.

  Rose took a step back, stunned by the gory sight. “Kara, please,” she said quietly, watching as Kara removed the dagger from his face, “I can’t watch this.”

  Kara shoved the dagger into his stomach again, causing him to scream out. “He doesn’t deserve a quick death. But if you’d rather me kill him quickly…”

  “Yes,” Rose said softly, still holding the gun, “I’d prefer it quick. Please.”

  Kara leaned toward Isaac, meeting his agonized gaze. “You’re lucky she’s kind,” she growled, “because I had eighteen more weapons to introduce you to.”

  Then, in one swift, fluid motion, Kara shoved her hand up into his chest and ripped out his heart, putting a quick, merciful end to the agony of his injuries.

  Rose didn’t lower the gun until she saw his lifeless body fall back against the back of the seat. Blood continued to pour from the wounds in his face, even after Kara removed his heart, as his blood-soaked face fell back. “Thank you,” she mumbled as Kara stood and tossed his heart aside, “for showing him mercy.”

  Kara wiped her hands across her thighs, wiping some of the blood from her hands. She lifted an eyebrow. “Yeah, well, he’s lucky I fell in love with such a compassionate woman because…I’m a Viking, and Vikings never show mercy.”

  “Unless their girlfriend asks them to?” Rose asked with a teasing smile.

  Kara smiled and shrugged. “Yeah, well, I’d do anything for you, so…”

  Rose fell silent, watching speechlessly as Kara searched the plane for any other suspicious signs. Perhaps that statement shouldn’t have shocked her so much. After all, Kara had already confessed her love for Rose. But it did shock her because that level of love—the I’d-do-anything-for-you kind of love—was something she hadn’t expected Kara to feel for her. Especially not so soon after they met. And yet, as she considered her own feelings for Kara, she didn’t doubt that she’d do anything for Kara, as well. She loved Kara so deeply, so truly…

  “Rose?” Kara called, running back into the cabin, from the cockpit. She waved a blood-soaked arm toward the door. “We need to run. Now. As fast as we can.” Her light blue eyes flashed with anxiety. “This plane is going to explode.”

  Rose and Kara raced from the plane, grabbing Erik and Elise on their way, and—moving faster than the human eye could see—they fled to a nearby street and ducked into an alley. They covered their ears, cringing, as the explosion resounded through the city, inflicting sharp, shattering pain on their sensitive ears.

  Yells of alarm rang out as humans rushed out to see what had exploded.

  Meanwhile, Rose, Kara, Elise, and Erik leaned against the walls on each side of the alley—hidden from the humans—as they tried to catch their breath.

  “What the hell,” Erik said slowly, gasping for breath, “just happened?”

  “Isaac betrayed us,” Rose said tiredly, the scent of fire burning her nose.

  “He never left the Assassins of Light,” Kara explained. “He’s been one step ahead of us this whole time. He followed you,” she told Erik and Elise, “and he knew where we were headed. He sent our location to the Assassins of Light.”

  Elise straightened, pushing her blonde curls out of her face. “What does that mean?” she breathed, her blue-gray eyes widening. “They’re coming for us?”

  Kara nodded. “And for us, they’ll probably send the whole army.”

  “What did we do?” Rose said dryly. “Other than kill a ton of them.”

  “And almost take down their entire organization in one night,”
Erik said.

  Elise tugged nervously at the bottom of her dress. “So, what do we do?”

  “I don’t know,” Kara said with a worried frown, “but we can’t stay here.”

  “Isaac said that the Assassins were already on their way,” Rose agreed.

  Erik waved his hand at the sky, gesturing at the pillars of dark smoke swirled upward. “And now, they’ve got a beacon to lead them here,” he muttered.

  “As if they needed one,” Elise sighed. “So, where do we go?”

  “We could steal a car,” Erik suggested, “and drive to Canada.”

  Kara raised an eyebrow. “And stop at a hotel during the day? When there are Assassins of Light on our trail?” she said. “They’d just kill us while we slept.”

  “It’s our only option,” Erik told her. “Unless you have another plane?”

  “I don’t,” Kara said with a smile, “but I do know someone with a ship.”

  Rose blinked at that. “A ship? How do you know someone with a ship?”

  “He works for me occasionally,” Kara said dismissively. “I think he can get here before sunrise, but first, we need to get to the beach. The Assassins of Light are coming here. There are cameras everywhere, and this is a well-populated area. This is not where we want to take on the Assassins of Light. We need to go.”

  “You don’t think the beach will be heavily-populated, too?” Elise asked.

  “Not at this time of the night,” Kara told her. “Not on such a cold night.”

  “Okay, but how will we find the beach?” Rose said, glancing curiously at Elise and Erik, who didn’t seem concerned about it at all. “I don’t know the area.”

  Kara turned toward Rose, curling her warm hands around Rose’s arms. “Use your instincts,” she advised, staring into Rose’s bright blue eyes. “Close your eyes. Inhale deeply. Push past each scent until you find the scent of saltwater.”

  Rose closed her eyes and breathed in through her nose, just as Kara said. She smelled—first and foremost—the scent of Kara, of violets and leather, and blood that called out to her, that drew her in, and instinctually, she leaned closer to Kara, her instincts urging her to feed. But she pushed past it, smelling the fire of the plane, smelling the car exhaust from cars nearby, smelling all of the humans that lived in the populated city, smelling hundreds upon hundreds of scents, until finally, she caught the scent of saltwater. She opened her eyes. “Okay. I found it.”

  Kara dropped her hands and stepped back. “Now, follow it.”

  —

  “Is it just me,” Rose said uneasily, “or does something feel very…wrong?”

  “It’s not just you,” Elise told her, stopping to pull off her high-heeled shoes, before stepping into the sand. She tossed the shoes aside. “I feel it, too.”

  Kara swept her gaze over the beach, glancing up at the condos and hotels nearby, and she slowed her steps. “It’s too quiet,” she muttered. “This isn’t right.”

  “Umm,” Rose said, sensing her anxiety, “wasn’t it supposed to be quiet?”

  “Not this quiet,” Kara told her. She waved her hand at a tall, twelve-story hotel. “There are no lights on. Few, I’d understand, since it’s so late. But none?”

  Erik nodded, glancing at another hotel. “It’s as if it’s been evacuated.”

  “Except it isn’t empty,” Kara said, turning to face them. “It’s only quiet.”

  Erik watched her worriedly, his brows furrowing. “What do you mean?”

  “Listen,” Kara whispered to them. “Don’t you hear their hearts beating?”

  Rose focused on the sounds—hearing the waves lap against the shore, the breeze ripple over the water, the flags flap in the wind, and then…heartbeats.

  Not one. Not a few. Many.

  Rose straightened, sweeping her gaze over the beach, as she tried to find the people she’d heard, but she saw only sand and waves of water and the navy-blue, star-speckled sky. She froze as she saw something else on the horizon.

  Where the dark ocean met the dark sky, she noticed the outline of a ship.

  “Whose ship is that?” Rose said. “I didn’t think you’d called anyone yet.”

  Kara followed her gaze, her eyes widening as she saw it, too. “Holy hell.”

  Rose spun toward her. “What is it? Do you recognize the ship?”

  Kara nodded slowly. “I may have underestimated Isaac,” she sighed.

  Erik watched her apprehensively. “I don’t like the way this is sounding.”

  Kara turned toward Rose, strands of her blue and black hair flying in the wind. “I thought he was just gloating,” she muttered, “when he told you to read the message he’d sent to the Assassins of Light. I assumed he was just rubbing it in our faces—that he’d betrayed us. It seemed like the kind of thing he’d do.”

  “I thought so, too,” Rose said, her heart racing. “That’s not what it was?”

  “No,” Kara said with a sad shake of her head. “He was manipulating us.”

  Rose felt a hole of dread open up in her stomach. “He wanted us to run.”

  Kara nodded. “The Assassins of Light were never coming to the airport. They were coming here,” she said, turning toward the ocean. “That’s their ship.”

  “Kara,” Erik mumbled, “are you saying that we just walked into a trap?”

  “Yeah,” Kara said, her gaze shifting toward him, “and it’s a good one.”

  At that exact moment, a gunshot resounded through the night, practically punctuating her statement. Erik and Kara spun around, stunned to find several black-clothed humans on the balconies of the hotel, their guns aimed at them.

  “Elise!” Rose gasped, falling to her knees. Elise lay in the sand, her dress soaked in blood, as she bled from the small, bullet wound in her stomach. Rose reached out and brushed Elise’s blonde spiral curls out of her face, so that she could see the paleness of Elise’s skin. “I’m so sorry. I wasn’t prepared. I didn’t…”

  “It’s okay,” Elise interrupted. “No one expects you to stop every bullet.”

  Rose glanced down at the bullet wound. “What do you need? What…”

  “Hey,” Elise said, lifting her hand to touch Rose’s face, “Relax. I’m fine.”

  Rose cast a worried glance at the hotel and the Assassins. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” Elise said. “I can feel it healing already. Just help Kara and Erik.”

  Rose cast another worried look at the bullet wound in Elise’s stomach, and then, she met Elise’s blue-gray gaze. “Do you think you can stay conscious?”

  Elise offered her a weak smile. “It’s just a stomach wound. I’ll be fine.”

  Rose nodded and stood up, her knees raw from the sand. The Assassins of Light shot at them again, but Rose—prepared, this time—stopped the bullets with her mind. The bullets hovered between them and the humans, like a wall.

  Kara and Erik had been discussing how to fight the Assassins of Light when the shots rang out, and they both froze, panicking for a moment, until they noticed the strange line of bullets, floating in mid-air, between them and the hotel.

  Rose’s fiery red eyes shifted toward them. “What do you need me to do?”

  “Well,” Erik said, staring at the bullets, “what you’re doing. Preferably.”

  Rose shifted her strange, glowing gaze toward Kara. “Anything else?”

  The Assassins of Light began to move, some of them disappearing into the hotel, some of them flooding out of the hotel from the ground floor. A few more Assassins emerged from other directions, closing in on the three of them.

  Kara stepped closer to Rose, her boots sinking deep in the sand. Her icy blue eyes burned with intensity and fear as she met Rose’s gaze, as she lifted her hands to touch Rose’s face. “Do you think you can keep the bullets off of Erik and me,” she whispered, leaning closer, “if we’re moving in opposite directions?”

  Rose listened to the erratic pounding of Kara’s heart, realizing that Kara felt as uncertain as
she did, that Kara knew, as well as she did, that there was a very real possibility that none of them would survive the night. “I don’t know,” she said, glancing nervously at the Assassins of Light, “I’ve never done it before.”

  Kara turned Rose’s face back toward herself, urging Rose to look at her, rather than the black-clothed humans that were closing in on them. “I believe in you,” she said, her lilting voice ringing with confidence. “Do you believe in me?”

  Rose didn’t even have to think about it. “Yes,” she said easily. “I do.”

  Kara smiled affectionately. “Then, trust me. I know you can do this.”

  “Okay,” Rose said anxiously. “I’ll keep the bullets off of you. What else?”

  “Isn’t that enough?” Erik muttered. He pointed his gun at the Assassins of Light and shot as many of them as he could, before he ran out of bullets. Rose allowed his bullets to pass through, even as she continued to stop the bullets that the Assassins shot at them. “I think you have your work cut out for you already.”

  Kara pulled a few weapons from her weapon belt. “Remember,” she told Erik, “you start with the ones on the left. I’ll start with the ones on the right.”

  Erik tossed his gun aside, once it was out of bullets, and reached into his jacket, pulling out a small dagger. “And then, we meet in the middle,” he agreed.

  Kara tossed him one of her own daggers. “You’ll need more than one.”

  Rose watched them worriedly. “What happens if they surround you?”

  Erik winced a little. “We’re…kind of just hoping that doesn’t happen.”

  “If you could create a diversion,” Kara suggested, “that might help.”

  Rose nodded quickly. “Diversion. Got it,” she agreed. “And…Kara?”

  Kara turned toward her, and already, a smile was tugging at the corners of her lips. She stepped forward, meeting Rose midway, and she captured Rose’s face in her hands, their lips crashing together, their bodies meeting in all the right places. Everything seemed to stop while Kara’s lips were on Rose’s lips—literally, as well as figuratively, thanks to Rose’s telekinesis. Rose looped her arms around Kara’s neck, tasting the passion on Kara’s lips, exploring the heat of her mouth.