The Assassin's Prayer

by Mark Allen

Kain met those eyes without flinching. Rain ran off the brim of her hat like a veil of tears as they stared at each other. He could feel her hate, a black, palpable presence bridging the gap between them, driving the coldness even deeper into his bones. He tried not to think about Larissa, but it was impossible. With one bullet hole in him already and five guns pointed at his chest, he had to face the fact that he might not walk away from this one, might not get a chance to see her again. The thought was almost more than he could stand. But he put on his best poker face and hid his emotions behind a stony mask.

  Rene Perelli gave him a big smile, but it lacked any trace of warmth and looked more like the curved edge of a scimitar. “Hello, Kain,” she said. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you again.”

  Her beauty still had the power to stun, Kain saw, but now it bore a harder, tougher, more primal edge. Before, her beauty had been that of a frail, vulnerable dove. Now it was the beauty of a hunting wolf—raw, relentless, unforgiving. Looking at her, Kain found no reason to be optimistic about his hopes of survival. But he couldn’t give up. Larissa was waiting for him.

  “What’s wrong, Kain? Nothing to say?” Rene’s voice sounded light, amused, toying. She was a tigress playing with her prey.

  “I’ll say anything you want if you’ll tell your boys to point those guns somewhere else.”

  Rene laughed, but like everything else about her, the laugh had a dark edge. “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

  “Never hurts to ask.” Kain gauged the distance between himself and Rene. If he could grab her before the goons opened up with the guns, this would be a whole new ballgame. But no, it was too far. He’d be riddled by a dozen slugs before he even got close. Desperation began to prowl the edges of his mind. “So what’s this about?”

  Rene’s eyes flashed dangerously. “Don’t be coy, Kain. You know full well what this is about.” She reached into the pocket of her dress and pulled out a white rose with blood-stained petals. “Recognize it? You should. It’s the rose you dropped on my husband’s body after you killed him.” Her tone was cool as ice, but laced with an undercurrent of heat. “After you left, I crawled across the floor to Peter and picked up this rose and swore I would lay it on your dead body.”

  Kain felt hypnotized by the rose. He stared at the black, crusted blood on the once-pure petals and felt shame knife through him. He thought of a thousand things to say to Rene, but the words would only be so much wasted breath. So in the end, all he said was, “If I could take it all back, I would, but I can’t.”

  Tears glistened in Rene Perelli’s eyes. “No, you can’t,” she said softly. “I loved my husband, and you took him from me. My little girl loved her daddy and you took him away from her. There is nothing on the face of this earth that you can do to atone for that day. I want you dead, Kain. I want you dead so bad I can taste it.” She paused for a moment, as if savoring the thought of him rotting six feet under, then said, “But instead, I’m going to give you a choice, a choice you didn’t give me.”

  Kain asked, “What kind of choice?”

  “The impossible kind.” Rene’s fingers rubbed the stem of the rose. “Fourth floor, sixth window to the right.”

  Kain looked at the hospital building in front of him until he found the window Rene wanted him to see. He instantly forgot all about his pain as horror locked its terrible, choking grip around his throat.

  Larissa was pressed up against the glass, gazing down at him. A large man stood behind her, arm encircling her neck like a python. One flex of his muscles and Larissa’s neck would snap. With his free hand, he pressed a silenced pistol to her head. Kain couldn’t make out the model of the gun from here, but it didn’t matter; at that point-blank range, an air-pistol would probably be enough to kill her. He looked into her eyes, felt her fear and terror, a crushing weight that nearly buckled his knees. Without taking his eyes off Larissa, he said to Rene, “You heartless bitch.”

  “I called you a heartless bastard the night you executed my husband,” Rene reminded him. “It didn’t stop you from blowing his brains out, so do you really think calling me a heartless bitch is going to save your girlfriend up there?”

  “Then tell me how,” Kain said. “Tell me how to save her.”

  Rene caressed the petals of the rose. Dried blood flaked off, staining her fingers. “One of you lives, one of your dies,” she said. “But I leave the choice up to you. A signal from me and my man up there will put a bullet in her brain. You’ll live, but it will be without her. Or I pump you full of bullets and Larissa gets to live, but she’ll have to do it without you. Any way you look at it, the story of Kain and Larissa will not have a happy ending.”

  Kain didn’t even have to think about it. There was no choice at all. He knew what had to come next. It was the only way, maybe even the right way. “You know what my choice is,” he said to Rene. “Do what you want to me, but give me your word that Larissa lives.”

  Rene gazed at him for several long, silent moments, then gave a slight nod. “You have my word, but on one condition.” She stepped forward and handed him the rose. “I want you to hold that as you die.”

  Kain took the rose and nodded. He owed it to her. Maybe he even owed it to himself.

  Rene stepped back, hesitated for just a fraction of a moment as she looked at him with eyes that seemed almost sorrowful, and then motioned to her gunmen.

  The red dots on his chest blossomed into crimson holes as five submachine guns emptied their magazines into his flesh. Through a haze of blood, Kain saw something white flutter up in front of his eyes and realized it was the remnants of the rose, ripped apart by autofire. The bullets shredded the delicate flower and then punched into his chest, dozens of them, over and over again.

  Kain fell backwards against the car, struggling to stay on his feet. But the bullets just kept coming. The merciless impacts pounded him, flesh and bone dissolving, blood flying everywhere like a butcher gone berserk. He wanted to scream but couldn’t, his lungs now nothing more than ruptured meat and tissue.

  His legs suddenly failed him. The converging lines of fire followed him to the ground, continuing their ripping, tearing assault on his body. Stop! he wanted to scream. Oh God please make it stop! The pain made it impossible to think clearly. Bullets heaped pain upon pain in a relentless, never-ending tide. Again he tried to cry out and again he failed. Bright, frothy blood spilled over his lips and down his chin.

  Time ceased to exist. The guns continued to spit death but for Kain there was nothing but a series of wrenching sensations. Blood spurting from his wounds. His silent screams. The smell of burnt cordite. The relentless impact of the 9mm slugs chopping away at him. In those terrible seconds, Kain knew he had found his hell, a place where the guns forever thundered and the bullets forever flew.

  Then he saw Larissa, pressed against the window of her hospital room, her lips screaming Nooooo!!! over and over again as the guns cut him down. He wanted her to turn away, but knew she never would. The gunman was no longer beside her. Rene Perelli had kept her word.

  An eternity later, the guns finally stopped, bolts locked open on empty chambers. Kain laid there and felt the life flowing out of him as he gazed up at Larissa. He longed to hold her close and tell her she would be all right without him. For just a moment, he felt no pain, no sense of death’s sure approach. For just a moment, there was only Larissa. He imagined he could feel her heartbeat, a steady rhythm that grew stronger as his own ebbed away.

  And then the moment was gone and agony jacked him with a vengeance, as if punishing him for his few short seconds of peace. He arched his back against the pain until he thought his spine would snap. Wet gurgles filled the air and he realized it was himself, trying to scream and strangling on the blood that now filled his chest cavity. He felt death-sweat on his brow, hot and cold at the same time. His eyes sought Larissa again.

  She had surrendered to the inevitable. She no longer pounded on the glass. Shoulders slumped in ho
pelessness, she just stood there, alone, staring down at him. Her lips moved silently, whispering the words he needed to hear. I love you.

  Somehow, Kain found the strength to smile and his pain drifted away. It was time to go but he would leave knowing Larissa loved him, and not even the fires of hell could take that away from him. He felt death, cold and yet somehow calm, hovering all around him. But he couldn’t go. Not yet. There was one more thing he had to do.

  Summoning every last ounce of strength left in his body, he raised a trembling hand to his crimsoned lips and dipped his fingers into the blood like an artist dipping his pen into an ink well. Then he reached out with his bloody fingers and on the blacktop wrote the words his mouth could no longer say. When he was finished, his hand fell, limp and exhausted, back to his side. He could no longer feel his wounds, only the agony of a broken heart, and that hurt far worse than a hundred bullets ever could.

  He looked at Larissa for the last time. Goodbye, he said, and though he never spoke the word, he knew she heard him. He imagined kissing her with his final breath. Then, as his broken heart beat one last time and the rain fell around him like the weeping of angels, his eyes closed forever.

  Beside him, the words I love you that he had written in his own blood began to fade, washed away by the rain until they were no more.

  THE END

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Mark Allen writes hard-hitting fiction that slams like a bullet between the eyes or a punch to the guts, but never loses sight of the heart and soul. His writing is tough and uncompromising and he uses words like a scalpel, carving through the surface layers to rip open the bleeding secrets beneath. He currently resides in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York with enough firepower and ammunition to make sure he is never bothered by door to door salesmen.

  ALSO BY MARK ALLEN

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  The Killing Question