A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters (14 page)

“Bad doggie,” Leis said. She lashed out with her fist, hitting him in the gut and dropping him to his knees. “Lykaion couldn’t resist coming out for Lupercalia now, could he?” Leis kicked him, catching him in the side this time and knocking him over. The creature growled weakly, but didn’t move.

“Stop it,” Helen said, despite being horrified by the creature before her. She was surprised at how hurt she felt watching him suffer. “You’re killing him!”

“I’m not killing him,” Leis said, rolling her eyes. She knelt next to the wolfman, grabbing his face and turning it to face her. “Something like him can’t be killed, am I right?” She grabbed him by his snout and nodded his head for him. Leis voice turned mocking. “You can’t kill love!”

“Jesus,” Helen said, “if that’s the case, then why did you come here?”

Leis looked up at her. “To put him on notice,” she said, turning back to him. She pulled the arrow from his shoulder. The man wolf hissed in pain, then slowly turned back into the man Helen recognized as Jason, albeit a bloody version of him. “Look at you, all happy with this Valentine’s action going on all around you.”

“Not really my holiday . . .” he said, panting. “Covers some of my old ways, though. Just works out nice that way.”

“Lovely,” Leis said, pulling the chain tight around him to shut him up. “Point is, I’m done with you. I’ve had it.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, laughing through his pain. Leis stood up and kicked him viciously in the face. Blood went everywhere, and again, Helen felt overwhelmed with feelings for the poor man. She knew it had to be a part of his power, but she couldn’t help it.

“Shut
up,
” Leis said. “I’ve had enough heartache. If I catch you cavorting about with an arrow in my presence, I’ll do more than kick the stuffing out of you next time, got it? You think you want to tackle me? Just look at how quickly I found the instruments to bring you down. You come after me again and I’ll be sure I
do
have the tools to end you. Now let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. For now, though, if you see me coming, you walk the other way. Got it?”

The bloody man on the ground hesitated, but then nodded without saying a word.

“Good,” Leis said. She uncoiled the chain around him and tucked it under her cloak. She looked at Helen. “Let’s get out of here.”

Helen hesitated.

“Let’s
go,
” Leis said, impatient and still fueled by her victory.

Helen shook her head. “I don’t think so,” she said.

“What?”

“Just go,” Helen said. She walked over to the curled-up figure on the ground. “I’m staying.”

“Are you kidding?” Leis said, on the verge of bitter laughter. “You’re not falling for this, are you? It’s love. It’s a sham.”

Helen gave a weak smile. “Yeah, I know, but the way it’s making me feel . . .”

“It will go away when this all turns to shit, believe me.”

“But if this is the only way I can get it,” Helen said, looking down with concern at the wounded crumple of a man that was Jason Eros, “then I’ll accept that if the time comes.”

“Ha!” Leis said, actually laughing out loud this time. “Not
if
. When. When the time comes, and it will, Helen.”

Helen turned away from Leis and completely back to Jason, kneeling next to him, checking him over.

“Fine,” Leis said, storming off toward the elevators, “but don’t expect me to be back at the dorm when you get back. Go crazy, no, really. Maybe you’ll have little wolf babies, or some of those creepy cherubim. If nothing else, maybe this will keep him off my back.”

Realizing only the tourists and clichéd lovebirds were listening, she stormed off.

Helen didn’t even notice Leis was gone and with every passing moment, it mattered less and less. She was too busy worrying over poor beaten and bruised Jason to care about much else.

Jason looked up at her with a tremulous smile. Helen’s heart accelerated to an immediate flutter, not even minding the blood on his face that was already drying and flaking away. Why should she mind? Didn’t that just make him look a little more rugged?

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said, that irresistible smile growing stronger.

“Are . . . are you okay?” Helen asked, standing. She offered her hand to him. He took it and she felt an even stronger spark of connection pass between them. She knew it was just his power at work, that it was just the power to charm, but she didn’t care. After all, she had never been sure if the love in her life previous to this moment had ever been real anyway. At least Jason’s power gave her a thrill that certainly felt real enough. “Seriously, are you okay? Leis beat you pretty badly.”

“Yeah,” he said, standing and brushing off his clothing, the blood and debris fading away as he did so. “Don’t worry about me. I’m used to it. It happens all the time.”

S
pending six weeks at a writers’ workshop in the Midwest would drive an empath insane. Or maybe it would make the empath suicidal. Or homicidal, depending on the emotions swirling around the empath that day.

I think about such things because 1) I am trapped at just such a writers’ workshop, and 2) I am in the process of divorcing said empath. He’s at home, with all our belongings and our cats, while I’m here for week four, when my target finally arrives. Fortunately for me, said empath (who shall remain nameless) didn’t get the bright idea to clear out our bank accounts until yesterday. I had that bright idea three hours before I started researching my lawyer months ago. All the money once labeled ours is now in several accounts now labeled mine, and no matter how hard said empath screams over the phone, he’ll never be able to find them.

Empathy works two ways. He can feel all of my emotions when we talk and I can feel all of his. His are extremely powerful. Mine are generally muted, which explains the initial attraction.

It also explains why I do what I do.

I kill people. Well, not people per se. Evil magical creatures that misuse a human form. Lest you think I am insane myself and use this explanation to rationalize my murderous tendencies, let me simply tell you that I have few murderous tendencies. That’s why I get the jobs I do. I’m a highly skilled, highly paid assassin who works only once every four to five years.

I also happen to have a 100% success rate.

Which might completely vanish on this particular job, distracted as I am by said empath and by the silly workshop itself.

Here’s the problem: I’m thinking seriously of retiring and taking up writing as a new career. Secretly, I’ve always wanted to write.

But if you had asked me—oh, say, three weeks ago—which would be harder, becoming a writer or an assassin who specialized in magical creatures that misuse human form, I would have answered writer every time.

Then I met the first three of my so-called professional instructors. The best thing I’ve learned at this workshop is this:
if they can become professional writers, then anyone can do it.

Sure wish I’d known that twenty years and five assassinations ago.

But I wouldn’t have ended up here on the campus of a major state university at a program for serious unpublished writers taught by the professionals. Theoretically, I’m here to assassinate someone.

In reality, I’m taking these six weeks to learn how to write.

So I’m a busy little writer bee, handing in a story per week to each new instructor and letting my fellow students shred me in public. At first, I thought I’d get assistance from the instructors, and while the first one was helpful, the instructor for week two was more interested in fomenting discord—which was relatively easy to do, considering most of the students have nothing to do except read about two short stories per night.

The instructors come from different fiction genres and are supposed to give us insights into their various disciplines. As I’m learning, the use of the word “discipline” along with the word “writer” verges on oxymoronic.

That oxymoron seems to apply more than usual to week three’s instructor, a has-been award-winning western writer who hasn’t published a book in more than a decade. She’s subbing for a bigger name who got sick and couldn’t come. She’s always the sub at this workshop because she needs the money. She doesn’t have a lot to teach except gloom and doom, and so after Discord from the week before, she’s only making things worse.

My handlers warned me this would happen. Apparently this workshop has a pattern. By the middle, the inmates—I mean students—have forgotten everything they knew about home and have now become convinced that the workshop is the world.

Weeks Three and Four are when the big blowups happen. Students quit, affairs end, and fistfights occur. One group stripped the least liked student naked, painted her green, and carried her like an offering to the dean of the English Department.

That was the year the workshop had to change university sponsors.

I was told to pay special attention starting in week three, because my target would arrive in week four, and she would make sure this workshop was one for the record books.

 

My target, Margarite Lawson, writes lurid bestselling novels based on actual crimes. Margarite picks a famous crime, changes the names, maybe even moves it to a new location, and gives it her personal spin. The weird thing about Margarite’s books is that the more she published, the more likely she was to have a hand in solving the famous crime. In fact, in the latter five books or so, the famous crime became famous because Margarite was on-site when it happened.

It’s become a joke that whenever Margarite shows up, someone is going to die. In fact, my workshop has been nervously kidding each other about this since our first night together. Everyone, that is, except me.

Because to me, Margarite’s talent for finding the crime in a given community isn’t coincidence. It’s part of her unnatural charm.

Margarite arrives on Friday night of week three, so that she can confer with the western writer before the poor sap leaves on Sunday morning. If all goes according to script, someone on this university campus will die on Saturday.

Margarite will organize the police investigation, handle the media, and solve the case by the following Friday. About two years from now, she’ll published a novel about the case.

She’ll get wealthier while she’s feeding the demon within.

My assignment is simple: I’m supposed to stop her once and for all. If possible, I take her out on Friday night, before anyone else gets hurt.

But after nearly three full weeks undercover in this rather unique circle of hell, I’m not sure I want to prevent anyone from getting hurt. I’m tired of the drama, the petty jealousies, the bickering, and the backbiting.

These people need something real to whine about.

And I figure Margarite Lawson is going to give that to them.

 

Nine AM Friday morning, the workshop meets as usual. We have full run of a graduate student dorm that opens into a private courtyard. At one end of that courtyard is the so-called lounge—really an oversized conference room filled with uncomfortable upholstered chairs, flimsy tables, and one extremely loud Coke machine. Laptop users have to make certain the batteries are charged before they arrive, or fight for a seat nearest one of two unused outlets on the only wall without a window. That wall is covered with whiteboards, because—apparently—in university circles, chalkboards have become passé.

My “student” laptop—a battered first generation iBook—is always charged. Whenever I’m out in public, I carry that thing.

My business laptop stays in my silly little graduate student suite, under lock and key. The laptop is unlike anything anyone around here has seen, except maybe in some of the secret R&D labs around campus. Maybe not even there.

Because this thing is high-powered—not just with tech, but with the occasional magical connection. And how to explain magic to the nonbelievers in my audience? It’s simple, really.

Magic slips into the real world. Or the real world slips into the magical world, depending on your point of view. Mine is the point of view of a person who uncomfortably straddles both worlds. I can see the magical, even though I have little magic myself.

I have little magic, but I have access to magic. Thanks to engineers with magic who also happen to design computers, I have at my fingertips the simplest of spells. I also have commonsense nonmagical remedies to magical potions, and other such things that occasionally come in handy when dealing with the other side of reality.

In truth, I’ve only used those things with said empath’s friends. In my work, I’ve used the standard gun/ knife/whatever’s handy to complete the job.

Which is looming.

That’s what I’m thinking as I approach my usual chair. It’s a wingback with high arms that sits directly across the room from the instructor’s chair.

I staked out this chair on day one of the workshop, and although one of my less observant compatriots tried to take it from me on day two, no one will ever try that again.

They say I’m touchy.

I’m just a little protective.

The problem is that I don’t look touchy. If you were to walk into our little critique session on this Friday morning, I’m the one you’d ignore. I’m older than most of the class for one thing. I also have cultivated the don’t-pay-attention-to-me vibe so essential in my job.

Maybe it’s one of my little magics.

If you glanced at me, you’d see a once- pretty woman who allowed time and lack of attention to make her seem faded. But if you looked, really looked, you’d notice a few anomalies. I wear baggy clothes to give the impression of flab, when in truth I have none. I also have a hard time hiding the intelligence in my eyes, so I look through my eyelashes a lot like an unrepentant Southern belle.