Green Flame Assassin (Demon Lord series, book 2)

269

   GREEN FLAME
ASSASSIN/Blayde

GREEN FLAME ASSASSIN

© Copyright July 201
3 by

MORGAN BLAYDE

Acknowledgments

To those who helped along the way: Sally Ann Barnes, Denny Grayson, Caroline Williams, Dave Murray, Chris Crowe, Steve and Judy Prey, Jim Czajkowski, Leo Little, Chris Smith, Betty Johnson,
Taxrasquela Perez Mejia, and Betty Jo Bisbee.

ONE

“’Real’ is what trips you as

you’re running for your life.”

                                  
             —Caine Deathwalker

The Dallas skyscrapers loomed behind me.  This outlying fringe could have been urban sprawl from anywhere.  Anywhere hot and muggy.  During the day, the endless concrete soaked up smothering heat that would later seep into the night, surrendered begrudgingly like something precious.  I grinned at my poetical mood.  That meant someone was going to die.  Soon. 

Nothing personal, just business.

The butt of my sniper’s rifle snuggled into my shoulder as I haunted the edge of a five-story building.  Scope pressed to my right eye, I looked down, diagonally across the street at the black glass and chrome entrance of the Savannah Club.  Two bodyguards came out, dark suits stuffed with muscle.  The feel of ex-military lay in their relaxed, but ready posture.  Their on-mission auras were distinctive.  Through the scope, I made out the bulges of hidden shoulder holsters. 

One guard lingered near the entrance.  The other stalked out to the curb where a black stretch limo idled, headlights and running lights burning with anticipation.

The bud in my ear caught their radio frequency:
Outside is clear.

Hah!  That’s what they think.

I shifted view to the double doors of the club where my target would soon appear, and I pulled out a curling strip of paper the Old Man had given me.  It had ancient Atlantean scribbling on it, a demonic suppression spell to keep the rifle silenced, adding extra power to the shot for additional range.  I felt a gentle flush of heat from my
Dragon Fire
tat.  A trickle of magic hit the paper, awakening the spell.  The paper jerked from my hand and wrapped itself around the rifle barrel like a tourniquet.  Raised as a demon, adopted into a demon clan, I had the best toys to play with.

Both hands on the rifle, I watched the doors, and caught another transmission:
Papa bear is stepping out.

The new tattoo on my back—
Dragon Eyes
—flared in teeth-grinding pain, sending my senses into overdrive. 

The bodyguard by the door opened it for his boss.  My
mark
emerged in a black suit, one vastly more expensive than those of the hired help.  He paused in the heat to pull out a black silk handkerchief and wipe his forehead.  The handkerchief moved with a sigh of wind.  Wind was an important factor.  More than two thousand yards away, the smallest error of judgment could make me miss the target completely. 

I pulled the trigger and counted;
3... 2 ... 1...

The mark’s chest exploded, almost cut in half.  His spraying blood and pulverized organs painted everything red behind him.

The guards pulled their guns, scanning quickly in all directions, at a loss of where to aim.  The guard at the curb looked over limo to the building straight across from the club.  He ran that way, assuming I’d shot from the closest position.  It was a good guess. 

Just wrong.

I watched another bodyguard stare down at the corpse’s wound, at the pattern of the blood splatter.  He turned toward my position, making no effort to hide, understanding that this was a professional hit, and professionals don’t waste bullets that they aren’t paid for.  The man’s face was calm, a mask of ice.  A soft shimmer danced over his clothes.  He changed.  His ears formed points.  His hair went from an all-around buzz cut to a tumbling spill that hit well past his waist.  His suit became red-leather pants, boots, and a blousy, sage green shirt with puffy sleeves, and a red-leather vest trimmed in gold.  Two over-large knives materialized, strapped to his outer thighs.  The hilts were silver, probably the blades as well, reinforced with magic for extra strength.  Having dropped his glamour, the fey warrior no longer passed for human.

  He ran diagonally across the street toward the building I was on. 

Yeah, easy contract, my ass.

I put my .50 rifle down on the rooftop, and picked up the special glass I’d brought, a three-
and-a-half inch mirror framed in polished white jade.  Like the full-length mirrors back home, this one could pass objects to other locations.  The frame was even expandable.  I could have used it to return, but I’d have lost the mirror since it can’t transmit itself. 

I used a finger to trace a pattern on the glass, stirring its spell to life.  The mirror showed my bedroom, a close shot of my bed.  With the location chosen, I tugged on the frame, letting it expand a few more inches.  I set the glass down, mirror side up, and grabbed the rifle.  I slid it into the mirror butt first.  In a moment, the rifle was gone.  I picked up the mirror and returned it to its former size, slapping it against my chest where it self-adhered. 

One problem solved.  One to go. 

T
he fey trying to chase me down would follow once I left the roof, only interested in my death.  I’d made him look bad.  His professional pride hurt worse than a virgin’s first gangbang.  I’d need more than human resources to deal with him.  The tattoos on the sides of my legs burned like hellfire turned up high.  Pain—usually extreme and agonizing—was the price I paid for using dragon magic.  As the haze of agony cleared from my thoughts, I felt superhuman strength and stamina sweep through me like an electric wave, swelling my muscles, hardening my bones, toughening my skin.

I ran to the side of the building, looked down into a shadow-choked alley, and vaulted out into space.  Having already worked out my escape route, I missed the opposite roof on purpose.  That direction would have been all too obvious to a pursuer.  The wall I faced, and its rows of dark windows, blurred past, then slowed as my protective shield kicked in, thinning gravity so I settled gently the last few yards.  At the bottom of the alley, I straightened from a crouch and put my back to the wall.  Just around the corner, a streetlamp cast a slash of light across the mouth of the alley.

I listened for running feet, knowing what was coming after me.  A normal man wouldn’t be able to close on me so quickly, but this guy was fey.  They all had odd twists of magic to call on.  He might deaden sound, cloak himself in glamour, and lighten the weight on his feet to move at phenomenal speed.  Some fey could magically teleport, the crazy ones doing it blindly to places they’d never been, risking materialization in walls or trashcans.  The guy coming after me probably wasn’t that crazy, but he’d looked determined.