Rise of the Assassin
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“A sword is never a killer, it is a tool in the killer’s hands”
- Seneca

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Chapter Six

My room became a different sort of refuge in the weeks which followed. What once was a prison for the conscience-laden became a haven for a sociopath, a proclivity creeping through my system like a slow poison releasing its toxin into my veins. The mortal inhibitions which kept my dark side held at bay gone, I rose each evening to find another temptation crawling up my spine, something which went from bad to worse the more I learned about the blade.

Twas a good thing Robin kept me too busy to indulge. The inevitable might have come to pass much sooner otherwise.

Oh, I still hunted. Robin demanded it. This time he accompanied me, though, and refused to leave me to my own recognizances. His constant presence irritated me a great deal at first. Where my brother had once been the mocker in the corner, he now became a taskmaster of a mentor. And his instruction did not end with sword skills and weapon handling.

Robin became determined to reinvent me altogether. My speech. My stalking. The art of luring and seduction. The Victorian bastard held nothing back and I, in turn, could not so much as spit without it going noticed. “Who the devil taught you how to hunt?” Robin asked one evening, his arms folded across his chest with his blue eyes observing me as I held a mortal in my arms. Her head tipped back, vacant eyes beheld the heavens while I drank from her violated jugular.

I raised my head, fangs still elongated and stained red. “Are you going to critique the way I hunt now?” I asked.

“You kill like an animal. This is not what I showed you on your first evening.”

“Your way takes too damn … .”

“Language, Flynn.”

I grumbled. “Fucking prude.”

It happened too fast for me to react. Robin closed the short distance between us and smacked the glasses off my face. Dropping the mortal, I raised my hands to cover my eyes and yelled as my victim’s body hit the ground. “Why the hell did you do that?”

“First of all, your reactions are too slow. You should have been able to move out of the way before I reached you. If you have a weakness, then you must be on guard for those who would expose that weakness at all times, be they friend or foe.”

Doubled over, I pressed my palms against my eyes while turning in the direction I heard the hard plastic land, desperate to prevent any beams of moonlight from raping my corneas until the last possible moment. I heard the sound, however, of Robin stepping forward one pace, followed by the sensation of one of my hands being pulled from my face and my glasses being slapped into my grip. I thrust the spectacles over my eyes and grumbled at Robin again. “You have a lot of f… .”

“And two… Watch. Your. Language.” He scowled at me when I met his gaze. “You sound uneducated and ignorant when you indulge this habit of yours. Now…” He glanced at the body lying on the ground before looking up at me again. “… Are you an animal or a vampire?”

I shut my eyes while raising a hand to rub at them. “Biting into the neck takes too long.”

“Takes too long? Did you learn nothing from that first day? You grow lazy and stupid and opt to produce bodies which which look like zoo animals were set loose out here, instead of learning to do it correctly.”

“Does it matter either way?”

Robin paced around me. “Yes, it does, in fact. For several reasons. Cleanliness, for one. Finesse, for another. This is much like your sword skills; you can raise the sword, but your blows lack discipline. This is what I am trying to teach you.” As I looked at him, I beheld the upturned eyebrow directed at me, a hint of the old Michael surfacing in his gaze. “Besides,” he said, “You were a doctor and have not heard of the carotid artery?”

“Of course I’ve heard of the fu… .”

“Language, Flynn.”

“…carotid artery.”

Robin nodded. “Then you should know what to do with those teeth of yours. I showed you, for the love of all things.” He huffed and leaned against a building in the side street where we stood. The breeze of an early spring evening blew past Robin, as though bent to tousle his hair while unable to ruffle even a strand. “Timothy taught you ill. He has a taste for the jugular. The man never possessed any aristocracy in his veins that he did not drink from a victim. Your teeth are long enough to nick the artery and drawing from it will force the blood flow through the wound.”

“Why does it matter, Robin?” I asked. “We are predators. Who cares how we do it?”

Robin looked at me, an even expression on his face. “I am teaching you the difference between a butcher and an assassin. If you wish to be an animal, suit yourself.”

I furrowed my brow while he walked away, giving chase the moment I saw he was being more than a scornful twit with me. He did not look at me, but continued speaking as though repeating a mantra. “An assassin has finesse. He leaves nothing in his wake but death. Everything is clean and done with precision. Patience should be demonstrated when patience is called for and expediency when that is in order. It translates into everything, Flynn. From the way you stalk, to the way you kill.”

I smirked, my eyes fixed on the city. “So, when do we get to the sword lessons?”

Robin rolled his eyes. “You are still an impossible nuisance, Flynn. Do not think any of this has changed my sentiment on the matter.”

“You’re too old to know the definition of the word ‘change,’ let alone how to do it.”

His jaw clenched, Robin answered with silence and I continued to smirk in the same cocky manner. My arrogance was short-lived, however. Robin savored a cup filled with schadenfreude the moment my weapons instruction commenced.

An open room used for meetings between Sabrina and the other vampire elders of our area facilitated our sparring sessions. On the first night, Robin stood halfway across the room, nothing more than tiled floor between us with all tables and chairs removed from the immediate vicinity. Suit jackets stripped and sleeves rolled up, we held the blades Robin insisted we use. Two European swords; light, straight, and sturdy.

“Bring me to my knees again,” he said, poisied for attack. Yet, he did not move.

Both hands wrapped around the hilt of my weapon, I leaped for him and swung the blade just as I had the night I bested him. This time, however, Robin ducked and shifted to the side. My swipe cut through nothing but air. My landing left me vulnerable.

I felt a sharp blade slice across my shoulder. Turning, I hissed at Robin. He smirked at me and rotated his wrist to swing his sword around in an idle form of mockery. “What the hell?!” I shouted, freeing one hand to clutch my shoulder.

“You are lucky I’m not nearly so incensed tonight, dear brother,” Robin said. He smirked. “I could have had you impaled through your back.”

Gritting my teeth, I grabbed the sword’s hilt with both hands and made another aggravated pass for him. Robin remained still, not bothering to motion one way or the other. He kept his sword lowered to his side with only one hand clutching it. The nonchalant posture infuriated me and as I swung the sword again, I aimed for his neck, too angry to care one whit over his demise. Robin perked an eyebrow at me, but dropped to his knees, arching his back. My blade sailed past, not connecting with anything.

The resultant momentum spun me around on my heels until I went from charging away to facing my brother. In that millisecond, though, the tip of Robin’s sword pressed against my trachea, Robin still on his knees, but rising to his feet while his eyes remained set upon mine in a deliberate manner. I felt the tepid blood beneath my skin seep down my throat. “Death blow number two,” Robin said. “Care to make it a third, or have we learned our lesson yet?”

“What fucking lesson?”

Robin pressed the sword against my throat again. More blood trickled from the aggravated wound. I yelled, startled, wondering if he did intend to have my head after all. “I swear by The Fates and heaven above, I shall now start bleeding you a pint for every crass euphemism you employ,” Robin said. “Now, as for what lesson; the very lesson I have been trying to teach you for days now.”

“Yeah, yeah, finesse. Assassin. I get it.” I growled. “Please lower the sword. That hurts.”

He did as I requested, but held the sword in hand with elbow bent, as though not trusting me to hold back a cheap shot. “Precisely, but there is another lesson latent in this whole exhibition as well, Flynn.”

I touched the weeping cut on my neck, glancing at the crimson staining my fingertips for a brief moment before my eyes raised toward Robin’s again. “And what lesson is that?” I asked. I issued the question in a subdued manner. Infuriated, but far more frustrated with myself than Robin’s attack itself. He sent me crashing from my ivory tower back onto the ground in two blows. Perhaps I was not the prodigy Sabrina boasted of before.

The smug expression on my older, more regal brother’s face evened, the half smirk fading into a frown. I thought I caught a flash of sympathy surface in his gaze, but it, too, smoothed itself out as though an unintended wrinkle in his otherwise polished appearance. “Respect,” he said simply.

My brow knitted at the one-word response. “What do you mean, respect?”

“You lack it. To your downfall.” He shook his head. “You claim I have been your antagonist from the start. I confess, when I first had to carry your unconscious body from that street into our coven, I decided you were a mistake and have acted accordingly. I might have been swayed otherwise, though, if not for your attitude with me.”

“I don’t understand. What attitude?”

“Never once have I detected an ounce of respect from you.” His frown becoming a scowl, I still did not sense absolute disdain in it. Not like before. The man was bent to level with me and for once, he had my attention. “Not when I attempted to teach you your initial lessons. Not from any subsequent time we passed one another in the halls. Had you not been an antisocial miscreant, I might have expected to see you snickering with the others behind my back. I may have made my disgust of you apparent, but you have done the same in spades.”

The scowl relaxed. I lowered my hand from my throat, wiping the blood-stained digits against the fabric of my pants. “You probably think this is how I’ve always been,” I said. “Rude and stubborn. Moody. I admit, I’m not the boy scout I once was, but I’m not a ‘Neanderthal’ either, as you put it the other night.”

“And you think me nothing but pretentious.”

“You definitely act that way sometimes.”

“And you the same, but now we have something more than our petty differences to focus on.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Wish to learn how to do this all the proper way? Then assent me a modicum of respect. I have been alive over a century longer than you have, dear brother.”

He and I stared at each other, locked within a silent stalemate with neither of us breaking eye contact. I nodded after what seemed like minutes. “Alright,” I said. “I’ll listen to you. But you should respect me a bit, too. I don’t know what happened in here before I came or why you think I was that big of a mistake, but it’s not fair to take it out on me. The least you could do is tell me why you hate me so much.”

Robin shook his head. His eyes drifted toward the other side of the room. “I do not hate you,” he said. “And perhaps someday I will explain these things to you. But, for now, I made a promise and you accepted a commission.” He turned his head to regard me once more. “You wish to please our mistress, do you not?”

The words shot a tingle up my spine, inspiring immediate agreement from my lips. Yet, it also brought to mind the other notion nagging at me just as much as Sabrina’s wiles did. “I want to know what I am. Everyone else seems to.”

“You are a killer. A vampire. Now, raise your sword.” Robin nodded. “And allow me to show you what you were doing wrong.”

Sliding my shirt sleeve across my neck to wipe away the blood, I nodded and raised my weapon, taking hold of the hilt with both hands. Robin did not engage me. Rather, he walked around behind me, hands placed on my shoulders, adjusting my posture and stance. He bid me deliver a blow into the air afterward and corrected my failed attempt, stepping back to watch as I attempted once more. I glanced at him while he placed his sword down in favor of folding his arms across his chest. “Again,” he said.

I nodded again in response and complied.

***

Weeks of this persisted. Days lengthened and nights shortened while the weather turned from chilly to sweltering within the confines of our urban estate. Robin remained my shadow throughout the better part of the months that followed, first instructing, then overseeing when I began to eclipse his own ability. It happened much sooner than he anticipated; than either of us anticipated, for that matter. The level of skill and composure I achieved by summer’s end could not be denied, though. A mortal familiar from Japan flew in by the beginning of autumn and the blade I first came to admire found its way into my hands again.

The skill of a surgeon. The focus of a far more patient man than I ever was before. That being hinted at by Sabrina started to fill my shoes and embodied my tailored suits. A vampire’s vampire, the toxin reaching its height of concentration within the chill that settled in my veins by the time the winter months wrapped Philadelphia inside a cold blanket of frost and snow. I recall sparring with Robin one night, brother to brother, as became common practice between us. Throughout the course of my instruction, we went from enemies to friends and the tenor of our sessions changed as a result.

Still stubborn and set in his ways, Robin held his European styled sword in hand while I whipped the curved blade of my katana from side to side. My sleeves rolled up, I stalked Robin as I had been taught, throwing occasional strikes without warning and anticipating the blows he issued in return. We conversed as this continued. “I’m growing bored,” I said, taking hold of the sword’s hilt with both hands. I thrust it at Robin while he parried and used his blade to deflect my shot.

“Define bored, dear brother,” he said.

“Tired. Listless. My lessons are redundant.” I raised my blade to intersect a counterstrike from Robin. “When do you think Sabrina will finally give me something to do with all this?”

“You mean an assignment?”

“Yes, an assignment.”

Robin frowned. We engaged each other in several back-and-forth exchanges before he responded. “Flynn, I would not hurry things. When we finally set you loose, you will have a target affixed to your back. You do not shed the blood of an immortal without there being consequences.”

“I can handle it.” I threw another strike his way. “I think I’ve proven my ability. My instructors have just about packed up shop and gone home.”

“You mean you have mastered everything?”

“Everything. Every bloody thing.”

Robin sighed. We crossed blades once more. “I still dislike it when you swear. Regardless of what English dialect you utilize in doing it.”

“Be thankful I stopped saying the other words in front of you.” Steel caressing steel, I halted Robin’s blade and held it in place, my eyes shifting from our swords to his eyes. “You’re ignoring me.”

“I dislike that you do it at all, and no, I am not.” Robin stared me in the eyes for a few seconds longer before lowering his sword. I did the same. “Have you practiced with the knives?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yes, both close combat and throwing them.”

“And what is your current level of aptitude?”

I sighed, freeing one hand to scratch the back of my neck. “The same level as my sword skills. The same level as everything else. I stalk and take prey like a shadow. Nobody sees me whom I do not want to. Everything you taught me.”

Robin drew in a deep breath, exhaling it slowly as he regarded me. “Brother, you have done well,” Robin said with a nod. “You have done very well. I simply worry about a neophyte being exposed to the sort of danger you will be exposed to. I never thought you would take so quickly to your lessons. I counted on this taking years, not months.”

“I’ve done everything asked of me,” I said, frowning. “You’ve commended me to Sabrina several times.”

“I know. And I underestimated just how much your… nature… would factor into how fast you became proficient.”

I raised an eyebrow and adjusted my sunglasses. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Robin hesitated. He studied me, his mouth open as though willing something past his lips which was difficult to say. Just as it seemed actual noise would follow, the sound of stiletto heels clicking against the tile floor redirected our attention toward the source. I smirked at her the moment her brown eyes settled on me. “Good evening, fair Sabrina,” I said, turning my back on Robin for the time being in favor of meeting her halfway across the room.

Stunning as always, the black suit she wore clung to all of the correct curves. Each time I saw her, Sabrina called to me like a siren and I found myself helpless to resist. What started as touches on my face and through my hair became seductive brushes of her body against mine. Her fingers sliding across my shoulders; her lips almost nibbling at my ear. As my training started to fashion this assassin she dreamed of, I became more and more the item of interest to her. That night was no exception.

Sabrina’s gaze wriggled into mine, despite the dark lenses protecting my eyes. If seduction could be made corporeal, it would have been tendrils of smoke lacing around my body, wrapping around me like an anaconda seeking nourishment, strangling first before consuming. I died willingly within such an embrace. “Hello, my devilish assassin,” she said, her smile possessing the slightest hint of fangs. “How are you tonight?”

How much I longed for those teeth to find their way into my body the same way Rose’s did each time we slept together. The vixen before my eyes could not be equated to the coven harlot, though. “I’m well, Mistress.” Bowing at the waist, my eyes remained set on her. “And you?”

She reached out as I stood, hands touching the collar of my shirt and tracing their way down to play with the top button. “The night belongs to its predators, right?” Her eyes shifted from her finger’s play to my gaze. “I am doing well, too, my dear. I heard you two were sparring and thought I would check on my prodigy.”

A half-smile blossomed its way onto my face. Yet my eyes fell partially closed; a bit intoxicated. I felt her hand slide across my chest and struggled with mental images of taking hold of Sabrina and doing the wickedest things with her body. “Your dark son lives to serve you,” I said.

“I know he does.” Sabrina’s head fell to her side, exposing the pale skin of her neck. “You are eager for a kill, aren’t you, Flynn?”

“I am.” I motioned forward before I could stop myself. My lips touched her cool flesh in a feather kiss before pulling away. “What good is knowing all of this without having some use for it, after all?”

“Soon.” Sabrina met my eyes with hers as I stood straight again and winked at me. Her hands left a burning impression where they had been when she lifted them. I became aware of Robin’s presence again in the room when she turned to regard him. “How is he progressing, mentor?”

I pivoted to align Robin in my sights, catching a look exchanged between him and Sabrina that read of a thousand things, with none of them vocalized. Robin’s words hardly seemed a summary of any thought I saw in his eyes, but he spoke them just the same. “Remarkably well, Mistress,” he said, his tone chilled without being frigid. “Prodigy does not begin to summarize it. We should have expected as such, though.”

“Yes, quite.” She raised an eyebrow. Her eyes shot venom at Robin before returning to me. At once, flames of wrath settled into soft lights when her gaze met mine. I noted the change with passing interest, lost inside her seductive stare once more as though a switch engaged inside my psyche. “Is he ready yet, then?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Robin and I spoke at the same time – I affirming and he stating the negative – which jarred me enough from the trance I fell under to turn and look at him. “Brother?” I asked, furrowing my brow.

He stared at me, rather than looking at Sabrina. “You are too young for this,” he said. “There are lessons only time can teach that exceed sword skills and knife proficiency.”

“I can handle them,” I said, frowning. I looked back at Sabrina as though pleading between two parents. “I don’t understand what I still have to learn.”

Sabrina looked at Robin, brow knitted. “What lessons does he have need of learning?” she asked.

Robin sighed. “Self-preservation. He minds his own, but he needs to do more than slip through shadows with proficiency. He must be prepared for all ends and everything to possibly go wrong.” His eyes finally settled on Sabrina. “You know what setting him loose will do. The moment somebody hears the name Flynn, he will become a public enemy. In more manners than one.”

“I thought we came to an agreement on this several months ago, when it all started,” Sabrina said.

“Yes, we did.” Robin’s eyes shifted back at me. “And the concerns I have now are ones I didn’t have before. I did tell you some things might arise along the way.”

“What else?” One of Sabrina’s hands settled on her hip as she shifted her weight onto the opposite foot. “If that is your only concern, then we shall let the other six covens know that touching him means war.”

“That is not as easy as you think it is, and you know it, Sabrina.” Gone were formalities. Robin stared Sabrina down as a peer. “There are other things as well.”

“Such as…?”

“Such as his mental state. I have been careful not to indulge his bloodlust nearly as much as he would like.” I caught a quick shift of his eyes from Sabrina to me and back again. “He needs time to settle into immortality.”

“I am settled,” I said, interjecting.

“Dear brother, you do not know the half of it,” Robin said, frowning. “You… .”

“That is enough.” Sabrina broke through our impromptu debate. We both looked at her as she sized each of us up. “I believe I am still the mistress in this coven, am I not?”

Robin muttered something in a foreign tongue, dropping his sword onto the ground in favor of walking off toward where his suit jacket laid. Sabrina scowled. Proverbial steam rose from her head, threatening to reignite the flames of wrath and consume Robin whole. “Ne tournes pas le dos à moi,” she said, answering Robin back in the language he spoke in hushed tones.

“Pourquoi? Tu as décidé déjà.” Robin slid his arms through his suit jacket, then looked at me. “I will leave you to decide this with the Mistress,” he said. “You are her child, not mine. Please know I do not doubt your aptitude, Flynn. There are only things about your mental preparedness which have me concerned. I would like to see you mature as a vampire first. It would put my mind much more at ease.” Nodding, Robin looked away, hurrying toward the exit. Leaving Sabrina and I the sight of his back and ponytail hanging down past his shoulders as his parting statement. I furrowed my brow at the display.

It lingered with me for the remainder of the evening.

Sighing, I entered my room again after indulging in a quick hunt, my need for blood sated as the dawn sky threatened to intrude upon the matters of immortals. The air outside growing colder by the day, I sensed one year as a vampire coming to a close and wondered just how many Robin thought I needed to weather. Five? Ten? A hundred, as he had? I shut my door with a bit more force than normal and leaned against it, arms crossing my chest while my eyes took stock of the room surrounding me.

What was once devoid of any blade of which to speak now boasted the beginnings of an arsenal. Several katanas, throwing knives, daggers, and short swords adorned the walls of my private quarters, with more housed inside the closet. Weapons with which I planned on experimenting. Everything Asian and all types of tools short of rifles, guns, and bullets. Had I been commissioned to be an assassin of men, those weapons might have had more worth, but I knew from the start what my targets would be. I would be killing other immortals. “A target fixed upon my back,” I said, revisiting Robin’s words.

I could handle it. I knew I could.

While I understood my brother’s concern, I also had a healthy sense of egotism throbbing through my veins as I plucked one of the swords off the wall. Swinging it around as others taught me, I revisited words of praise bestowed upon me. I was born for this. I was a natural. Whipping the blade around only seemed to verify it. I set my weapon down atop my dresser as the hour called me toward slumber. Yawning, I stole a quick glance inside a half-opened drawer. Something shimmered from within. I found myself plucking it from inside and lifting it up before I could stop myself.

The necklace I ripped from Lydia as I murdered her lay nestled in the palm of my hand. My fingers slid over its pendant while my eyes became distant and the mantra continued playing. I was born for this. I knew it as surely as I knew my name was Flynn; it was evident in the killer instinct I possessed. Even as the sainted doctor, I slayed that which I loved with such precision, it would have made the surgeons I once brushed shoulders with envious. What would it take to demonstrate to Robin that I could handle the responsibility of being an assassin?

Clutching the necklace in hand, I thrust it into my pocket, not entirely certain why I did such a thing except to keep a trophy close to my person. Something that proved even the hypocrite doctor was a murderer. Throwing my belabored body onto the bed, I neither bothered to strip, nor did I tuck myself under the covers before succumbing to fatigue. Instead, I allowed the tidal wave to crest and carry me off in its wake. I should have been lulled into the soundest of dreams.

That morning, however, I weathered the most terrible nightmare I had experienced since my fledgling days. Despite months of cold cruelty and intense focus, there yet remained one voice who refused to surrender her mission to redeem my soul.

The ghost of Lydia Davies returned with a vengeance to haunt me.

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