(Violence and some language)
After a brief knock on the door, a pair of guards entered, dragging a feline captive into my throne room.
"What is it now?" I asked impatiently, deeply annoyed as I was trying to read the reports from the team I had sent to Macura Province.
"MiLord, we caught this armed intruder breaking into the palace.", said the guard and prodded the now-disarmed cat who stood before him.
"I have come to end your accursed reign, foul murderer of Page..." he began.
"Not another one," I interrupted, looking up briefly. "Throw this ingrate through the portal. No! Wait..." I grabbed a piece of parchment and scrawled a short note, signing it and sealing it in wax.
"Take this letter back to your fellows," I said. "Guards, throw him out."
It read:
So help me, I shall kill the next idiot who accuses me of murdering Page, my dearest friend and mentor. Now piss off and leave me alone.
-- Johan Cross
As it happened my agents in Macura had only sent me a periodic report. The demons were still believed to be in the area, but my men were having some difficulty locating them. This was something which had to be done carefully to avoid arousing their suspicion, so it was not unexpected.
Disappointed, I went for a stroll in the city to distract myself. That I had risen from such modest beginnings to the absolute ruler of my own realm was something which never ceased to amaze me. I watched the people hurry through the streets, eyeing one another with suspicion, furtive glances abound. All these people were afraid of me! It was something I felt slightly proud of, despite myself. Who would have thought that a young peasant farmer would some day inspire such awe in their subjects?
As I smiled to myself, the sun approached its zenith and the early morning crowd thinned out as noon began to make its presence felt.
On a whim I sat upon a bench and watched someone, a canine of doberman descent as they made their nervous way through the street. I allowed a faint drowsiness to wash over me... not because I needed to sleep but it would be a way to pass the time, and besides - who would suspect some old labrador lazing in the sun of being the eternally-young incubus Johan Cross?
As I sat back, I began to daydream and imagined the possibilities at my disposal.
Just think, said a voice from the darkest corner of my mind, you could have the doberman arrested for any reason. For no reason.
You could even have him killed if you chose... or you could kill him yourself if you made all your wings reappear. No-one would dare stop their ruler.
I realised that I held his life in my hands, and the lives of all the others who dwelt in the city, Being and Creature alike. I wouldn't even need to touch him, I could end his life with a mere thought...
At that precise moment the doberman's head jerked back and he fell dead.
I sat bolt upright with a look of horror on my face. My wicked reverie broken, I invoked a partial invisibility spell and glanced up at the rooftops of the tall buildings in the distance. A dark shape silhouetted against the sky caught my eye, slithering away as I watched. Making myself fully visible again I knelt to examine the corpse and confirmed my fears, a bullet wound.
Closing my eyes, I saw the doberman's shade staring down at me with a venomous expression. Apparently he could see my base form and had realised who I was.
"I had nothing to do with it," I whispered.
Yeah, right... came a faint echo. He gave me the finger and disappeared.
"Hands in the air," said a voice behind me. I arose and complied, turning to face its owner.
"I had nothing to do with it," I said again, this time for the benefit of the guards as they attempted to arrest me.
"I'll be the judge of that," said the officer and I promptly lost my patience.
"'I'll be the judge of that, Sir,'" I retorted, revealing my headwings, backwings and turning my right hand to display the duplicate ceremonial ring that Page had given to me so many decades ago.
The effect of this was electric. The three guards stood to attention immediately and the officer began to mumble a grovelling apology.
"That's enough of that," I said. "Alert the other guards. This man has been murdered by a sniper on the roof of the central bank and you must find the perpetrator at once. I will not have people taking pot shots at my citizens."
It was only later, as one of the guards and I sorted through the dead dog's effects that I suddenly realised that the sniper was most likely targetting me.
Over the next few weeks there were a number of other murders.
In desperation I took to wandering around in something very close to my true wolf incubus form, hoping to draw fire into the projectile shield I had cast, but to no avail. Only one of the victims survived, a feline incubus whom I managed to save by combining their own energy reserves with mine to keep them alive. If I or another Creature of similar skill had not been at hand as he died there would have been another funeral. Most of the victims were Beings, though.
I began to brood about the problem, until I was disturbed by Ashley one fine morning.
"I have good news, Mi'lord," he said.
"From Macura Province?" I asked hopefully.
"I'm afraid not, sir, but it's about the assassin. We have caught them at last."
"Very good, Ashley.", I smiled. "Have him sent to the second board room in five minutes."
"Certainly, Mi'lord. It's a 'she', though.", he added.
I sat at one of my desks, adopting the cynical expression I normally used for such occasions, mercifully rare though they were. The vixen was led into the room, held in check by by two guards although she didn't seem to be struggling.
As she stood before me, I turned her weapon over in my hands, a high-velocity rifle.
"Very neat," I said. "Where did you get this? It seems to be based on one of my own designs."
As I spoke, I shuddered, recalling the efficient way in which it had been put to use. Her victims didn't even know until after their bodies had died.
"You're going to kill me anyway. Why should I help you by betraying my sources?"
"Whatever. You know, at first I assumed you were after me. I can understand that, but it soon became clear that you actually intended to kill other people by preference. And if there is one thing that I cannot stand," I said coldly, "it is someone who goes around committing wanton acts of murder for their own sick pleasure."
Putting the rifle back on the table, I began to check the semiautomatic which I had taken to carrying with me.
"Pleasure?" she spat, "You think I enjoyed doing this? You don't think I have any regrets about what I've done?"
"Well, that's the usual motive," I said casually, placing a couple of live rounds in the gun. "But if it isn't the case this time, I'm all ears."
She looked at the gun sadly. "You're right," she said. "I don't deserve to live anymore. But what I did to my victims was a better fate than they would have suffered in your hands."
"Oh, please." I snarled. "You're the one who's just murdered six innocent people. They were happily minding their own business until you came along and blew their heads off."
"I needed the money," she screeched. "You wanted my motive? That's why I did it. I hated myself each time I fired! The only thing which kept me going was the knowledge that you had them marked!
You were going to eat their souls! You would have.. erased them if I hadn't got to them first."
Am I really that bad?
"I was going to kill you," I said as I flicked the safety back on, "but I've changed my mind.
"I'm a reasonably capable actor, you know. Most 'cubi are since it helps us stay undercover and keeps us alive.
Murder doesn't come naturally to me and even though it would have been just for me to do to you what you did to those poor wretches, you can have no idea how much effort it took to steel myself to end your life. Let alone act as if it was something I do every day.
"I could have ordered your death of course, but that is the coward's way out." As I spoke, I removed a bottle from a drawer in my desk.
"I always confine my punishments to the physical realm," I continued. "That's where I have jurisdiction, not the world beyond. When I feel that the crime is sufficiently evil I may take it upon myself to end someone's life. It leaves me feeling truly wretched afterwards, for I was taught to believe that life is sacred.
"And if the short life of a Being is sacred, then robbing someone, anyone of their afterlife is surely a crime far, far more heinous than any mere murder. I do not believe I have the right to take such an action."
"You mean you haven't ever... you weren't going to..."
"No. Well okay, so I took a chunk out of Ulric's soul when he came to slay me but that doesn't seem to have done him any lasting damage, has it Ulric?"
Let me go at once, demon filth... whispered the bottle, causing the vixen's hackles to stand on end.
"Oh dear. Apparently he hasn't learned his lesson yet," I smirked, putting it back into the drawer along with the pistol. My expression softened as I looked back at the vixen who just sat there, gazing numbly at the floor.
"Come on, it's not that bad," I said. "Okay, so someone conned you into murdering six innocent people. That is a punishment of its own, for I see now that you are after all, that most precious of commodities.. an assassin with a conscience.
"What you have done will haunt you for the rest of your days, and I think that in this case, it will be punishment enough.
The one consolation as far as you're concerned is that you, I and your former employer are the only ones who know that you are responsible. Many of my public seem to believe that I am the killer. We can't have that, though, so I shall have to tell them otherwise. After all, the murders will stop, at least until your master finds a new sniper."
I looked at her intently.
"And I can stop that too, with your help. I could break down your mind to get this you know, but I don't want to do that. So I'm asking you to tell me just two things.. who sent you and how I can reach them. It won't bring back your victims, but it will stop there being any more."
"And what about me?" she asked.
"Well, that is up to you." I said. "If your days as an assassin are over, then I have no further designs upon your life. If you tell me of your employer, you will be free to go. Having said that, you might prefer to remain here or perhaps go into exile, for the families of your victims may not be as forgiving as I if they ever should discover your identity."
"But he'll kill me."
"That's an odd reason for reticence," I said. "You were asking me to kill you a few minutes ago. But it is a 'he', then, is it? That's interesting."
I was silent for a few minutes as two thoughts suddenly collided in my mind, forming new elements like the particle accelerators on Earth.
"You know, the way he's manipulated you makes me wonder if it's an Angel," I said. She didn't reply.
"Let me tell you something about a few of your victims," I went on. "I learned this from the incubus you failed to kill."
"Failed?" she asked, turning to me with a start. "How?"
"Oh you killed him all right, it's just that I managed to resurrect him. I've learned a lot about resurrecting Creatures.. too bad I didn't study Beings as hard. In any case, I could not have done it alone.
He is still recovering in the SAIA medical department, but he did manage to tell me something very interesting. He was a member of a secret organisation, one which has been a thorn in my side for quite some time.
"You see, they have some irrational belief that I killed Page, the city's original founder, and occasionally they send people to kill me. It was fun at first but now they seem to be worshipping Page and since I consider that to be an insult to his memory, I'm starting to lose patience with them. But I digress.
This 'cubi told me that their leader was an Angel, one who seems to believe that Page's successor should have been another Angel and not an incubus. The Page worship thing seems to have been his idea."
"Why would he tell you this?" she asked.
"Well, I saved his life for one. I guess he figured that I wasn't such a bad sort after all. Anyway... a couple of the people you killed were members of this group, but now I know that the killings were not the work of a lone sicko, it seems likely to me that they are all involved somehow. I'll have to double-check that.
And you know what's really interesting? On the night before your first murder I sent them a rude letter saying I'd kill the next man who accused me of murdering Page."
The vixen was utterly silent, but her eyes changed. She knew.
"You've got it. I can see it in your mind. This angel used you to frame me for martyring the members of his cause. It's genius... bordering on insanity, I'll admit, but genius nonetheless."
I spoke to her softly, gently. "Now all I need is a way to get at him, and that is something you can provide. It would be a fitting way to help repair the damage you have done."
"What about the incubus?", she asked reluctantly.
"He can't remember any more than I have just said. You caused an enormous amount of brain damage and while he should recover in a matter of months, we don't have months. Your master will have found another sniper by then."
After a long pause, she closed her eyes and uttered a single word... "Zarach."