were to hire an assassin to slay him? By the looks of her, though, she’d never get the chance. Death was hovering very close by this one.
He was drawn to the bedside. The dying woman was little more than skin pulled tightly over bones. Her mouth moved pathetically as she tried to speak, but she was too weak to create much more than wheezing croaks.
The weapon cradled in his arm wanted to strike, but Ripper of Souls felt that it would only be a waste, and besides, no one ever got rich by being merciful.
Ripper of Souls pulled his cloak tighter about himself, preparing to leave and collect his fee, when his weapon suddenly began to vibrate.
At first he thought it was a warning, but then realized that the living gun was the first to respond to a psychic communication from the Broker.
Ripper of Souls allowed his guard to fall, feeling the tickling sensation of the telepathic call. Perhaps he was about to receive his newest job, the killer thought, feeling that sense of excitement he always did when being given the death notice on some hapless individual.
But then he realized that he and his weapon were not the only ones to receive this call—it was for all the Bone Masters. Their honor was being challenged. A quarry had managed to survive.
That could never be allowed.
Ripper of Souls felt himself aroused. To be the one that managed to prevent this potential embarrassment would be glorious.
His weapon agreed, vibrating eagerly in anticipation.
All the information he required to fulfill this existing contract filled his consciousness and that of his weapon.
An angel, he thought. He and his weapon had never killed anything of the divine before. They could barely contain their excitement.
The sound that disturbed his thrill was little more than a squeak, but it distracted him anyway.
Ripper of Souls looked toward the bed, at the dying woman, as her mouth moved again, emitting a single, barely audible word. “Murderer,” she managed, the toll that the effort took upon her obvious.
The assassin could not contain himself, and he stepped closer to the bed.
“Yes,” he whispered, ignoring the psychic pleas of his weapon. It so wanted to kill the woman, but Ripper decided that he would not waste a single projectile or drop of venom.
Instead, he reached out, placed a skeletal hand firmly over the woman’s mouth and nose, and held it there. Her eyes grew wide with the realization that this was her time and that he would be the one to take her life.
“I am a murderer,” he told her, watching the life drain from her eyes as he had her daughter before. “And I do so love my job.”
• • •
Ashley bounded up the stairs, her heart pounding to the point that she thought it might just burst through her ribs.
“Remy,” she cried as she practically leapt into the bedroom, her momentum stopped cold by the sight of him lying so very still upon the bed.
Marlowe let out an excited bark, his tail wagging furiously as he jumped from his spot next to Remy and ran to greet her.
“What’s happened, boy?” she found herself asking, on the verge of crying, but she refused to let the emotion override her control. It wouldn’t do her any good to lose it now.
It was then that she noticed the dark-skinned man sitting so very still at the top of the bed beside her friend, his hand pressed to Remy’s heart.
“Hello?” she said. “Can you tell me what happened? . . . Can you tell me if he’ll be . . .” Her voice started to crack and she stopped to take a deep breath. “Can you tell me if he’ll be all right?”
When the man didn’t answer, Ashley rounded the bed with Marlowe close at her side. The man appeared to be in a kind of trance, his eyes barely open—just slits, really.
“Hello?” she said again.
The man continued to remain perfectly still. Slowly, she reached a tentative hand out.
The tips of her fingers touched his shoulder.
“Can you hear me?”
• • •
Assiel walked in the darkness of the angel Remiel’s psyche.
It was a turbulent place filled with equal parts darkness and light, and in all his time he had never seen another like it.
It had been his purpose to help heal those who were injured; sometimes using balms, sometimes potions, and sometimes something more drastic.
Something far more intense.
Assiel had the ability to connect with a being’s inner self, that which linked him to the flow