The best things about being an assassin inevitably lead to the worst thing. All the wealth, power, training, and excitement- they all leave you without a soul worth speaking of. Even if you’re like me, killing with a righteous sense of purpose and dispatching those creatures and souls of only the most diabolic nature, each pull of the trigger, snapping of a bone, or plunging of a blade takes the tiniest piece from you. You spend your entire life hunting monsters until you become one yourself. Then, if you’re lucky, you end will soon follow.
My name is Gabriel. I am a contract killer and security advisor, formerly under the employment of the Holy Roman Catholic Church of Rome, and, I would say, God itself. Fortunately, or unfortunately, my end has not arrived. This is my story.
++++++
In a business where everything is about speed and misdirection, you hardly ever take a moment to appreciate the effects of your work. Shots from above me thudded into the marble pillar behind me, spitting chunks of stone. Italian curses were spat out with equal ferocity, each swearing to see my painful demise done in short time. All I could do was look at the floor. Sixteen bodies laid out on the floor in front of me, surrounded by scatterings of bullets casings and blood splatters. Morbid to most, I assume, but I take pride in the art of it. The symmetry and technique required for such a result requires all the foresight of any other type of artist you can think of.
I let the empty magazines fall and made a note to pick them up later. A second later, both guns were reloaded and I was on the move. To an outside viewer, my movements might seem like something out of a movie, or at least one might say that the “bad guys” had horrible aim. But I have a distinct advantage that allows me to pull off what most would consider impossible- my mind. I can feel the thoughts of each man desperately trying to kill me. I know where they will aim and move. I know where to step to avoid their lines of fire. I know where to shoot to hit a target that might not have been viable when the gun’s hammer struck the bullet. Outlandish, but then again, most of my daily life is.
Five shots, five kills. Each man with a bullet lodged in his throat or heart or brain. I enjoy the balance of a HK USP .45. With the supressors, they are like some poet’s whisper of an end. For a flicker of time, I feel sorry that they ever had to die. They couldn’t have even known they didn’t stand a chance.
I cleared the room and paused, feeling out the thoughts of everyone in the building. Evidently, my target was making his way to a helicopter on the roof of the building. I moved like wildfire, too fast and too quiet for most of the guards to notice. Those that impede my path die fast and quiet, mostly out of a neccesity to avoid attention, but also I know that in my soul I do it to spare them. I am, after all, a man of God.
Ten men stood guarding the only door leading to the roof. I shot out a window from the next room and hauled myself up to the summit of the grandiose and now ruined mansion. Without much thought put into it, I tossed a fragmentation grenade so it would land just behind the door. Before the grenade had stopped moving, my guns kissed four guards and I pulled my target clear. The commotion and reactive shots fired by the dead guards caused the ones guarding the door to open it and try to come to their employer’s aid. All they succeeded in doing was getting burnt and ripped to shreds by the explosive at their feet.
My target tried squirming and pushing himself away from me. He drew a gun and placed it a half inch from my forehead. Before he could think of pulling the trigger, I redirected the weapon at his own foot and helped him fire. As he squealed, I broke his wrist and disarmed him. Unfortunately for him, this was the least of his worries. I grabbed a lounge chair and zip-tied his flailing limbs to it.
“Rico Guiseppi. Male, thirty three, cocaine addict. One of the ten wealthiest men in all of Italy,” I said, reciting his personal information as if I had a case file in front of me.
“Wanted in seven countries for extortion, murder, rape, and trafficking of drugs and weapons,” I said.
Sniveling, as only the weak and cowardly can manage, he asked “What do you want with me?! I’ll give you anything you want! Money, power, women, drugs, all of it!”
“I came here to get information, but you had to do it the hard way. Fortunately for you, I am a merciful tool of God. And so I will give you another chance. Will you tell me what I want to know? Or will I make you do so? Cooperate, and I can make your records and pursuers all vanish. Get stubborn or lie, and your last minutes here will be the most agonizing you can imagine.”
“You’ll clear everything if I help?” he asked, rather dumbfounded.
“Yes. You’ll never have to worry about them again,” I responded. “Tell me about the Blood Night.”
After several minutes of conversation, replete with instances of coercion to extract the entirety of the truth, Rico told me all of what I wanted to hear. He was pale and bleeding heavily. If left there, either the bleeding would kill him or shock would set in and do it. Only the proper application of pain kept him coherent through our discussion.
I thumbed the hammer back on my pistol and placed it between his eyes. It certainly reacquired his awareness for him.
“You said you would help me!” he whined.
“Trust me, I am. May God have mercy on your soul.”
There was a sensation so surprising that I almost didn’t feel or recognize it. My gun, still armed, dropped to my side. Rico’s head now resembled an exploded watermelon, but by no bullet of mine. I looked at my torso and saw a generously bleeding hole just above my stomach. Instantly my training took over and told me that my lung had been punctured and that what I looked at was an exit wound from an exceedingly powerful rifle shot. I fell to my knees and then onto my shoulder just as the second shot ripped past me and into Rico’s torso, just to make sure.
How?
Why?
Where?
Who?
It turns out none of it matters much when death arrives at your doorstep, on in this case, comes to meet you on the top of a mansion surrounded by its other charges. There were moments in my life when I would have genuinely accepted death. This was not one of them.