Unseen

Chapter 18

Yvette was their objective, so they took her away first thing.

Violet knew right away they were going for her. She knew how to spot someone on a mission, laser-focused on a target. They looked at Yvette the way she had looked at every one of the targets Yvette had given her. The only difference was how hard they worked not to kill her.

Violet tried to stop them, of course. But there were too many of them. She had been taught to fight using the element of surprise, and one-on-one if possible. It was what her ability lent itself to.

They handcuffed Yvette and gagged her. Her eyes were wide and scared as they dragged her roughly down the stairs, not letting her find her feet. Every time Violet tried to reach her, there was an arm or a torso or the barrel of a gun in the way. It was all Violet could do to stop those arms from wrapping around her and those guns from aiming at her head.

Then Yvette was gone, along with the echo of her screams. The half-finished bowl of ice cream was melting in the living room—Violet could smell it, sweet and salty against the tang of blood. The faint, triumphant yowl of a vampire kitten room rose in the air. Then a rat-a-tat, add the sound of splintering plastic and shattering glass, and the kitten's cry cut off. Someone had shot the TV.

Then, for the space of a few seconds, everything was silent and still. No sound except for their rough breathing. No movement except for their hands shifting on their weapons and their eyes locking on her.

Four against one.

She hadn't done much training for scenarios like this, but she had done a little. Everyone did. She trained six-on-one before. Once, she had even won.

But that had been training. And in that moment of stillness, their faces changed. This wasn't training, their eyes said. This wasn't a kidnap operation anymore, either. That shift in their faces said they were willing to kill now, in a way they hadn't been when Yvette had still been in the room. They didn't have to worry about her catching a stray bullet now. The gloves could come off.

She knew that look, too. The look of someone who had come prepared to take a life. She had seen it in the mirror.

Violet broke the detente first—because if she didn't choose how it ended, they would. She broke it by breaking one of the first rules she had learned in her training, and one of the most important.

She showed them what she could do.

With all eyes on her, she disappeared.

Their startled gasps left her briefly triumphant, like she had the upper hand. It was an illusion.

Either they had heard rumors of what Yvette's pet assassin could do, or they simply knew how to handle the unexpected. Either way, two of them blocked the stairs, cutting off her route to Yvette. The other two spread out so they wouldn't hit each other, then sprayed the room with gunfire. A bullet whizzed past her ankle, inches from burying itself in the bone. More bullets shredded the cabinets behind her.

The hole in the closet ceiling—she could make it. She was fast enough.

But Yvette was downstairs, helpless and afraid.

Yvette didn't have anyone else.

She didn't run. Instead, she called on forgotten lessons from her training. Lessons she had never needed to learn in any of her missions. Lessons she had thought she would never call on in real life.

She darted between two enemies and flickered back to visibility, just long enough for them to aim their guns at each other. She cycled fluidly in and out of invisibility, spending and replenishing her energy a little at a time rather than pushing the clock in her cells to its limits.