Undetected

Chapter Fourteen

 Shadow was already dead, so shattering her physically was the only way to destroy her. I was going to have to strike while she was most vulnerable, which was in the slow-wave cycle of her sleep. It would be similar to killing a vampire, by driving a stake through his heart while he lay sleeping in his coffin.

"I need to use Cupid's Arrow, the only weapon I have that can do the trick". I said out loud, realizing that the danger was in getting close enough to her sleeping body. She was wired to sense danger. The elixir1 that Mari provided would help me stay alive but might not help with remaining undetected.

"What are Shadow's powers?" I kept asking myself over and over, but this time I said it out loud. I really needed to stop spilling my thoughts out into the open. If a bug was planted I was screwed.

I walked to the storage room and opened the secret compartment that was behind a maintenance closet, where I kept everything necessary for my missions. The compartment was similar to the design of the secret elevator in the strip club that Shadow came out of.

On the far back wall, hung Cupid's arrow, with its poison arrow ready to go. I was six when my father started teaching me archery. I really took to it, and within a few years it was hard for me to miss the bullseye.

Once Marí was confident in my skills, she made me one arrow with a tip so lethal, that if a person was struck in the heart, the person's body would disintegrate in seconds.

She concocted the poison in her lab, made from the same venom of a viper that the Mongrels used to dip their arrow in, to poison their enemy. Marí added a special chemical compound that would implode the body after it struck the heart. Anything less than striking the heart, the arrow would still hurt and stop a person in their tracks but not kill them.

"The time will come when you will need a special operation weapon to kill someone who cannot be killed any other way.

"I trust your judgment on when to use it," Mari said, after handing me the deceptively small, red device that looked like a cupids arrow that is often depicted in art.

Cupid's arrow is what I named it, as I hung it on the wall.

Mari had Raul make a tiny fingerprint ID pad, so that the only time the arrow would launch was when it had my fingers on it.

"Vee don't want the arrow to strike anyone except for the target." She assured me when scanning my fingerprints years ago. When I said Mari didn't miss a thing, I meant it.

I took it off the wall and laid it on the table. Because of its small size, I was able to hide inside my jacket.

I reconfigured the military-style pants into a more customized pant by adding easy-access pockets, both outside and inside the leg. The large outside pocket was perfect to hold the baby bow and arrow, until I needed it.

I slipped on my fitted sports jacket, which I also customized with pockets to fit the various weapons that I had.

It took a minute to get all of my gear together, including my Ninja Throwing Stars. It occurred to me that Shadow, with her Japanese heritage, and Samuri's training might know a thing or two about Throwing Stars. There were so many ways to make the steel weapon even deadlier. My heart began to race. Mari assured me that she would be close by.

"Good to know." I mumbled, not too loudly this time, but still above a whisper.

It occurred to me that despite the fact that I was going to turn into the tiniest particle of evaporation, Shadow could still sense my presence. She knew something. When I took Ace's weapons and dropped them off at the police station, she was there somewhere. She made no attempts to harm me though, which baffled me.

It took me close to an hour to pack everything on my body in a way that wouldn't weigh me down. The mission required equipment to strike down the enemy.

Packed and ready to go, I looked at my watch, twelve-thirty p.m.

I closed my eyes and visualized the house and its inhabitants. I clearly saw the bodies of Ace and Katie asleep. Shadow's body, on the other hand, was not so clear.

A bad sign maybe or just hazy vision?

I had to go for it, so I got into my Honda and drove over to the house.

One wrong move and I was toast.