How to Raise an Assassin

CHAPTER 47: THE STAIN THAT NEVER GOES AWAY

My soul collapsed with Ash's body.

I rushed towards him trying to stop the blood pouring from his neck. I felt dizzy. I felt hot. I felt nauseous. This was a nightmare. This wasn't real.

Ash's dwindling life made it all too clear that this was real. He struggled to speak. All I heard were attempts at coughing. I shushed him, even though I really wanted to hear his voice. Anything he could've said to me would've been better than his last words, "Zay, please don't kill my dad."

I was speechless. I tore off my sleeve trying to wrap it around his neck like a scarf. But that couldn't calm the tide. My hands trembled as I applied pressure. Tears dropped onto my hands as I tried to keep his soul from leaving his body. I would've gone through a million Tunnels of Punishments if it meant keeping my best friend alive. Ash was leaving me, and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

I never thought I would experience this feeling again...this feeling of such uselessness, until seeing someone I love slip through my hands for a second time.

When his body turned limp, my entire body ruptured with fear. I looked at my hands and saw flashes of Noa's blood on them. I reached down and hugged Ash's corpse, soaking myself in his blood as I heard something shatter once again in my mind.

"I'm sorry," I sobbed into his chest wishing my tears would bring him back to me. "Please Ash, forgive me."

I heard a couple of steps stop just behind me. "You can drop the act Za-Za." He spoke with a hollow voice. "You don't have to continue with this Locust charade any longer."

Noa was right. My father wasn't just a monster, or even a villain. He was a slave to evil, serving someone or something more powerful than him...a patron who supplied him with his unnatural killing ability.

I spotted a throwing knife in Ash's pocket. I bent down and kissed Ash's flaking forehead, sprinkled with my salty tears. "I'll never forget you." I gripped my hand around the knife. "Say hi to Noa for me."

Then I swung around and tossed the knife at my father.

He batted it away with his scythe. I charged him and slid beneath his legs, jumping up and swinging a kick to his back side and knocking him forward.

"Za-Za, what's the meaning of this?"

I reached for a fallen guard's gun. My father turned around to face me and I didn't hesitate to unload the entire clip on my own father.

I saw puffs of dark smoke sprout and disappear. Faster than I could blink my eyes my father had teleported in a zig-zagging motion, dodging all the bullets, knocking aside my pistol, and slapping me across the face so hard I fell to the ground.

The world around me was dizzy from the impact. I backed away from my father's slow advances towards me. I started tossing the plates, knives, forks, food, anything I could find to keep him away. He sidestepped, swatted, or ducked away from all projectiles. Then I latched my hand around another pistol, but I couldn't even raise it off the ground because my hand was met with my father's dress shoe, crushing my fingers beneath them.

I held back my cry, biting my lips, but I couldn't hold back the tears of hurt, frustration, and pure thirst for vengeance that flowed like lava down my cheeks.

"Enough of this," he said, bringing his foot to my back and pinning me to the ground. "You did your job by ending the Mayor. Don't disappoint me like Noa did by getting your mind wrapped up around a puny soul like his son."

"He was my friend!" I shouted, but my voice was muffled by my cheeks being pressed against the ground, resting on shattered porcelain and broken glass. "And you killed him."

"I was saving my daughter. Had I left him to live, he surely would've either implicated us in the murder of his father or gotten back at you by attempting to kill you himself." My father shook his head. "No Za-Za, he wasn't your friend. Not before the attempt on his dad, and he definitely wouldn't have been your friend after today."

My father was a cruel bastard, but he was right. I wasn't sure if Ash would have forgiven me if the Mayor never woke up. If the poison I used was too strong for him, or if cracking his sternum was overkill, then Ash would no longer have been my friend after today.

I couldn't plague my mind with the what if's. It wouldn't bring back my best friend.

My father saw my contemplating as me calming down. He took his foot off of my back and walked towards the door. "Remember Za-Za, there are no friends in this business. There is only us."

He left the room and made a call for a ride to pick us up. Xavier was out front in a matter of minutes. Meanwhile, I slip my hand inside Ash's one last time.

"The mission isn't over."

And as painful as it was for me to leave Ash dead in his own blood, I pulled away knowing that I will continue stage eight for the both of us—not to complete our initiation into the Locusts, but to assure ourselves that someone like Ash will never fall to such cruelty ever again.