Hello good reader, I feel I must apologise for the abomination you are about to read. I have only read book 1 of the Night Angel Trilogy (I am trying to secure the rest) and I am a poor writer overall. You have been warned ;)
Credit due to Brent Weeks for creating the Night Angel Trilogy; I own none of the material.
He had been like them once. The ordinary folk, trudging through their insular, paltry lives like sheep, unaware that wolves like him even existed. He stood atop a grandiose old building in the morning sun, a figure dressed in black as if fashioned from shadows, green eyes flashing from under his hood that covered his lengthy dark brown hair. As Jason Drake glared across the city of Cenaria from his perch high above the milling crowds below, he considered what he'd be like if he wasn't a wetboy. That Jason would be nothing compared to what he was now. The thought passed and he dropped the next roof silently, stalking his ignorant prey. He had a contract to fulfil and a deader to find.
The target was, in fact, an ancient priest from Ossein. Jason didn't know why the client wanted him dead, and frankly he didn't care – all that mattered to him was that he eliminated the target and he received his payment. He found the elderly priest outside his temple to the One God, preaching to the silent masses arranged before him in the plaza. "Damn sheep" Jason hissed under his breath as he crouched on a nearby rooftop, drew a heavy crossbow of darkened wood and took aim. The priest must have been in his seventies easily, his wispy white hair clinging to his head in futile protest against the ravages of time and his rather modest and plain robes swayed slightly in the thin breeze as the aged orator tended to his flock. Jason flashed a killer smile as he drew the bolt back into the firing position. Easiest money he'd made in a long while. The priest turned suddenly, and Jason froze. The last thing he needed was an imperfect shot. After all, wetboys don't miss. He drew on the Talent, focusing his eyesight like a raptor focusing on a rabbit as he searched for the reason for his target's distraction.
A young woman stepped out from the chapel and whispered in the ear of the priest. Jason lowered the crossbow and considered this fresh situation. The woman was young, maybe in her twenties, with curly brown locks and almost golden eyes. She reminded Jason of a woman he had known in his earlier life, before he was a wetboy. No wait… Jason squinted as he scanned her with analytic precision. It was her. He thought his old life had gone; he had renounced that squalid existence and her in particular. And now she was back. He snarled, took aim and fired. The bolt punched through the priest's upper back, continued through his heart and carried on, embedding itself in the wall behind. The priest fell to the stone floor without a sound and as his body hit the ground, all hell broke loose in the plaza. The crowd metamorphosed from a silent, transfixed audience to a fear crazed horde and all it had taken was a single, perfect shot from a peerless killer. Jason smiled darkly again, and leapt from the roof, using his Talent to cushion the fall. He landed with a small grunt, and prowled away, unaware that a pair of golden, feminine eyes were trained on him.
A few hours' time found Jason in the Blue Boar, arguably the finest brothel in Cenaria City. Of course, that depends on who you ask. While the wetboy didn't really have a taste for the wine that had become one of the Boar's pillars, he was interested in the other foundation; the women. A cut above the day walkers that blighted the lower areas of Cenaria, Jason knew all of them and while some had fetishes too debauched even for a man of his nature, he had found brief windows of superficial happiness within these walls. But a killer has no friends, only targets. That was the code of a wetboy, their one and only rule. Kill the target, maintain your reputation and stay alive. All other rules are beneath a wetboys concern. Jason had followed these rules, this black code of conduct since he had turned his back on his old life, never to return. Until the golden eyed girl had turned up again. Jason drained a goblet of wine and thought to himself. She would never recognize him. And if she did, she'd soon be far, far away. Their last meeting, nearly a decade ago had ended badly after Jason had lied to her. But those days were gone, and he lived for now. Jason set down the goblet, spat out the remnants of the weak wine and followed a red-haired whore upstairs. He had been paid handsomely; now the task remained to spend his blood tainted coin.
