The moon floats high over the crest of the tree line, and the smell of cherry blossoms drifts to my nose from several hundred feet away where two lines of them stretch into the darkness. The buds are pale against leaves blackened by night. It reminds me of home, a spring night like this, with the cherry tree called sakura dropping sweet petals to cover the ground. The wall of this estate is high and topped with barbed wire, but I scale it easily, dropping to the ground as my coat flares out behind me. This sort of job is child's play. I could do it in my sleep.
I avoid the motion-sensing cameras and the heat sensors as I weave my way toward the main house, my feet crushing cherry blossom petals as I walk. Gerald Savvs is the owner of this mansion. He bought his home with money gained through smuggling young girls to the United States from India, China, and South Korea and selling them into sexual slavery. His customer base includes a large number of sadists. Many of his women have died from the treatment. It was why I'd taken the job – women are my love and my weakness. I can always be counted on to dash to the rescue of one, ever since I failed to rescue the most important one....
No time for that now, I remind myself, darting through the bushes and withdrawing from my pockets the neko-do that will allow me to scale the sheer marble side of the house. They are short, bent pieces of metal attached to a ring that fits around my hand, the ends sharpened to dig into the slightest purchase. They have been used by ninjas since the origin of that class, and now I am using them for much the same purpose. I am going to kill tonight.
Gott weiß ich will kein Engel sein.
I can hear you asking 'why'. I can sense your confusion. People like Savvs, we put in jail, strip of their assets, and lock away. People like Savvs meet justice under the judicial system, unless of course, they get away with their crimes and manage to dodge the authorities. For the record, Savvs is going to meet justice tonight for all the lives he's destroyed and all the people he's hurt, going beyond those women to the men whose perversions are fueled and worsened by his catering, to the women whose hearts are broken when their men fall prey to temptation, to the children whose parents wind up in jail, to the mothers and fathers who lose a child and are intimidated into keeping silent. What are those numbers, anyway? Hundreds? Thousands, more likely. It doesn't matter, does it? I'm going to take his life tonight, and you're going to be aghast.
Once upon a time, back when I first took this job, I had immature notions of what exactly I would be – a white knight, coming to the rescue of people the law had failed to help. I would hunt the predators that lurked in the shadows and steal away their tomorrows, as they had stolen the tomorrows of so many innocents. I hadn't anticipated the pain of my own failed life haunting me every step of the way, or the horror of having blood on my hands. I hadn't anticipated what I would become if I stepped into the shadows myself.
Once upon a time, I was a man who believed in justice. When my partner was gunned down, I ceased to believe in justice and began to believe in vengeance. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, it's true, but I and my co-workers... we were the cure. A combined six-hundred or so pounds of cure that came down hard on anyone who had the chutzpah to do evil and flout the law. We were young and stupid. We made poor choices. We have suffered greatly for them. Myself, I was suffering as much as any of them, wallowing in my own misery which multiplied exponentially with each person whose life I took. A reluctant killer is a terrible thing to be, a white knight and a bloody angel.
Gott weiß ich will kein Engel sein.
Then she came along. As I said, I have a weakness for women, as is proven by the fact that I'm breaking into the house of a man who has his own highly-trained and deadly security force, without any back-up whatsoever. This one, however, was barely a woman. I never even got her into bed, and that's saying something. She was a machine, honed for battle, nothing like even the female assassins I've gone up against in the past. She was a murderer, and she was okay with it.
She was a godsend. I had already watched one of my coworkers crack under the strain of being what we were. I didn't want to be the next one who fractured, though I could see it happening, bit by bit and day by day. Did she blacken my soul? Probably. Did she save me from myself? Indubitably. She told me what I needed to know – that murder is a job, and if it wasn't necessary, we wouldn't be able to make such good money doing it. She had devoted herself to The Hunt, and to the kill, had lost her former life, her former personality, and even her femininity along the way. But she was good at what she did, one of the best, and she taught me that there is only one way to survive this lifestyle without going insane – you have to learn to like what you are.
Not to become a psychopath – that way lies madness and uselessness. And in this business, if you turn useless, you turn dead very shortly thereafter. No, it's simply the ability to look in the mirror and say, "I am a killer... and I'm okay with that".
The alarm on the windows will be triggered by motion of the frame. I place my glass-cutter flat against the pane and swivel the blade in a circle, gently removing the cut-out and sliding my hand inside. I am feeling for the wire leading to the alarm fixture. I discard the piece of glass and withdraw a set of wire cutters from my coat. If I can cut the power to the alarm, I can open this window with impunity. I'm all about sleekness and stealth. My savior, she was all about brutality, explosions, and head-on confrontations. She taught me how to see the job as a challenge, a competition, a game of cat and mouse that was played in deadly earnest. She taught me how to think like a hunter, instead of a wounded wildcat, fighting to stave off the pain of past injuries. She showed me the true face of evil in the world, and gave me back the determination to fight it.
Gott weiß ich will kein Engel sein.
I came to realize that things like justice and honor don't really matter, in a lot of ways. That good and evil don't matter. I do this because this is what I'm good at. I do this because this is what I am. And since making peace with that, I've been a whole new animal – my coworkers barely know me anymore. No more angst, no more pining after those beautiful blue eyes and that sly smile that I lost forever to a few bullets.
Funny. We were trying to break up a slave ring just like this when she died, the woman I loved before my wings were stained red.
The window comes open with a minimum of noise, the wire dangling in severed ends as my feet softly hit the carpet. I crouch as I move through the room, listening for any sound. My target is asleep, and his guards are downstairs. He hasn't been the target of any assassination attempts before now. I'll show them how careful they should have been.
He has valuable artwork on his walls, and I am mildly disgusted. He probably doesn't even appreciate it. But if you have money, why not spend it? Personally, I spend the obscene amount of money I make as a glorified assassin on fueling my chain-smoking habit and taking beautiful women on dates. Both are vices I can truly appreciate. Somehow, I doubt Savvs has any real fondness for Van Gogh. I would be tempted to steal him blind if I didn't know better – focus on the job, Balinese, and save ridiculing the target for after he's dead.
His bedroom is on the fourth floor and I'm on the third. There are cameras on the roof, I learned when I cased this place, because there is a helicopter pad on the roof. So it's easier for me to go up than down, and I creep up the thickly carpeted stairs with utmost caution, even though I know he's skimped on internal alarms.
What it boils down to, really, is forgiving yourself. In order to do that, you have to believe you're worthy of forgiveness, that you have a right to happiness just like everyone else does. Once you can bring yourself to believe that, once you start valuing yourself, it's much easier to decide that there will be good and evil in the world no matter what, but that a few people sleep better at night because of what you do. So maybe it IS worth something, and so am I. And maybe no one will ever appreciate what I do, or thank me for it, but as long as I'm good at my job and being paid well, I can take some measure of satisfaction in it.
Savvs isn't sleeping well. He's restless, though I doubt it's because he knows I'm here. Sleeping the sleep of the wicked, Gerald? Plagued by dreams of weeping? I melt into the shadows as he rises to get a glass of water from his brass and marble bathroom. Easy, for me to do it. The light glints faintly off the razor-sharp wire I stretch between my hands. I can only use the stuff because my coat is Kevlar, and my gloves are a metal/Kevlar weave. It cuts through human flesh like a knife through silk, clean and quick. Once upon a time, I used thicker wires meant to suffocate, so I didn't have to kill my victims unless I broke their necks. Now, my scruples have vanished, it seems.
Gott weiß ich will kein Engel sein.
Savvs steps out of the bathroom. His boxers are made of silk, and his body is slightly emaciated under them. He doesn't look dangerous, with his ugly mustache and his retreating hairline. He doesn't have what it takes to be graceful, or beautiful in his wickedness. He is slime, and his blood spatters black over the peach-colored carpet as I whip the wires around his throat and pull them tight between my hands, cutting through his throat down to the spinal column. His hands rise to stop me, but he is already almost dead, and with a quick jerk, I finish it. His body becomes dead weight and I release the wires, letting them slide back into their homes in my specially-made watches. Ah, the sexy wires of death. Blood is dripping down the front of my coat, but I don't mind. It's navy, it'll fade enough in the wash. I leave his body there and move back downstairs, to where I know his bookkeeper sleeps – this man is sharp-eyed and cunning, and will likely take over Savv's organization if I don't take him out as well. He's not part of the mission, but I haven't exactly been following orders lately. I've been rediscovering myself, and realizing I might be capable of liking what I am.
Gott weiß ich will kein Engel sein.
He is awake, as I knew he'd be, scribbling under the glow of an antique lamp and muttering under his breath as he crunches numbers. Boring job, I should think. I wonder if he hates it. Not that it much matters. I chuckle as I move out of the shadows and he whirls, scattering papers everywhere. "Who are you?" he demands. "How did you get into this house? You are trespassing!"
"This house is up for sale. The owner's dead," I say nonchalantly, looping a few strands of my still-bloody wires around my fingers in preparation. He can see the light glinting off the mono-filament strand, and his eyes widen.
"Who are you?" he demands again, scrambling to put his desk between him and me, as though it will protect him.
"The one who hunts dark beasts and brings their evil to an end," I said lightly, feeling a smirk curve my lips as I slide my hands apart, stringing more wire between them. "Weiß."
"Weiß," he spits. "You're pathetic! Playing at angels when you're really just murderers! I've heard of you and your Kritiker. You're a joke!"
I cast the lines and they wrap around his body, pinning his arms to his sides and cutting into his skin. The poor man didn't have a gun handy. Really, he should have been less trusting. He screams as he feels his body being sliced like a Christmas ham. My time here is running out, but that's fine. I toss another loop around his neck and yank, and his head bursts from his shoulders in a fountain spray of blood, thunking to the floor along with his body.
I let my wires retract, scribble our calling card on a scrap of paper in bold-point black marker, and stab a pen through it, pinning it to the desk. I hear shouts of confusion outside and pounding on the door, followed by the scream of cracking wood. Time to make myself scarce. Darting to the window, I yank it open and feel the cool breeze on my face, sweetened by the scent of sakura petals. The door breaks open behind me and I pause to toss the bodyguards a dashing grin before throwing myself out of a third-story window.
I make the landing without an issue and sprint for the wall, all pretense of stealth abandoned now. I know it was risky, but I can't help throwing the wild card of human behavior into my missions, just to see what will come of it. There's no mistaking what happened to their boss and his right-hand-man, not with the word 'Weiß' scrawled across a piece of paper fluttering on his desk. I hurdle the wall with the same ease of before – since coming to terms with myself and my work, I've gotten much better at it. Amazing what you can accomplish when you have the will to try. I'm gone before they can get themselves together enough to try and stop me, and safely back at my temporary apartment while they're still milling like insects, panicked over the impending loss of their empire. I called the police from a pay phone nearby to report the murder. Hopefully, they'll look deep and find all sorts of interesting things.
I bundle my bloody coat into a plastic bag and go to take a shower, picking at my hair as I pause by the mirror. The roots are showing again – time for another bleach. I'll do it when I get back to Japan. The hot water feels heavenly, and the soft terrycloth robe and mug of coffee even more heavenly. I can't go to bed yet – I have to write my report on the mission and fax it to Kritiker. They're sticklers for the rules. But as I sit down to pound out something simple and to the point, my cell phone rings. I crack it open and smile at the phone number displayed before hitting the button to answer the call.
"Keiko," I gush, managing to put affection into my tone. I know why she's calling, and I know I'm in trouble. "What are you up to?"
"This is the third time you've stood me up in a MONTH, Yohji, where are you?"
"In America, on a business trip," I say with the appropriately apologetic tone. "I'll bring you back a gift. You have to forgive me, it couldn't be helped. Come now, I'll take you to dinner on Saturday."
"And you won't break the date this time? I swear, Yohji, you're the most irresponsible person I've ever dated!"
"I swear not to break the date," I tell her, placing my hand over my heart even though she can't see me. "If you swear to let me take you home afterward."
"Yohji!" she exclaims, scandalized. "You devil!"
"You love me for it. Ja ne, Keiko, see you Saturday," I say cheerfully, and hang up on her spluttering. That, at least, is out of the way. Now, what to tell Kritiker? 'Savvs successfully murdered. Bled a lot on his carpet.' I smirk as I begin to draft a sardonic letter to Manx. She's called me a devil too, in the past, but I don't mind it. It suits me. It goes with the job.
God knows I don't want to be an angel.