Chapter 2: The Master
Catryne closed the door behind him, and slumped down against it, fighting tears. She wanted to say yes, she really did, but she had made a personal resolution long ago to never become emotionally involved with her marks. And Remy LeBeau was a mark; a very lucrative one. The next one down on her list, actually.
"I have to go and see the Master," she said to herself, getting to her feet and scrambling into her clothes.
It was a short hop downtown to the offices of the Master. He operated a small bookshop and did some legitimate business that way; but his real source of income lay in his subordinates. Catryne was one of them.
Six years ago, Catryne had been an ordinary woman, working for a midsize corporation as a security officer and bodyguard for its CEO's. Then one night, she had been ordered to escort the president to a business dinner. The 'business dinner' had turned into a clandestine meeting between the man she'd been ordered to escort and the president of a rival corporation. She had been ordered to kill the other man. Horrified, she'd refused. The president of her corporation had gunned down the man himself, and pursued her. She'd foolishly run to the only place she felt safe; her home, where her husband and infant son had been waiting for her. They had gone to bed, making plans to turn the President in the next morning.
She'd never gotten the chance. Late that night two men had broken into her house, injected her with a sedative, and then dragged her outside to her car. She had woken up, fully dressed, in her car, just in time to see her home go up in flames with her family inside. There was nothing she could do but cry with grief as the firemen held her back from throwing herself into the flames.
She had wanted to die, for a long time. Then an enigmatic man calling himself the Master of Assassins had appeared to her, one day at the park, and told her he could help her get revenge on the corporate president who had killed her family. The price was that she had to serve him as an assassin for ten years. She had agreed at the time. She had nothing to live for; her family was gone. She wanted revenge. So she had agreed, and he had her sign a contract, giving him ten years of her life. For a year she had lived with him, learning all forms of self-defense, learning different ways of killing. Revenge, when she finally met the man who had ordered her family killed, had been sweet, but oddly enough it hadn't satisfied her. Seeing him die didn't alleviate the weight of sorrow she carried with her. But a deal was a deal, and she had joined his corps of assassins as his New York operative. He had at least one in almost every major city in the country.
Except New Orleans. He had struck a deal with the leader of the Assassins' Guild there, a lady named Belladonna. And a month ago, she had come to the Master with a contract. A contract for a man named Remy LeBeau. She wanted him dead, she said. He was her former husband, and he had killed her brother. As the one assigned to New York, Catryne had agreed to take the contract. The guy had killed his brother in law and been exiled. He was no innocent. So she'd added his name and information to her little black book of marks.
But in the month since, while she tracked down and eliminated the killer of Mr. Marsden's daughter, she had been quietly gathering information on the mutant X-Man known as Gambit. And everything she saw on the news and heard from the papers pointed to a different man than the one she had been commanded to take down. Last week she had seen on TV a rabble of the mutant-hating group called the Friends of Humanity carry out an anti-mutant rally in front of the United Nations building during a summit. The rally had gotten ugly when a group of mutant sympathizers had chosen to conduct their own rally across the street and the FOH had taken exception to it. Many innocent bystanders had gotten caught in the crossfire when the X-Men arrived at the scene. The figure in the brown duster had scooped a child in a carriage out of the way of the FOH members' gunshots, and then a moment later had taken the child's mother from harm's way. He then escorted both out of the fray, taking them to a stoplight half a block away before he left them to join the rest of his teammates.
It didn't fit with the picture she had been given about him. And now, having met him personally, she knew something wasn't right. Oh, she hadn't known who he was when she saw him in her apartment; but when he'd said he was a member of the X-Men, she'd thought he was a good way to get close to her mark. Then he had told her what his name was, and the gears had come to a crashing halt.
She walked into the little bookshop, to be greeted by a tall man with silver hair, wearing glasses. "Hello," she said, noting there were other customers in the store. "I'm trying to find a rare book, and I was told you might have it in your back room." It was the phrase they used to indicate they needed to talk to the Master.
He took off his glasses. "Come this way, miss," he said, leading her into the back. A tall red-haired man with a slight stoop went out to the front of the shop, to mind it while the Master spoke with his assassin.
"Bloodcat, what can I do for you?" he said, the kindly demeanor disappearing, his face going cold and hard. Seeing the change made shivers trickle down her spine; he was so good at dissembling, and it chilled her to know that he could kill anyone, anytime, anywhere. Only his eyes betrayed his inner nature; they were cold, flat pools of a brown so deep they were almost black.
"I completed the last assignment, Master," she said. "And the client will pay your fee of ten thousand. I decided to allow him to keep my share of the contract fee; he does, after all, now have two grandchildren to raise in his daughter's absence."
He looked disapproving. "Bloodcat, you disappoint me. I did not expect you to do this, not after the last conversation we had. I believed I made it clear that you were not to reduce the agreed-upon fee, and that you were to take your full share. I received a grateful letter from the Kline family saying that you returned the share you were to have taken after I commanded you not to. Do you require correction?"
"No," Catryne lowered her head to hide the look of fear in her eyes. 'Correction' for something the Master's well-trained assassins did came in the form of corporal punishment. She had only experienced it once herself, and it had left her with nightmares and not a few scars.
She had been still new to the business, and nervous, because this mark was a mafia don. She had been on the roof outside an old, crumbling theatre, waiting for him, and when he came out she had shot. It hadn't killed him cleanly; she had put the expanding bullet into his lungs, and in the three days it took him to die, he had meanwhile changed his will, and not handed the 'family business' over to the son who had hired the Assassins, but to the other child. The man had been upset with the extra time it took his old man to die, and dropped the fee, paying only half of what he had promised. The Master had punished her for it, restraining her and then whipping her thirty times, ten lashes for each day. "No, Master, I do not."
"Good. Then you will call the client back this evening and inform him that the full payment is to be made. Now, is that all?"
She took a deep breath. He was definitely not going to be happy with this. "I cannot take the next contract, Master," she said quietly, her eyes still glued to the floor.
"Really." He stared at her, narrow-eyed. "And why not, Bloodcat?"
"I…I met the mark, Master," she whispered, her throat closed in fear but still determined to do what she thought was right. "He does not deserve to die."
He grabbed her chin in a hard, bruising grip and forced her to look up. "And when did I begin asking you what you think the mark does or does not deserve?" he snarled. "All I ask is that you follow my instructions and do as I say. You do not think. Do you understand?"
She felt her eyes fill with tears and hated herself for them. "Yes, Master. But Master, I must still request that you assign the mark to someone else…"
He grabbed her arm in a firm grip and she nearly cried out. "Downstairs," he said coldly. Biting her lip, she went to the door that opened onto a flight of stairs that led down to the basement of the building. The Master lived here, in a spacious, opulent apartment in the rear; but their destination was, she knew, the large meeting room, dubbed the Assignment Room by the assassins belonging to the Master.
He indicated a raised platform against the wall in a corner of the room. She crossed to it, trembling, knowing what was coming. He was going to 'correct' her. She turned to him, terror in her eyes. "Please, Master," she whispered, "I can't bear this. Please, It's not necessary…"
He pointed to the platform inexorably. "Any further delay, and you will incur more punishment," he warned.
She stepped up to the platform and opened the buttons on her blouse with trembling fingers. The cool air of the underground chamber kissed her bare chest for just a moment above her plain white bra, then she slid her shirt off her shoulders, unclasped the front of her bra, and turned around to face the wall after he cuffed her hands in front of her.
She gritted her teeth as she heard him go to the heavy carved armoire across the room and take out his whip. She clenched her fists and lowered her head, gathering her heavy chestnut hair and pulling it over her shoulders as he raised it. As the first lash left a burning trail across her shoulders, she bit back a scream. Her wrists bit into the cuffs as she fought for control.
The Master surveyed the trembling woman before him. The muscles in her back rippled as she clenched her fists, trying not to make a sound. Such spirit, he thought, and struck again. Again she just barely kept a scream from escaping her lips. Irritated, he lashed her again, harder this time, and heard her scream in anguish. Satisfied, he made the last two stripes light. He stepped forward, running his hand over the raised welts. He had deliberately not struck her with full force, not wanting to break skin. These would be almost faded by the next morning, though she would feel the pain for a couple of days.
When he pulled away from her again she blurted out, "Please, Master, please don't! Not again, I can't take it anymore. I'll hit the mark. I promise, just…please don't hurt me again!" Her body was bathed in a cold sweat that glistened on her welted shoulders.
"Turn, and kneel," he said, signaling that her punishment was over. She fell to her knees, gasping for air and sobbing. She knelt at his feet, and raised her cuffed hands to him. He took his time unlocking them as he admired her heaving breasts for a moment. "Have we learned our lesson?" he said in a deceptively mild voice.
"Yes, Master," she whimpered, her forehead brushing the floor at his feet.
"Now, my dear Bloodcat, what brought this on?" he said, walking away from her kneeling figure and sitting down at the table. Catryne knew better than to rise or put on her clothing. He was still upset with her. And she wasn't sure she could move, anyway; her whole body was shaking with pain. She settled for rubbing her raw wrists.
"I met the mark yesterday," she said quietly. "He observed me doing the Marsdens' daughter's score. Then he followed me home. I took several detours, made him chase me around the city, but he took a shortcut and caught me. He did not try to fight; I believe he was just curious. Then, when I believed I had finally shaken him, I went home. But he must have followed me home; he appeared in my kitchen from the fire escape. I surprised him, I think; when he turned around I accidentally cut him with my sword. I didn't know then that he was my mark; he may have mentioned his name to me during our conversation but I didn't catch it. Anyway, he had been drinking, and he passed out while I was bandaging his arm. I put him to bed in my bedroom and went to sleep on my couch. When I woke he had coffee and breakfast waiting for me. We ate, and then he asked me out tonight…just before he told me his name."
The Master sat quietly for a moment, thinking. "Does he know your name?" he said.
"I told him to call me Bloodcat," she said. "He shortened it to Cat."
He stood. "You will accept his offer of a date should he make one again. He does not strike me as the type to give up; you will probably see him again either tonight or tomorrow. You will go out with him. You will get close to him, and when the time is right, you will kill him according to the contract. I want no more of this nonsense. As he has already gravitated to you, you are the one who must finish it. The leader of the Assassins' Guild in New Orleans is a very powerful lady, and she is paying us twice the premium fee. That means, my dear, forty thousand for me, and sixty thousand for you. If you find yourself overwhelmed with pity for this man, remember something; you will lose sixty thousand dollars for a sentimental reason. And you will suffer such pain as you have never felt before from me, if I lose forty thousand dollars."
"Yes, Master," she whispered. He took a look into the monitors keeping an eye on the shop, and observed, "There are no customers presently in the shop. Go now, for in your current condition you would attract unwanted attention from customers if you tried to exit while they were in. Come back when you have eliminated the mark."
She found herself standing out on the sidewalk in front of the bookshop a short time later, putting her helmet on over her head. She made it home by driving slowly, avoiding the worst of the traffic, and when she did get home she collapsed on her couch, exhausted and trembling. She lay there for a long time, then got up, unbuttoned her blouse with shaking fingers and examined the five livid red welts on her back and the abraded skin on her wrists. They hurt like hell. She put anesthetic on her wrists and tried to rub some on the lashes, but it was awkward, and she soon gave up. She left the bathroom and lay down on the still-rumpled sheets, smelling him on her pillow. Tears fell from her eyes, and she hugged the pillow to her as she cried herself to sleep.