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Chapter 9: Throwing Knives

Anastasia
oOo

Location: Four Horsemen's Mansion, Crows Landing, Florida, USA
City Population: 248
Current time: 7:02 pm, Eastern
Current date: July 10, 2013
Current alias: None

Now was not a time that I wanted to have any sort of meaningful, emotional, heart-to-heart talk. In fact, when did I ever want to have that kind of talk? With anybody?!

My bag was becoming impossibly messy, though it might have crossed that line a while ago, I just wouldn't have noticed, filled with all the random crap and clothes that had piled up. Some stuff was flying at the wall (that was to keep) some stuff found its way almost all the way into the laundry basket across the room (needed washing) and most all of it was being chucked at the closed door (that would be trash). In a rare moment of quiet around the house with the Horsemen, supervised begrudgingly by Black, scampering around out of town for two or three days, I had gone on a cleaning spree.

How domestic of me.

Guns? Check. Ammo? Check. Whole lot of black and various other dark color clothing? Check. Badass set of throwing knives? Check-got three of those.

I love my throwing knives.

I doubt Dylan was falling for my little 'I-don't-see-you' game, his sleep-deprived self leaning against the doorframe, arms folded, watching every little motion I carried out. I turned to the wooden panel I had against the wall opposite my bed. I fanned the knives out in my hand and began flicking them into the wood.

"What do you want, Dylan?"

Whoosh-THUD.

"Nothing. Just wanted to see how you were doing."

Whoosh-THUD.

"I'm fine, Big Brother. You sure you weren't just missing me?"

Whoosh-THUD.

"What's up with you and Jack?"

Cue shocked face and slice in finger from misdirected knife. I dropped the rest of the insanely shop objects, sending them clattering to the floor and my bare feet dancing to avoid their edges. Dylan looked on in amusement as I held my bleeding hand.

"Damnit, Dylan! Why'd you have to do that?"

I hissed in pain as he stepped forwards and took my hand in his own. "I didn't. I asked a question and you sliced yourself with a knife. If it was that easy to get you to pay attention to me, then I would have started doing that a long time ago!"

"Son of a bitch, you've only known me for a month," I breathed. He produced a cloth in his fist and began to gently dab away at the blood. The gash was pretty deep, but nothing I couldn't handle. I bit my lip to keep from kicking him. I wasn't used to people taking care of me. I guess it was obvious.

"Not used to it, hmm?" I didn't say anything or look at him, just continued watching him wrap the cloth around my open palm. "So, what is going on with you and Jack? He obviously likes you, and not just in that 'I look up to her because she's a badass assassin' sort of way. Tell me you haven't noticed, Anastasia."

Oh, I've noticed all right. "I haven't noticed."

He snorted and yanked on the bandage. I didn't flinch away but finally snapped my head up to look him in the eye. He was smirking down at me, which annoyed me a hell of a lot more than it should have.

"Yeah, you haven't noticed. Uh-huh." He tied the two corners together and tugged on them a little. "You like him, and you know it, Anastasia. It may not be clear to anybody else, but I can tell."

"Apparently so can Black, but both of you are wrong. I don't like him—he's just some kid I have to protect on a mission, and that's all he'll ever be. Even if I did like him, I couldn't. I'm an assassin, Dylan. A monster with no heart that's been hearing kill, kill, kill enough in my life that's I have to stop myself from saying it every time I open my mouth."

I snatched my hand away and turned away from him to look out the window, but my view was soon blocked by his stubbly face at exactly eye-level with mine. He was kneeling in front of me on the bed, hands on my shoulders. I sighed and rolled my eyes up to the ceiling.

"Both you and I know that you're lying to yourself." I made no move to look at him, but also no move to get away. "Look into my eyes and tell me you don't feel something. Tell me, right now."

He put his calloused thumb on my chin and pulled my head down so that I was staring into his chocolate eyes. Not like Jack's. Darker. I don't know how he did it, but maybe it was that 'I'm your big brother—you can't hide anything from me' sort of thing going on, but he seemed to know exactly how to manipulate me into telling him anything.

And I wanted to pick him up and kick his ass all the way into next week because of it.

"Ugh, fine! Maybe I do think he's attractive! Maybe I've noticed that he likes me, and maybe I've noticed that I maybe sort of like him, too! I don't know, Dylan, what do you want me to say? I. Can't. Like. Him! When this mission is over and The Caste is gone, I'm just going to have to run again. There are still plenty of people out there hwo want me dead and know how to carry out a plan."

"You could settle down…" he started.

"And have a 'normal life'?" He nodded. I pushed his hands away. "I don't know what a 'normal life' is. I live in crappy motels and steal food from Holiday Inn's."

"Don't let Alma hear you say that."

"Shouldn't I be more worried about you?"

"You don't exist." I stopped, backing up and way from him. He flounced onto the comforter strewn across the mattress. "I looked you up, every name I could find on you. Shrike, Ray, Rhodes… there's no record of you anywhere, and when I got far enough into the database, those 'Unauthorized Information' alerts popped up on the computer."

"Probably because it's unauthorized information that you were trying to find."

"Nobody in The Caste exists. The Caste doesn't exist."

"You think Black and I are lying?" I asked, confused and skeptical and more of those warning bells were starting to block my vision.

"No! No, no. I just think that this is going to be harder to catch 'him' or whoever he is if we don't have any proof that he's even alive."

"You've got me and Black."

"No offense, but that doesn't really count for anything," he laughed. "But we'll get 'em. I had a contact of mine run your Band Code."

I reeled back and slapped a hand over my mouth, refraining from screaming. "You had some unknown person run a code that could have gotten me killed it if it popped up on the database?"

"Are you dead yet?" I didn't respond. "It worked, surprisingly. We got a hit-it took us to some pretty impactful places."

"Can you trust the guy?"

"Can you trust me?"

"I can't trust anybody." He didn't really have anything else to say to that, and there was silence for a few moments before I went right back to the topic at hand. "What did you find?"

"Proof that you people exist and some proof of what the others like you have done."

My eyes teared up, but I couldn't go off at him. I closed my eyes gently and willed htem away. Thankfully, it worked. he had no idea what he had done. Running a Band Code would pop up on screens everywhere. It either meant that a member was dead and that somebody had found them or that the senario had flipped nad the person was alive. I was, obviosuly, still very much alive, as they were sure to find out soon.

I'd have to tell Black. I'd have to get them all out of here. We'd have to get the mission aborted, destroy any evidence of anybody being in this house. Destroy teh feed from my cameras, the cameras themselves… everything. And it would have ot be soon. It would have just been today that Dylan would have had time to run the scan, meaning they could find me and kill everyone, possibly even find The Eye, and destroy them all before they week was through.

He had no idea what he had done.

But maybe they could just take me.

"Are you really leaving?" He asked quietly. "After the mission. Are you disappearing again."

It may have ot be sooner than you think, brother'mine. "Would I lie to you?"

"I don't know. Would you?"

My eyes popped open once again, blinking at the dryness in the air. "I may kill and steal and fight for my life, but if it's something big, something that affects the lives of other people, I don't lie about it. I'm thinking either India or Bengali."

He looked shocked, but he didn't miss a beat, though his voice was a bit quieter. "Maybe being attached to someone will help you decide what to do with your life."

"Oh, we're back to this again," I said sarcastically (I would never admit that it pained me to talk to him like that).

"Yes." He bounced off the bed and onto the floor, crossing the distance I had managed to put between us without even realizing it in less than four steps. "We're back to this again. I found you after all these years, and now you're going to leave? I can't just let you go again, not after that. You're my sister, and it's my job to look after you."

I scoffed. "Oh, because you did a great job of that when I was alone in an assassin's training program for sixteen years. What makes you think you can do it now?"

"I don't know!" he shouted. "I don't know. What makes you think you'd be better off alone?"

"I'm protected. People I don't know are protected, better off if they don't know me.."

"No, friends protect people. Friends and family and even the strangers out there in the town. People that know you for what you are, and people who judge you by your actions, not by outward appearances."

I didn't know what to say, but I had to think of something, fast. I wasn't one to be caught speechless, and certainly not in a talk like this. "Well, I'll keep looking for people like that. Better yet, if you find some, introduce them to me. Who knows? Maybe I'll like them."

I was out of my room in less than two seconds. Dylan didn't follow, but I secretly wished he had. That dark cliff that I'd fallen over a long time ago, the one I talked about before? The likelihood of me getting back up to that ever-dimming spot of blue above me, solid ground, was disappearing into air. Into thin air.