I, ASSASSIN

Chapter Sixteen

Remy LeBeau had never been the kind of person to suffer from nightmares. From a very early age, he'd rarely dreamed much. He either slept too solidly to remember, or too little and infrequently to properly dream at all.

Nightmares were for nervous wrecks, for the kind of people who jumped when someone said boo, for the ones who jumped at the movement of their own shadow out of the corner of their eyes.

It was safe to say, he was almost certain he'd never had a true honest to god terrifying chilling nightmare. At least he'd always been able to say that...until that night.

The image of that corpse suspended by thick blood-stained ropes to those two thick trees in the middle of the woods was fresh with him, sometimes, it stared at him with helpless eyes and sometimes it tried to scream. The man whose body had become a warning to all Assassins who would briefly consider crossing their own, he struggled and kicked, howling as hungry black wolves devoured the rotting flesh from his bones, as crows pecked at his already bleeding eyes.

Remy saw the guts spill from the corpse as the wolves tore at what was left of the stomach, and they tore the intestines, string of human sausage from him while he still screamed, the pack snapping at each other, huge teeth bared, growling as the others came to try and muscle in on the meal. On closer inspection, he realised to his terror that one was a German Shepherd...its head a mess of gore. It was the one Bella Donna had shot.

And Remy felt powerless, standing there unable to look away, feet rooted to the ground with thick twisting vines, the taste of vomit bitter and and almost gas-like in his mouth. He somehow found the power to turn, and saw not The Grand Master there, but the devil, draped in stringy tattered clothes, long twisting horns, face tan and fleshy, swollen like a bloated cadaver, eyes black like two pieces of obsidian.

"Now you know the price," said the devil, voice slow like a cassette tape that had been worn from years of being played persistently.

Remy knew the price all right, right then, as he looked at the devil that should have been the old man, Bella Donna's grandpere, he realised immediately the price...was his soul.

With a start, he sat up, he couldn't breathe and there was a tremendous boom and flash, lighting up the room, nearly blinding him and a pale face was staring down at him, he caught a brief glimpse of the face and for one moment, he saw the devil again and instinctively he threw his hands up, catching what he thought were the two hands that were going to drag him to a dark place to join the corpse in the woods.

"Remy! It's okay! It's okay! Stop!"

He struggled violently for a moment, yelling, startled and afraid until the figure spoke again, this time softer.

"Remy, please...stop...you have to calm down, please..."

He slowed his struggle, gazing at the petite silhouette in front of him, the pale light coming in from the hallway through the open door showed just the vaguest halo of gold from her head. Anxiously he let go of the arms of that person and immediately slammed his fist against the light switch, dim light filling the room, swathing it in dull beige and brown, seeming to suck all colour out of it, leaving it like a sepia print.

Bella Donna was kneeling upon the bed, her eyes wide, her face seemed much paler than it should have in this poor lighting.

"Jesus christ..." he muttered, he put his hand to his hair, it was soaked in sweat, literally dripping with it, and as he looked to his shaking hand he saw the sweat glistening upon his bare palm.

"What the fuck is goin' on?!" came a booming voice from the door and they both turned to see Marius standing at the open doorway, a rather intimidating looking rapier (Remy recognised it as one of the decorative ones that was usually braced to the wall in the hallway near his room) clenched in his fist, knuckles white. The man's eyes blazed angrily to see the two upon the bed together.

"Didn't you hear his screamin'?" Bella Donna demanded of her father, her tone immediately accusatory, her eyes seemed dark and dangerous as she gazed at the man.

Remy tried to control his trembling, he didn't need to let his mentor see this, he already was under enough scrutiny, and fear and panic were not what the man expected of him.

"I told you to keep away from him. You determined not to listen?!"

"I couldn't just let him scream like that!" Bella Donna admonished, her hand pressed against Remy's bare chest which Remy was sure only would infuriate Marius further. "His heart is beatin' like a goddamn train..." she said suddenly, turning to look at him.

"I'm fine..." Remy managed weakly, brushed her hand away, aware of the eyes of his mentor on him. He sat forward, trying to breathe normally, rubbing his head.

Bella Donna squinted suspiciously at her father, "what did you do to him?!"

"Belle," said Marius, his tone warning, "bed. Now."

"Can't you just give me a minute to try and calm him down?" asked Bella Donna, she touched Remy's shoulder tenderly, "He's shakin' like a leaf, he's cold like ice-"

"Now," warned Marius, he came further into the room, using the sword to point towards the door.

"But-"

"Now," said Marius again, this time the tone was far more commanding. Remy had the distinct feeling the girl wasn't going to test her father's patience yet again.

"Just breathe, okay?" Bella Donna said quietly to Remy, so softly under her breath even he barely heard it. She climbed off of the bed and headed towards the door, but Remy didn't miss the disgusted look the girl had with her father right at that moment.

Marius used the end of the rapier to push the door shut after Bella Donna had left the room, his expression dark as he stared down at Remy. Remy couldn't stand to look back, he dropped his eyes to the blankets tangled around his legs, he realised he must have been kicking as well as screaming.

"So," Marius began, he put the sword down on the end of the bed. "You were introduced to the price."

Remy tried to speak, he briefly raised his eyes to the man, desperate to try and explain, hoping for understanding, that Marius would sympathise just this once why he was so shaken. "He-"

"I don't want to hear about it," Marius interrupted, his voice cold. "You have to get a grip, boy."

Remy guilty dropped his eyes back to the blankets, focused on the dense quality of the weave.

"You think I've made this hard on you?" he demanded, "it is nothin' to what lies ahead. And it is nothin' compared to what he will do if you don't toughen up and deal with this now," Marius warned.

Unable to look at him directly, Remy instead watched Marius's reflection in the mirror above the dresser; it was slightly distorted and imperfect, almost blurry and convex.

"This hard on you? You get this is the life you didn't want?"

Remy said nothing, what could he say? It hadn't been as if there'd been a choice in this. Admitting it would only make things much worse.

"You don't get to bow out, Remy. This is it, once he takes an interest in an initiate...once he starts conditionin' them, there's only one way out...and you saw that. Once an Assassin knows all our secrets and they try to run...that's the price...do you understand what I'm sayin'?"

"Yes," Remy replied, his voice small.

Marius turned for the door, but Remy somehow couldn't let him leave right then without bringing everything he'd been holding back since he'd returned from that trip.

"You said you killed with honour...you said you killed cleanly!" Remy managed, his voice thick. "That wasn't honourable...That was...that was...that was torment...you left that guy in the fucking woods...he was alive, wasn't he? What about the tenets you told me about...how leavin' sufferin' in your wake was a goddamn sin?!"

"That weren't no average mark you saw out there, Remy. That were the last Assassin who got a penchant for sufferin', he got sloppy with drug addiction and killed for pleasure outside of contract, outside of our law."

Remy swept his hand through his sweat soaked hair, "are you hearin' yourself? No one deserves that! No one deserves to be left to die like that!"

"Who are you to dictate what's deserved?" snorted Marius.

"Who are you?" Remy demanded, "who says you have the right to dictate how people die! Who says people have the right to dictate to you who should?"

"The wages of sin is death, Remy, and he sinned."

"Don't you sin too?!" Remy dared to ask incredulously, "every time you raise a knife to some poor bastard's throat or...or make a death look like an accident?! Ain't that a sin?!"

"There's sin, and then there's sin, Remy," Marius remarked, "You know what he did? You know how he killed the ones he killed for pleasure?"

"No," Remy responded, trying to sound cold and angry, instead, afraid he may sound fearful and shaken. The less he knew about what that nameless man that corpse had belonged to, the better. Knowledge was power, but in this guild, it was also enough to get you killed it seemed.

"We're not just talkin' throat slittin', and stranglin' here, LeBeau," he stepped closer to the bed, "we are talkin' calculated premeditated cold-blooded murder..." he stepped forward a little more, his eyes seemed to blaze with fury, "we are talking stalking...and menacin', and rape, we are talkin' mutilation, we are talkin' cuttin' off pieces of skin and keepin' it as a fuckin' souvenir! Those girls were innocent," he hissed. "You know nothin' of what's deserved. Don't you think they deserved justice, and he deserved punishment?"

Remy swallowed hard, "Maybe he did deserve punishment...but not like that...not an eye for an eye..."

"So what then? Turn him in? Let him share our secrets in exchange for leniency and special treatment in jail?" Marius scoffed, "You may think what we did was cruel, but we did what we had to in order to protect the guild."

"And what about the families of those girls, those people who will never get closure?!" Remy demanded, "what about them?! What if it had been Belle...what if you never found the guy, would you be able to live with that?"

"The police will be tipped off as soon as we've finished wipin' his trail to us," Marius commented, "they'll get their closure soon as we've finished getting ours."

Remy shuddered, the thought of that corpse was still fresh in his mind, and the smell wouldn't leave him. He'd showered since coming home, but he could still smell it, it seemed to have gotten into his very pores even if he hadn't been remotely close to it. He'd gone back into that shower three times, convinced that once the water had been turned off he could still smell it.

He'd already resolved to burn the clothes he'd been wearing; the smell seemed to linger there on them, and even if the smell wasn't on those clothes, he couldn't stomach the thought of wearing them ever again. Anything associated with that day...anything...it had to go.

Even the phone that had been in his pocket the entire time seemed tainted with the horrific event. He was already considering trading it in for anything else that didn't remind him of that moment when he'd saw that body there.

"Now," Marius looked at him, eyes now dull and tired, "I'd suggest you get sleep, 'cause your training will resume tomorrow. Ten am tomorrow, I want you ready."

With a sigh of defeat, Remy nodded slightly.

"And one more thing," Marius stopped for a moment, "The next time my daughter is caught in your room..." said Marius, heading for the door, "you'll be the one to pay the price. Understood?"

Remy gave a slow careful nod, keeping his eyes on Marius's eyes the entire time, "understood."

End of Chapter Sixteen