[Awakening] - The Things We Do for Love

[lslaw.livejournal.com]

It's a bad situation.

I came here to kill my daughter's boyfriend, which is a bad start, but it's gone wrong from there. She panicked and now he knows; there's a pistol pressed into her side and she's between me and him. At that range the protective spells that I wove around her might keep her alive, but not much more.

I hold up my pistol in an awkward hand, fill my mind with fear and I begin to beg.

"Please don't kill me! They made me do it! I don't care about you, or the girl; just don't kill me!"

He recognises me and that's good; it confuses him, puts him off balance. It's hardly what he expected; major television personality hiding in his cupboard with a pistol and bleeding edge body armour. I call on all my stagecraft and I act for my daughter's life; I know that I have to sell this in one go.

My eyes flicker past this shoulder; just enough to be noticed, not so much as to be too blatant. For a moment I'm sure that I've overdone it, but then he turns to look, his pistol shifting, down and to the side.

I banish the fear and step in, around Tasha, following the perfect path. At the last moment he half-turns back to me and his body moves to meet the blow. My knife comes up under his arm and bites deep; the blood on my hand is arterial-dark. The pistol goes off, but although the bullet tears flesh and cracks bone and the muzzle flare scorches her skin, the hit grazes her vitals instead of turning them to pulp.

I strike again, tracing the lines of fate so that the knife slides through the cracks in his body armour. The blow is less deep than the first, but I nick his lung; his breath is suddenly short and there is fear in his eyes.

He turns to run and I knock him down, dragging his head back. Unbidden, the old words come into my mind and I bend to whisper them in his ear. I feel his body tense in terror as old stories race back to haunt him.

His fear feels good to me; too good. To revel in it would be wrong and so I reach down and draw the knife across his throat, slicing through arteries, veins and windpipe and cutting into his spinal column, almost completely severing his head.

I clean the knife and go back to Tasha. Shock is setting in and I have to guide her, pressing her hand to her side and showing her how to turn her magic to her own healing. There are footsteps on the stairs, but even if I didn't recognise them, I would know Tinker by the withering scorn she pours out at us.

I glance back anyway. I can bury my concern, but it's still there, and it is a relief to know that she is unhurt. From the sounds downstairs I know that Tax is at least active and my worst fears are allayed. We are all alive and they are all dead.

I look at his body, Daniel's, and I feel a sudden sense of guilt.

I promised Tinker she could watch me kill him.