"The Birth of an Assassin" by Kristen A. Pilcher

White Crow: Ageless Assassin   Story #2  

“The Birth of an Assassin”

“Run, ****, run!” the voice screamed in her dream.  It was her father’s voice, racked with pain and dripping with insanity.  She could see the flames eating her house, eating him, eating her mother who lay broken and bleeding on the bed.  She heard other voices.  Men laughing, enjoying the pain they brought to others.  Laughing as her parents struggled to fight, to live.  And all the while she watched, helpless.  Innocent eyes, defiled, forever haunted by the images before her.  “Run, ****, run!”

            She screamed.  Her voice rang throughout the forest, waking animals and sending birds into the sky with fright.  She sat up from the forest floor and looked around.  All was peaceful, quiet, like the forest always was just before daybreak.  Her wide blue eyes took in every detail, from the different marks on the trees, to the way the pine needles lay beneath her.  She stared at the needles between her bare feet, trying to force her mind to be still.  But the images still remained.  They would never go away.

            A chocked sob escaped her lips as she let her head rest on her knees.  Tears streamed down her dirty cheeks unawares.  She wound her hands into her thick, tangled, white hair.  Suddenly, a heavy something landed on her shoulder.

            “The dream again?” asked a soft male voice in her mind.

            She looked up and into the large black eyes of a white crow, “Yes, the dream.”  They sat in silence, neither moving, for a long time.  Then she looked up into the sky where the sun was making its first appearance for the day.  “How long has it been?”

            “Does it matter?”

            “No, I guess not.”

            “Would it make you feel better if you knew?”

            “No.  I can never feel better.  Everything is all wrong and can never be right again.”

            “You’re wrong.”

            “What do you mean?” she looked the crow in the eye.

            “It can be made right.”

            “How?” she asked, sitting up straight.

            “You could get revenge.”

            “What is… revenge?”

            “Revenge is something you do to people, people who’ve hurt you.”

            “How do you do revenge?” her voice was hesitant.

            “You hurt them the way they hurt you.”

            “You can do that to someone?”

            “You can do it to the men who killed your parents.”

            She looked at the crow sharply, her eyes filling with pain and hatred, “How?”

            “You kill them.”

            “I can’t kill them!” she stood in an outrage, almost upsetting the crow off her shoulder.  “They’re too big and strong.”

            “That doesn’t matter.  You are bigger and stronger than you were before.  You can kill them.  In the same way you kill rabbits.”

            As this thought settled in her mind, her eyes began to glow with an unholy light.  The crow, sensing his danger, took flight and landed in a near by tree to watch.

            Her head lolled from side to side then snapped back on her neck.  Her back arched, arms spread, bare chest thrust out as a scream more terrifying than the first burst from her lips.  She leaped into the air and landed in a tree.  Like an ape, she swung from branch to branch, tree to tree, heading toward the white pulsating light that hovered in the middle of the forest.

            She paused before the light, feeling its heat.  It’s pulse quickened and the light slowly turned from white to dark, blood red.  She was so fascinated with the light that she did not notice as blood dripped from between her legs.

            With a wicked sneer and a laugh she jumped into the light.

She opened her eyes and looked straight into the noonday sun.  She closed them again and rolled onto her side as stabbing pains tore through her abdomen.  She whimpered and then vomited onto the forest floor.  She looked up into the trees until her eyes met with those of the crow.

            “What…?  What’s happening to me?”

            “You’re a woman now.  No longer a little girl.  This is your womanhood.  This will repeat itself every full moon for the rest of your long life.”

            She sat up and looked down at herself, at her blood caked legs, “Why am I bleeding?  Did I hurt myself?”

            “No.  You have to bleed.  It is the blood that allows you to have babies.  It is the blood that will give you the strength, and the power, you will need in the years ahead.  For you are more than a woman now.  You are an assassin.”

            “What’s an assassin?”

            “A person who does revenge, someone who deals out justice.  A chosen one who is neither Good nor Evil, but is both.  An assassin is free.  An assassin is alone.  An assassin’s only friend, family, and lover is Death.”

            Her eyes still glowed an unholy blue but they were slowly cooling.  So much so, that her eyes became like ice.  Piecing as a blade, dead as a glacier, but filled with knowledge and uncanny intelligence.  An impenetrable barrier went up in those eyes, and behind that wall of ice and steel hid the frightened little girl who had watched her parents murdered by Evil men.  There, that little girl wept as the woman never would, or could, again.