Mercy, Please
an excerpt

I sat at the far end of the bar waiting. I could just barely see the front door. A crowd of happy hour participants blocked my view. Like an impatient child I squirmed slightly in the uncomfortable chairs.
I thought. I slid out the left side of the chair. I wasn’t just the crowd that was making me uneasy. The blood red chair cushion was flat. At least it was well loved – though I doubted any other chair would be better. Finally I settled on the very last chair on my side of the bar. With the curve of the bar it sat nearly behind the counter. It was perfect – not even happy hour could block my view of the door.
I saw myself moving out of the mirrors that lined the walls behind the glasses racks. Who needed a mirror to watch their back when it was up against the wall? But I knew the possible real reason why the mirrors were there. In the dark, dirty, light of the bar the mirrors reflected beautiful clean white light – from strategically placed lamps – on to the glasses that hung over the bar. In the light the haphazardly washed, brown stained glasses looked newly bought, clear as the crystal they once were. The few scattered lights were a stark contrast to the lights at the bar; the lights had a permanent layer of dust on them casting the typical brown light I had seen in most bars. Bright lights and drinking do not mix well.
I moved rather slowly. No need to attract the attention of happy hour, or some already drunk man who’s tongue and inhabitations the alcohol had loosened. I traced the carvings on the dark cherry bar. Tiny martini glasses danced back and forth. I grinned in spite of myself. No one would ever appreciate the carvings or if they did, their hangover the next morning would be so severe they wouldn’t remember the previous night. The chairs, I realized had the same carvings, though the wood they were made from was more red than the bars. The top of the bar was slick and polished to a high shine, it had no water rings, and there were no missing sections of the bar.
I sighed finally being able to see the door. The bartender set a paper lace dolly and my bloody Mary in front of my former seat. He left it there to busy to care. I reached across sliding it easily towards me. I sipped cautiously on the drink, my mouth puckering till the bite of the vodka left. Too much vodka could ruin a bloody Mary, but that did not mean I would not drink it.
The door opened. The whole room turned to the person in the doorway. I personally didn’t move. I stayed hunched over my drink, only my eyes looked up and through my hair. But not moving didn’t stop my heart from leaping into my throat and beat frantically. The nonchalance, seen in the movies, exhibited by the Hollywood assassins is completely false. Standing in one place, casually taking the last drag on a cigarette before flicking it away, one last glance to make sure their target has not moved and finally firing a single shot before sauntering off into the sunset is not how it works in real life. Usually it is a mad scramble ant the first person to draw their gun and fire an entire clip in to their opponent wins – usually. There is nothing like the prospect of being shot at to raise your adrenaline levels, but adrenaline can make you stupid and clumsy. One might end up with their finger pointed at their opponent instead of their gun and then it is game over, for-ev-er.
He’d tried to enter silently, but the door had one of those darn bells that make more noise that the traffic outside. The semi-peace of the bar returned. The happy hour group to their drinks some invited the stranger to join them. He glared at the group, and moved to the opposite end of the bar form me. He ordered a glass of red wine, draining his glass the second after it was set in front of him. I glanced up to find him staring at me. His eyes were sunk in and his skin an ashy color. My heart settled, he was not my target. He felt different from the humans in the room.
my mind screamed. I couldn’t compete with a vampire in its element when it came to speed, strength or just about anything that has to do with physical abilities. I looked at him. No he was not a vampire, he was trying hard to fool the bar, to hard. He was a good illusionist maybe, but vampire he was not. I realized why he felt different; I had the same effect on large crowds of people as well. I swallowed a small mouth full of tomato juice, Tabasco sauce, and vodka. I was a solitary, conservative, drinker, most assassins were. The man across the world was my competition. I shifted and drew my Beretta from its holster on my hip. The black lace dress shirt I was wearing was loose enough to cover the holster and not look too weird. Safety off, so if it came to a shoot out I’d have an advantage.
He turned to scan the room. I watched him, laughing privately, because I had done the same thing earlier. He would see: gum dotted tables, ripped plastic seat covers, over crowded booths, chipped plates and stacked used glasses, but he would see people enjoying themselves and the people they were with. I rarely drank publicly because it reminded me I hung out with the wrong crowd.
The bell went off again as the door opened. The happy hour crowd had moved to a booth still ordering the one-dollar long necks. I looked up and smiled brightly at the man in the doorway. Green dollar signs reflected in his black sunglasses. Only vampires wore sunglasses at night and in-doors. The man at the other end of the bar twitched. My target smiled back at me, he had a classic prince charming smile, and so white those teeth sparkled. He was tall, dark and handsome, the only problem was he was also fanged. He was a New Blood vampire – he smelt like grass. For me vampires have two smells, the New Bloods – a league of vampires that had been dead for two centuries or less, the were ruled by a bloody dictator, and a “royal” family, the supposed founders of the new bloods – smell like wet graveyard grass, a vague hint of something long dead and decayed, then there are the Old Bloods – my mother was an Old Blood, the last of the resistance against the New Blood faction, she always smelt like roses and soap – all Old Bloods smell like roses and soap no matter who they are. I like the Old Bloods, they and I got along just fine, I had even do some work for the oldest of the Old Bloods, but new bloods were the reason I was in the family assassin business – I wanted revenge.
The vampire moved – human bones didn’t move like that, like the bones didn’t exist. He was assuming I could not see him move, but I could – being a half vampire had its advantages – I would not show my ace just yet, so I kept my eyes and smile trained on the door until his coat brushed my shoulder. I turned coyly blinking as id I should have seen him move. My competition glanced rapidly back and forth from the door to the vampire next to me. Maybe he had never dealt with vampires, but it made me wonder if he even had silver bullets.
Silver bullets, the bane of then undead, not really, but silver bullets, like silver crosses had a tendency to burst into flames if they were blessed, and even if they weren’t blessed they caused an allergic reaction for the vampire. However if you wanted to kill a vampire for good, you needed a stake, sunlight, or a fire hot enough to incapacitate the vampire while it burned alive, or dead depending on your source. You could probably get away with dumping a bucket of holy water on a vampire and it would work, but you would probably die in the process as well.
He sat down scooting his chair closer to me like I had invited him, and ordered a shot of whiskey. He raised his glass to me and I returned the salute.
“All in black? Beautiful little angles like you should never have anything to morn,” he pushed his glasses through his dark chocolate brown hair, finally folding them and tucking them away into a pocket. I laughed at the pick up line, beautiful maybe, but little never. At five ten, six one with heels on I was tall, as tall as some men. Being tall made me an easier target, but height made me more imposing, no one was going to bully me and fights, I was not outclassed by to much as long as they were not body guards, hit men, body builders or the undead. It was the last one I was worried about – humans die if they are shot enough times – the undead just get pissed.
“Jake.” I shook his extended hand. The handshake was firm, he looked me straight in the eye, it last the appropriate length of time but he never actually let go of my hand. I tugged gently on my hand trying to free it. It was hard to remember that the man holding my hand was actually a monster who killed twin sister, not a week earlier.
He dated both of them, giving both sisters a false name. He had invited both to his place – the same time, same apartment – under the pretense that he was going to purposing to them. The girls were found the next day, their fears still lingered in their eyes.
I was called to the scene to stake the girls, their parents did not want any chance of them rising as vampires, but there wasn’t enough left of their entrails to have to worry about them rising. I staked each girl anyways, traditional wooden stakes were not designed to go through human flesh. Undead flesh gives easier to a stake, but newly dead human flesh still has a rubber like quality to it. It was hard work to stake even the undead, but staking the living even if they were dead tugged at my heart. You knew how bad it was if you were staking more humans than vampires. Their hands were still clasped as they tried to believe they were going to survive and laugh about it later, but each were crippled so they couldn’t move, but they were fully aware of what was happening to them and each other.
The room gave me nightmare. They were found in a room that was a windowless box, covered in mirrors. The sisters could watch themselves die from any angle the imagination could come up with. There was no DNA there was no evidence, so there would be no justice for their death, or closure for the family. It was the father of the sister that had contacted me, asking for my help. I do not take any type of hit without a good reason, and the better the reason the less it cost. I had not exactly taken this hit pro-bono, but it was pretty damn close to free.
I arrived at the parent’s house in the late morning earlier today. The man on the phone, who sounded strong, had nearly been reduced to a weeping mass on the blue and white striped couch. He looked like a football player, but the loss of his daughter had broken him. The sister’s mother, had become the rock for the family, she offered me coffee, which I kindly accepted. While her husband still mourned she seemed to wither before my eye, as if his crying was taking all the tears from her. I showed them a line up of every vampire who even remotely matched the description I received over the phone. I kept detailed records of every vampire that existed. There were six file cabinets in my basement devoted to the Old Bloods, I had just bought my eighteenth for the New Bloods, but the death rates for new bloods was killing off an equal number at the same rate new ones were being made. Old Bloods were far more selective in who they brought into their ranks. My files contained pictures, addresses, last known victims who had hunted them, who if any one killed them, age of turning, and anything else I had o know about them at the time. They came to a consensus that Jake had been the boy friend they had never met. The crime sounded like a typical Jake even if it was more violent than what I believed Jake capable of. He was the rock star of the vampire world, and he a had made being a vampire very popular among the younger generations of humans. He was twenty-five when he had been turned and like most rock stars he was not the brightest light in the dark. Now it was my job to kill the bastard and heaven forgive me I was going to enjoy it.
The man at the end of the bar twitched, apparently someone else wanted Jake dead. I could not blame them, but no one get in my way of completing a hit. I saw the barrel of a gun peak over the top of the bar seconds before I heard the gun go off. I grabbed Jake’s collar throwing both of us backwards and off our stools. My gun flew out of my lap and skidded to a stop some where in the shadows behind me. So much for my advantage.
“Stay down,” I hissed. Maybe if we were quiet he would think Jake was dead and leave. I heard steps towards our end of the bar and I scrambled to find my gun. I found it lurking as far away from me as it could get. As I lifted the gun a sharp pain ran up and down my arm. There was a cool slick feeling running down my arm. I’d been grazed and I was bleeding in front of a vampire – it could get much worse if I wasn’t careful. I hate the idea of being shot at but even less for a target I target I was just going to kill myself, but I would take both over actually being hit. If you are in the business long enough you were going to get hit eventually. The graze began burn and I sucked air in though clenched teeth. He was using silver bullets – good for him, at the moment bad for me, did I mention that being a half vampire had its down sides – but he was still going to be dead. For a split second I wondered if Jake was the man’s target, and if he was not was I?
“You are going to die you stupid vampire son of a b– ” the man was getting closer to our side of the bar. “SOB” cleared up my suspicions Jake was definitely the target here. I glared at Jake and motioned for him to get behind me and stay hidden in the shadows. The shooter’s foot came into view. They were nice shoes, black dress shoe polished so that I could see myself in them. He was either very good to make enough money to buy his shoes or he started off rich and has no idea what he is doing – I was hoping he was just rich and did not know what he was doing. Then his body came into view, he scanned the back door and shadows before turning to face where we were hiding. I coiled my legs up under me the best I could with out making a sound. His gun was sighted at the ground, so if I could fire before he could bring it up I might just live to kill Jake.
I popped up gun and arm coming up at the same time. I fired twice not bothering to aim at the body less than five feet in front of me. If I was lucky he would not raise his gun and shoot me back, if I wasn’t quite as lucky we would get into an old west shoot out – if it came to that then I was betting he’d die first and I would bleed to death in the ambulance on the way to hospital. I was lucky. He turned and ran, I heard the clatter of a gun on the hard wood floor; I must have hit his shooting arm. Bonus points for me, plus a free gun. A strong arm wrapped around my arm and the graze. I gasped, trying to pull away. I transfer my gun to my left hand, turning slightly pressing the barrel to Jake’s forehead. I could have ended the job there, but there would be witness and I would have to kill every last one of them, it was tempting, but I did not think I had enough bullets to eliminate the bar packed to capacity. Then I would have to go after the man who just shot me, though I doubted that he would actually turn me in, if he did he would be in just as much trouble as I was – sort of.
“You are bleeding,” Jakes eyes were dark as he spoke.
“So you want a taste?” I snapped. His hand pressing into the graze was not improving my mood. I lowered my gun just in case the temptation came back.
“Are you offering?” he was breathing a little harder now.”