Page 1 of Countdown to Murder
Prologue
Fawn walked into Aaron Drake’s office and took a seat when one was offered. As tempting as it was to sneak a quick look, she stayed out of the two men’s heads. Getting caught trying to poke into the mind of the top dragon and lion on the planet didn’t bode well for one’s longevity, and Fawn had lived a very long time.
“Thanks for meeting with me, and for accommodating my need for a nighttime meeting. I’ll cut straight to the point. When Abbott and Kendra took over Maryland, you know he did his best to rehabilitate the slaves, so they could be released.” She’d been comfortable around both the Dragon King and the Amakhosi, the King of the Lions, for centuries, but she was worried about today’s meeting. She had to behonest with these men about Mira’s shortcomings, but sheneededthem to want to hire her.
“Right, which is how he got Spence.”
“Not until Spence broke himself free, but I have a feeling the two of you know that. I’m here because we have someone who has the potential to work for you, but you need to understand her history if you are to be her bosses. She was trained as an assassin. She considered herself a weapon and not a slave. Still does, in her heart, but she knows better in her head.” Fawn sighed. She had to be honest, but damn, it was hard when she so badly needed them to accept Mira. “Nevertheless, we believe she is ready to use her skills to protect people.”
“Who trained her?” Aaron asked.
Fawn met his gaze and gave him the name of the school in Europe. She may as well have told them she’d been raised by the Concilio to be their weapon, but telling them this way seemed easier.
Aaron shook his head. “Not interested. I don’t care how good her skills are.”
Nathan looked at Aaron, his brows pulled down and together. “Without even meeting her?”
“They purchase three-year-old babies and training begins immediately. The toddlers are raised withoutaffection or touch, isolated with no friends, only their four handlers, who show no affection. Martial arts training begins immediately, knife and gun skills begin around seven. At nine, they are isolated with a dog who’s been abused all of its pathetic life, given a pantry full of rice and beans, along with water, in a cabin with a yard, inside an inescapable wall. They also have dog food. They’re told they will get nothing except rice and beans to eat until the dog falls asleep in their lap without being restrained. If the dog dies or is killed, they are given another one and must start over. Three days after the dog falls asleep in their lap, they are instructed to torture the dog until it urinates without meaning to, and then to slit its stomach open and gently pull the intestine out without drugging the dog or killing it. And then they have to keep the dog alive for ten hours. At that time, their ticket outside of the wall and ability to eat something other than rice and beans is the dog’s heart in their hand.” Aaron took a breath and looked back to Fawn. “And that’s merely the beginning of how you train an assassin-slash-torture expert. How you raise a sociopathic psychopath.”
It was unfortunate that he knew so much about their training methods, but it also simplified things.She’d have had to explain some of it to him in order to operate in good faith.
“I’m a vampire. I’m in her head. I wouldn’t offer her to you if we hadn’t been able to teach her some empathy.”
“The thing with the dog? The lesson is the same later, but with people. She’s specifically been taught how to gain the trust of people and animals, so she can later turn on them and kill them. Graduates of this school sometimes takeyearsto get close enough to royalty so they can kill them.”
“This is all true, would you like to hear how we’ve gone about trying to re-train her?”
“No.”
While Fawn and Aaron’s gazes were locked, Nathan said, “I’d like to hear.”
“We put her in Abbott’s flock. When the flock was attacked, she kept as many of them safe as possible.” Aaron was about to argue that she’d done it only because she’d learned to keep the dogs and humans alive until it was time to torture and kill them. She couldn’t read his mind, but she knew him well enough to see what was coming, so she shook her head and told him, “Yes, it can be argued it was an extension of her training to keep people and animals alive while sheattached to them, except I’m in her head and I couldseethe attachment. Not just that, but could see her confusion over how she felt about the deaths of the other members of the flock. Originally, we hadn’t intended to allow her to fight with us, but it seemed important we allow her some vengeance.”
They were silent, and she said it again. “Vengeance. Do you understand why this is important? She cared enough about them to avenge their deaths.”
“Anyone we’d remember fighting beside?” Nathan asked.
Fawn shrugged. “We renamed her Mira. She’s a king cobra shifter.”
“The slaves in her old facility are used to being renamed,” Aaron said.
He wasn’t wrong. Toddlers are given numbers but not a name. Moving up in martial arts training gives them their first name – some kids do better with different styles, and the one they master first gives them their first name, Black for Karate, Red for Kung Fu, Yellow for Jujitsu. Mira had mastered Taekwondo, and she’d been Blue943. She’d had four names before she finally earned her master-level name: Assassina2593.
“They are,” Fawn told Aaron. “But every name also has a number, and every name is long. We gave her a short name, using two consonants not found in any of her previous names.”
“I remember a snake,” Nathan said. “Tiny, with a mop of short hair?”
Yes, her hair had been a mop of a mess during the battle.
“She shaved her head after a therapy session about identity and refused tochangeto put it back to rights. She was injured during the battle and chose to heal slowly, rather thanchange. She understands how she was trained and why. She wants to be a person and not a weapon. She asked for me to let her see inside the heads of normal people, so I took her with me to feed a few days a week for nearly a year and let her spend as much time in their heads as she wanted. I watched what she was looking for, and after about a month, I let her help me choose when I hunted. I wouldn’t send her to you if I thought she’d turn on you.”
Aaron leaned back in his chair, dismissive. He wasn’t prepared to even consider taking Mira on. “Snakes are at high risk of being psychopaths and sociopaths to start with. Extra care must be taken to be sure they are taught emotions as young children, andthat this is nurtured throughout their lives, especially the teen years. This snake was trained to kill and torture. Any emotions she started with were carefully excised.”
“We gave her a bodyguarding job eight months ago — the daughter of a king. The princess is going to college here in the states, and Mira shared a dorm with her and took the same classes. She got to know her, became attached to her, and eventually figured out that she’d been responsible for killing this woman’s father, and that the princess's brother is now king of their country because Assassina2593 had tortured and killed their father. The six-year-old princess who’d watched an assassin kill her father had been called by her birth name, while she used an American name here in the states, where she’s incognito, so no one knows who she really is.”
Fawn took a breath and gave them the rest. If this didn’t sway Aaron Drake, nothing would.
“Mira learned early on that her charge still grieved for her father, and that her life had drastically changed when he’d died. The child and her baby brother had been sent into hiding away from the family. Her two older brothers had stayed because they were old enough to fight. At the time, her charge gave no detailsbecause even her bodyguard wasn’t supposed to know who she really is — a princess in hiding. Mira thought her charge was the spoiled heiress of an oil family from the UAE, in the States for an education.”
