The witch assassin, p.1
The Witch Assassin, page 1
THE WITCH ASSASSIN
LEAGUE OF SUPERNATURAL ASSASSINS
By
J.E. Taylor
The Witch Assassin © 2023 J.E. Taylor
All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.
Cover Art by SLM Creations
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
THE WITCH ASSASSIN
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
About J.E. Taylor
THE WITCH ASSASSIN
An assassin tasked with taking out a mythical fae king...
In a realm that doesn’t exist...
Mya’s mission is to get in, obtain the fae king’s DNA, and get out.
It should be easy with her gifts, except when does anything ever go as planned?
But failing in her line of work is a death sentence, and nothing in her training prepared her for Tavin Zorander—the most powerful Elvren to ever exist. After all, it’s his family’s magic that’s kept his kingdom cloaked from the prying eyes of the universe for centuries.
When she finds herself at the mercy of the fae king, Mya has a choice to make.
Does she use her darkest power, thus compromising her mission, or should she surrender to Tavin’s desires and put his entire kingdom at risk?
CHAPTER ONE
MY LUNGS BURNED AS I ran toward the section of Ireland where Earth’s portal to Icarus resided. Multiple footfalls followed, echoing in the deep night. I had too far to go to escape, and their drunken slurs were getting closer.
My luck had run out when I’d crossed in front of a pub at the same time these drunken assholes had spilled out the door. I didn’t have time to pull my weapons from the ether before one of them grabbed my shirt, tearing it as he tried to grope me. I planted my knee in his groin and slipped past another hand, hoping that was enough to stop them.
But it only made them more savage and determined after a night of drinking and probably reminiscing about imagined conquests.
I tucked the vial of blood I had gotten from my last job into the pocket in my bra. If I lost it, the Director would have me beaten within a breath of life. He wouldn’t give a damn that a drunken crowd of men were trying to accost me. He would only care that I had finally failed one of his impossible missions.
A hand grabbed at my shoulder, tilting me off-balance, and I tumbled to the ground. The men surrounded me, mocking me and laughing as they circled like a pack of rabid wolves.
I didn’t have my normal assassin outfit on that was sleek like a second skin and covered me from ankle to neck. Here on earth, I only had this skirt and thin shirt.
And now that I was on the ground, the skirt had slid up, giving the drunks a good view of my ass, feeding their frenzy.
I rolled onto my back, trying to straighten myself out, but their eyes lingered, flashing with lust. Alcohol from their breaths hung on the air strong enough to make me gag, even from six feet above me.
The man I’d kneed started unzipping his pants.
“Hold her, boys, while I make her regret hitting my family jewels.” He grinned.
Anger flared inside of me before anyone so much as touched me. I should have attacked in front of the bar. I bared my teeth at them in a hiss, but it didn’t stop them. Hands grabbed my shoulders, trying to pin me to the hard ground.
I did the only logical thing a soul eater like me could do. I ripped their souls, along with every ounce of their life force, from them, swallowing their essence with a snarl. Their souls filled me more than the adrenaline pumping through my veins, making my muscles buzz with an extra boost of power.
I rolled, avoiding their crashing bodies, and climbed to my feet, feeling the euphoria of devouring their crooked souls. I licked my lips in satisfaction and stalked off into the woods, straightening out this unpleasant outfit. I could not wait to get back home and get into something more comfortable.
But that wouldn’t happen until after I reported to the Director. Which was about on par with entertaining a group of drunks.
I wasn’t looking forward to it at all. I dreaded interacting with him, especially when I had extra information from a job. He didn’t instill loyalty from his league by being benevolent. Instead, he ruled us with fear that had been conditioned into us from birth.
Sometimes, I thought he put an obedient gene in the mix of our DNA because I had never heard of anyone disobeying him. The fear of being made an example of lived in our hearts and minds, staunching rebellion in its tracks.
Of course, none of us ever talked about dissent. That was akin to mutiny, and even though most of us had a haunted look in our eyes, one that mirrored what I saw in my own eyes every night, we never spoke about our unrest.
We never talked about disobedience because we saw the ramifications. There had been a few assassins in my lifetime who had not met their deadlines, and they were dragged back to Icarus and publicly tortured to death.
We knew the cost of failure.
Just like we never spoke about how we came into existence. Some assassins were engineered. Some like me had real parents, versus test tubes as incubators, but we all had been manipulated with various strains of DNA.
So, we focused on learning and training and surviving and interacted more as competitors than comrades.
I was lucky. I had no family for the Director to lean on to keep me in line like some of the others. I couldn’t imagine the fear of failure if someone else’s well-being was on the line. My insides squeezed at the thought.
I glanced around, getting my bearings. I had miles to go to get to the portal, and teleporting, or what we called zapping to other places within a realm, wasn’t possible. Not when I’d need all my energy to make it back.
The thought of walking that far raked my nerves, but the blood sacrifice the damn portals required made me slow my pace, conserving the energy infusion from those drunks.
I hadn’t heard the others complain about the sacrifice portals’ requirements, but for me, the portal wouldn’t let me pass without at least a pint of blood.
Maybe it was the fact that I usually conjured a portal wherever I was, and perhaps that made it require more of a blood sacrifice to get back to Icarus. But even with normal portals, I found them to be greedy bitches when I wanted to go home where the League of Supernatural Assassins’ compound resided, and my dorm room and pet snake awaited me.
Perhaps bypassing the compound’s outer portal was why it demanded more blood from me than others. Everyone else jumped to the portal outside the compound to reach their destinations, but I just jumped to and from the compound.
The why didn’t matter. Every trip home was the same.
I shook my head, dismissing the thought. I waved my hand, conjuring my own portal home with a fraction of the energy that it would have taken to zap to the normal portal placed in some random field near a bluff overlooking the ocean.
I pulled a blade from the ether and took a deep breath before slicing my wrist. I swiped my blood across the portal, and it opened, sucking me in and then spitting me out in the portal room at the complex.
The room was barren, and I startled, holding my wrist to my chest. The Director’s guards weren’t here. Someone always monitored the portal room to sign us out and sign us back in.
I blinked and headed toward the door, hoping my wrist would mend by the time I got to the Director’s office.
In the halls, there was pandemonium. People ran as if the world was on fire, and no one even spared me a glance. Ava, the Director’s mate, didn’t even acknowledge me as we passed in the hall to his office. She looked just as harried as the rest of the people in the complex.
I didn’t stop to ask what was going on, not with the exhaustion setting in from the blood loss. I just headed to the Director’s office to deliver the sample and the extra information I had obtained on this latest mission.
Dread seeped into my skin with each step I took.
CHAPTER TWO
IT SEEMED WHILE I was away, someone had finally rebelled and destroyed the UV field that spanned over the compound and kept the night walkers like the Director safe.
Which explained the absolute chaos in the hallways and the darkness the Director’s office was plunged in. Metal barriers encased all the Director’s windows, but that wasn’t what unnerved me.
“I want to know who the fuck destroyed my protections!” the Director yelled into the phone with barely contained fury.
His voice rang through the room, making me flinch.
I stood in front of his desk waiting for him to get off the phone as I refrained from rubbing my sweaty palms on my thighs. If I showed any sign of weakness while he blasted whoever was on the other end of the line, he would pounce.
My chances of getting out of his office unscathed diminished with every second he growled into the phone.
I had nothing to do with the destruction of the UV field over the compound, but that didn’t matter. I was here. A body to be smashed if he couldn’t get his anger in check.
His salt-and-pepper hair stood on end from too many hand-rakes, making him look more like a mad scientist than the Director of the League of Supernatural Assassins.
He slammed the phone into the cradle and turned his gray, snakelike eyes to me. His hands fisted, and I twitched, waiting for him to give a nod to his guards who hid in the shadows to beat me to within an inch of my life for his entertainment.
He regarded me for a moment, smoothed his hair, and masked all that fury I had witnessed, turning his expression into the cold and calculating one I was used to.
This was his normal state. It was when he displayed emotion that a shit storm was imminent.
“What do you have for me?”
The edge in his voice sent a shiver of fear through me.
I swallowed hard, pulled out a vial of blood from my bra, and put it on his desk. “Here’s the DNA from the seer hiding out on Earth. Unfortunately, she did not see me coming.”
I suppressed the smirk that wanted to surface from my bad pun and focused on the Director’s cross look. He did not find me amusing. He picked up the blood, rolling it between his fingers before he pocketed it. He leaned back in his chair and gave me a curt nod.
My shoulders relaxed.
My specialty was getting DNA from unwilling royal lines, and sometimes, I had the bonus of being allowed to kill them if I chose. I embraced killing the way the Director embraced beating us into submission.
After all, it was part of my DNA. I was a demon-witch hybrid and a special demon breed at that. I existed on the essence of souls, otherwise known as a soul eater.
And in a pinch, I had the kiss of death at my disposal, but I couldn’t deploy that on my targets until I obtained their DNA, because the moment I employed the kiss of death, my victims turned to ash.
I shifted my weight, unsure of whether I should repeat the information the seer gave me as she begged for her life. I did not know how to approach the situation with the Director’s current mood. She had dropped a few juicy tidbits while trying to bargain for her life, but it wasn’t enough to save her.
I focused back on the Director and his narrowing eyes. Normally, I dropped the DNA and headed to my room to clean up and attend to my pet snake.
“You have more for me?”
I swallowed hard. If I didn’t give him the information now and opted to do it later, he surely would have me beaten for not divulging the information when I first arrived.
It was a no-win situation, so I forged on. “Yes. The seer mentioned Eleka is not what it seems. It holds blood you covet. Fae blood.”
The Director slammed his palm on his desk, flashing his fangs. “Wrong! Eleka is a dead world. It has been since before I was born!”
Dead. Right. At least that’s what we were taught in all our history lessons throughout school. I even read about explorers who had been tasked with searching for Eleka, but no one ever returned. It was as if it were a massive black hole that screamed death to anyone who ventured there.
He nodded to the guards. His elite shadow demon guards were loyal to a fault. But I guess you have to be once you take a blood oath to obey the Director’s every order.
I licked my lips and continued, “She said it was a glamour created by an ancient and supreme Elvren clan.”
I started to shake as the guards approached, towering over me like rabid beasts with smiles that broadcast pain was coming. I could take them, but I was not allowed to use my skills against the Director’s guards. That was an immediate death sentence, and I liked living.
The Director’s hand went up, and the guards stopped.
“She said ancient and supreme Elvren clan?” His eyes sparkled with interest, like this information had made him forget that he had a disaster on his hands with the UV shield gone.
“Yes, sir.” I flicked my gaze to the guards and then back to the Director.
He slowly ran his fingers over the line of his jaw and chin as if determining whether it was worth not having his brutes beat me.
I schooled my features. If I showed any sign of fear, he’d sic them on me.
After a moment, he waved them back into the shadows.
“Go to your quarters and wait for my summons.” He dismissed me.
I didn’t need to be told twice. I turned and headed to the solace of a hot shower and my boa constrictor.
I didn’t slow my stride until I was halfway across the complex, and I knew the Director’s people were no longer focused on me. Only then did I allow my muscles the release of tension.
I hated being afraid and feeling helpless. I was a demon seed, after all. I could syphon energy from the souls around me, and in a pinch, deplete them into cardiac arrest. Yet every time I faced the Director, I felt like a child being scolded.
Exhaustion pummeled my muscles, making each step even more onerous than the last. I just wanted a shower and my bed. The trip back to Icarus through the portal had left me off, like it always did. The only thing that seemed to abate the jaunt home was a good night’s sleep in my own comfy bed with my snake wrapped around me.
My wrist throbbed, and I glanced at the healing scar. The portal from Earth seemed to be a bit greedier this time. Thankfully, we were engineered to heal pretty quickly in comparison to the non-supernatural beings of the different realms. Even so, most of the other assassins never had open wounds when they exited the portals like I did.
Sometimes, the guards in the portal bay slapped on a bandage so I wasn’t openly bleeding when I stepped into the Director’s office. Every once in a while, I would end up in the medical bay to be stitched up before they allowed me into the Director’s office.
Which was a good thing, because getting close to a night walker with an open wound could be deadly.
I turned down the corridor leading to my sparsely furnished dorm.
I didn’t require much. Not with the nomadic lives we led in the League of Supernatural Assassins. But a comfortable bed was a must. If I could have fit a king-size bed in my unit, you bet I’d have one covered in satin and silk.
But there was only room for a double bed in this little dormitory room that the company provided for us, and that was pushing it. Most of my co-assassins only had a single bed in their dorm room.
I pressed my fingers to the scanner at my door, and the whoosh of the electronics came to life. A moment later, my door swung open, and I stepped into my tiny abode.
When it clicked closed behind me, I headed toward the bathroom, stripping my clothing as I went. I didn’t care that the ultraviolet protection had been compromised outside my window or that any one of a half-dozen assassins could peer in to see me strut my stuff.
Because of my mother, I had a curvy human form that blended in on Earth and pleased men on most of the realms the Director sent me for my missions. Looking this way made my job easier. All I needed to do was bat my eyelashes and smile demurely while sticking out my chest to get close enough to get my victim’s DNA.
Even the women reacted to me as if I let out pheromones when I chose to flirt. No one expected that I was capable of soul-syphoning. I didn’t have to use glamours like some of the other assassins who had stronger traits of non-human DNA, like horns or wings or canine teeth like the Director. Nope, I looked human even with a high dose of demon blood running amok in my system.
