I heard it used to be a beautiful place, with people and food, lots of places to sleep out of the rain, and buildings rising up into the sky. I’m still not sure I believe those tales. Mothers, fathers, and children with a whole building to themselves? Huge structures that no one lived in? Some things are too absurd to believe in, even when you’ve been assured they’re true.

It’s hard to imagine this maligned rubble heap as anything other than a junkyard of bricks and rock, the odor of decay heavy everywhere. A place for young boy-children to fight to prove their right to live. A hunting ground. A dying ground.

I belonged to Claude’s pack. He was large for his age, which was ten, with brown hair that he kept cut short, and green-flecked brown eyes. He was a good man, intelligent and good-humored. He was my friend.

“Liss’n’up,” he called, gathering us up in the morning. “There’s ‘n Alchemist in Third House wants ta strike us a deal. Give us four loaves a’bread if we get ‘im a full bush’l a’potweed. Got me so far?”

“Two days rations,” My brother Thandre murmured, looking at me with his large, doe-brown eyes. “For the whole pack!”

I nodded to him absently. Four loaves might sound like a lot to most other people, but not to me. I wore the Assassin’s tattoo, even as Claude wore the tattoo that marked him leader, and I knew how much a bushel of potweed could cost - in blood. I caught Claude’s eye. He knew, too. He just shook his head, oh so slightly, and made a vague gesture encompassing everything. That’s how it is.

“Ideas, people?” He asked.

Alexis nodded slowly. “Phillipe’s pack’s gotta stash tucked away. One a’their people smokes it. Must be ‘bout half’a bush’l.”

“Where’d they get it from? They don’t have a paydirt bit on their turf.”

Alexis shrugged. “Heard they scraped it offa Hara’s pack, a’fore th’ rainy season set in.”

“Good man.” Claude clapped him on the back. You’n Victor go on, ‘n get that half-bush’l. I don’t care how. Thandre, go scout Hara’s turf. I wanna know if they’re growin’ it, or scrapin’ it offa someone else. I wan’ alla ya back here by sunset, got it?”

The three singled-out boys nodded before ducking around corners and out of sight. Any of them could be headed for death. Maybe all of them. For a full bushel, it would be a light price to pay.

Claude sighed, watching them go, and I knew he was thinking the same thoughts I was. Claude did not like to spend lives so freely, but he had other things to consider. Like feeding those who survived.

Flashing me a small smile, he turned to the rest of us. ‘The rest of us’ being myself, and eight-year-old Harq, and ten-year-old Jean-Pierre.

“Make your reports.”

Harq spoke up first. “Torri’s pack found a patch of wild wheat on th’ North End. Their pickers ‘re yammerin’ on ‘bout a bad season, an’ how there aint a lotta rain out there on th’ outskirts an’ all. Dark of it is, they wanna negotiate.”

Claude bared his teeth. Torri was Leader of his pack only because Claude didn’t want to control so much territory by himself. But Torri kept pressing. Pushing against the boundaries. Fighting the rules. One of these days, the little twit would need eliminated. I fingered my knife.

“Ya tell that clodhopper he’ll gimme sixty percent, as agreed, or I’ll find a way t’take alla it, an’ rearrange ‘is face in th’ bargain,” Claude said quietly.

Harq nodded. Trying to weasel out of keeping your oath was grounds for execution. Claude’s warning was both lenient and merciful. And only given because there was no one in Torri’s pack with the leadership ability to replace him.

“Anythin’ else, anyone?”

Harq nudged Jean-Pierre, who dropped his eyes to the ground in a most un-Jean-Pierrelike manner.

“Gotta message from Lafey,” the sandy-haired boy muttered. He barely flicked his eyes up for a second, looking down again when he met Claude’s steady gaze.

I frowned. It took a lot to scare Jean-Pierre.

“Well?” Claude was frowning, too.

“He s-says we got today ta shove off our turf. Or we g-get ta be p-part of it.” I touched the knife at my belt. That man dared to threaten my pack? “An’ said he’d wr-write it d-down, so I w-wouldn’t f-forget it.”

Jean-Pierre took off his coat, baring his shirtless chest to our view. Strange shapes had been cut into his skin, with something that had less leverage than a knife. None of us could read, but I was pretty sure it was writing. It looked painful.

Claude looked at me. “I don’t wan a pack war. They’d slaughter us.”

“Lafey’s not gonna back down. Not any more’n yer gonna back down to Torri. You know that,” I said. I knew what he was going to ask. I didn’t want him to say it. Desperately, I didn’t want him to say it.

“Think you can take ‘im?” Claude asked.

I looked at Jean-Pierre. At the cruel markings slashed into his skin. I looked at Harq. At his frightened blue eyes as he turned to look at me, as they filled with something strangely like hope.

I nodded. Swallowed. “I can take ‘im.”

“How long d’ya figure it’ll take ya?” Claude tilted his head slightly. He left the last bit unsaid. So I’ll know when you’re not coming back.

Jean-Pierre. Harq. Victor. Alexis. Thandre, my twin brother. Claude, my Leader and friend. Six reasons why I was going to be coming back, if I had to fight the Devil himself to do it.

“Gimme a day, maybe two. Not more’n two.”

“Good man, Dak,” Claude clapped my shoulder. “An’ how’d things turn out with Zep’s pack?”

Some of the tenseness left me, and I was able to smile. “Fellow named Chanute wears the tattoo now. He looks ta be a brighter boy’n Zep was.”

Claude smiled, too, and nodded his thanks. “Off with you, then. Good hunting.”

I squared my shoulders, waved, and left my packbrothers behind me. Cold detachment settled over me like an extra garment as my assignment set in.

My name is Dakarys. I was the best Assassin who ever lived.

It was not the first time the Dark Angels had caught him and imprisoned him here in this dungeon that was neither of Heaven nor Earth. Many times before over the millennia, Michael’s Deathwalkers had found him, throwing him in here on charges of crimes he had committed, or sometimes simply because he was a Grey. A Fallen one.

This time they had a reason, or so they said. They hadn’t told him what, but from the glares he had received on arrival, it was pretty bad. That thought roused him from his brief slumber. His eyes opened, shining silver in the darkness that surrounded him. The silver eyes of the damned.

Stretching his ebon-grey wings as far as they would go in this limited space, Rramaan glanced carefully around. Dark Angels could be hiding anywhere in these shadows, waiting to snatch at any stray tendril of thought that might incriminate him.

But they didn’t understand. How could they? If they truly knew the nature of his crime, they would never be able to understand. Comprehension was beyond those who cared nothing for it. Rramaan shook his head, listening to the heavy chains rattle over his powerful body.

The Light Angels might understand why he did it. They might be able to comprehend how, years ago, he had realized this was not the life he wanted. They might be able to see how even his callous soul

could begin to long for what used to be… What should have been… But their Dark counterparts never would. And this was one place the Dark Angels did not allow the Light Angels to walk.

In frustration, Rramaan slammed his fist into the unyielding wall. If they truly new his crime, this time they would execute him. They wouldn’t ask him why he did it, wouldn’t listen if he tried to tell them. And most of all, they wouldn’t care if they destroyed his hopes, his dreams, his fragile fragments of faith.

Dark Angels never cared about those things. He hit the wall again, feeling his fury begin to mount. He made his decision. If the Dark Angels really knew… They would have to die. He knew he would be torn apart, trying to face so many by himself, but some things were worth more than a single life. That was another thing the Darks would never be able to understand.

Even now, as I write this, I am shocked at my own stupidity in agreeing to assassinate Lafey. It is one thing to eliminate a child close to your own age for the crime of dangerous stupidity. It is quite another to go up against a grown man with ten nearly grown teenagers behind him, for the same offense.

Few streetkids lived to maturity then, and I doubt many more do now. Those that did were likely to find places in nearby villages, or travel to farther ones. I’m not sure anyone really knows why Lafey chose to stay, but the fact is that he did, and attracted strong packbrothers like rotting meat does flies.

Part of the Assassin’s Oath I took in receiving the tattoo states that there is no surrender but death, not defeat but death. I would succeed or die once I had accepted my assignment. I might mention that most Assassins don’t live very long.

In any case, I had accepted, and so I had a job to do. Lafey’s pack didn’t become the dominant pack in Paris by being stupid. They knew not everyone was going to hand over their territory without a fight. Assassins had been sent before, and had been returned to their comrades… in pieces.

Lafey and his ten warriors were known to hole up in an underground structure called a ‘bomb shelter’, though I’m not certain that’s actually what it was. There was one entrance, and it was always guarded. One guard at the doorway, another just inside. Impossible to take by surprise. Impossible to infiltrate. I excelled at the impossible.

I settled down in the heavy brush surrounding the area, and studied it. Maybe I would make my move tonight, maybe not until much later. Lack of information can kill a man quicker than a thrown knife.

This was the reason that very few people proficient in the art of killing ever reach the status of Assassin. Patience is the supreme virtue. The knowledge of how to wait, where to wait, and when to wait is far more important than skill with a deadly weapon.

A few hours after midnight, someone left the shelter. Lafey? It was too dark to tell. Being careful to make as little noise as possible, I crept closer for a better look.

A fifteen-year-old boy with Hispanic features was relieving himself in the bushes. My mind flashed, sorting possibilities into scenarios, scenarios into rough plans. I might never get another chance like this, I decided.

He looked mostly asleep, and not at all alert, so I took the opportunity to lower my number of opponents from eleven to ten. My hands closed around his throat.

I sighed, looking at my victim’s height. Even though my hair and complexion were as dark as the unfortunate wretch’s, and though I was tall for a nine-year-old, I was not tall enough to pass for fifteen. Drat. Passing for my victim would have been the easy way of accomplishing my task.

I left the corpse where it was. Moving it would make too much noise, and it wasn’t visible to the sentries, so I let well enough alone. I had to move fast now, though. If the dead boy were discovered, with his bulging eyes and swollen tongue, there was not a chance in Hell he would be taken for sleeping. Why did the dead have to be so damn uncooperative?

Rramaan shivered as the cold, hard hand jerked at his arm, snapping him fully awake. Yamin, Dark Angel of the aspect of Justice, stood glaring at him. She was a shadow among shadows, and Rramaan marveled once again at the multitude of shades of black.

Yamin’s wings and hair were reminiscent of black iron, her unrelenting features as hard as steel. Her contempt for him and all his kind seethed from her gaze, and her grip on his shoulder was tighter than was truly necessary.

“Get up, Grey,” she snapped, her voice as cold as the rest of her. “Michael is here to see you.”

“The head honcho himself?” Rramaan asked, raising an eyebrow. “I must really be in deep ****.”

“Silence!” She punched him hard in the jaw, hard enough to make everything spin for a moment. “I will not tolerate the foul slime of your speech.”

She tore his chains from the wall and held them like a leash. “Follow me.”

Rramaan followed silently, wondering idly that all his strength meant nothing to those metal links, yet Yamin snapped them like silk. Similar things had occurred on his previous visits here, but he had yet to puzzle out the how or why of it.

The plain white corridor led into a larger, round chamber furnished only with a large table and a single chair. Occupying the chair was a tall, muscularly built man with deeply bronzed skin and piercing black eyes as sharp as a hawk’s. His long, raven hair was pulled back and knotted carelessly at the base of his neck, and his glistening black wings, the color of the Abyss, streamed behind him like a banner.

Even without Yamin’s remark, Rramaan would have known him. He would know Michael anywhere.

“You’re in deep ****, Rramaan,” Michael growled, violence in his eyes.

“You men are disgusting,” Yamin sniffed, throwing Rramaan’s chains at her superior’s feet. “I’m leaving.” She managed to give the impression of slamming the door, even though there was no such obstacle between the room and the corridor.

Rramaan ignored her, keeping his silver eyes locked on Michael. “Are you going to tell me why?”

He would never beat the Dark Angel in one-on-one combat, but if Michael knew, then he was damn well going to try.

“Well, first off, because you’re a Grey. But since God hasn’t seen fit to strike you dead, I guess we’ll both just have to deal with that.” Michael sneered. “Secondly, you’ve been in personal contact with a human who knows about us. I didn’t figure you’d be that stupid. You know such mortals are not to be part of your schemes.”

Rramaan relaxed slightly. So Michael didn’t know. Not yet, anyway. “I have been deferential to his wishes, General. I appear as myself, I use none of my abilities, I do not speak to him about anything that could have a negative impact on his soul. We are old acquaintances.”

“I don’t care!” Michael roared. The table shook with the sound of his voice. “Leave him alone! You deceive without being conscious of it! You taint all that is near you! You are denied the fullness of God’s presence! You are evil! You are Grey!”

Rramaan let the Dark Angel’s fury wash over him without touching him. There were many things the Darks would never understand, and it was useless to try to teach them. He backed up, mentally, and tried a different tactic.

“I know about the girl.”

Death shone in Michael’s midnight eyes, voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “I know you do.”

“I know that the human man is raising her. I know of your plans for her, your desperate hopes for the power in her mixed blood.”

“I know.”

“I’ve never touched her, never spoken to her. I’ve never seen her. Never tried to.”

“I know.”

“I don’t want to interfere. I don’t care what you do with her. A few words with a friend, that’s all I go there for. You know I’m not lying.”

Michael’s expression didn’t change. “There are too many ways to speak the truth and still be lying. You think I don’t remember you and Lucivar? Like two peas in a pod, and always plotting something. I don’t believe it’s coincidence you’re all chummy with the guardian of a Child of the Blood of Angels. I don’t believe in coincidence at all, and especially not where you’re concerned.”

Rramaan shook his head, feeling the frustration build again. “I told you, I -”

“My Prince!” A young-looking Deathwalker burst in. He cast a cursory glance at Rramaan, then focused his gaze on Michael.

“You may speak in front of the prisoner,” Michael decided.

The Deathwalker nodded. “The mixed-blood girl has gone missing. He guardian says she just ran away.”

“Then get out there and look for her!” Michael roared. The younger Dark Angel dashed off.

Rramaan felt a terrible feeling clench his guts as Michael’s murderous glare rested on him. And an even worse one when the Dark Prince began to smile.

“I’m telling’ ya, she’s Greek. I seen Greeks a’fore, I know what they look like!”

The red-head across from him smirked.

“If you can’t tell Greek from Italian, that aint my fault. Their accent’s diff’rent. ‘Sides, if she’s a Greek, what’s she doin’ here? I hear there’s some guy way north a’here pullin’ together ev’ry Greek he can find an’ makin’ ‘em richer’n sweet cream.”

“Oh. Well, you gotta point. Say, d’ya think I could pass me off as a Greek? Maybe if I could get an Alchemist to black my hair?”

Blonde-hair modeled slightly, trying his best to look Greek.

“Not a chance in Hell,” Red-head scoffed. “Whadda’ya think’s takin’ Emile so long?”

“Dunno. Should be done by now. Hey Emile! You done yet?”

There was no response.

“Damn Spaniard prob’ly fell down drunk asleep again,” Red-head said disgustedly. “Dunno why Lafey lets ‘im waste good brew like that.”

“I s’pose maybe I oughtta go’n get ‘im, then,” Blonde-hair sighed. “Unless you wanna do th’ honors.”

“Naw,” Red-head responded. “Wake up Sauli. He can do th’ dirty work. I for sure don’ want Emile vomiting all over me.”

Blonde-hair went off to find Emile’s unfortunate friend in the near-total darkness of the shelter.

This was the chance I had been waiting for. I ghosted along the outer wall until I was just inches away from Red-head, but out of sight behind the corner of the doorway. One quick leap, and I drew my knife across Red-head’s throat, watching him drown in his own blood. Cold satisfaction flickered through me as I stepped past his corpse. Down to nine.

I slid like a shadow into the shelter, careful not to step on slumbering teenagers. My heart beat at an alarming pace, throbbing so loud in my ears I was certain the whole world could hear it. But there was no room in my mind for fear - at least, that’s what I told myself. Onlyy room for caution, and a great deal of it. I felt like I was moving in slow motion. Maybe I was.

Blonde-hair was shaking a large, fat form, and grumbling something incoherent. The fat form, whom I presumed to be Sauli, made noises of protest and said some very rude words.

It was perfect, and my abnormal run of luck was ringing alarm bells in my head. Was Fate simply being kind to me, or…?

I drove my knife upward into the back of Blonde-hair’s skull, thankful that the blade was thin enough to slide easily between the bones. He collapsed, dead, before he could shift from one thought to another, much less cry out. Down to eight.

“Mmm?” Sauli muttered confusedly.

“Never mind, ya can go back t’sleep now,” I said softly, trying to sound like Blonde-hair. Either I succeeded, or he was practically asleep anyway, because the next sound I heard from him was a muffled snore.

At the moment, he wished he were a heavy-lifting sort of man, impervious to the sun’s unrelenting heat, and about ten years younger. A slight whitening at the temples was beginning to accompany his well-groomed black hair. I’m getting too old for this, he thought to himself.

His vivid green eyes carefully picked out the path his quarry must have taken through the desolate landscape. Massive boulders, blasted from the earth over two thousand years ago by the fateful bombs mankind had dropped upon itself, lay strewn across the parched land. Time and heat cracked many open, creating a dangerous and, at times, nearly impassable maze of jagged edges and pitfalls.

He shook his head in wonder as he looked up at the latest barrier of twisted stone. How in the world am I supposed to get through there? Some of those cracks are barely large enough for a rabbit! And yet, the young girl he followed had somehow managed to squeeze through.

Erik glanced at the sun, quickly looking away again before its brightness burned away his vision. She had been gone almost a day now, his little Angel, the small girl-child he had adopted as his daughter. He felt panic and concern jar within him as he made himself think of that.

Had she thought to bring any water? Food? Had she been thinking at all when she fled his desert sanctuary, his oasis of stone, and ran out into the endless night? Was she raw and sunburned by now? She has such fair skin. She’ll be baked red as a tomato… Or had she been bitten by some basking viper hidden amongst the rocks? Had she fallen into a ragged hole where the land had cracked open, and was lying at the bottom, too weak and injured for her small, pleading voice to reach him?

Erik shook his head and hiked around to look at the boulder formation from another angle. Frightening himself with maybes wasn’t going to get him over these rocks, and it wasn’t going to help Angel, wherever she was. Oh please, God, don’t let her be stuck in a hole. The Wastelands were no place for small children to be clambering around on their own. Or grown men, for that matter.

There was no way he was going to be able to squeeze himself through the gaps in those rocks, he decided. No way in Hell. This particular mountain like section stretched out for miles, so he wouldn’t be able to stay on her trail if he tried going around. He would lose precious hours that way, too. But without wings, he wasn’t going to be going over them, either.

“Damnit!” He yelled, for no other reason than the faint hope that the boulders would quake before his wrath and miraculously part for him. And maybe to vent some of that unbearable worry-tension that was building up inside.

Angel’s tracks had twisted hither and yon for the first part of her wild flight, but for the last several hours, every track Erik had found pointed straight south. Why south? he wondered.

North would have made sense. Far out on the northern horizon was a hint of green, and the faint shapes of brush or trees in the distance. To a child of eight, wouldn’t that spot of color be an irresistible pull after the mundane grays and dusty browns that covered everything else in sight?

South, south. Was anything to the south? Erik tried to remember. He had maps at home, maps he had spent years scouting and drawing himself. There was a canyon rift a few miles southwest of here, and a lot more empty, boulder-scarred desert for miles and miles…

Then flat grassland, with the rare village scattered here and there, and beyond that, the shattered ruins of an ancient city. Nothing of interest, nothing worth noting. Just the pitiful attempts of mankind to continue surviving in this hostile world they had created for themselves.

Erik kicked a rock, scowling when his foot sustained more damage than the sun-bleached limestone target of his violence. Angel wouldn’t know any of these things. She was just wandering around in the hot sun, hoping that wherever she was going would be better than where she was now, most likely. Oh, why did she have to run away?

Maybe, if he cut across the canyon to the southwest and tried to work his way east as the roll of the land carried him south… It was the shortest path, but he would still have to go as far as what was left of Paris before he could begin to backtrack. Would Angel survive that long? Would she go that far?

He could only guess, and hope. He looked out on the coming twilight, eyes searching for something he knew he wasn’t going to see. This, he thought, would be a very excellent time for you to show up, old friend. Oh, for the sight of those ebon-grey wings in the sunset! Come on, Rramaan. Where are you when I need you most?

Maybe there weren’t eight bundles on the floor. If Lafey worked his pack like Claude did, there would nearly always be someone off on assignment. I couldn’t see well enough to tell. I could barely see where I was going to step next, and sometimes not even that.

Which one was Lafey? This was the unexpected problem that presented itself to me. The largest form I could make out in this dim light belonged to fat Sauli, who was most definitely not Leader of the pack. And, if rumors were true, Lafey had his own Assassin around here somewhere. Unless, of course, his Assassin was away on assignment, hunting me. I shivered, and put that thought far out of my mind.

But I was thinking along a different line now. Out of curiosity, I backtracked to Red-head’s corpse and flipped it over. Pulling down the coat collar, I peered at the base of the neck, even with the shoulders. No black Assassin’s tattoo met my eyes.

I did the same with Blonde-hair’s body. Nope, not him, either. I didn’t bother checking Sauli, or the one they called Emile. If an Assassin were as fat and sound asleep as Sauli, he’d be dead. As for Emile, well, Assassins don’t drink brew. Ever.

So if the Assassin wasn’t just rumor, and wasn’t on assignment, then they were one of the lumps sleeping on the floor. Which meant I couldn’t just go from shape to shape, slitting random throats and hoping I killed the right person, which is a stupid thing to do anyway. Lafey might not even be here. And an Assassin could hear the sound of killing, even in their sleep. Perhaps especially in their sleep.

I had to find another way. I clamped a firm hand over the mouth of the nearest bundle and woke them with the touch of cold steel on their throat. The girl looked up at me with wide, fearful eyes, but didn’t try to make a sound. How odd, I thought, looking at her. I hadn’t ever seen a girl streetkid before. The cast of her features was a little strange, and I wondered briefly if she was the girl Red-head and Blonde-hair had been talking about.

“Tell me true, an’ I’ll let ya live,” I hissed at her. “Which’n’s Lafey?”

She pointed with a shaking arm to a largish lump maybe five paces away. Maybe it was Lafey, maybe not, but in any case, I had a lead.

True to my word, I clouted her hard on the head with the hilt of my knife, watching her slump as unconsciousness took her. I didn’t yet have enough strength to have to worry I might have killed her. But if she proved wrong, I could always use the other end of the knife.

Carefully, I edged my way over to the sleeping figure the girl said was Lafey. I didn’t trust her any more than I’d trust a witch bent on eating my bones, and if it wasn’t him… If it was maybe the Assassin… Or a peaceful, visiting Medic…

I tripped, stumbling over something unseen in the dark. Something that felt like a length of cord against my ankles. I lost my balance, curses rattling through my head as I realized I was coming down right on top of the sleeper…

Realization of a trap hit at the same time as I did, and jumbled pieces of broken, probably rusted metal jabbed at me through the cloth covering on top of them. A tremendous amount of crashing and clanging rang out, and I’m ashamed to say, a yelp of surprise and pain from me.

A simple trap, one only an obsessive Assassin would ever fall for, and like the greatest dunce in the world, I had blundered right in. Now everyone in the shelter was awake, and on top of that, I couldn’t quite figure out how to get up. Damn and double damn.

Someone lit a candle and I could see that, though everyone able to had risen and grabbed a weapon, no one was attacking me. Once again, I’m ashamed to admit the candle fascinated me more than that elegant little fact for a few seconds. I hadn’t ever seen a candle before. I blinked, and the situation crashed home to me. Why wasn’t anyone coming after me? I was easy prey, just the kind a bunch of big bullies would find irresistible.

Then I looked and saw who had lit the candle in the first place.

Lafey.

Behind her stretched the rough sands and coarse rock Erik called ‘the Wastelands’. She didn’t remember crossing it. Somewhere in that vast nothingness was the big, comfortable house she lived in with Erik and the stupid fat white cat her adopted father kept telling her to leave alone.

Angel laughed and skipped a few steps. Stupid fat white cat! She had made a rhyme! She would go and tell Erik, and he would pretend to be upset with her for making fun of Allyson, and then he would smile, too.

She looked around. Grass, all around her. Some was green, some was brown, but all of it felt soft on her feet. This wasn’t home. Where was this? Where was Erik? She was so confused.

The little voice whispered in her ear again, and she smiled. Everything would be fine, everything would be okay, the little voice said. She just had to go that way, and everything would be happy again.

Angel didn’t notice the scrapes on her hands and shoulders from climbing over big rocks in the Wastelands. She didn’t remember going climbing. She didn’t notice the blistering red the sun had baked on her skin, or the cracks in her parched lips. She was going that way, and she didn’t know or care about anything else.

Michael would know the truth of that if he would only ask God for the wisdom to handle the situation properly. But Michael was not an Angel of Justice. He didn’t care about determining guilt or innocence. Truth was not his objective.

Michael was an Angel of Death, and he was an executioner. He meted out the punishment those who were found guilty deserved. He escorted condemned souls from the Judgment Seat of God to the cold dark of the Abyss. Hell. He arranged the final breaths of mortals, sinners and saved alike, though there were precious few of the latter these days.

Other Angels of Death did the same. Except for the few who trained to be Deathwalkers. Trained by Michael himself, Deathwalkers hunted Greys with a feverish intensity Rramaan himself had been the target of many a time. Hunted, imprisoned, and occasionally executed them. Rramaan hated Deathwalkers.

He picked himself up off the floor of his cell. He felt like he should be bruised from head to toe, but he knew he wasn’t. Angels, even fallen ones, did not bruise. Not on the outside, anyway. Inside, in his soul, was a different matter.

“I didn’t have anything to do with it!” He shouted at the empty chamber. They would hear him outside, but they wouldn’t listen. They never did.

But he couldn’t really complain. He was, after all, a Grey, and thus deserved far worse a punishment than simply being reminded in vivid detail of every vile, despicable deed he had ever done over thousands of years of living in sin. Which was what Michael had done to him.

And wasn’t anything, deserved or not, worth enduring, so long as his captors remained ignorant of his true crime? Yes, anything. Because if they didn’t know, there was the fervent, feverish hope that Lucivar didn’t know. And if Lucivar didn’t know, then there was the slim chance that maybe what began as the most evil of actions could turn out to be for good… The first good thing he had ever done.

But he still didn’t do anything to that little girl.

Lafey smiled, which was not so much an expression of pleasure as a predator’s feral grin at finding its prey already served up on a dinner platter. His tawny brown-gold eyes glinted with satisfaction, drinking up the sight of me. He looked like a coyote.

“So, this is the famed Assassin,” he said, seeming to savor every word. I wondered if he had practiced making this speech. “Claude’s pet killer. The best of the best.” His way of speaking sounded strange to me, and for a moment I couldn’t figure out why. Then I realized he was using whole words, not clipped and slurred like a streetkid. Odd.

I met his gaze, refusing to let any particle of fear show in my eyes. I felt blood trickle down my shoulder from the metal shards, but I managed to sit up anyway. I wondered if I could stand.

How ludicrous it must have seemed to those who watched; a scrawny little black-haired kid with a knife, glaring up at a tall, solidly-built man in his early thirties, with his pack at the ready!

Lafey scoffed. “You don’t look like much to me, boy. You think you’re so tough, waving that little knife around.” He sniffed, and touched the sword at his hip. “Don’t even have a real weapon. Tell me, O master Assassin,” he mocked, “have you ever killed anyone in a fair fight? Or are you too afraid of being snapped like a twig?”

The coldness of my emotions flickered. If there was one thing I hated more than anything else, it was taunting. Cowards taunt. Weaklings taunt. It makes them feel all big and bad.

I pursed my lips. “I wouldn’t have ta hunt ya in th’ shadows if ya didn’t run scared from a fair fight,” I shot back. I pulled myself to my feet. “Are ya offerin’ ta gimme one?”

Lafey laughed. “Now, why would I do that? You’re on my turf, in my home, and have killed several of my men. I would say that’s grounds for execution.” He smiled that feral smile again, and I truly began to hate him.

An Assassin cannot be executed. The three tattooed positions - Leader, Assassin, and Medic - cannot be executed. This is part of streetkid law. You want one of the tattooed dead? Kill them in a fight, or have them assassinated. Simple as that. Did Lafey think he could break two thousand years of strict custom on a whim?

“What? No witty answer? No valiant quoting of law and honor?”

“I’m an Assassin. That’s th’ only law I follow. What do I know of honor?” Except that I kill the honorless, like you, I thought.

He slapped my shoulder. I felt contaminated. “Know what, kid? I think I like you. As a matter of fact, I’m certain I like you. Be a shame to kill you.”

I spat in his face. “Be a pleasure ta kill you. Go ta Hell, ya oversized coward!”

Hot rage poured through Lafey’s blood, and painted his face with splotches of red and purple. He wiped the spit off and bared his teeth.

“You know, kid, I set all this up just so we could have this little chat? The claim on your turf, the threats, the carvings on your friend, all of it. I was going to invite you to join my pack. I was intrigued, you see? They say you can do anything, kill anyone, and leave no witnesses. The other packs shiver at the mention of the great Dakarys. I figured you might like to be on the winning side for once. But now? Now, I think it will give me great pleasure to waste you.”

He drew his sword from his belt and prepared to skewer me. I, however, neither desired nor intended to allow myself to be skewered.

I jabbed my knife into the gut of the guy behind me, pulled it out, and ducked. Lafey’s blade whooshed over me, and I rolled to the side, ignoring the fiery pain in my shoulder. Seven left. Six, if the girl hadn’t come to yet.

An older boy with prematurely white hair tried to cut me off. I kicked his legs out from under him and slid my knife between his vertebrae. It would have been kinder to kill him than to leave him crippled to die a long, slow death of starvation and shame, but I was preoccupied with dodging blows from various weapons and trying not to get killed, myself.

I cut off one of an axe-wielding boy’s fingers, then blinked as I was soundly clouted on the head. I saw weird flashes of light before darkness took me, but not the face of the one who hit me - the one who consigned me to death.