Vera perched on the edge of the building, the wind whipping at her exposed eyes and sending salty trails tracking down under her scarf. She rubbed her forearm across her eyes and tucked her face deeper into her hood, casting her whole face into shadow.
She pulled her scarf up and over her nose, shielding it from the biting wind as she started off into the distance, finally free to lose herself in thought. She admired the old square below her, trying to form a picture in her mind, a picture of the city in its heyday. She tried to clean it, to remove all the muddy footprints left on it, to wash the city of the disease of utopia.
Vera closed her eyes, thinking, content in her little world for the time being. She rarely ever felt this sense of calm, of peace. Her life, all lives, just flew by. So rapid. So fleeting.
She tucked a hand into her sleeve, her hand meeting warm fabric then soft skin then cold steel as she eased one of her knives out of its sheathe.
Admiring the way the blade caught the dying light and turned it to liquid amber, the soft glow playing across her face, she pulled a scrap of cloth from her pocket, relishing in the feel of the silky fabric against her hand. Tenderly, almost reverently, she wiped the blade down. She could feel the icy cold of the steel through the warmth of the cleaning cloth as she stroked the gleaming metal, cleansing it of all the visible stains it bore, and the removal of the blood brought the pain, the fear with it.
She rested it on her thigh, the comforting weight pressing into her leg as she cleaned the other knife, noticeable calm spreading across her face.
Vera took perfect care of her weapons, these beautiful blades that gave her life sustenance, survival, power.
She took a blade in her hand, her callused but smooth fingers gripping the blade with a suppleness that belied her underlying strength. She drew the knife across the ball of her other thumb, the razor edge slicing easily through her skin and pulling a bead of blood up to the surface, welling up and shining like a ruby in the fading sunlight, its brightness seeming to rage refusal at the dying of the light.
Doing the same to her other thumb with the other knife, two were added to the patter of scars crisscrossing her thumbs.
As always, the sharpness of the blades was perfect. Even though she knew that from the feeling as she had cut her man's throat earlier, she still sliced her thumbs to prove it. It was her ritual, the one thing that couldn't be controlled or monitored by...someone else.
It calmed her to do this every day, day after day, to feel the blade’s bite and see the blood rise.
That, and the fact that the pain helped her focus.
Vera sighed, the sound echoing in the empty, quiet air. Her mind switched directions, wandering from blood to pain to life to existence and back again.
Life. Eurgh.
It saddened her just to think of her pitiful existence. She was worth absolutely nothing. Aside from the steady destruction of the atmosphere by the conversion of oxygen into carbon dioxide, she did nothing of value. Sure, they told her her job was important, but was it?
Anyway, what use is a job if you had no one to talk about it with? No one with which to share your evenings, feelings, loves, hates, desires? She had no friends. No family. Not even a conscium, a partner. Everyone that came into her life did so once, and once only. Then, they were gone.
Vera stood, the rough surface of the roof grating against her bare feet. She didn’t feel it anymore. She barely felt anything.
Her contemplative mood ruined now, she turned and strode away from the edge, descending to the streets below.
A lone figure in black made for an unusual sight on the streets of this city. Not so much unusual but almost unheard of, as the the city Council had forbidden black clothing for all but the elites, the rich.
The rich, and the others.
The Deathbringers.
People she passed on the streets assumed she was of the former group, as the ones who brought death rarely walked the same streets as the common folk. They came down only to deliver death, or so the public thought.
But they were unaware of the one other reason: payment.
Vera kept her head down as she walked, keeping an ear open for interesting conversations. As she went about her business in town she occasionally caught snippets of talk about, of all things, her. Not just her, of course, but of all the other Deathbringers. The people in the city seemed to have realized that there was, in fact, more than one person that donned the angel scarf. Apparently, the townspeople had nicknames for them. Some had names like Elf or Eagle, others names like Knight or Monk. But Vera, the one who fell from the sky, the one who always gave her victims the chance to run, was Regina. Queen.
Vera glanced around, well aware of her conspicuousness. Far from being uncomfortable with it, she actually enjoyed the looks that she would occasionally garner from the passers-by. Infrequently, someone who held to the assumption that she was rich would stoop down to her height and risk a look under her hood, where they would be greeted by harsh golden eyes, a flash of steel, and a tiny pair of angel wings.
A new one, then.
As expected, a man shuffled into the alleyway, glancing furtively to one side and turning to glance to the other, starting in panic as he saw that Vera was already there, leaning against the doorframe and looking very, VERY impatient.
She looked this newcomer up and down, reflective eyes sizing him up, flicking about his person. She'd never seen him before, she was sure of that, but his posture was all too familiar. Arrogant, even dismissive, in the face of someone he had to know could kill him in an instant. Probably some low-ranked official brought up to do something useful for the first time. She glanced him up and down a second time, developing a healthy distaste for this ratlike creature at the same time as she decided that he needed to be brought down a couple pegs.
Her eyes dipped even lower into her scowl as she noted that he was well below average height, and let out a condescending 'tch' at the fact that he still stood several inches over her hooded head.
Glaring at him with unveiled hostility, threat implicit in her ice-cold golden eyes, Vera silently held out a hand. The rat opposite her tried to object to this silent treatment, saying something about procedure, but as he blethered on he managed to catch a blur of movement and a flash of steel as one of Vera's knives whirled past his head, burying its point in the wood of the door behind him. He felt a warm wetness down his neck and his thighs as his ear wept rivulets of blood and the tang of ammonia stained the air.
Vera's nose wrinkled in disgust as he hastily removed a thick envelope from a pocket, thrusting it at her with bony hands shaking so much they almost rattled.
A bit of the hostility faded from her eyes as she took the money, flicking open the tab with a forefinger and taking a quick glance inside. Satisfied, she slipped the envelope into one of the several pockets on her pitch black pants; the rectangular shape disappearing into an amorphous blob as she turned to walk away.
The man made a strangled sound, akin to that a mouse makes when it is trodden upon, before he cleared his throat and nodded to the gleaming blade still quivering behind him. Apparently some of his bravado had returned.
Pity.
"I-isn't that yours, shorty?"
Vera closed her eyes and shook her head slightly, sighing in complete contempt of this man's utter idiocy and pulling her scarf down below her chin.
"And here you were doing so well...I almost felt bad for making you pee yourself. You must be new."
He almost had time to blink.
Vera flicked her wrist, pulling the almost invisible wire she had attached to the hilt of the knife taut and yanking the knife out of the wall and sending it spinning, a disk of dying sunlight, back into her hand.
She tugged her scarf back up and slipped away, wiping the knife on the back of her leg and slotting it into the sheath on the side of her thigh.
Behind her, the ratty man choked out his last breaths as he drowned in his own blood, beady eyes full of shock and horror.
Vera pitied him with one last backwards glance, her eyes dark.
"Bye now."
ns 15.158.61.48da2
