People assume, or at least I believe this is so, that a contract killer should sleep easily. At least if they are as cold and detached as they seem. Perhaps if that was all I had been, I might have slept soundlessly in my bed. Instead, I dreamed of oceans of fire and blood, tossing and turning through the day as I slept. Old battle scenes and their horrors blended with the grisly aftermaths of plague and famine. Death was so familiar that I feared no end, mine or anyone else's, but that did not change the emotion of the old memories even after so long.

It was better when I actually slept with my skin pressed against the soil of my native earth, but for the moment I had a finite supply of that. A cigar box filled with earth was neatly tucked under the bed I slept in, offering at least some islands of respite amongst the tempestuous abyss of memory. I always made certain I had a fair number of those boxes, in the luggage or storage containers, depending on how long we intended to stay.

I heard Dieter come into the room when I stirred fitfully. He sat at the edge of the bed and ran fingers over my hair, not aware that I wasn't completely asleep. "You're okay, Malle," he mumbled, mostly asleep himself.

Such a sweet man, your servant. He does take a fine care of you. Sirje's voice filled my thoughts. Such devotion should be savored.

I wasn't certain if it was a dream or a memory. She had made many such comments over the centuries we spent together. Where Sirje was the chameleon who discarded humans regularly to avoid being recognized as a face that never aged, I always made a point to have at least one I could trust at all times. It proved to be a point of contention often in those days, as there were times I had returned from a journey to find no trace of them except the husk of a body. Sirje never understood my anger at the sight. It was one of the few things I didn't miss in her absence.

She was more of a force of nature than a transformed mortal by the time she turned me. I couldn't begin to imagine what she might have seen in me. I had no memory of who I was before the change. None of us did. It erased everything that came before. A wise vampire takes their fledgling far from their old life before they even awaken, Sirje had told me once. I was never certain if this was for fear of them being recognized and slain or because too many familiar faces too soon would reawaken the memories of mortal life.

I would never know. Nothing had ever stirred that absence. Not even speaking my mother tongue could bring up some memories beyond what each word meant.

In my centuries with Sirje, I had been rootless. Any time I started to feel at home, she would move us, perhaps always ensuring my loyalty to her.

Then Paris.

I heard the shearing of the guillotine in my dreams, punctuating each vision of Sirje in the firelight with the dull thump of a rolling head.

What a strange twist of irony, if the woman who had called herself the Queen of Hearts had lost her own head. It was such a strange inversion of Lewis Carroll that I wondered privately sometimes if the man had ever heard the stories of her. There was certainly plenty of her imperious and capricious nature in his character.

I woke to the sound of a door opening. Dieter was sprawled out on the bed next to me, his hand still resting against my hair as he snored softly. If he was here, either a housekeeper had ignored a lot of warnings or someone was here to do us harm. The sun was still shining on the other side of the curtains, however, which meant I was far weaker than normal.

I slipped out of bed, well aware that waking Dieter would interrupt his sound and alert the intruding danger to a change. I stepped into the shadows of the bathroom and pulled my pistol out of the bag of my clothes, wincing at even the barest glimmer of gold I could see at the edge of the curtains back in the bedroom. I waited and listened as I threaded on the suppressor.

Four hearts beating and the faint smell of mortal fear. They had an inkling what they were intruding on, which did nothing to comfort me.

When the door to the bedroom opened, sunlight came spilling in. I shrank back into the bathroom. If I allowed them to reach the curtains in this room, I would have a real problem on my hands. I apologized mentally to Dieter even as I fired. He hated waking up to a gunshot and there were about to be several.

Supernatural speed has its advantages. I hit the one going for the curtains in the back of the head, dropping him like a stone. A full metal jacket .45 caliber shot will do some truly unpleasant things to a skull. I didn't feel the recoil. Instead of watching him, my eyes had already moved even as I finished cycling the action. The Semmerling LM4 was a present from Dieter that required it, which was excellent for assassinations, but somewhat challenging in situations like this.

I did love a challenge.

The gunshot sent Dieter diving for cover on the other side of the bed, a move so reflexive he could do it half asleep.. The one closest to me rounded with his own gun drawn. I ducked back out of the way as his muzzle moved, gone before he could pull the trigger. About ten shots zipped my way at submachine gun speed. That was not good.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

At least Dieter was still cursing. That meant he was still alive. The sharp three cracks of retaliation meant he also had his gun on him still. I heard all three shots hit, but not the impact of a body against the floor. "Malle, body armor!"

I dropped to one knee and popped out of cover below the eyeline of the man with the submachine gun. My second shot blew out his knee, the third caught him in the head.

Brilliant daylight poured into the room as the third man wrenched open the curtains. I hissed reflexively and recoiled back into the bathroom with a parting shot that tagged the fourth man in the leg, my eyes nearly blind from the hateful glare of my worst enemy. I could handle strobes and flash bangs, but never the sun.

Dieter must have popped up, because I heard another burst of three shots. This time, a body hit the floor over by the window. He wouldn't be able to get to the curtains until the fourth man was dead or completely disabled.

I kept my back against the bathroom wall, staying in the shadows as I angled my body for another shot towards the whimpering man on the floor. I caught him in the head and flicked the action of my pistol with my thumb for the final time. While Dieter checked for more, I reloaded. The pistol only held five shots, a price of being so slim and compact that it could fit comfortably in a pocket.

"You okay in there, sweetheart?" Dieter shouted as he cleared the room.

I looked myself over. I'd escaped without any burns, but the sunlight pouring into the room promised an agonizing death if I ventured into it. It would burn me progressively worse and worse, and while I was in the sun, I could not regenerate. "Not even a scratch."

Dieter returned quickly and pulled closed the curtains. "Alright," he said, poking his head into the darkness. "Four dead idiots. I'll search them and then the shotgun and I will keep watch while you get the rest of your forty winks in. I'd call hotel security, but there's no damage to the door. They got in here with a key. Marie's gonna have a fit when she clocks in tonight."

I emerged swaying from fatigue. "Remind me who is in charge on day shift?"

"Hugh," Dieter muttered darkly, steadying me as I climbed back over to the bed. "I'm going to knee-cap him with his own sidearm for this." He stopped me before I could lay down. "Not on this side, sweetheart. There's blood all over it and the pillow. There's less on my side."

I nodded, stepping around the bed. He ripped off the top covers to minimize the amount of blood seeping into the mattress and then opened one of the drawers to the side, pulling out a spare blanket to drape over me. Then he reached under the bed and retrieved the cigar box with my native earth. Dieter slid it under the bed on the new side so I would be able to sleep more restfully.

"You take such care good of me," I mumbled, already almost asleep again. "Wake me if more come."

"Unless they bring a literal apocalypse with them, I'm not waking you." He gave my shoulder a squeeze. "Get some sleep."

With the sun high in the sky, I had little power to resist. I slept.

By the time I awoke, the sun was almost completely set and the hotel room smelled of congealed blood. Dieter and Marie were talking in the next room. I sat up, noting someone had dragged the bodies into the other room. I walked around and checked that the curtains were closed in the main area before I opened the door fully.

It creaked and a tired Dieter looked up. He had his short-barreled shotgun across his lap. Marie was examining the bodies. "You're up early, sweetheart." Dieter only used that term of endearment when he was worried, and the fact that it hadn't eased meant they'd discovered something unsettling.

I stepped into the room and sat down on the couch, rubbing at my eyes. "I am not a fainting violet, Dieter. What did you find?"

Marie turned one of the corpses so I had a view of the back of its neck. A strange design looked back at me, a heavily stylized symbol of an eye at the center of a rose. "You recognize this, Malle? It's not a syndicate or gang marking that I've seen before," Marie asked.

A knot formed in my stomach when I saw it. "I do not," I lied smoothly. "What did Hugh say?"

"Hugh's dead," Marie said grimly. "I found him in his office. He looped the cameras for them and then shot himself. The camera in the office was the only one Hugh missed. Or he left it intentionally so I would know."

"We can't stay here, Marie," Dieter muttered.

Marie sighed. "I know. I'm going to comb Hugh's files, talk to the dayshift staff, and see if there's any other traces of this insanity. I'll have the cleaners come up and take care of the bodies. It might take me a few hours to find anything."

"We will stay in the lounge and wait."

Dieter scowled. "Malle, don't be ridiculous. We should be getting you the hell out of here."

"No one is going to make a move there, where it could set off a war between syndicates or draw the attention of the bodyguards present," I said smoothly. "We have all night with nowhere to be."

My partner narrowed his eyes. He wanted to argue, but Marie was unaware of my true nature and that was best left unchanged. "I hate it when you think you're invincible."

"That is not what I think," I said evenly. "I think it is far easier to be shot in a parking lot than in the middle of organized crime elements who depend on this place and the people who run it to do their business."

"It's also hard to secure a crowd," Dieter muttered.

"A knife that cuts both ways."

He threw up his hands. "Alright, fine. But I'm not going to be happy about it." He waited until after Marie had said her farewell and left before voicing his next thought. "Any theories about that tattoo?"

I sighed. "More than a theory. I have seen it before."

"Yeah?" His brows furrowed when I frowned. "Where?"

"On Sirje's signet ring." I rose to my feet. "Why would she wish me harm? And why do it like this? She would be more than capable of putting me in the ground herself. This makes no sense!"

Dieter's worried look returned. "Maybe someone else is using it to get to you, or maybe she's not as careful as you thought."

"If someone else is using it for such a purpose, they know far too much about me," I said bitterly. "And if it is Sirje herself..." I pulled in a deep breath at that painful thought.

He put a hand on my shoulder. "Go get cleaned up, Malle. I'll handle packing. Promise me you'll at least try to get a kiss out of that singer before we go?"

I sighed. "We will see."

"Don't worry, sweetheart," he said as he stood up, resting the shotgun against his leg. "We'll get it figured."