Chapter One: Murderer

Running water. All she could hear was the running water to her left. She felt the water droplets collect on her cheek until their weight became too great and gravity slowly pulled them down in a cool line to land on her hand. The light mist felt good. Her skin felt far too hot, pumped full of adrenaline. Her hair was soaked probably from the same mist that was causing the condensation on her skin.

How did she end up lying on the ground? Oh yeah, rammed by her latest target. Definitely not up to par today. It was mandatory for all assassins to be trained in hand to hand combat as well as all cops. Being both a cop and an assassin for the government’s department on supernatural creatures, Haven was not quite sure why she was doing so poorly today. Though, her targets never got this close to her. Her weapon of choice was an L96A1; shooting from miles away on top of a building so that they would never see it coming.

A shot from that far away, the speed of the bullet as it entered their skull would cause such a drastic change in pressure that the entire skull would explode. Seeing as her victims could probably function just fine with a bullet hole but would not get very far without their heads, this seemed the most efficient way to get the job done. Wouldn’t want to simply aggravate the creature and have it go on a rampage killing more people. Unfortunately when killing vampires, you have to burn the body and it’s hard to set a body on fire from such a distance.

Most people are aware that the creatures are alive. They are no longer the things of movies and ghost stories; now your doctor could turn into a tiger every full moon, your neighbors could be ghosts, and as far as you know your coworkers are vampires. The integration of supernatural beings was a gradual one. One by one the monsters came forward and exposed themselves. After the hysteria passed, and the world-wide mass murders of many innocent creatures, people realized that they had lived in peace for years as it was, so there wasn’t really anything to be afraid of.

Well that is not entirely true. There is some threat, if there wasn’t Haven wouldn’t have a job. She would simply be a detective investigating average homicides, not those linked with supernatural creatures. The government wouldn’t send her out to, for lack of a better word, dispose of those who do go homicidal.

Now was not the time to be reminiscing about how she ended up lying on the smooth marble of the fountains edge. Now she had to fight for her life. She looked up squinting through the mist. The small shadowy figure was sitting on the opposite edge watching her. She didn’t move but watched as the shape of a little girl slowly stood and walked around the fountain as if it were a tight rope, as little girls may do.

Narrowing her eyes, she held her breath. She went to the quiet abyss inside of herself; that place specifically for the kill shot. Her gun went off within her hands though she neither heard the shot nor saw the flash. Her eyes were only for the small creature. She watched as her small head whip back with the force and her body soon followed being thrown into the air. Watched it fall hitting the pavement with such force that the body actually bounced then skidded, leaving a thick smear of black blood along the fountain.

Haven stood slowly; as her senses slowly came back to her the people in the plaza seemed to speed up. The sound of the fountain came back in a roar but she didn’t even blink. The body lay there unmoving, but Haven knew better. She shouted to the people who had started creeping out from under the tables they had used as refuge when the fight had started.

“Stay back! Don’t come out yet!” she yelled to the people desperately trying to let them know that there was no way that one shot killed this small demon. She kept her gun pointed steadily at the child lying on the ground and slowly, step by step, walked around the fountain. The shot had landed between the eyes, but vampires heal quickly. The vampire that had the bright idea of turning a child should lose an appendage.

Children vampires are the worst. They don’t know how to control themselves and end up killing massive amounts of people, not because they are evil, but because they never learned the skills necessary for restraint. It was horrible to have to kill children. She hated killing them though she killed them more often than their adult counterparts.

As she stood above the child with her gun pointed down the eyelids fluttered and her gun went of a second time this time, straight through the neck. This shot was meant to sever the spinal chord. The eyelids stopped fluttering. Haven slowly drew the large blade from its sheath at her back, grabbed a handful of golden curls and beheaded the girl with one swift move.

The only true way to know that a vampire is dead, permanently dead, is to burn the body. The only problem is you have to burn the head separately. Sometimes they can rejuvenate themselves if you don’t, usually only the really old ones, but there’s no such thing as too careful. Beheading someone isn’t an easy task. It took Haven years to perfect this ghastly art. When she first started she had to whack at the neck at least four times to cut all the way through, a neck being thicker than most people think.

Now it takes no more than that one fateful swing, with a freshly sharpened blade and all the strength she has built up over the years. Everyday Haven spends about three hours in the gym, not to mention the various martial arts classes she takes, the hours logged in the range practicing her marksmanship. Her entire life revolves around being the best at what she does.

Haven stepped away from the body and threw the head. It rolled a little way then stopped. The angelic face of child sleeping stared up at her as she dropped the lit match. Vampires burn. They don’t burn the way humans do. A comparable example would be lighting a piece of beach grass that has been left out in the sun for two weeks on fire. They go up and burn to ash within seconds. Once the head was nothing but dust she walked back over to the body and did the same.

A hand touched her arm and she turned quickly to find a woman staring up at her with shock written all over her face. “How could you?” the woman asked shock and disgust dripping from each word. “It was only a child. She didn’t do anything to you. You just looked at her and pointed your gun. She went crazy, throwing tables and screaming, but only after she saw the gun.”

How do you explain that the child she saw had killed thirteen innocent people? How do you tell someone that the innocent little girl whose blood was still wet on the marble, whose dust was slowly disappearing into the ground like it had never been there, whose body would be gone without a single trace by morning had been a ruthless, vicious murderer? You’re blunt.

“She didn’t do anything to me personally; aside from bruise me up a little. Which is not very much compared to what she could do, but she killed thirteen people. Thirteen people with families, with jobs, with lives. They didn’t deserve to die. She did. The monster that killed her deserves to die as well. I didn’t kill her. I know what you’re going to say. I didn’t kill her. She was a vampire. A rogue vampire at that; she was already dead.”

The woman’s hand fell from Haven’s sleeve and she backed away slowly. Haven knew that the woman could not see the child as a murderer. She also knew that the woman thought Haven was. The dozens of people in the plaza probably did too. What could she do about it? They had witnessed her “kill” a child. She didn’t have the time to get it through their heads that by disposing of this child she had done her civic duty.

Haven always viewed it in a way so that she was sparing it from an eternity of pain, an eternity of killing people without the ability to control itself, an eternity stuck in a tiny body without the chance to grow up. It was the ethical thing to do. If only the people staring at her could see it that way. They would probably have nightmares about her. The monsters didn’t call her Deadly Wit for nothing.

Just like people tell their children to behave or monsters will get them, the monsters tell the new members of their various societies to behave or The Deadly Wit will come for them. The latter is truer than the former. She would get them, she always got her man. Always.

Rolling her eyes she wiped her blade on the edge of the fountain and walked out of the plaza with the rest of the people at her heals. They didn’t want to stay there any more than she did. She sighed and pulled her hair out of the tight bun she kept it in while on the job and got into her hearse.

Yeah, she drove a hearse, ironic isn’t it? It wasn’t an actively used a hearse, but the extra space in the back allowed her to store many a weapon inconspicuously while still managing to be smaller than a van or a truck. Being a petite woman she felt the need to be in smaller vehicles. Wouldn’t want to look too out of place?

She started the engine and pushed the button for the radio to come on. Her radio was always set to the national news. She knew that news was only sensationalized crap that grossly overstated minor events and undercut many of the far more interesting stories. She also liked to listen in, just in case someone started talking about her. A national monster assassin and world renowned detective, why wouldn’t she be in the news?

Haven knew the streets of Washington D.C. like the back of her hand by now. She drove mindlessly. She didn’t really see where she was going yet she stopped for every pedestrian, stop light or sign and turned all of the right corners. She didn’t really hear the news yet she knew they spoke for ten minutes about a ten year old girl who graduated from college with a PHD in medical studies, specializing in Lycanthropy.

When she turned into her driveway her mind came back to her and she looked up at the huge mansion she had recently bought. It wasn’t really a mansion, a three story colonial in historic D.C. is hardly anything compared to the 90210 of Beverly Hills, but for a single woman without a boyfriend it seemed like a palace.

She got out of the car leaving the door open and the car running and opened the two doors to the garage. Walking back to the car, she barely lifted her feet listening to the scuff noises her shoes made on the asphalt. Closed the door to her car with a thud and parked it safely within the garage. She walked around it to close the doors and sighed softly as she locked it. We wouldn’t want a car full of highly dangerous weapons being stolen.

She followed the walkway through the overgrown garden the last owner of the house had left. She had no time to garden and no hubby to do it for her. She sighed thinking that she would have to do something about it to keep up appearances with the neighbors.

She unlocked the back door and walked into her kitchen. She dropped her car key into the basket on the table next to the door, pulled her coat off and placed it on the hook, then took it back off the hook as she noticed it was a little blood spattered. Blood spattered? Vampire blood disappears like the rest of them once they were dead. There shouldn’t have been blood spatter.

Haven looked down slowly and saw the small gashes in her arm. She didn’t even remember getting hurt that bad. She must have cut her arm up on the rough side of the marble within the fountain. She sighed and tossed the coat on to the table.

She opened the door in the kitchen that most people thought led to either a butler’s pantry or a closet but actually was a set of stair leading to the third floor. Servant’s stairs originally, now it just happened to be the easiest way to the master suite.

Haven had remolded the third floor into a huge master suite, just the way she liked it. She climbed the stairs into the small sitting room and flipped the switch to light the fireplace. She walked past the fireplace and across her bedroom floor to the huge master bathroom. She didn’t bother to turn on the light but walked straight to the sink to wash out her arm.

She turned the switch on the two lights next to the mirror and looked at herself as she washed the cuts with soap and water. The first thing anybody ever noticed was that her eyes were moss green. Most green eyes are closer to hazel, or even an emerald green. Her eyes seemed ethereal, to even her. She sighed and counted the twenty three freckles that dotted from one cheek to the other over her nose.

She yelped slightly as she added the soap to her wounds. She had forgotten what her hands were doing. Counting freckles will do that to a person. She scrubbed and winced as she went back to examining her face. Her nose was perfect, short and round, not pointy no bumps, not too fat nor to skinny. She smiled softly, her delicate lips lifting at the corners.

For a ruthless killer she was very cute. She had to pull the mirror forward to open the medicine cabinet and reach the bandages. First she smeared the wound with some antiseptic gunk that smelled of chemicals, and then she wrapped her arm tight. As she closed the mirror she finally ran a hand through her hair in a futile attempt to tame the mess of orange curls that were flying about her head. She hated her hair because it was unmanageable, but every man she had ever dated said it was beautiful.

That was probably the reason she had grown it out as long as she had. She turned to see that it reached her waist. If she took into account the fact that it was curly, huge thick natural curls that looked artificial, it had to be at least down to her butt. She stripped slowly peeling off each piece of clothing and carried them with her back through the rooms and down the stairs. She took her clothes and her jacket to the door that led to the basement, dressed in nothing but her bra and underwear. She opened the door carefully and made her way to the wash.

Starting her clothes on a cold wash so as not to set in the bloodstains she walked back upstairs. She looked down noticing that she was scantily clad and walked back to her room to throw on a pair of shorts and a tank top. Once she was more comfortable she jumped onto her bed. A king sized beauty covered in a green comforter with an ivy design. The green matched her eyes. She took one of the pillows from behind her and hugged it to herself as she turned the television on in front of her. Being four in the afternoon it was too early for dinner or bed, but she was too tired to get anything else accomplished. She set the television to the cooking channel then went into the bathroom to retrieve her weapons, cell phone, and pager then stalked back to her bed.

She used her foot to slide the boxes out from under her bed. One box held the spaces for the equipment she used solely when working as well as extra ammo and was locked with a fingerprint analyzer, the other simply held the tools to clean and sharpen her weapons. She took the cloth and chemicals out first so that she could make her weapons shiny and new. She cleaned them silently watching the chef make some fancy Italian dish. Then she took her whetstone out and careful sharpened the blade again. She placed her M1911 into its holster on the headboard but opened the box to put everything else away. Two Colt .45s, four extra boxes of ammo and the knife fit within the box perfectly. She slid them back under the bed.

Unless you knew Haven’s occupation, you would think she was just another girl. Girly bed, girly cream colored wallpaper with faint ivy designs, girly dresser, girly closet, girly pillows, everything around her screamed petite, pathetic damsel who couldn’t save herself if she tried. She laughed softly at the irony within her own taste. Then sighed at the fact that if she did need saving, there would be no one there to come and save her, no one to miss her.