Page 55 of Hell’s Weapon

“It would seem.”

Looking up from the victims, I assess Garrick through my mask, which I haven’t bothered to remove. It feels so good to be back in my true attire. The costume everyone knows me in. The faceless bringer of death.

Garrick’s standing by the main door. Arms folded across his chest, feet slightly apart. A quizzical look etches across his face, his brows knitting and his stubble-coated jaw ticking.

“Who knew we could have a full conversation without a single insult.” I chuckle as I realise we are in fact working quite well together.

He grunts a response I take to mean that he agrees.

I continue to ask him questions and he gives me all the information he’s gathered so far, and then asks driving questions back. Together we develop the timeline, determine the type of knife used on the second victim, and the likelihood of the implement used on the first.

The injuries inflicted leave no doubt that each was killed with a different tool. Which is interesting in itself. And not common when it comes to serial killers. Normally, they stick to their favourite. Even with contract killers, who are trained in various ways to end lives, it is rare they use two different methods for a double kill like this.

“Theatrics aside, you're actually good at this aren’t you?” Garrick surprises me with the comment.

Snorting in response to the back-handed compliment, I rise from where I’d been kneeling to check the rest of Sixty-Six’s body in case there were any other injuries we’d missed.

“I didn’t get to my position on luck,” I snark. “Or theatrics.”

“So why the get up?” He sounds genuinely interested so I decide to indulge him.

“I can still be me when I want to be. You saw how the guards looked at me when I arrived. Half of them are scared and the other half believe in the hierarchy of power too much.”

“We have to have a chain of command,” he argues.

“I’m not saying we don’t. But I knew that I wanted to be the best when I signed up to start killing for a living. I also knew I wanted my anonymity so I could still be a regular demon whenever I wanted. Besides, how many of the realm would believe that Hades’s Assassin is a female?” Garrick can’t see my face but my lips curl into a sly grin. Some of the pompous assholes I had to work for when I first joined Hades's team would be shocked to their very souls to know just how far I outperformed anything they ever achieved, no matter how far Hades has pushed for reform.

“I’ve always thought you were female. The Death Bringer, I mean,” Garrick replies.

“You did?” I cock my head at him.

“Yeah. It’s in your attention to detail. The little things you do to those you bring in. Whether that’s the type of injuries they have, or the things they say you did as you captured them. And how thorough you are in arranging their finances.”

“You notice that?”

“Of course. You might deliver the worst souls to Tartarus but it’s my job to make their afterlife their living Hell. Most of the time I find that you’ve already done it before you bring them in.”

“I do like ensuring the rich bastards know their money is going to be well spent after they’re gone.” Like Mr Albright, who I’d killed to get into the games. I often loved to tie up my assignments money to ensure it went to help those who I knew they despised the most; whether that be women, children, or marginalised communities they wrongly screwed over during their lives.

And if they weren’t rich, I tended to carry out a little bit of my own torture before dumping their asses with Charon to carry across the river, or Garrick’s team at the gates of Tartarus.

“Being thorough doesn’t make me female,” I say, still slightly perplexed at Garrick’s assessment.

“True. Call it intuition or my skill in reading people, but I knew. I just never would’ve guessed that the biggest pain in my ass in these games would be the highly professional assassin to our Lord.”

That has me bursting into laughter. “Then you don’t know the real me at all, Officer.”

“Clearly not,” he replies, but the look that crosses his face this time says that he might like to.

It unnerves me, sends heat spreading over my skin, making it feel tight and my muscles tense.

“I think we’re about done here,” I say as a way to break whatever train of thought the Head Officer is headed down.

He shakes whatever thought he’d been having out of head and his standard grumpy demeanour returns. “Yes. Shall we return to my office? We can debrief Hades and then I can get you to your cell. And my team can clear the bodies.”

“Cell?” My eyebrows hit my hairline underneath my mask.

“You didn’t think I was going to let you off from firing off at me, did you?” He refers to the way he got me away from the crowd earlier. When I’d walked up to him to ask him about the murders, he’d told me to give him reason to take me away from the others.