Chapter One
What have I done? What the hell have I done?
Vision blurry and ears ringing, Fox the Executioner stumbled around the ancient, crumbling temple. This was a warzone. She needed to focus but… So dizzy.
How many enemies waited nearby? Hoping to ward off an attack, she waved her short swords wildly, metal whistling. A cool wind blustered past the temple’s pillars, the warm, wet blood that coated her hands and dripped down her arms chilling in an instant.
She had portaled here only minutes before and…and…she had gone into some kind of trance and murdered…she’d killed… A cry of distress parted her lips. She’d killed ten demon assassins known as Sent Ones. Immortals who’d been bound and utterly helpless.
Innocents.
Killing wasn’t new to her. For centuries, people had paid her big bucks to slay their targets. As an equal opportunity assassin, she always welcomed a chance to take out liars, perverts, thieves, abusers, and cheaters. Even fellow exterminators. And she never f
ailed to complete the job. No dead body meant no payment. No payment, no happiness.
Money was her source of life, and she always wanted more.
As a child, Fox had tasted the horrors of destitution. Without shelter, you were vulnerable to predators as much as the elements. Without food, you were rendered weak. Too weak to defend yourself. Without water and clean clothes, you were stripped of your humanity. Never again. She’d learned to save backup money for her backup money’s backup money.
Today, however, she would earn no fee for her kills and derive no satisfaction from taking out bad men. The Sent Ones had been good. They had not deserved death. And yet, the moment she’d spotted them, something dark and insidious had overtaken her. She’d attacked.
Something? Like she really had to wonder where to cast the blame. Not too long ago, the demon of Distrust had possessed her, and she’d let him. Hell, she’d welcomed him. Her people lived to the ripe old age of five thousand, never any longer. As she’d neared the end, she’d sought true immortality.
That was her first mistake.
Her second? Considering herself too strong-minded to be influenced by her dark companion.
Now, crazed, gleeful laughter rumbled in the back of her mind, disrupting her thoughts.
Fox dropped her swords, a clang reverberating. Still stumbling about, she fisted her hands and punched her temples. Anything to make the hated laughter stop. But it didn’t stop. It never would. Evil didn’t play by any rules. It lied, cheated, stole, abused and murdered, the very things she’d spent centuries fighting against.
Worse than the laughter, the whispers. The demon enjoyed wafting his poison into her mind, little suspicions quickly ballooning into huge over-reactions.
She lies, kill her… He is setting you up for a fall, kill him… They cannot be trusted, kill them…
Today had been no different. The Sent Ones hunt the demon-possessed, kill them…