The knock on her door went unnoticed, the first time.
She was a machine. Born, bred, and honed to a fine edge, Artemis Heracleides was, without a doubt, a killer, a hunter, a legacy that ran through her veins as surely as four rivers ran through the realm of Hades to converge at its center.
So it was, after every hunt, the same ritual. The shower, to wash herself clean of the blood. The weapons cared for - guns taken apart and cleaned, knives honed back to razor-sharpness, all while drinking glass after glass of Jack Daniel's - her own addition to the ritual - her hands doing the work, while her mind drifted like a ship with no anchor, aimless and wandering.
After the weapons had been tended to, exercise. Pushups, five hundred of them - standard, diamonds, wides, left hand, right hand - followed by crunches and obliques (three hundred total), pullups, four count swimmer's kicks, jumping jacks, mountain climbers, eight-count body builders.
Every muscle worked, then reworked, then reworked again, like steel in a master's forge, to be folded and shaped and honed into a deadly, elegant and graceful weapon.
These things had been so drilled into her that now she did them by rote, without any thought or feeling, letting her body do the work, while her mind wandered.
It had been wandering far afield, lately.
Ever since the death of the Order.
Ever since the note, and the file.
To say that her life had been a lie would have been somewhat unfair. True, she hadn't known much that the file revealed to her. True, the Order hadn't told her everything. But they had raised her, trained her, cared for her. She was honestly sure that there had been those that, in their own way while she was growing up, had truly cared for her, perhaps even loved her as a daughter. There had even been one or two she might've loved back, to some degree.
The knock came again, just as she was pulling her chin over the bar hanging from her ceiling for the thirtieth time.
She hung there for a moment, looking at the door from where she was, then sighed. She was paid up for a few months, at least. What could they possibly want?
She let her self drop to the floor, landing heavily, her feet sending a loud thud through the floor to let whoever was out there know she was coming. Snatching a towel, she used it to mop the sweat from her forehead, then draped it over her shoulders as she reached the door and pulled it open.
For a long moment, she just stared at the man standing in her doorway. He looked like he might've just left a funeral service - a sharp, hand-tailored black suit, black tie, polished shoes, white shirt, dark hair and moustache just concealing a face that looked like it did a lot of smiling sometimes, more severe expressions at others. She saw hints of features that were familiar there.
They should've been, too. She saw them every time she looked in the mirror.
Turning away from the door, she waved over her shoulder to beckon him into her room in the Red Dragon Inn.
"Come in, Father."
She was a machine. Born, bred, and honed to a fine edge, Artemis Heracleides was, without a doubt, a killer, a hunter, a legacy that ran through her veins as surely as four rivers ran through the realm of Hades to converge at its center.
So it was, after every hunt, the same ritual. The shower, to wash herself clean of the blood. The weapons cared for - guns taken apart and cleaned, knives honed back to razor-sharpness, all while drinking glass after glass of Jack Daniel's - her own addition to the ritual - her hands doing the work, while her mind drifted like a ship with no anchor, aimless and wandering.
After the weapons had been tended to, exercise. Pushups, five hundred of them - standard, diamonds, wides, left hand, right hand - followed by crunches and obliques (three hundred total), pullups, four count swimmer's kicks, jumping jacks, mountain climbers, eight-count body builders.
Every muscle worked, then reworked, then reworked again, like steel in a master's forge, to be folded and shaped and honed into a deadly, elegant and graceful weapon.
These things had been so drilled into her that now she did them by rote, without any thought or feeling, letting her body do the work, while her mind wandered.
It had been wandering far afield, lately.
Ever since the death of the Order.
Ever since the note, and the file.
To say that her life had been a lie would have been somewhat unfair. True, she hadn't known much that the file revealed to her. True, the Order hadn't told her everything. But they had raised her, trained her, cared for her. She was honestly sure that there had been those that, in their own way while she was growing up, had truly cared for her, perhaps even loved her as a daughter. There had even been one or two she might've loved back, to some degree.
The knock came again, just as she was pulling her chin over the bar hanging from her ceiling for the thirtieth time.
She hung there for a moment, looking at the door from where she was, then sighed. She was paid up for a few months, at least. What could they possibly want?
She let her self drop to the floor, landing heavily, her feet sending a loud thud through the floor to let whoever was out there know she was coming. Snatching a towel, she used it to mop the sweat from her forehead, then draped it over her shoulders as she reached the door and pulled it open.
For a long moment, she just stared at the man standing in her doorway. He looked like he might've just left a funeral service - a sharp, hand-tailored black suit, black tie, polished shoes, white shirt, dark hair and moustache just concealing a face that looked like it did a lot of smiling sometimes, more severe expressions at others. She saw hints of features that were familiar there.
They should've been, too. She saw them every time she looked in the mirror.
Turning away from the door, she waved over her shoulder to beckon him into her room in the Red Dragon Inn.
"Come in, Father."