Phantom Assassin (2015 version)

Chapter 08

Fog curled into the woods, burying the fight within. The air was dense and the scent of blood hung in the air. WP7 stood at the outside of the forest, waiting for the fight to end.

Hailey brushed her lips clean of blood. In doing so, she stained her glove and growled angrily. Her eyes glimmered red, magical portals of boiling lava. The crimson liquid on her lips glistened and a smirk found its way into her features. For a moment her lips parted and a cackle bellowed from her lungs.

"Come on out Trace, are you scared?" Hailey sounded possessed. Her pitch raised an octave very time she spoke, and her pupils shrunk into specks, her veins slightly visible.

Scared? Trace shook his head and gulped. I'm terrified.

He was in a tree. The only thing concealing him was a branch lowered in front of him. Mossy leaves covered down until they reached his crouched knees, and that was enough to keep him concealed.

She was going easy on him. The hand she cut off was his robotic one, so the blood that was shed had been painless. Hailey hadn't harmed him, but she seemed to be at the edge of her sanity, capable of just about anything.

"Where are you, Trace?" She growled, turning around 360 degrees. Trace watched through a gap in the leaves.

He'd stay hidden until Hailey would regain her sanity, but she was already insane. No, worse than insane. She would kill him.

"Trace," her voice mellowed out. "You have to feel like you're in danger or this will never work. I'm acting out the role of Till, the number one assassin in Phantom. You have to defeat him. Think of it that way."

Trace creased his eyebrows, confused, as he watched Hailey warp back into character. This time she fuzzed up her hair and rubbed her thumb under her teeth, testing for sharpness.

"If you're just acting out a character, you won't kill me, right?" Trace mumbled quietly to himself, making sure she could barely hear him.

The smirk spread, bigger, across her lips. "Who knows?" She shrugged her shoulders and bent on one knee to sniff the muddy grass. "I take my role quite seriously." Her voice cracked at her revelation and she rumbled in a wave of laughter.

Trace decided, at some point, that it was time to pursue his killer. It was the same as the other people he had killed, right?

Wrong.

Hailey's eyes widened but her pupils continued to shrink. One was slightly larger than the other. She reached behind her neck and spoke softly to herself, something that was barely audible to Trace.

"Tool HWP," her lips mimicked, her eyes glowing red. The whiteness still left in her eyes turned jet black and the red against it seemed to threat Trace. An overwhelming fear of death and pain banged around in Trace's chest, wanting out. What was he doing, standing there, staring at Hailey?

He tried to move, but found he was glued in place. He stared at Hailey with horror filling him. He couldn't concentrate on breathing, blinking, or anything other than Hailey's transformation.

Her hair turned dark black, and her cloak turned blood red. She grinned at Trace as she lifted a silver scythe over her head to rest on her shoulder. Black chains wrapped around it, and a red glow wrapped around it, like a strange aura or mist filled with some sort of supernatural power.

Trace managed to retrieve two ninja stars from inside of his cloak. A strange gleam slithered around the blades and into Trace's glove. He shivered with the feeling of power filling him.

Suddenly, the grass beneath his feet turned ash black and a wave of air rushed around him. The blades sank into his palms, drawing blood. Why was he squeezing them so hard? He wasn't scared...