“I cannot drop this contract, Fuery.” But he would do it in a heartbeat if it gave his friend relief.
It had been a mistake to take it on, a rash decision on his part. As soon as the client had listed his conditions, Hartt should have told him he would need to wait for Fuery to return so he could discuss it with him.
He had known the moment the male had stipulated that he wanted Hartt on the job and wanted him to work alone, because he didn’t want to alert the vampire to the fact someone was looking to end him, that Fuery would want him to refuse it.
But for some godsdamned reason, Hartt had accepted it instead.
The foolish thing he had almost done tonight came rushing back, and again he had the feeling he had a death wish these days.
It wasn’t just the fact he was working alone for the first time in countless decades that led him to that conclusion.
It was the target.
Hartt had no love for vampires. The filthy creatures had been spawned from corrupted elves millennia ago after all, a wretched shadow of his own kind that most of his species wanted to pretend didn’t exist and the rest wanted to hunt to extinction.
He wasn’t normally one to hunt vampires, but the prestige that came from taking down a vampire of high standing and fearsome reputation was always rather appealing.
And the prestige his guild would receive from taking down this mark was far beyond any recognition they had received in the past.
It almost made it worth it. Almost. Had it been any other vampire, it would have been one hundred percent worth it, but this wasn’t just any vampire he was hunting.
It was Lord Van der Garde.
The King of Death himself.
One of the most dangerous males in Hell.
“If you will not renege on this contract, then you must take me with you.” Fuery’s words snapped him back to the room, had fear surging through him as he locked gazes with his friend.
Hartt shook his head, not hesitating for even the briefest moment. “No.”
He only had to look at Fuery these days to see the progress he had made, how his visits with the exiled Prince Vail and his witch mate Rosalind were helping him claw his way back from the abyss, and how Shaia’s love was healing him.
All that work could be undone in the blink of an eye on the battlefield. As an ex-soldier, Fuery had been trained to harness the darkness that resided within all elves in order to make himself stronger in a fight, and it was something he still did even now, even when he feared it would steal control and turn him into its mindless slave.
“I won’t risk you, Fuery.” Hartt crossed the span of polished black stone floor to him and gripped his shoulders, weathering the scowl Fuery levelled on him. He wouldn’t change his mind about this. Fuery could rant at him all he wanted, but Hartt wouldn’t be swayed. “It is too dangerous.”
“It is too dangerous for you too,” Fuery barked before he had even finished.
Hartt sighed. He was well aware of that. Fuery wasn’t the only one who had let the darkness steal too much of his soul, had allowed it to corrupt him and turn him into something most elves viewed with disgust and scorn.
A tainted.
But taking on the darkness had been the only way to save Fuery from it, to stop him from becoming lost.
His brow furrowed as he looked at his friend, as he thought about everything that had happened recently. He had come too close to losing Fuery, and it was still a raw wound inside him, one that made his heart sore whenever he looked at his friend, whenever he thought about what might have happened if it hadn’t been for Shaia or the blood bond he shared with the male.
“Back down,” Hartt whispered softly, silently imploring his friend to do that for him. He needed to know Fuery wouldn’t do something reckless, like following him or coming to him when he was in a fight. He needed all of his focus to be on his mark, and it wouldn’t be if he feared Fuery would attempt to intervene, placing himself in danger.
Fuery’s frown melted away and he sighed. “I will, but only if you swear to call on me for backup if you need it… whether it is to deal with the mark or the assassin.”
A sudden, violent urge to snarl and snap his emerging fangs at Fuery bolted through him, had his ears growing pointier as they flared back against the sides of his head.
“It has been some time since I have seen you turn aggressive.” Fuery canted his head to his right and before Hartt could think of a reasonable excuse for his outburst, he added, “I can understand why you do not want to share the contract. I do not like to share my marks either… the darkness does not like to share.”
It didn’t, Fuery was right about that, but Hartt had the dreadful feeling it hadn’t been aggression of that nature that had made him want to turn on his friend and attack him.
He had the terrible feeling it had been something far worse, born of the thought of Fuery being near Mackenzie.
Desire.
And a dark need to possess her.
Chapter 5
Mackenzie took the steps up from the London Underground two at a time, passing an elderly couple as they helped each other up and tuning out their conversation about which stores they were going to hit on Oxford Street.
She wasn’t here to shop.
As much as Jasynder, her second in command at the guild, insisted that she needed a new wardrobe. Something a little more spicy—whatever that meant. Mackenzie presumed her friend wanted her to pick up short skirts and low-cut tops that revealed more than they concealed, exactly the sort of clothing the demoness liked to wear.
Syn called it making use of all her assets.
She had lectured Mackenzie on it when she had walked back into their small guild building in the far north of the free realm in Hell. Apparently, if she had used all her assets to her advantage, she would have had no problem defeating the elf.
She wouldn’t have suffered an embarrassing defeat herself.
“He cheated,” she muttered into her purple woollen scarf as she pulled it up over the lower half of her face and burrowed into it.
A passing man gave her a wide berth on hearing that and flicked her a wary look to boot, as if she was going to launch into some anti-man rant. The elf hadn’t cheated like that. He was nothing but an enemy to her. She certainly wasn’t interested in him becoming anything other than dead, buried and in her past.
Mackenzie pulled the phone from the pocket of her knee-length grey wool coat and checked the message she had received when she had reached out to her client demanding a meeting, contacting him on a number she had no doubt he would torch once the contract was done.
The café it mentioned wasn’t far now.
She tamped down her nerves, something she’d had to do far too many times in the last day. They had been shot since she had teleported away from the elf, using a gift she rarely relied on these days. In fact, it had been so long since she had used that ability that she was surprised she still remembered how it worked. She had stopped using it when someone had witnessed it and started asking too many questions, probing into what she was.
Just as the elf had.
Mackenzie spotted the café ahead of her, close to a junction in the broad street that formed a crossroads with Oxford Street. Cream stone buildings towered on either side of the four-lane road, red double-decker buses and black taxis reflected in the windows of the stores on the ground floors.