Tears for Fears
Phillip
I’d gotten complacent. My head was full of the ginger-haired minx, and I’d all but forgotten to take the reverse serum with us.
I’d forgotten she was still a target. I’d been wrapped up in my complex, conflicted feelings for her, and it led to mistakes on the job not even an amateur would make.
And I’d likely do it again, if my time with her taught me anything.
Eros, a longtime mercenary, was someone who’d kill anyone for the right price—and a massive pain in my ass.
Mostly because Eros was a descendent of the first Fae.
I hadn’t been given an age, but it was speculated he was among the first creatures to cross over into this realm.
So he could very easily be thousands upon thousands of years old.
Humans might refer to his kind as warlocks or elves. Maybe even fairies, but we called his particular type Dark Fae. They employed dark magic to bring death and destruction. Their magic was tainted by the countless lives they’d stolen, and over time, Dark Fae were physically marked by it.
Eros stayed covered by several layers of fabric, and I’d only seen his true face a handful of times, but it was marked by countless black lines of ancient runes. They marred his pale flesh and couldn’t be concealed with magic.
The Organization had long hunted the renegade Fae. He’d killed more Hunters than any other person in the history of our kind. Often, some of the top Hunters the Organization ever employed.
Eros’s magic was nearly impossible to evade, and his spell of invisibility rendered his victims helpless to fight him.
Very few ever escaped him. Seeing through his invisibility wasn’t impossible, but not many people I knew ever managed it, so their lives were claimed before they even knew they were a target.
It was a difficult skill to teach.
Eros despised me the most because I could beat his magic, so he never got the jump on me.
My abilities tore through his spells, and my propensity for clever thinking put me one step ahead.
I created counter-weapons that disrupted his spells, and most of his spells were too slow to match my speed.
I cataloged every single spell he cast and how it could be overcome; information privy to a select few because the Organization would use it to better themselves and not protect anyone.
But Eros couldn’t win against me. He attempted to countless times, but he always failed. That was when he started to go after those close to me—Hunters, friends, my master.
Giselle.
Anyone of value, Eros targeted. In every case, he was successful.
Getting close to someone always proved my greatest mistake.
It put a target on their back and directly in the Dark Fae’s sights.
Eros was determined to spend his life punishing me, and I vowed never to get close to anyone again.
Not after I barely picked myself back up after Giselle’s death.
Not when I knew what sort of torture awaited those close to me if he ever made them his target—and he would.
Twenty years ago, I broke off my partnership with Kris.
She was a strong and immensely talented Hunter, but she’d be no match for Eros.
So, I suggested Sloan, who was like me—immortal, strong, and a product of the same gene mutation.
Kris was the only one I managed to save, and I very quickly dropped off the radar afterwards.
Long ago, I met Sloan by total accident.
And when his speed matched mine, his skill set hauntingly similar, I questioned if the Organization had done it again.
I’d never met anyone capable of countering my moves like Sloan could.
After a little digging, I discovered his age and connected the dots.
He was one of two other Hunters I found with the gene mutation V and I had.
Sloan was a century younger, a prodigal genius, and he’d made top Hunter within the first twenty years of life. He wasn’t as fast as I was, but he was stronger. Even though we shared the same gene mutation, our abilities were in no way identical. In a few years after meeting, that fact was clear.
The blue-eyed Hunter was assigned to do the highest-level covert missions, so very few Hunters knew he existed. Not even Rose was aware the UK-born Hunter lived. Only after he became Kris’s partner did people really start to see him more.
The secret of our gene mutation wasn’t much of a kept secret anymore.
Sadly, it was difficult to conceal immortality after a time, but many Hunters accepted it as a long-dormant trait of our Hunter genetic line, and not something mutated out of a lab.
People would believe practically anything to keep the status quo.
And after over two hundred years, I was well-acquainted with the ugly side of humans and their kin. No matter where you hailed from or what powers you had, ultimately, very few cared about anyone outside of themselves. Greed bred more greed, and it always came down to personal gain.
But I wasn’t any different.
Incidentally, with Sloan’s help, the reverse serum was created. He was the only other person who knew how to make it. There were very few I trusted, but Sloan and Kris were among them.
With Eros after me, as much as I could, I kept my distance from them. I didn’t call for their help unless I didn’t have a choice, and I rarely talked to them. Otherwise, sending Kris away was pointless.
Eros disappeared from anywhere familiar shortly after I parted ways with Kris. For that reason, I went off the grid and completed only solitary missions, similar to Sloan before he was partnered with Kris, to stay hidden in case Eros reappeared.
The Dark Fae was a phantom when not on the hunt.
The only contact I permitted myself was with Rose. We rarely met over the last few decades, but for some reason, the bond we shared was the most maternal one I’d ever experienced.
I didn’t have a mother or father, or really any family. I’d been raised in a white box, monitored and tested on like a fucking animal. After my life was destroyed when Eros killed Giselle, I closed myself off to every person I met.
But Rose, she intrigued me. She provoked me to think. She forced me to come out of my own damn head and live a little, so I couldn’t abandon her. And when V’s suspicious abilities came into the picture ten years prior, I couldn’t say no.
The fact that Eros was here could only mean one thing: V was targeted for the same reason as everyone else.
But because the Dark Fae had the serum, it was different. There wasn’t any way a guy like him could get his hands on it without help, because he was a top-priority enemy to the Organization, and one they’d been eager to capture for as long as I was a part of it.
The Dark Fae may know everything about magic, but his comprehension of progressive science was practically nonexistent.
He hadn’t countered any of my devices or figured out a way to protect against them.
His weaponry was limited. The Dark Fae relied heaviest on his magic, which told me everything I needed to know about his skill set.
Bastard only knew how to cast spells.
Recreating the serum would therefore be impossible.
I could confidently say it was very unlikely he even understood how it worked.
Since the reverse serum couldn’t be detected by any test and its wear-off time varied, Eros wouldn’t identify what happened first—administering the antidote, or the serum wearing off.
Most importantly, Eros couldn’t move about freely. The most likely way he got his hands on the serum was through a back-door deal, and only a few Hunters high enough up the chain had that sort of access. Several of which unfortunately had a personal vendetta against me.
It added a complicated layer to his sudden appearance. Up against Eros and the serum meant I couldn’t get distracted again. If I did, it’d be my life.
Or worse, V’s.
Eros had taken too many of the people around me, and the very idea of him taking another turned my insides in on themselves. It reignited the desire to chase after him and finally put an end to the elusive assassin.
But I couldn’t.
She needed me.
My heart thundered as I turned the quaking woman on her side.
Then, taking a spot behind her, I held V as she writhed over the floor with a gentleness she’d argue I was incapable of.
I brushed back her hair, which was matted against her forehead due to an agony I’d felt one too many times in my life.
Carefully, I placed my jacket under her head, but only after I’d removed all the weapons from it.
I kept them close enough to grab if Eros attacked again, but with the ever-watchful Shifter standing over us, I didn’t worry too much.
Bet the wolf has a lot to say.
Not that I cared what the bastard wolf thought about me, but it would get under my skin today. Everything would with V in such a state.
I’d failed her.
Thankfully for us, Eros specialized in one-on-one fights and fled when he was outnumbered.
His magic required intense focus and wasn’t limitless.
Invisibility and binding spells as well as teleportation were likely what cost him the most. So, Eros wouldn’t survive if he had to fight a group, especially not one as strategically in tune with each other as a pack of Shifters.
Wolves could talk to each other telepathically and were natural enemies to magic-users, mainly because their fur protected them against spells. As such, Eros would be limited to casting spells on the world around them and couldn’t bind or harm Nigel like he could V and I.
It was the only thing I envied about that damn wolf.
The Dark Fae’s ability to transport short distances helped him escape normal Hunters, and it was likely why he hadn’t been captured yet.
The bastard always escaped when he knew he couldn’t win.