Scorched by Darkness: Eternal Mates Series Book 18 Read online

  She gritted her teeth and struggled, kicked his shins with an enthusiasm he could only admire as she wrestled to get free.

  Hartt tugged her arm up higher.

  Her chest collided with his.

  She looked up at him as he gazed down at her, the fires raging in her eyes bewitching him as he waited for her to make her next move, tried to figure out what it would be. A knee to the groin? A teleport? A fist in the face?

  She did none of those things.

  She grabbed him by his nape, dragged his head down and kissed him.

  An inferno instantly swept through him, torched his blood and his resolve.

  Hartt wrapped his free arm around her waist and hauled her against him, kissed her hard, a desperate clash of their lips that had his heart pumping faster. Her fingers tightened against his nape, nails pressing into his flesh, and she moaned as she angled her head and opened to him, as her tongue brushed his and sent wicked heat sizzling through every nerve in his body, setting them alight.

  Gods.

  He wanted to drown in her.

  He went to pull her closer.

  She stiffened in his arms, her heart skipping a beat in his ears as she locked up tight. And then she broke free of him, staggered backwards and ripped a growl from his lips as she stole the delicious heat of her body from his.

  Her golden eyes were enormous as she touched her lips, as she stared at him, shock written in every line of her delicate features.

  Shock that echoed inside him too.

  Tempered by a fierce need to seize her and drag her back against him, to kiss her until she surrendered to him.

  His beautiful redhead was quick to recover, came at him on a strangled cry, more vicious than before. He blocked whenever he could manage it, but she was faster now, her blows more precise, more power behind each one. Fury fuelled her and he would’ve picked her up on it had she not been attempting to gut him and almost succeeding.

  “You kissed me,” he muttered as he barely managed to knock a blow off course.

  She bared her teeth at him, but the blame she had clearly placed on his shoulders didn’t leave her lips. She attacked instead, thrusting her blade at his hip, coming too damned close to cutting him this time.

  “Mackenzie,” he bit out and shoved her arm, knocking her off balance. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  Those words gave him pause. It didn’t?

  Unfortunately, they didn’t have the same effect on her.

  He grunted as her blade plunged into the right side of his chest, close to his shoulder, and stared at her, his ears ringing as white-hot fire blazed outwards from the point of impact. Her eyes widened and she blinked as she stared at her hand, a flicker of disbelief crossing her features.

  Heat spread downwards, the scent of his blood hanging thick in the air, awakening the part of him that he battled on a daily basis. The part of him now gnashing fangs at the stunned female in front of him.

  He tried to tell her to run as it roared up on him, but the only sound that left his lips was a black snarl.

  And then everything went hazy.

  He heard muffled cries, felt fire erupting in several places on his own body, but experienced only pleasure as it coursed through him, as he slipped deeper into the waiting darkness. He grinned and lashed out at his foe, drawing blood that had him howling with a need of it. His fangs ached, saliva pooling in his mouth as he tried to get close to the source of that blood, desperate to drink his fill.

  To drown in it.

  In her.

  A male scent swirled around him. Familiar. A voice wobbled in his ears. Comforting. Strength that had given way slowly reconstructed itself as he shook his head and stumbled backwards, as he tried to piece together fragmented memories of hair like rubies and eyes like gold.

  And tears that glistened like diamonds upon her crimson-stained cheeks.

  He sank to his knees as his strength left him again, hitting the ground hard enough to jolt his spine, but he didn’t feel the pain through the fire that consumed his body. He clutched his head and bellowed as the roar of noise in his mind made it impossible to gather his thoughts. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision, confusion tearing at him as heat rolled down his cheeks, laced with the scent of salt.

  “Fight it.” The familiar male voice echoed in the darkness, carved holes in the veil of night to allow light to shine in.

  That light blazed gold as a softer female voice bit out, “I’ll kill you too if you don’t get out of my way!”

  Kill who? Him? The other male?

  The thought of her attacking the other male had his blood running cold and caused a fissure in the darkness so wide and dazzling that his eyes watered.

  “No,” he muttered and tried to stand as he pushed back against the darkness, wrestling his way towards that light.

  He managed to get his foot against the ground before he collapsed again. What was wrong with him? Why was he so damned weak? He needed to be strong. He needed to stop the male before it was too late.

  He would kill her.

  A muffled grunt followed by a thud that sent a slight tremor through the ground to him had his blood turning to ice.

  The female.

  Silence fell.

  He strained to hear her, his jumbled senses stretching outwards to find her, fear gripping him in icy talons that pierced right down to his soul. Shuffling footsteps sounded, growing more distant rather than coming towards him.

  “No,” he whispered and growled as frustration rolled through him, as he fought the darkness that blackened his soul and filled his mind with images of bloodshed and death.

  Her bloodshed and death.

  But not at his hands.

  He laboured onto his feet again, blinked hard to clear his vision.

  His mind cleared instead, the oily haze lifting enough that thoughts formed in order and his senses came back online.

  The male.

  “Fuery,” he mumbled, locked his focus on the male and shook his head, trying to rid himself of the tangled threads of darkness that were still trying to engulf him again. “No.”

  The male stopped and Hartt felt his gaze on him, sensed a trickle of concern through their bond as boots scuffed the dirt and steps grew louder.

  “Hartt?” Strong hands claimed his shoulders, clutching them tightly to keep him blessedly upright.

  He sagged in his friend’s grip and laboured for breath, fighting the darkness with every beat of his heart, attempting to purge it because he feared that if he didn’t, he would kill someone—and it wouldn’t be his friend.

  It would be the female.

  He managed to clear his vision, peered beyond Fuery’s shoulder to her where she lay on the dirt, out cold, but not dead. Blood covered the side of her face and dripped from the corner of her lips, and four nasty cuts darted across the right of her chest, from her breast to her shoulder.

  Claw marks.

  Hartt lowered his gaze to his hands where they dangled before him, stared at his bloodied black talons and growled as anger rolled through him on the crest of a wave of hurt, agony that threatened to rip his sanity from him again. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her, but he had. The darkness had seized control and he had attacked her and wounded her—might have killed her if Fuery hadn’t come along.

  For once, he was thankful his friend had harassed him until he had told him where he was going. Fuery must have felt his pain through their bond, or had felt the darkness, and had come to him in the hope of freeing him from its grip as Hartt had freed Fuery from it so many times.

  The female moaned and her nose wrinkled.

  Fuery released him and turned in her direction. He began stalking towards her.

  Something dark inside Hartt bayed for freedom, snapped fangs and snarled in Fuery’s direction. A powerful rush of darkness swept through him, threatening to wash away his fragile grip on consciousness as Fuery advanced on the assassin.

  When the male dared to flex his own black talo
ns, Hartt couldn’t hold back the roar that rolled up his throat.

  He launched at the male, filled with a need to stop him, to protect the female.

  Staggered and fell flat on his face when his legs gave out.

  The male stopped his advance and turned back, hurried to him and rolled him onto his back. Hartt wanted to claw at him, growled as his body refused to cooperate and his vision tunnelled. He weakly lifted his hand, managed to move it barely a few inches off the ground before it fell back to the dirt.

  Concern filled the male’s violet eyes as he loomed over him, onyx encroaching from the edges of his irises. Hartt growled at him, the sound strained in his own ears, as the male placed a hand on his chest. When he pressed, pain blazed through Hartt, had darkness rolling over him for a heartbeat before his vision came back again.

  “Hartt?”

  He knew that voice. Fuery. He struggled to blink. Fuery was here. He scented someone else too. The assassin. Mackenzie. Her blood filled his senses. Her cries filled his mind, a broken replay of a battle he had tried to stop. He saw her fear, felt it in his own veins as he lashed at her, as he bared fangs and grasped her throat, trying to throttle her. He felt the blows she had delivered, ones meant to weaken him but ones that had only infuriated him, giving the darkness a firmer hold over him and wrenching away his control.

  Heat pooled beneath the hand pressed to the right side of his chest, turned cold as it touched the air.

  “We must get you home,” Fuery whispered.

  Hartt tried to shake his head, a dark need filling him and driving him to refuse to go. He put a name to that need.

  “Mackenzie,” he rasped.

  Fuery’s blurry face loomed over him, clear enough that Hartt could make out a frown and the black pits of his friend’s eyes.

  He wanted to tell Fuery to let her live, ached to tell him to bring her too, fearing she would do something reckless without him here. He struggled to form the words, but the effort it took was too much for him and his grip on consciousness failed.

  The abyss devoured him.

  Chapter 7

  Awareness rolled up on Hartt like gentle waves lapping at a black shore. The darkness receded a little more with each one, but it fought back, sank its claws into him and hung on, refusing to let him go. His hearing was the first sense to awaken, muffled male and female voices filling his ears, sounding as if they were underwater. Or perhaps he was. He felt sure he was drowning as a more powerful wave crashed over him, this one pure oily darkness that threatened to wash away his growing awareness of the world.

  And the light that was beginning to fill his soul again.

  “There was a spell,” the female said, her voice soft but not the beautiful harmony a distant part of him had wanted to hear. “Words he said to boost your bond with him.”

  “When was this?” the male snarled.

  Fuery.

  Hartt felt as if he frowned as he tried to piece together what they were talking about, tried to grasp it and pull it into focus. He wasn’t sure though. He wasn’t sure of anything as he swam in the darkness, trying to keep his head above the surface. Pain throbbed hot and fierce in his right shoulder, pulsing in waves over his ribs, and a duller ache lingered at the rear of his right hip too. He had been fighting. Injured.

  “In the elf kingdom, when your eyes were going crimson.” The female sounded worried as she quickly added, “It harmed him to use such a spell.”

  A very masculine growl sounded.

  Bond. Spell. Words.

  It crystallised in his mind and he fought to move, filled with a need to stop Fuery. He must have managed to lift his hand, because strong ones suddenly gripped his arms, and he sensed Fuery beside him.

  “Hartt?” Fuery’s concern echoed in the link they shared, a connection he had forged with blood and boosted with the spell Shaia had mentioned to her mate.

  A spell Hartt had kept secret for this very reason.

  “Tell me the words, Hartt.”

  He weakly shook his head. He wouldn’t. Fuery would try to use them to steal the darkness from his soul just as Hartt had used them to free Fuery of its grip more than once, bringing him back from the abyss against all the odds. Doing so would push Fuery back towards that abyss, undoing all of his friend’s hard work.

  “Tell me the words,” Fuery gritted and tightened his grip on Hartt’s arms.

  “Fuery,” Shaia whispered. “Be gentle with him. He is hurt.”

  As she said that, Hartt grew aware of the injuries on his body again, as if her words had triggered a reaction in them. The left side of his stomach blazed, joining the throbbing ache in his right shoulder and the back of his hip. They weren’t the only places where he hurt. They were just the worst ones. Someone had gone to town on him, treating him like a pincushion.

  He frowned as it hit him, the crest of a wave of fear that left him colder than the blood loss.

  “Mackenzie.” He forced her name past his lips, a desperate urge compelling him to speak it, a need that made him wild and made him want to fight, roused darkness and a black hunger for violence.

  If Fuery had hurt her…

  “I left her alone,” Fuery muttered, the sharp, dark edge to his tone revealing that he wasn’t happy about it either.

  It wasn’t like his friend to want to harm a female. The assassin must have hurt him worse than he realised, had injured him badly enough that Fuery wanted to lash out at her. Or maybe it was the fact she had pushed him deep into the darkness that had Fuery agitated and out for blood.

  The relief part of Hartt had expected to feel didn’t come. One worry merely transformed into another. Alone. Fuery had left her on the outskirts of the town, injured and struggling to come around from the blow his friend had dealt her. Vulnerable. The vampires in that town had seen them fighting, and if the King of Death hadn’t known he had assassins after him, he did now. The vampires would have reported it to him, and he feared the male would send his men out to search the town.

  If they found her…

  Gods, he wasn’t sure what he would do.

  A deep need to find her and make sure she was safe compelled him to move, a powerful urge to protect her sweeping through him on the heels of it. He tried to push up, gritted his teeth as his shoulder ached so fiercely he felt sick. He couldn’t just lie here while she was out there. The gods only knew what would happen to her. He needed to find her.

  Fuery pushed him back down onto the bed and Hartt snarled and bared fangs at him, mustered his strength to fight the male and force him to release him.

  “Tell me the words.” His friend’s voice swam in his ears, growing distant again as creeping tendrils of darkness encroached at the corners of his mind.

  Kill the male. Teleport back to the town. Protect the female at any cost.

  That echoed in his mind on repeat, rapidly becoming a cacophony that drowned out all other thoughts. The tendrils seemed to snake around those other thoughts, dragged them down into the shadows so he forgot them. All that mattered was the female.

  He wouldn’t let anyone stand between him and her.

  The black scales of his armour were cool as they rippled over his hands, as they capped his fingers with long talons. Talons he intended to use to gut the male who was restraining him, stopping him from reaching her.

  Cold washed over him, causing his mind to spin and thoughts to twirl and blur. Pain blazed in his side and shoulder, the heady scent of freshly spilled blood goading him into attacking the male who was moving him. Taking him somewhere.

  Further away from the female.

  The cold remained as they landed, but the scents of Hell gave way to softer, sweet fragrances that were out of place given the time of year in the mortal realm. Roses. Lilacs. Hyacinths. Tulips. Hollyhocks. The smell of the earth and snow carried on the gentle wintry breeze.

  His legs gave out and he sank forwards as another scent hit him.

  The tinny, strange odour of magic.

  His armour peeled awa
y from his hands and he pressed them to the damp grass, dug his fingers into the earth and just breathed, letting nature flow over him to purge the darkness from his soul. Tears burned the backs of his eyes and his nose as he reached for her, desperate to connect with her in a way he had been able to once, before the corruption had spread too far inside him, had stolen too much of him.

  Those tears blazed hot trails down his cheeks as he felt her reach for him, as he sank forwards and relief swept over him, together with a thousand other emotions that were too much for him.

  “Do you feel her?” Fuery whispered as he crouched before him, as he gently placed a hand on his left shoulder. “She has not turned her back on you.”

  Hartt couldn’t believe it. All elves shared a powerful connection with nature, and it was something they all cherished, and if the darkness in their blood became too much and began to taint them, it was something they all began to crave. He felt lighter as he clung to the ground, as nature embraced him rather than rejected him, and the shadows in his soul began to writhe and hiss, baring fangs at the light that filled him.

  “I feel her.” He choked on those words, his throat too tight to speak without revealing the emotions running rampant inside him.

  Had Fuery brought him here, to this oasis of nature, to help him purge the darkness, or had it been for a reason he didn’t want to contemplate, one he could sense rushing towards him as a door burst open off to his left?

  “Oh, mother earth!” The bright female voice held a wealth of horror and disbelief that brought out her English accent, and Hartt could almost picture how wide her large blue eyes would be as she bounded towards them, her ash-blonde hair bouncing against her slight shoulders.

  The witch halted beside him in the middle of the lawn of her cottage’s rear garden.

  “Look at the bloody state of him.”

  The air shifted close to him and tremendous power rolled over him. He wearily lifted his head and gazed at the elf who towered a foot taller than the petite blonde witch, his eyes warm with concern but holding a corona of darkness around his violet irises.