Marked by an Assassin

by Felicity Heaton

  Harbin roared and hurled himself at the young hunter. The male turned, wide brown eyes filled with panic, and swiftly raised his compact crossbow. Harbin saw the flash of the dart, felt the sting as it pierced his chest, and grunted as he stumbled a step. He pushed onwards, lumbering towards the male, desperate to force him into firing again. He needed the oblivion the tranquilisers offered. He would lose his mind if he had to do this capture and transport in a semi-drugged state. His memories would destroy what little sanity he had left.

  A second hunter dropped his quarry and joined the first, lashing out with a baton.

  Harbin staggered right as the blow connected with the left side of his head, pain ricocheting around his skull and turning the world hazy for a moment. He tried to retain his balance, his injured leg crumpled beneath him, and he hit the tacky club floor hard.

  The two males closed in and every instinct he possessed commanded him to shift and fight. He shut his eyes and surrendered instead, allowing the hunters to crack their batons across his arms and head as he curled into a ball on his side. His snow leopard side pushed for freedom, writhing beneath his skin, wild with a need to attack and protect himself. It took every shred of his will to keep still and take the beating, to not retaliate and kill the males who were battering him.

  He would find them and kill them, after he had fulfilled his mission.

  His strength faded as the tranquilisers began to take hold, numbing him but not quickly enough to stop the need to escape the hunters and their vile clutches, and the thought of waking to find himself at the mercy of Archangel from driving him mad.

  Shattered memory fragments bombarded him, filling his mind with a broken replay of blood on snow, crimson drenching white, and the black blur of the hunters who had attacked his kin. He saw their faces, heard their last gasps as he choked the life from them, staring into their eyes so he was the last thing they saw.

  He saw her.

  The blonde Archangel huntress mocked him with the pretty smile that had addled his lust-fogged alcohol-impaired brain, luring him under her spell in the small bar in the town nearest to the mountain where his pride had lived in safety for centuries.

  A peace he had shattered because he had been too full of himself, as headstrong and hot-blooded as his father had always told him he was. He had been too blinded by lust to see the warning signs, had been too tempted by the sinful beauty and the thought of satisfying his carnal hungers.

  His pain dulled as he slipped into a daze, the tranquiliser dose not enough to knock him out, leaving him at the mercy of his memories. They ran on a constant twisted replay, tormenting him, driving him insane with a need to hunt and kill, a hunger that he was powerless to satisfy in his drugged state. He weakly banged his head against the hard floor, seeking oblivion in order to escape his past, but he didn’t have the strength to knock himself out.

  He was vaguely aware of the hunters as they dragged him from the room, and the faint smell of gasoline as they loaded him into a truck. Lucidity came and went, giving him brief glimpses of holding cells in a darkened space, each filled with an unconscious fae or demon, before the past came rushing back to swallow him.

  Each time it hit him, it drove him back under the violent tide of his memories. They battered him, turning him inside out with emotions that were still raw, his pain and fury yet to fade. He tried to growl whenever the blonde huntress flashed across his mind, tried to change the course of events whenever he saw her leaning in to kiss him, her emerald eyes glittering with desire, but no sound left his lips and nothing he did could alter the past.

  The truck shifted, jostling him so he rolled against the cold metal bars of his cell. The feel of them pressing against his back and the thought of where he was heading combined to overpower him. Fear closed in despite his years of training and honing his abilities as an assassin, the emotion too strong to deny as it swept through him, swamping his mind and flooding it with images of what might await him and the other unlucky bastards in the truck with him when they reached the facility.

  He tried to move, his instincts screaming at him to break free, to not allow Archangel to take him into a facility where he would be tortured and would possibly die. He hadn’t survived this long, hadn’t borne the pain for twenty agonising years for it to end here at their hands.

  He wouldn’t let them win.

  He snarled and shuffled, managed to get his hands beneath him and convince his body to obey his foggy mind, but he didn’t have the strength to push himself off the grotty floor. His arms gave out beneath him, his left shoulder hitting the floor hard enough to rip a pained yelp from his lips.

  A hunter near the back muttered something and cautiously stalked forwards, heading in his direction.

  He attempted to feign unconsciousness, but the pain in his shoulder was too intense, the fresh metallic tang of blood permeating the air telling him he had torn the wound open again. He gritted his teeth against it, his jaw muscles flexed, and the next thing he knew was a sharp sting in the right side of his chest as a dart impacted. Strange cold stole through him, numbing as it crept outwards from the impact point.

  Darkness claimed him.

  A brief, sweet moment of oblivion.

  Followed by a rude blast of cold water.

  Harbin snarled and tried to back away from the powerful jet, but a wall blocked his escape. He barked out his pain as the icy water thundered against his injured shoulder and then coughed as it struck his face, getting in his mouth and up his nose. He flinched away from it, curling against the wall, but it didn’t stop his assailants. They kept up with their torment, hosing him down where he sat on the frigid tiles of what seemed to be a bright room.

  As they ran the hose down his body, he barked again, fire and lightning rocketing up his leg bones as the jet reached his ankle. He growled a curse and swung his gaze towards them, narrowing his silver eyes on them as he breathed hard, struggling against his need to leap to his feet and rip them to shreds.

  The two young male hunters lost their smiles, their dark eyes turning wary as they backed off in unison.

  Without a word, the one with the hose switched it off and made a swift exit, followed by his companion.

  Harbin panted through the pain and gritted his teeth as he looked down at his left leg. The bastards had removed his cast, exposing the deep bruises that marked his skin and leaving him in danger of re-breaking his tibia if he put too much weight on it. He wouldn’t be fighting them any time soon, that was for sure. He needed a few more days before he could risk more than hobbling.

  He huffed.

  The bastards knew what they were doing. They knew what he was.

  Who he was.

  Not only had they taken his cast, which he would have easily stripped back to its base parts to get his hands on the metal rods to use them as makeshift batons, but they had taken his clothes.

  They had removed everything he might have used as a weapon against them.

  He flexed his fingers and smiled coldly as his claws extended.

  Everything except his built-in arsenal anyway.

  A shadow flickered out of the corner of his eye and he lowered his hands and looked towards the only exit in the white room.

  A larger male blocked the door, his rugged face set in grim lines that Harbin felt matched his own expression. They had sent an assassin to deal with him, one of their finest no doubt. Only the best for him.

  He bared his fangs at the male.

  The bastard simply raised the dart gun in his hand and squeezed the trigger.

  Four times.

  Harbin grunted as each dart impacted in his injured shoulder and his chest. Cold swept outwards, turning his mind to mush and his limbs to rubber. He slumped against the wall, his head striking it hard, and his hands fell to his lap. He was vaguely aware of the hunter as he advanced, and the rough way he jerked him onto his feet. Icy tiles slammed against Harbin’s face and cool metal encircled his wrists behind him, locking them in place. He struggled, one
weak and pathetic attempt at fighting back that did nothing but make the Archangel hunter chuckle in his ear.

  Harbin’s hackles rose.

  He would take pleasure in making this one suffer when he was free of this wretched place.

  It rang around his mind as he stumbled through blurred corridors, beat deep in his blood as he heard the whispers and snickers of other Archangel members and felt their eyes on him.

  Felt them mocking him.

  The drugs the hunter had pumped him with were already fading by the time he smelled other fae and knew he was near the detention block. His new home for the foreseeable future. He bit back a growl as someone commented as he staggered onwards, feeling as if he had hit a tavern for a few too many beers and was paying the price.

  “The mighty have fallen.”

  He hadn’t fallen.

  Not yet.

  He would prove that to them when he escaped this Hell. He would show them all that he was as dangerous as the reputation that preceded him, as wild and feral as the legends told.

  He would bathe in the blood of Archangel as he tore this facility to the ground.

  He stumbled down a set of steps into a long white corridor and bumped off a wall. His escort shoved him in the back and he snarled over his shoulder at him. The male grabbed his shackled wrists and twisted. Harbin grunted, biting back the cry that tried to leave his lips as his shoulder caught fire.

  The pain instantly faded, the anger that blazed within him dying as he felt eyes on him.

  A familiar piercing that seemed to ground him and lift the haze from his mind, freeing him from the torment of his memories and his seething need for bloodshed.

  His gaze swung towards the source of the soothing feeling.

  The snow leopard female sat tucked in the back of a bright white cell with a thick glass front, hugging her black-denim-clad knees to her chest, her silver-gold eyes tracking him. His heart beat harder, an insatiable hunger instantly awakening in his blood, drumming fiercely in his veins.

  His guard was down, stripped from him by the drugs and the pain, and he couldn’t deny one thought as it speared his very soul.

  She was beautiful.

  And he was meant to kill her.

  Fresh agony rolled through him, stirred by the thought of taking her life. It collided with the anger roused by the sight of her confined in a cell and at the mercy of Archangel.

  He growled, flashing his fangs at her.

  She continued to stare at him, unflinching in the face of his fury.

  Brave female.

  Would she be so brave when Archangel came for her?

  The thought of her being dragged from her cell, pulled into whatever twisted experiments awaited her, churned his stomach until it boiled like acid and he wanted to take his claws to the male behind him, and every other person in the building.

  He turned away from her and stared at the white tiled floor.

  Would she be so brave when she faced him and knew her life was going to end?

  What he had planned for her was surely far worse than anything Archangel could dish out, but perhaps it was more merciful. He liked to think so anyway. A wry smile curled his lips. He wasn’t sure whether that made him fucked up or not. Was it better he gave her a swift death rather than her being subjected to Archangel’s demented experiments?

  A swift death was surely preferable.

  He tipped his head back and stared up at the ceiling.

  He certainly preferred it.

  But the thought of Archangel doing anything to a snow leopard turned his insides and hollowed him out, scraping away all of the softer feelings she had stirred in him and leaving him raw with a need to butcher them all.

  And he would.

  The hunter shoved him into an empty cell and the glass barrier dropped from the ceiling before he could turn to attack him. The male stared coldly at him and pressed a button on a small black device. The shackles beeped and opened, dropping to the ground behind Harbin. He slammed his palms against the thick glass, right in front of the hunter’s face, but the male didn’t even twitch.

  Harbin placed him right at the top of the list of people he would kill the moment he was free.

  And he would do it with the very shackles the male had placed on him.

  He turned towards them, a smile playing on his lips as he thought about using them to rip open the bastard’s carotid.

  A panel in the ceiling swished open, a hum sounded, and the shackles shot up into the dark opening. A tugging sensation in Harbin’s left thigh had his fingers dropping to stroke the neat inch-long surgical scar there. Magnets. He should have known they would have a way of retrieving the shackles.

  He hobbled across to the back of his cell, eased down to the floor, and kept stroking the scar, sensing the tracker buried deep beneath his skin.

  Hartt would be coming.

  Hartt would find him.

  He had two days.

  He could bear whatever Hell Archangel intended to put him through in that time.

  He would survive.

  And he would make sure his mark survived with him.

  Harbin closed his eyes, seeking the rest he needed to heal his body and ensure he was fit to fight when the time came.

  But only horror awaited him.

  CHAPTER 5

  The sound of screaming wrenched Aya from the tight grip of her nightmare. She breathed hard, sweat trickling down the valley between her breasts and her spine under her silver halter-top, her wide eyes fixed unseeing on a point across the room from her.

  It took her a moment to remember where she was and realise that she hadn’t been the one to scream.

  The harrowed sound came again, a desperate bellow that made her shiver and chilled her to the bone.

  The male snow leopard.

  Whatever tormented him, it was infinitely worse than the nightmare she had been living in her sleep. Were the hunters hurting him?

  Or were his agonised screams the product of a deeper suffering?

  Aya hadn’t failed to notice the darkness in him when the big hunter had marched him past her cell.

  She had thought him more handsome in the full light, but there had been ice in his eyes that had made her cold inside.

  One look into his pale silvery eyes had left her feeling he had no emotion in him, no shred of feeling, that whatever life he led, it had drained him of all light and left only darkness behind.

  But the way he was screaming, each bellow speaking of agony and suffering, left her with a different feeling. Whatever emotions he had, they had been buried deep beneath that mountain of pain.

  She could relate to that.

  She had fallen into a violent abyss of nightmares shortly after seeing him paraded past her cell, stripped bare and exposed to the eyes of all, as if the hunters wanted to humiliate him for some reason. The twisted visions of her past had held her firmly in their grasp for the gods only knew how many hours, and mingled in with them had been images of the other captives being tortured by Archangel, experimented on as the scientists attempted to uncover their species’ deepest secrets to use as weapons against their kind.

  Rocky.

  Aya pulled her knees up to her chest, rubbed her fingers over the smooth denim of her jeans, and brought her focus to the world around her.

  Rocky was somewhere in this cellblock, trapped in a tiny white box just like her.

  What would Archangel do to him?

  The need to see him pushed her onto her hands and knees and she crawled to the glass front of her cell. She pressed her cheek to the barrier and peered down the corridor, but she couldn’t see into the other cells. She could only see the one opposite her, and it was empty right now. She felt sure it had been occupied last night by an unfamiliar woman. What had Archangel done with her?

  Had they released her?

  Aya scoffed at that and her misguided hope. She knew Archangel and she knew better than to believe them capable of releasing their captives without a damn good
reason. They said they merely studied species in order to understand them, to document them and discover methods of swiftly dealing with any from their kind who broke the laws and became a threat to the humans or other fae.

  They lied.

  She had seen the other side of Archangel with her own eyes.

  She knew that most of the captives in the cells around her would never see the outside world again.

  “Rocky,” she whispered and laid her left palm on the several inches of glass, trying to reach through it to the other side so she could sense whether he was nearby.

  Her stomach churned, hunger and fear combining to turn the acid into a bubbling pit. She closed her eyes and sighed out her breath, clinging to the fragile strands of hope, because she couldn’t give up. She had to keep believing that Rocky would be fine and so would the others.

  A hot shiver coursed through her.

  Aya opened her eyes and lifted them, settling them straight on the male in the corridor.

  Gods, he was handsome.

  The bright lights made his sweat-soaked scruffy silver hair shimmer and his eyes almost glow as he hobbled along the stark white hallway, his lips firmly pressed together in a way that spoke of pain. He was trying to control it, but the edge to his gaze said that he was losing that battle. His expression twisted and darkened, and his shoulders and biceps bulged as he shifted his bound wrists behind his back, as if he was flexing his fingers.

  Readying his claws.

  The ice-cold look in his stunning eyes as they fell to her sent a warning arrowing through her, causing her instincts to fire back a response that told her to keep her distance from him. This male meant war.

  She could almost read every dark fantasy running through his mind, could almost smell the blood of these hunters and see it splashing up the walls, streaking the pristine white with crimson. He wanted to kill the men behind him, and gods, there was a part of her that wanted to see him do it.

  Profane lips peeled back off his short fangs as he growled and she instinctively lowered her gaze, obeying his command to avert her gaze from him.

  Big mistake.

  Taut square slabs of pectoral muscles, dusky nipples, and ropes of abdominals caught her eyes. She swallowed hard and tried to look away, but the way his muscles shifted with each step he took held her fast and fascinated her. Each bunch and stretch, each flex, spoke of power, and she couldn’t stop her body from responding to it, heating and beginning to burn as her eyes betrayed her and slowly drifted down the length of his eight-pack to the dusting of silver hair that trailed onwards.