Page 48

D ay Lancaster stared blankly at the gory mess standing in front of him, feeling his blood pressure rise. Never a day went by when he was not thankful his ass hadn’t gotten saddled with Harlow fucking Blackmore. The man was a migraine and a half.

And now he was a dhampir, or rather, he always had been… Made sense now that he thought about it. Though him dating someone, let alone a man…not so much, but what the fuck did he know?

He took a deep breath in, holding it for a minute before letting the air whoosh out. “You are all fucking idiots.”

“You better not be talking about me, Day,” Mari drawled sweetly.

“Wouldn’t dare,” he deadpanned.

“Long time, no see, Day.” Harlow smirked. “Been well? Still looking as ageless and baby-faced as always, I see.”

“Yeah, sort of fucking happens when a vampire fucks with your aging. Though it seems, in your case, it was a vampire fucking your mother or father,” Day said with a fake ass smile.

Harlow chuckled. “Yeah, it shocked the shit out of my orphaned ass.”

Day’s brow rose high when the short vampire, who he knew was Foxx Honeywell, nudged Harlow out of the way, and without taking a breath, blurted out, “HI! I’m Foxx Honeywell. I’ve heard very little about you actually, besides your name and that you run this Guild. But I know you knew Tony and Harlow back before hunting was legal! Have to say, you are looking way younger than I expected, but anyway, I was wondering if I could get your number, so you could share embar—fun stories about my wonderful boyfriend here.”

Wow, that was a lot…

The dhampir glared down at the vampire while the man slipped his arm through his. Bizarrely, Harlow didn’t push Foxx off. Tony had said they were dating, but…he hadn’t honestly believed it.

“Don’t you have enough ammo to use against me already, Brat?” Harlow growled.

“I can always use a little more, Old Man!” Foxx giggled.

Day eyed the vampire when the two men started to bicker as if they were alone in the damn room.

Gore aside, Foxx was…not what he’d been expecting. Though the shit-eating grin he’d worn as he walked in had told Day he was probably as much of a pain in the ass as Harlow was. Probably more than Tony realized yet—though the man did complain enough.

It was just…Foxx was…cute… Which didn’t really fit Harlow.

Day looked at Gavin when the dragon sighed, while the two men continued to talk to each other. “This common for them?”

Gavin scoffed. “Constantly. I have never been ignored more in my life.”

Mari snickered. “They do seem to get lost in each other. It’s adorable, really.”

He snorted when the two men didn’t even react to their conversation about them. “Have to say, his tastes have changed a bit, as this was not exactly what I’d been expecting when Tony told me Harlow was dating someone.”

“Technically, they haven’t. Foxx has a fat ass.”

The vampire in question made a choking noise.

“Why the fuck are you looking at Foxx’s ass?!” Harlow snapped, his eyes narrowing on Gavin.

Was that…jealousy he was hearing? Wait…no…not jealousy, possessiveness. Harlow was possessive of the vampire. Holy fuck, this was weird.

“You literally have told me multiple times since we’ve been on the road that it’s fat!? How was I supposed to NOT notice?!” the dragon growled.

“Don’t look at his ass!” Harlow pointed threateningly at the man.

“You both are idiots!” Foxx hissed as he pushed between the two, separating them.

“That I can agree on,” Day drawled with a sigh, while opening his drawer and pulling out a packet of stapled papers, which he tossed onto his desk. “Take this and get the fuck out, you are giving me a headache.”

Foxx huffed. “Is it just a Guild Director thing to rudely tell people to get out? Also, I still want your number.”

“Foxx, you don’t need his number,” Harlow huffed, as he grabbed the packet and started reading.

“Either he gives it to me, or I get it from Gavin, either way works for me.”

Day took a deep breath and let it out, before rattling off his number.

“Yay!” Foxx giggled way too cutely for a man covered in fucking blood.

“Why?!” Harlow groaned, clearly irritated, but then he must have realized what he was holding as he started to smile quite sadistically.

“Because your pain is my joy,” Day said with a smirk as he met the man’s gaze. That and he’d rather not have Gavin fucking hacking into his shit—again.

The dhampir snorted. “I’m sure it is. But remember, payback’s a bitch.”

His smirk grew as he said, “Bring it on, little boy.”

Foxx giggled. “He calls you little boy.”

Harlow rolled his eyes.

“What is it?” Gavin asked while trying to peek at the papers.

“This—” Harlow held the packet up, “—is our blank permission slip to murder every single one of Maverick’s men, including him.”

“REALLY?!” Foxx cried. “They give it to us now!?! Literally AFTER we planned all that shit out!?”

Day smiled and sweetly reminded them, “You all could have waited as Tony asked, instead of running off like fucking maniacs?”

Foxx’s expression turned serious for the first time since walking in. “More people would have died if we waited. Some were already dead when we got there, and others were in bad shape. One we had to put down, but who knows if we wouldn’t have lost the others if we had waited. Speaking of, we have five paranormals that need medical help, but not the kind any hospital can give them.”

“So you’re a bleeding heart, just like Tony,” Day scoffed. “No wonder the man sounded fond, even as he complained about you.”

The vampire’s eyes narrowed. “Nothing bleeding heart about doing the right thing. They are innocent, and don’t deserve what was done to them.” A slightly twisted smile slipped onto his face as he added, “But what I did to the humans tonight, now that was all well deserved.”

Ah, the man had a temper. He could see it flaring behind his eyes, ready to spark up and singe him at any moment.

Day glanced at Harlow and found a smug smile on his face, as if the dhampir was trying to goad him into pushing Foxx’s buttons. Motherfucker probably wanted him to set the vampire’s temper off, but he was way too fucking old to fall for that.

Snorting, he looked at Mari. “What’s your excuse?”

Her eyes narrowed, and he swiftly realized too late that he’d avoided one trap and stepped right into another.

“As someone who changed a few of your damn nappies when you were a baby, it will be a long day in hell before you have a right to tell me what to do, you hear me, Day Lancaster?”

“Get out!” Day growled, feeling his face heat as the others snickered. He stood up when they didn’t move, pushing the three men out while they laughed, not touching Mari in the least.

“A pleasure, as always, Day,” she said before leaving with a way too pleased fucking smile on her face.

Once the door shut behind her, he sighed. Returning to behind his desk, he sat back down with a groan. “Such a fucking headache.”

Sighing again, he pulled out his secure phone and called Tony.

“ You give it to them ?” the man said, without saying hello as the call connected .

“Yep. I have to say, not what I was fucking expecting.”

“ Foxx definitely isn’t what anyone would expect .”

Tony went silent, but it wasn’t as if he hadn’t heard the strain in his voice. “How are you holding up there?”

The other human just grunted in response.

“You want to talk about it?”

“ No, Day, I do not .”

“It may help?”

“ How the fuck would talking about it help?!”

“I know you’re worried, and believe me, you have a right to be, but not talking about it won’t help matters either.”

“You sound like fucking Wes! Tell me, Day. Tell me. How the hell will talking about it change anything, hmm?! My son has been—” The man’s words cut off as his voice cracked. Tony swallowed hard, but his voice still wavered when he spoke again, as if he was crying. “ He has been taken by a fucking psychopathic religious fanatic, whose had an unhealthy obsession with him since he spotted him with me as a child. I should have fucking put a bullet in him when I noticed, but no, I just kept them apart! If I had just ? —”

“ Tony, this is not your fault! And you know damn well that Iggy isn’t blaming you, wherever he is. Kid is probably worried all to hell about you considering how things were when he was taken. ”

“ What a load of bullshit. Day, you know as well as I do, what I did!”

“You gave a kid a home . And he loves you.”

“No, what I did was selfishly keep an orphaned child, after foolishly getting attached, and then I trained him, setting him up into a job with an unmatched DEATH RATE!”

“That was his choice.”

“ NO, it was him stupidly trying to make me proud, when I would be much happier to see him in a job where death wasn’t even a fucking factor! ”

Day’s eyes closed as Tony made a sound that was so soft he wasn’t sure he’d really heard it, but he just knew he had. The man was weeping, even if it was silently.

Taking a deep shuttered breath, Tony hopelessly rasped, “ I’m not ready to lose him, Day. Not him…anyone but him. ”

“They will find him. They won’t stop until they do.”

The man said nothing. Day stayed silent, just being there for his friend as the man quietly cried for his child.

When Tony started to sniff and take deep breaths, Day slowly said, “Tony, I want you to call Wes. I don’t think you should be alone right now.”

“ There is too fucking much to do .” Tony chuckled, sounding exhausted. “ And he just got out of the hospital, he really doesn’t need to be dealing with my ass .”

“Tony…”

The other human let out a heavy sigh, before conceding. “ Fine…I’ll call him. I’m hanging up now .”

“I’ll be checking,” he warned.

Tony let out a growl before the line went dead. Snorting, he sent a quick text to Wes, telling him to track Tony down if the bastard didn’t call him in the next thirty-minutes.

Sighing heavily himself, Day tossed his phone onto the desk and found himself staring at his reflection in the two-way mirror that looked out at the open office space to his left.

Like the vampire who had just left, he supposed many would describe him as…cute. With short strawberry-blond hair, a pert upturned nose, and a lightly dimpled and slightly boxy chin, his cheekbones were high, and his light-blue eyes large.

Day would admit he looked rather fucking innocent, if one ignored what his eyes gave away. And his eyes had always given away that he was not as innocent or young as he seemed, or sometimes pretended to be.

He scoffed and wrinkled his nose in disgust. It wasn’t that he minded how he looked. In fact, he liked it some days. It was just that at a hundred and twenty-three, during the moments when he felt every single fucking year, it would be nice to look like he felt just for one day in his life. But he likely would never look a single day older than twenty-five.

And the problem was that the people around him were aging. Tony being one of those people. A man he’d seen as a punk kid at one point, who had, unfortunately for him, become a dear friend as the years passed .

Each call, each time he saw him, the differences, the signs of aging, no matter how subtle, made Day’s heart ache, because it meant that the moment he was going to lose the man was drawing nearer.

And as much as Harlow fucking Blackmore could piss him off, the fact that Day now didn’t have to continue to see the same signs in him, was a…relief… Just a fucking relief…

He didn’t envy the man, though. In fact, he pitied him as much as he found it a relief, because it meant that Harlow was now stuck here, maybe not for as long as Day would be, but long enough.

If there was anyone he did envy, it was Tony, and all the humans like him who were aging day by day, because in the end, they would get to leave this violent, cruel, fucking world.

Sighing again, Day slowly whispered, “Mother…I’m tired, can’t you let me go now?”

He closed his eyes as she appeared behind him in the glass. Her presence, as always, filled him with such a mixture of emotions. Looking at her brought memories of joy, feelings of happiness, of calm, of unending safety, yet…she was also the source of his greatest sadness, of his endless despair, his anger… He never knew if he wanted to lash out or…hug her…

“It’ll get easier…” she claimed, her voice gentle.

The words sounded like the most blatant lie to him. And how could they not? They came from a woman who couldn’t, or rather wouldn’t , let go of the human she’d decided would be her son for all eternity, whether he was willing or not…