Wolf shook his head emphatically. ‘To hell with that. No way. Forget it. I told you, I’m out of it. I’ll never go back. And I especially won’t ever go back to that place.’

‘So you’d rather spend the rest of your life kidding yourself that you’re safe up here in your Spanish mountain paradise? Because you’re not. If I’m not the one who carries your head back to your former masters, then someone else will. They’ll hunt you to the ends of the earth.’

‘So reassuring. You really know how to cheer a guy up.’

‘Here’s the good news,’ Ben said. ‘You’re not alone. You and I have a common purpose here. Until these people are taken down, we both have an awful lot to lose. Likewise, we have everything to gain, if we play this right.’

Wolf weighed it up in his mind. At first he seemed reluctant to admit to himself that Ben was making sense. ‘So what are you saying, that we should team up together? Just like old times?’

‘Not quite like old times,’ Ben said. ‘Back in the day, we were just obeying orders. This time, it’s personal. Protecting what’s important to us. For me, it’s Grace and my sister. For you, your freedom and your future.’

Wolf smiled uncomfortably, and the moonlight glittered on his gold teeth. ‘You and me versus the bad guys. Going up against the forces of evil like Van Helsing and Jonathan Harker. That your idea?’

‘Not quite how I pictured it.’

‘Back into the game, just when I thought I was free of all that kind of shit, forevermore.’

‘I can’t do this on my own,’ Ben said.

‘Maybe that’s the real reason why you decided against killing me.’

‘On balance, you’re probably worth more to me alive than dead,’ Ben replied. ‘Just about.’

‘Thanks, buddy.’

‘And I seem to recall that you were pretty useful in a fight, once upon a time.’

‘Hell of a fight you have in mind, too,’ Wolf said. ‘You want to take them down? All of them?’

‘So hard, they won’t know what hit them. But it won’t be easy.’

‘Of course not,’ Wolf said. ‘You never did take the easy way.’

‘So what do you say, Jaden? Are you with me? One last time?’

Wolf gazed down the mountainside towards the lights of Albarracín in the distance. ‘Story of my life. All these years I dreamed of the day when I’d come back here. Putting it off, putting it off, always another excuse not to. Then when the time finally comes, no sooner am I getting settled in but I’m being recalled for duty.’