Brothers of the Flame (An Ariel Kimber Novel Book 1)

by Mary Martel

  I liked Tyson. A lot.

  “Alright,” he said as his hand appeared in front of my face. “I got all of your stuff picked up. Now let’s get out of here.”

  I took his hand and allowed him to pull me to my feet. He had the thick straps of my white and pink bag over his shoulder.

  When I got to my feet he didn’t let my hand go. He threaded his fingers through mine and gave my hand a gentle, but firm squeeze.

  “Come on, Ariel,” he said as he pulled me along behind him and out of the twins room. “I have promises to keep, and I know you have lots of questions you’re dying to ask me. When we’re safe behind my locked door, I’m all yours.”

  There were parts there I liked. Like finally getting my answers. But I didn’t think I needed to see the inside of another bedroom in this house. What I needed was to extract myself from this situation and eject myself from this damn house. What I didn’t need to do was think about how much I liked the thought of him being all mine.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Tyson and I walked down the hallway hand in hand. We passed the two closed doors and moved through the weirdly empty room at the top of the stairs. We walked towards the other hallway I’d noticed earlier. It was oddly the same as the other hallway, only opposite. Where the hallway that had led to the twin’s room had one door on the right and two doors on the left, this hallway had one door on the left and two doors on the right. All three doors were closed like they had been in the other hallway.

  Tyson stopped us in front of the last door on the right. For the twins, it had been the only door on the right. Tyson put his empty hand on the knob, twisted and pushed the door open.

  Tyson’s bedroom was what looked to be the exact same size as the twin’s bedroom. I shook my head as I looked around his bedroom. What did one person need with all this space? What did two people need with all this space?

  The size, and the doors I presumed lead to the bathroom and the closet were where the similarities of the two rooms ended.

  Tyson’s bed was a huge, four-poster, gothic monstrosity that pushed up against the wall between the two doors I’d guessed about. The bed frame itself and the posts were wood and stained a deep, dark wine red. Long, gauzy, see-through black curtains hung down on each side of the bed. Each curtain was pushed open so the unmade bed could be seen. Black, shiny sheets beckoned from within those curtains like a silky heaven. A deep burgundy comforter lay in a crumpled heap at the foot of the bed. A massive pile of black and burgundy pillows sat at the head of the bed. The pillows, like the sheet, shined in the light and looked like pure silk. My mother would have approved of Tyson’s expensive taste.

  Even unmade, Tyson’s bed was lush. I wanted a bed just like it. Or, better yet, maybe I could just sleep in here with him every night. Yeah, that’d work just fine for me.

  The walls were painted the same deep, rich burgundy as the comforter and half the massive pile of pillows. The plush carpet on the floor was black, looked to be brand new, and felt like walking on foam.

  A circular shaped rug lay underneath his massive bed. It was a reddish orange in color, thin and had what looked like words and shapes written in white chalk all over it. The rug appeared worn in places and very old. I liked the color, but the chalk seemed strange to me. An energy seemed to come off of the rug. Not a bad energy, just something otherworldly. Something not entirely natural, something other, different. And I could feel strange heat coming off of it. Almost like the heat I had felt when a Tyson and the twins had touched me. The rug sort of pulsed with its own energy. I didn’t want to touch it, but at the same time I knew it wouldn’t hurt me if I did. I didn’t understand it and I didn’t try to.

  On either side of the bed between the doors sat a black nightstand. Burgundy candles sat atop those nightstands with no candleholders to be seen. Wax dripped down the sides, pooling around the candle on the nightstand.

  Silver framed pictures graced the tops of those nightstands, intermingling with the candles. I couldn’t see the pictures from where I stood, but I wanted to see what they held, desperately so. I wanted that little peek into Tyson’s life before I’d come into it.

  I would wait until he either turned his back or left the room to get an up close and personal look at his photos. They had to be pictures of people who meant something to him if he cared enough to have them framed and put them on his nightstand, a place where he’d be able to see them before he fell asleep at night and first thing he saw when he opened his eyes in the morning and looked over. That’s where I’d put pictures that were special to me if I had any.

  A black trunk sat at the foot of his bed. The trunk, like the rug, looked to be very old. It wasn’t one of those trunks that had a vintage look to them but was really brand spanking new and only made to look vintage because people thought it looked cool. This was the real deal, something that looked like it had once belonged to some high born noble back in the day.

  The top of the trunk was covered with what I thought at first glance to be a furry blanket or rug, but when I moved closer I realized I was wrong. I ran the tips of my fingers over the black fur and turned my head, looking for Tyson. I found him off to the side, watching my every move like a hawk.

  He must have seen the question on my face because he said, “Bear,” without my having to ask.

  Bear.

  A goddamn bear. Like the beautiful but sad looking ones at the zoo.

  I pulled my hand back immediately. All that luscious black fur was attached to skin, skin that used to cover an animal. An animal I’d once seen at the zoo.

  Tyson laughed. “Your face, you look so horrified. I don’t understand. I know you’re not a vegetarian, I’ve seen you eat meat. What gives?”

  I shook my head, I didn’t know how to explain it to him without sounding stupid.

  “Ariel,” he asked gently as he ran his fingertips down my arm. He’d moved closer without my noticing. “You can tell me anything. I know you don’t get it yet, but I’m here for you, for whatever you need, whatever you want. We all are. Even my panty stealing wayward Uncle.”

  “It’s stupid,” I said. “My mother has never wanted anything to do with me unless it made her look good, or she got something out of it. But sometimes the men who blew through her life took interest in me. It wasn’t always good. In fact, it was mostly awful. But there was this one I remember who was awesome, and I think he stuck around longer than most because of me. At least that’s what my mother said when he left and she took it out on me because she had liked him more than she had most of the others.”

  I had to stop speaking suddenly to swallow down the bitter bile rising in my throat. These weren’t things I ever planned on talking about with anyone and now here I was, giving pieces of myself away so freely. It took me longer than I was proud of before I could control my voice enough to speak again without sounding like I was going to burst into heart wrenching, body wracking sobs.

  “I was eight and his name was Thomas. She’d always get drunk and call him Tommy Boy in her high, whiny voice and he’d get mad, so mad he’d yell at her not to call him that. She’d laugh and sometimes he’d hit her. No matter how mean he was to her he was never anything but nice to me. She worked nights dancing and would leave me home by myself. When he knew she wasn’t going to be there he would bring me something to eat for dinner, pizza or fast food. If it weren’t for him I would have eaten stale crackers and ramen for dinner. He also bought me pretty headbands for my hair once and a pair of new shoes just because. When he left her, my mother made me throw them away and I cried because before then I’d never owned a pair of shoes that hadn’t been worn by someone else before me.”

  He squeezed my hand and I closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see pity on his face. It was my life and I’d done the best I could with it. Also, the things I’d gone through had helped shape me into the person I was today and I had no problem with who I was. It could have been a lot worse, that’s for sure.

  “The day before he left
my mother was one of the best days I can remember from my childhood, but also one of the worst. It was my birthday and she had completely forgotten. Thomas knew because I had told him. He asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I told him. The only thing I wanted was something I had never allowed myself to want until he asked for fear of being disappointed when I didn’t get it.”

  Tyson squeezed my hand almost to the point of pain. “What did you want that badly, sweetheart?” He asked, his voice thick with an emotion I was better off not knowing.

  I should have stopped there but, stupidly, I kept right on speaking.

  “The one thing I wanted more than anything in the whole world was to go to the zoo and see the animals. The year before in school there was a field trip to the zoo and I didn’t get to go because she refused to pay for it and wouldn’t sign the permission slip. I’d wanted to go so bad. I told Thomas I wanted to go to the zoo and he took me. We spent hours at the zoo and I had the time of my life. We’d gone late enough in the day so my mother had already gone to work and we certainly weren’t expecting her to be home when we got back. But she was and when Thomas made the mistake of telling her he’d taken me to the zoo for my birthday she got angry. So very, very angry. I don’t think Thomas noticed because her anger first appeared as a dark look on her face. When Thomas asked why she wasn’t at work she lied and told him she’d come home because she wasn’t feeling well. Then she sent him home. I didn’t realize what was coming or I probably would have begged him to take me with him.

  “After he left I tried to tell her I was tired and wanted to go to bed, I wanted to go to my room so I could escape her. I never made it to my bedroom and on the night of my ninth birthday, after the best day of my life, she broke my arm, two of my ribs and blackened both my eyes. She didn’t even take me to the hospital. Instead she went out to a bar and didn’t bother coming home until the next day. Thomas found me on the floor in the hallway where she’d left me and he was the one to take me to the hospital. He left me at the emergency room and I never saw him again.” I shrugged off the memory as I pulled my hand free of Tyson’s. “It was the only time I’ve ever seen a bear that wasn’t on tv and I thought it was one of the most beautifully fierce creatures I have ever seen. I wasn’t expecting… I’m sorry, Tyson.”

  “Ariel, Ariel,” he whispered. “That’s so fucked up and sad that I don’t even know what to say.”

  I didn’t want him to say anything because he was right, it was fucked up and sad and what were you supposed to say to something like that?

  I shrugged like it was no big thing, like I hadn’t just told him some horrible thing from my past. “I’m sorry, Tyson, it just brought up a bad memory is all.”

  “I will put it away in the closet,” he whispered as he wrapped his arms around my shoulders and pulled me into his body. I buried my face in his chest as he hugged me tightly against him.

  Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how badly I had needed that hug.

  “You don’t have to put it in the closet,” I said. “It’s not going to bother me again, I promise. Honestly, I’d forgotten about the zoo until I saw the bear hide.”

  His hand cupped the back of my head as his lips brushed against my forehead. “Sweetheart, you don’t simply forget something like that.”

  I wanted to ask how the hell he would know, but I didn’t because it didn’t sound very nice. Instead of being a rude A-hole, I wrapped my arms around his middle and clung to him. He smelled nice, like some kind of rich, earthy incense.

  His lips moved across my forehead as he spoke. “Let’s go sit down and I’ll show you something cool. You’ll like it, I promise.”

  I wished he’d stop promising me things. The more he promised the more I worried the day would come where he’d break those promises.

  He moved back and I got to see the rest of his bedroom. It was just as burgundy and black as the first half of the room I’d seen, but with some other touches of color thrown in.

  Unlike the twin’s bedroom Tyson didn’t have a couch. There was another large, circular rug, this one burgundy and unlike the other one it had no chalk markings on it and it seemed relatively new. There were massive square shaped body pillows in orange and black piled on the rug. It resembled a cozy nest. In front of the rug and up against the wall there was a short, black television stand with a flat screen tv sitting on it. It was about half the size as the tv in the informal living room off of the kitchen.

  There were four tall windows along one wall that faced the backyard. They were bare and curtain-less like every other window I’d seen so far in this house. Did these boys not believe in curtains, or what?

  The wall behind the tv had four framed posters of what looked like blown up black and white tarot cards. I moved closer to get a better view and, sure enough, I’d been right. They were tarot cards.

  The Hanged Man.

  The Magician.

  The Emperor.

  And, The Fool.

  I moved even closer to get a better look and realized they weren’t mass market posters but were what looked like original black and white ink drawings. The details were impressive, the artwork beautiful.

  “Did you do these?” I asked in quiet awe.

  “No,” he laughed at me. “I can’t draw a straight line. They’ve belonged to my family for about three hundred years now. Once we owned a full deck, but we lost most of them in a fire years ago. All that’s left now are these four and the four in Quint’s room.”

  “What four does he have?” I couldn’t help but ask out of curiosity.

  “Death, The Wheel of Fortune, Justice and The moon.”

  “Can you read Tarot cards?”

  I hoped he said yes because tarot cards fascinated me ever since I’d gone to this carnival last summer on a date with some boy whose name I no longer remembered. There had been a fortune tellers tent that I had to drag my date into with me. He hadn’t wanted to go in, claiming the whole thing to be a hoax.

  Inside the tent had looked exactly like what you’d expect some traveling gypsy fortune tellers tent to look like. Scarves tossed all over everything. Candles burning in every corner. A table sat in the center of the tent draped with a gauzy piece of vibrant purple fabric. On top of the table sat a large crystal ball, a white ceramic bowl filled half way with water, and a deck of what had looked like hand painted tarot cards. Trunks covered in bright scarves sat on the floor lined against the walls of the tent. The dirt floor had been covered in bright, eccentric rugs.

  I had wanted so badly for that gypsy woman to read her cards for me but never got the chance. It had cost twenty dollars, I’d had no money of my own and my date had flat out refused to pay money for some bogus bullshit.

  That was the one and only date he got out of me. Not because he wouldn’t pay for something, but because dates were supposed to be fun and he’d been like a wet blanket, sucking all the fun out of the whole night.

  Tyson watched me with a blank face through a curtain of dark hair that had fallen forward to cover part of his face.

  I wished I knew what he hid behind that blank mask he wore on his handsome face.

  “And if I can?” he asked carefully, even his voice betrayed no emotion.

  “Can you?” My voice, however, betrayed everything. Not that I was trying to hide anything. Tyson gave me no reason to hide my emotions.

  “Yes,” he whispered while still watching me through his hair.

  I put my hands together below my chin in a silent prayer, made my eyes as big and wide as they could go and stuck out my lower lip, pouting at him. I was willing to bet I looked ridiculous, but did not care. “Please, please, please.”

  I wanted him to do a reading for me, but I also wanted him to teach me. If he was willing to teach me then I wanted to learn.

  He brushed his long hair back behind his ear with lean, tan fingers. His eyes lit with a happiness I had never seen in them before and he flashed me his beautiful smile, blinding me with his white, tooth paste a
d perfection.

  I hadn’t realized until that moment that he might have been nervous about my reaction to either his bedroom or the strangeness that was his family.

  “Sorry, sweetheart, but not today. Today we have something else to do. But, this weekend if you want we can play with tarot cards. I think I might even be able to scrounge up your own deck for you.”

  I liked the sound of that so I smiled at him. Not a small smile either, but a full blown one. Tyson always seemed to give me what I wanted, this time I had to wait a few days for it but it was still coming.

  His smile faded from his face and he suddenly looked far too serious for me. “You should smile more often, sweetheart; you’ve got a beautiful smile.”

  That did it, and my smile melted from my face, the happiness shining bright in my eyes dimmed a bit.

  “I’ve never really had much to smile about,” I told him honestly.

  “That’s going to change. I promise.”

  Again, here was another promise.

  I had to change the subject. “What are we doing today?” I asked him.

  He let me change the subject and I found myself liking him even more for it if that was possible.

  “You’re going to learn some things about magic.”

  Finally.

  Now we were talking.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Tyson moved the huge pillows on the floor around until they formed a circle around the rug. He kept two out of the outer ring. Those he placed beside each other inside the circle, they were closer to the tv than the bed.

  He instructed me to sit on one of the big pillows he’d placed inside the circle of pillows. I sat with my back to the tv, facing towards the bed on an orange pillow.

  He told me that when he normally did serious ceremonial magic he pulled out the rug from underneath the bed and would put his circle around it because it was old and held a great deal of magic. Whatever that meant. I had asked but was told I wasn’t ready for that explanation yet. I left it alone but filed a little note away in my head to look it up on my own when I got a chance. Objects could hold great deals of magic? I had no idea. I knew nothing of magic.