by Anthology
Kiara gasped as she heard footsteps coming towards her, and she turned away, taking a few quick steps towards the door as her eyes searched for her boots.
“Kiara?” It was Drake’s voice behind her.
“I was just leaving,” she said as she turned to him, grinning and holding up her purse. “I think I got everything I need upstairs. Thanks.”
“Wait, let me drive you home,” he said.
“Are you sure? The guests…”
Drake grinned. “You know I have no interest in guests.”
“Right. I knew that…Ethan.”
He opened a closet door and extracted her coat. Her boots sat on the floor, tidily put away as though in wait. Helping her into the coat he said, “Are you ready?”
“I am.”
This time, Drake led her out a side door to a garage where several cars were parked. He guided the way towards a red sporty vehicle that sat low to the ground, its body as streamlined as an eel.
“Are you kidding me?” she asked, gawking at the extraordinary car. “You drive this thing in winter?”
“Well, I have snow tires,” he said.
“You’re nuts. It’s snowed about eight feet today.”
“A little nuts. It’s okay. We’ll get through.”
He pressed a button on his key chain. When the car’s doors proceeded to open upwards like wings, Kiara let out a gleeful laugh. “I don’t think I belong in a machine like this. It’s far too fancy for my blood.”
“Sure you do. Hop in. You’ll like it. And I think it suits you, besides.”
She slid into the passenger seat, feeling its surface with her fingertips and savouring the moment. When would she ever be in such a vehicle again? When—if ever—would she be in the presence of such a man again?
“All limbs inside?” asked Drake as he slipped into the driver’s seat.
“Think so.”
The doors came down again, easing into place with a soft click. Behind them a garage door slid silently open and the sports car pulled out into the night.
“Home, is it?” he said.
Kiara hesitated for a moment before saying, “Yes. I think I’d better.”
What the hell are you doing? she asked herself. He gave you the option of another answer. Ask him out for a beer. Or in for a nightcap.
She looked sideways at him.
“You’re nervous,” he said. “Still, even after our chat.”
“Of course I am. I’m not accustomed to all this.” Kiara gestured to the car’s dashboard, which looked like something out of a futuristic film.
“All this is just things,” he said. “Objects. None of this means anything in the grand scheme of time and space.”
“No, I suppose not, Mr. Profound-Thoughts,” she replied. “But in our little world it means a lot. It means that you rule the roost, because you have the money and the power.”
“I have less power than I would like.” His voice grew distant as the words came out, as though his mind were accompanying the thought to another time and place.
“Less power? What does that mean?”
“Nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all. Just…do you ever wonder what the world would be like if you could go back in time and change things that had occurred, Kiara?”
“Like kill Hitler? That sort of thing?”
“Sort of, yes.”
“I suppose everyone wonders that. But everyone knows that time travel’s impossible, so I don’t lose sleep over it. Besides, even if I could move through time, I’m not sure I could actually kill someone.”
“What if you could save someone? Or many someones?”
“That’s different. I suppose if I knew I could save people, I would. I suppose because not saving them is the rough equivalent of murder.”
“Yes. Of course you’re right.”
Drake went silent and Kiara tried to convince herself that it wasn’t her fault that his jaw was now clenched. But something that she’d said had sent him into a state of stress.
“I’m sorry if I…” she began.
“You did nothing,” he said. “Nothing at all. It’s only that I find myself suddenly confronted by the need to make a decision about something that’s painful to me.”
“Can I help?”
The man laughed softly. “Yes. You are helping, in fact. By being here, next to me. Ah, but here we are already at your road.” He navigated the car to the right as it managed to hug the snow-covered asphalt, pulling ever closer towards her driveway.
“Thank you, Mr. Drake,” she said as she attempted to extricate herself from her seatbelt, unsure as to why she was hurrying. “For everything. Will I see you again? I mean…are you around for a while? I might run into you in town or something.”
“Listen, Kiara,” he said when he’d pulled the car to the side of the road and cut the engine. “I enjoyed our meeting. I would like to see you again, but I’m afraid it’s impossible. My life has become rather more complex than I’d thought at the beginning of this evening.”
Kiara had been around long enough to know that a man stating that life is complicated was synonymous with saying that he didn’t like her big nose or the way she smelled. There was no need for further conversation.
“Of course,” she said. “You’re a busy and important…” She began to open her door as she spoke the words, but the hot sensation of his hand on her arm made her freeze.
“That’s not at all what I meant,” he said, his hand slipping downwards. “No man should ever be too busy for a woman such as you.”
“What did you mean, then?” she asked, her tone a little harsh as he took her hand in his.
“I’m afraid that I can’t tell you, Kiara. But I must confess that I wish I could.” He lifted her hand towards his face, turning it to kiss the inside of her wrist gently before releasing it. “You are a beautiful creature. And I am sorry to say good night.”
With that, he hit a button, raising the doors so that she could make her reluctant escape, the flesh that he’d kissed hot from the touch of his lips.
A moment later, she stood under falling snow and watched the lights of his car disappear as though they’d never existed.
Micah Drake was gone.
6
Over the next few days, Kiara tried her best not to think of Drake, as she’d come to call him in her mind. Simply Drake. Somehow, his surname suited him better than his first.
Her efforts to expel him from her mind were in vain, however. As everyone knows, trying not to think of something is the frustrating equivalent of thinking of it. Constantly.
It didn’t help that she spent many hours hard at work on the article about his house, his strange nature, and all that she’d seen. The magazine’s photographer had sent her a series of pictures of the interior of the house, apparently taken while Drake was out of town. It seemed that her unusual host had left the day after the party and hadn’t been heard from since.
Kiara found herself absorbed in thought as she stared at the photos, thinking of the man’s voice, his face. The way that he leaned forward when he spoke to her. His intimate gestures that made her feel as though they were the only two people on earth. He’d seemed delighted by her, as though escaping a world that he wouldn’t speak of. As though he wanted her to pull him into her own world.
And in him she’d found an escape of sorts as well. He was intriguing, fascinating. And so handsome as to seem like a physical impossibility.
She remembered what it had felt like to have his lips meet her wrist. On more than one occasion, she found her thumb caressing the place that his mouth had touched. If only there were a way to capture such moments, to bottle them, preserve them, and to extract them on occasion in order to generate a quiet thrill.
Because it seemed as though that was all she’d ever have of Drake—those few moments of contact before he’d vanished into the night.
Kiara jerked herself out of her fantasy and scrolled through the photos on her computer, taking note of th
e rooms that she’d already seen, assessing what she might find to add to the article. Most were pictures of beds and windows, light filtering in and landing dramatically on this or that piece of furniture.
One of the photos, though, made her do a double take. It seemed almost to have made it into the collection accidentally.
In a doorway in the background stood a figure, a man, turned away from the camera. He was dressed in strange clothing that didn’t look like it belonged to a twenty-something-year-old billionaire, or even to the guest of such a man.
It was hard to gauge, as he was in shadow, but his clothes looked torn, and either dirty, bloody, or both. And his body was hunched over as though he were in some sort of physical pain.
Kiara zoomed in, trying to get a better look. But the photograph was too low-resolution to make head or tail of it. All she could conclude was that it wasn’t Drake himself; this man’s hair was quite long and light-coloured.
“Who are you?” she muttered. “And where is Drake?”
That evening, her question was answered when she received a text from him.
-This is Micah Drake, in case you don’t recognize the number. Would you care to dine at my house tonight?
She waited several minutes, not wishing to seem overly eager, before replying:
-All right. But I thought you were away…?
-I returned to Silver Creek. For various reasons. Please come.
-I’ll come. Seven?
-Seven it is. I’ll send a car.
Once again, his words had an unhealthy effect on her, her heart expanding inside her chest.
Excitement, she thought. That’s all it is. It’s just that I’m surprised to hear from him at all—it’s not that I have any feelings for him. That would be ridiculous. She realized that her thoughts were coming out in complete sentences, a sure sign that she was trying to convince herself of something.
This time she anticipated the car that was being sent to pick her up, but when she saw that it wasn’t Drake himself driving, her heart sank a little. It was one of his men; a tall fellow whose name was no doubt Jeeves, Mr. Butler, or Sir Manservant.
“My name is Rogers, Miss,” he said, as though reading her thoughts as he emerged from the dark sedan. He held the door for Kiara, who got into the back seat and thought for a moment before saying, “May I ask: what’s your boss like?”
“Miss?”
“Mr. Drake—what’s he like?”
“He’s a good man. Generous. Keeps to himself. The ideal employer, really.”
She didn’t press him with more questions; it seemed that the driver was as secretive as his boss.
When they arrived, the man held the door for her once again before escorting her to the front entrance of the house. Micah was there to greet her, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt which fit him very nicely, showing off the physique of an extremely fit man. In his tuxedo Kiara had been able to tell that he was well built, but the shirt told her a new story: with his arms, he looked as though he could lift a horse.
“How are you, Kiara?” he asked, putting a hand on her lower back. She tried to force the blood in her body not to make its way to her cheeks, but in vain. His touch was electric, and she found herself salivating all of a sudden. Hungry for everything but food.
He guided her to a sitting room where two wine glasses sat perched on a table alongside an assortment of fruit and fancy-looking cheeses.
“I’m fine. Busy,” she said. “I’ve been working on the article, trying to get my head around a few things.”
“Well, thank you for taking the time to see me,” he said.
“You’re talking as though we’re in a business meeting. Is that what this is? I had the impression that I wouldn’t be encountering you again.”
Drake laughed. “No, not a business meeting at all. The truth is that I wanted to see you again. Simple. I enjoy your company, and I have a stressful life.”
“Fair enough. I’m here to amuse you, then. So tell me—how have you been?”
“Oh, running around like a chicken with its head cut off,” he said. “But that’s not really your question, is it?” He leaned forward, looking her in the eye. “You want to know where I’ve been.”
Kiara nodded. “Yes, I do.”
“That’s a complicated question.”
“And complicated is a word you like to use to dodge questions,” she said. “You’re avoidant.”
“I’m careful.”
“You can trust me.”
“Can I?” he asked. “Tell me, Kiara, why are you here?”
“Because you invited me. Because I want more answers for my article.”
“Is that it?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want to be able to trust you. Why are you here?”
“Because you’re attractive. You intrigue me. And I want to understand you, your life. What you are.”
“Ah, there it is. What I am. Finally, some real honesty.”
“I meant ‘who,’” she said.
“No you didn’t. You know that I’m different, but you don’t understand how or why.”
“I suppose that’s true.”
“Yet, if I show you, you may run away forever, and that would be a shame. It would mean depriving myself of your company, you see.” He stood and walked to the fireplace, putting an elbow on the mantel and turning to look at her once again.
“I won’t run away,” she said, standing and approaching him. “Because I genuinely want to know the truth. There was a man, in one of the magazine photographs. He was wearing odd clothing and I want you to tell me about him.”
Drake sighed heavily. “He should not have been there. He is one of the refugees—one of the walking wounded. They come here occasionally, looking for my help so that they can return to their time after being mended.”
He spoke the words matter-of-factly, as though it were the simplest concept in the world.
“To their time?” said Kiara. “Is that really what you meant to say?”
“Yes, it is. You see, the man that you saw came from another era, Kiara. One where the world is filled with darkness. And I have the power to help him, as well as others. And so I choose to do it. Because what sort of a monster lets men, women and children die slowly when he has the resources to save them?”
She looked at him, her jaw tightly shut. There were many truths in the world, and often they collided and contradicted one another. But one thing of which she’d always been certain was that time travel was an impossibility.
“I need to go. I have to get out of here,” she said, her voice tight with an onslaught of emotion.
“One minute. I only ask for one minute,” he said, his hand extended towards her. “Please, come with me. If you don’t believe me after I show you the evidence, of course you can go. I won’t stop you.”
Oh, great. Now he really is going to turn out to be a psychopath and lock me up in the wine cellar, she thought. Of course. Things and people that seemed too good to be true always were, after all.
But he didn’t take her to any such place; instead, he guided her upstairs once again, taking her to one of the bedrooms that she’d seen a few evenings earlier.
Drake opened the door gently to reveal that someone was sleeping in the bed, and Kiara let out a gasp. A young boy lay there, his chest rising and falling, a series of bandages wrapped about his head. A faint bloodstain soaked through on one side.
“Who is that?” whispered Kiara, leaning towards Drake.
“A boy, taken from near the battlefield. He was too close to the action.”
Kiara walked out of the room and Drake followed, quietly closing the door behind him.
“We’re waiting for the doctor’s arrival,” he said. “This boy needs treatment.”
“Okay,” she said. “How is it possible that what you’re telling me is even remotely true?”
“There it is. That look. The look that tells me that in a few minutes you’ll leave here, and I
won’t ever see you again. Because you have decided in these last few seconds that I am a lunatic, a rich genius who hallucinates and invents stories to amuse himself.”
“I haven’t come to that conclusion,” she said. “Clearly, there’s a boy lying in that room. But you have to admit that it’s a pretty far-fetched story.”
“Absolutely it is. Why on earth do you think I’m so damned private about my life?” His tone was harsh now, as though he were a little angry.
“I should leave,” said Kiara, taking a step backwards. “I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have delved so deep into your life. You were quite right,” she said. “I’ll go.”
“No—please. You said you wouldn’t run away.”
But she’d already made her way out down the hall and was jogging down the stairs. She turned back to him as he followed.
“You’re right. I should at least offer you an explanation, so here it is: You are a handsome and a strange man, Micah Drake,” she said. “And I don’t think you’re a lunatic. But nor do I think you’re prepared to share your world with me—your real world. Whoever that child is, whoever his mother is, well, I don’t even want to know. So thank you for everything, and it was nice to meet you.”
“One day soon,” he said, “You will understand that this is my reality.”
She turned away and continued down the long staircase.
“But go,” said the voice behind her. “I understand your feelings. There is, after all, a reason that I am alone.”
As Kiara moved away, a pain struck her in the chest like a hard blow. With every molecule in her being she wanted to believe him. She wanted to think that he was better than this.
That he was honest, good. Noble.
And in spite of it all, she still wanted him.
7
After she’d waited outside for what seemed like an eternity, her taxi arrived. Kiara returned to her apartment and what now felt like an alternate reality. Away from Drake’s...whatever it was. All she knew was that he’d managed to claim that he brought people through some sort of time portal to save their lives, and that the boy lying in his house, injured, was one such person. A resident of another century.
