by Hati Bell
“Trusting him is a mistake. She has a better chance staying here. The next time someone tries to hurt her, we’ll be ready. Also, she can’t die. She’s as good as immortal.”
“You can’t know that,” Drake countered. “She’s a half-breed and it’s unsure if she’s just as untouchable and strong as a full-blood phoenix.” According to Gregor, she wasn’t.
A strange heat wafted over him, as if the Sahara had suddenly decided to pay Amber’s room a visit. It smelled like someone had lit a match and his muscles pulled taut.
“Where are you taking my promesi?” a curious voice sounded.
Between the window and the sink stood a man and a boy. The man was fully dressed in black. Dark curls spilled onto a chiseled face that was drawn in an expression of boredom mixed with arrogance. The teenager next to him wore a blue track suit and large headphones around his neck.
Drake immediately knew who the man was. His presence evoked the same aggression in him as it had done a year ago, right before the phoenix had stabbed him in the back with a steel pipe. Unfortunately, he was the same person who had the power to wake Amber. If he desired to. “Someone tried to kidnap her tonight, so we’re moving her to a secret location,” he said calmly. After having lived under Alec Kincaid’s roof for over a year, he knew how to keep his emotions in check.
The man stood with his hands crossed behind his back, like a captain on a ship. “Moving her where?”
“It wouldn’t be a secret anymore if we told you, now would it?” Drake drawled.
The phoenix gave him a haughty smile. “You think to keep her away from me, her promesi? You think to have to protect her, against me?” He looked impassively at the bruises on Amber’s throat.
Drake pulled the titanium knife from under his jacket. He wouldn’t underestimate the phoenix again. “Yeah. I think I do need to keep her away from you since you have the ability to wake her, but refuse to do so. I also think to need to protect her from you since apparently you don’t give a rat’s furry ass that she was about to be abducted.”
The phoenix walked to Amber’s side in a jiff and gently stroked her hair.
Drake tightened his fists, clenching his nails into his palm. “Wake her,” he pleaded. “Before someone tries to chain her like an animal again.”
“It is not up to you, inferi, to decide when I will wake my promesi.”
The boy with the headphones crossed his arms and nodded.
Drake couldn’t keep his hands form into claws. An intense rage fell over him and changed his skin into steel-hard scales.
Once again, Logan was the calm voice of reason. “Before we all start to growl and redecorate this room, may I propose we work together?” He looked directly at the older phoenix. “I’m sure you want to keep her safe as well. Someone tried to kidnap her. Who knows what for? Maybe he’ll try to kill her next time. She’s vulnerable in her current condition.”
“Death is only the beginning, draconi.” The phoenix put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and they disappeared, leaving only a faint scent of smoke behind.
“Bloody hell!” Drake balled his fists before he smashed something into bits.
His brother cocked a brow. “You were saying about superstition?”
“I have to go,” he said, walking to the door.
“Remember the last time you thought you’d found a way to wake her?” Logan said. “Maybe it’s time to let her go.”
“Call me when Benn has watched the surveillance tapes and knows who did this. I would like to be there to pull out his intestines.”
Logan let out a sigh. “Are you sure you want to do this? Can you trust Gregor not to hand her over to Kincaid? He is his lap dog, after all.”
“Gregor showed me something I could use against him if he betrayed me. A form of insurance.”
“Have you considered that he might have done that in cahoots with Kincaid? That he’s playing the double spy game, manipulating you?”
Of course Drake had, but he had his back against the wall. “Not on this. If Kincaid discovers what Gregor has been keeping from him, he’d kill him.”
“Fine,” his brother said. “Obviously I’m not going to change your stubborn mind. See you later.”
“Later?”
“Benn’s engagement party,” Logan reminded him. “Our big friend the brilliant IT guy in his eternal dungarees. A Steve Jobs in the making. Or have you forgotten about him?”
He hadn’t forgotten. He just had more pressing issues on his mind. “I have one more stop tonight before the party. See you later.”
***
Amber was dead. She knew it. She felt it. Everything was a stark white, as if she were covered in sheets with shadows dancing behind them. Oddly enough she heard voices of souls she didn’t remember, but somehow recognized.
“Hey, love, it’s me again. Drake.”
Drake—or the Pained Voice, as she called him—sounded full of sorrow and filled with a hint of rage.
“Sometimes I wish I’d never met you. Never got to know you. Never smelled you, tasted you.”
Now that didn’t sound very nice. She tried to open her mouth and tell him that, but her body refused to follow her directions.
The voice continued. “However dark my life was before you, it was less painful than the emptiness I feel now. Still, I can’t let you go. Not yet. Not now and perhaps never. I don’t know if you’d cheer me or hate me for not letting you go. Every morning when I look into the mirror I remind myself that I’m your champion. The man of steel, even though you would hate being treated as some helpless princess. But that’s exactly what you are. Helpless. Surrounded by monsters circling you, wanting to destroy you.”
She felt a finger brushing her cheek and lips touching her forehead.
The voice wasn’t finished yet. “I broke my promise to you once, but it won’t happen again. A Kincaid never makes the same mistake twice.”
A Kincaid? Glass-green eyes and a goatee manifested in her mind. The voice turned cold, tinged with bitterness, and internally made her shiver.
“No one will hurt you again. I won’t bloody allow it. Not even if I have to hang a hundred goblins for it.”
The voice disappeared and she once again faded into oblivion, feeling oddly reassured.
THREE
Someone once said there were two things in life that never change: taxes and death. Drake added his hate towards his grandfather, Alec Kincaid.
Somerset’s lord and master stood in the gym, swinging his sword in a sparring match. Gregor parried the fierce blows, the floor squeaking beneath them, while the two men were looking for an opening. Dragons aged slower than humans and his grandfather’s muscled, in-shape body was a testament to that. Despite his long office hours, Alec Kincaid had a rigorous workout schedule that Drake begrudgingly admired. Not that he’d ever admit that.
Kincaid lowered his sword when he saw Drake. “Well, what do you know? My grandson visiting me of his own accord during a sparring session. Have you finally swallowed your pride and come to ask for my help in how to wake Burning Beauty?”
As if a wolf would ever ask a jackal for its help. “I know better than that.”
“Then why are you here?” Kincaid gestured Gregor to hand his sword over to Drake. “Don’t tell me you plan to do something melodramatic again, such as murder during clear daylight?”
Drake grimaced at the memory of that day in the hospital, when he’d pulled lose the wires connecting Kincaid to the breathing machine. “No. You recover far too fast,” he shot back and accepted Gregor’s sword. Kincaid would spar with him, whether he took the weapon or not. “Someone tried to kidnap Amber tonight.” He stepped around a cross-trainer and pointed his sword accusatorily at Kincaid.
“I’m not surprised to hear that,” Kincaid said right before he lunged at him.
Drake blocked the blow and managed to twist before he had his back against the wall. Kincaid jumped over a treadmill and slashed at him. He didn’t stop until he drew blood from
a cut to Drake’s shoulder. Drake gritted his teeth.
“She’s a half-blood phoenix,” Kincaid continued. “Which means she holds no control over her fiery nature. She’s a ticking time-bomb and as such a danger to Somerset. It was only a matter of time before someone tried to take her out. You disappoint me. You should have seen this coming.”
Drake tightened and ignored the pain in his shoulder. “Is that a confession?”
Kincaid put his sword on a nearby bench. “And my disappointment continues,” he uttered with a sigh. “I said someone tried to do it, Drake. A Kincaid doesn’t try. A Kincaid succeeds. If I had wanted your comatose time-bomb dead, she would be.”
Drake dropped his sword. It took all he had not to lunge at Kincaid. “I came to warn you. If I find out you had something to do with this, you’ll regret it. I’ll take something from you that’s precious and irreplaceable to you as well.”
“You have piqued my interest. Something precious to me and irreplaceable as well? Do tell. What is this mysterious object?”
He had to admit that it had taken him some time to find the crack in Kincaid’s ivory tower. “I’ll take out Henry and renounce your name. This way the family line you are so proud of will end permanently. You will go into the Kincaid chronicles as the dragon responsible for the end of the dynasty.”
His grandfather almost looked impressed. “You expect me to believe you would kill your own cousin just to make a point with me?”
“A cousin who hates me,” Drake reminded him coolly. “And isn’t it a typical Kincaid trait to turn on your own flesh and blood?”
Kincaid stroked his goatee. “I see you have given this considerable thought. Have you also factored in that I might take you out before you have the chance to get to Henry?”
Drake’s smile told Kincaid that he had, in fact. “Should I suddenly disappear without a trace, your precious estate the Dome will be leveled to the ground. I already gave my grandmother’s lawyer the green light.” Kincaid’s mouth tightened when his deceased wife was mentioned. Drake was convinced Kincaid had ice in his veins. Ice that temporarily melted whenever he was reminded of Ariana Kincaid. Her shadow, her last wish in which she had left the estate and a fortune to Drake, was the only weapon he had against his grandfather. “I turn twenty-one in two months. The Dome will then officially be mine and I will finally have the right to toss you out. Promise me that the Council, and you particularly, won’t try anything to take her out, and I will have it made official that you can still live here.”
“Will be co-owner,” Kincaid corrected him. “It is not a small favor you ask. It will take a lot of persuasion to convince the other Council members that it’s harmless to have a semi-nuclear bomb stay in Somerset instead of eliminating her.” His eyes narrowed to green slits that cut through Drake. “You can also choose option two and just let her go.”
Everything in him revolted at that thought. “No.”
“Think about Turnpike and what happened there. Not even I can protect you when something like that happens again.”
Drake refused to think about that day. The memory was locked up somewhere in the dark corners of his brain. “I never asked you to.”
Kincaid let out an exasperated sigh. “What exactly were you planning to do if—and that’s a big if—she wakes from her coma within this century? Do you think you can just lead a plain, simple life with her like humans? You are not a full-blood human and never will be able to live like them. You are, however, mortal, and this means you can not keep a phoenix, dear boy. Have you ever tried to keep a flame in check? Euripides couldn’t have said it better when he said that no human, no property, is as difficult to guard as a woman. Let her go, Drake. Let her go.”
Drake looked Kincaid straight in the eye as he uttered his favorite word against him. “No.” He then turned him his back and walked away.
***
Alec Kincaid plopped down on a weight bench and followed his grandson’s departure with trepidation.
Gregor walked back inside. He was dressed in his usual black suit again. “Well? Did the boy listen to reason?”
“Every story needs a villain, Gregor. To Drake that’s me. To me it’s a comatose phoenix girl who keeps him enthralled even a year after her death. What happened in Turnpike is only a taste of what he’s willing to do before he gives her up. He’ll make the world bleed first. Which means the unrewarding task of preventing him from self-destruction rests upon my shoulders.”
“He’s not going to give her up.”
“No, he’s not,” Alec agreed. It was the Kincaid curse. When you found the right woman—or, in Drake’s case, thought you had—you did not give up the chase, the consequences be damned. “It seems history is repeating itself,” he confessed in a rare moment of melancholy. “One look at Ariana and I knew she would be mine. I didn’t falter when she turned me down and called me a megalomaniac with autocratic tendencies.”
Gregor cleared his throat. “You are a megalomaniac with autocratic tendencies.”
Alec grinned when he remembered the hoops he had to jump through before his wife even gave him the time of day. The most complicated merges and acquisitions had seemed a piece of cake after that. He hadn’t cared that she’d been practically engaged to another. He had crushed his opponent with great pleasure.
“Drake is cut from the same cloth,” Gregor said, amusement in his voice. “Though he will never admit it. Just like you will never admit being proud of him for not bowing down for you.”
Alec walked to his phone by the window sill. “The boy needs to focus his attention on more important issues and cut out anything that weighs him down. It is time for a distraction in the form of the proverbial skeleton in his closet.”
“Ravi Sengupta,” Gregor guessed. “Do you think that’s wise? He could be more dangerous than he already was. You did send him to hell. They say no one returns from the Catacombs unscathed.”
“Sengupta is a businessman. He won’t bite the hand that feeds him. Unfortunately he’s a necessary evil to teach Drake to prioritize. My grandson doesn’t know yet what awaits us this year.”
“Demillennium,” Gregor grounded out the hated word.
“Demillennium,” Alec agreed grimly.
FOUR
If someone had told Drake a year ago that he’d try to get his brother in leather-studded pants he would have laughed right in that person’s face. However, desperate times called for desperate measures.
Logan lifted his hands in a defensive position and shook his head. “As much as my brotherly heart loves to give you a hand, I must draw a line somewhere. Which would be now. Right fucking now.”
Drake put the pants on the armrest of the couch Logan and Benn sat on and opened a cabinet.
Benn pulled his phone from his pocket and a hip-hop beat blasted through Drake’s room.
Logan grinned. “Still planning to request this song for Cally on your wedding day?”
“It’s a good song,” Benn defended his choice.
“Oh, well, I suppose you could make bigger judgment errors,” Logan said with a sidelong glance at Drake. “Such as crashing a phoenix party dressed in an S and M outfit.”
Benn furrowed his brows. “How far exactly are you willing to take this?”
“As far as it takes,” Drake answered and took a bottle of oil from his bedside drawer.
Benn looked relieved. “I’m engaged, so count me out. What if this guy wants to kiss? I won’t cheat on Cally.”
Logan coughed and combed his fingers through his blond strands of hair. “No one is lipping with this Benedict.” His eyes narrowed on Drake.
Drake put on the pants that fit him like a second skin, carefully avoiding the studs. It was bloody tight around his ass, but he was careful not to show his discomfort. He took off his shirt and began to oil his chest and arms. “One of you has to come with me to that party. I wouldn’t have asked if there was another way. According to rumors Benedict the Bonker enjoys certain… group activities wi
th men. It was the only way to get on the guest list.”
His brother snorted. “Benedict the Bonker? Really? You’re making it sound more and more fetching to sacrifice myself as the sacrificial lamb.”
Benn pointed at his ring. “Engaged,” he repeated while rhythmically tapping his foot on “I Love Big Butts.”
A calculating look entered Logan’s eyes. “I have a girlfriend too. She might be the one.”
“No shit,” Benn huffed.
Drake shared his skepticism. Logan’s girlfriends usually lasted as long as a carton of milk. “Really? So, what does this mysterious girl none of us ever heard about before look like?”
Logan sank back into the couch. “She’s blond…”
“Of course she is,” Benn muttered.
“…curvy, with enough meat in all the right places so I have something to hold on to and…”
“So when did you meet this love of your live?” Drake interrupted him. He didn’t have time to listen to Logan’s description of the ideal woman. They all looked the same—blond, curvy—and had the brain capacity of a shrimp.
“About a month ago.” Logan smirked shamelessly.
Benn looked up from his phone and scowled. “You’re seriously comparing your flavor of the month to my engagement?”
Logan shrugged. “What can I say? Just because you felt the need to put a ring on Cally’s finger, at a ridiculously young age I might add, doesn’t mean my freedom-gleedom relationship is less important. Also, time is relative. The heart wants what the heart wants. And my heart wants Lynn.”
“She must be very special, this Lynn,” Drake said, keeping his face in check.
“She sure is,” Logan said, looking relaxed and a tad bit smug.
“Nice try. There’s only one problem,” Drake countered, before he threw the bottle at Logan. “Lynn was this nurse you met three months ago at a festival. If I’m not mistaken, she was a groupie of Imagine Dragons you’d convinced you were with the band.”
