Imdalind Ruby Collection One: Kiss of Fire | Eyes of Ember | Scorched Treachery

by Ethington, Rebecca

  “At least he’s alive.” She spoke barely above a whisper.

  “What?” I said, loud and accusatory.

  She turned to me, her eyes glistening with threatening tears. I felt my stomach tighten. I had spent the last twenty-four hours in a paralyzing depression caused by my psychotic father, and here my mother sat, crying for his safety. My blood began to rise in a slow boil as frustration mixed with disappointment in a way I had never experienced before.

  “He left us, Mom,” I said. “He doesn’t matter.”

  “Oh, honey.” I could hear the longing in her voice, and I shied away from her. “I know it must be so hard for you to understand; you are still so young.”

  “I’m seventeen, not seven. I understand he left us. What more is there?” I could feel my anger rising in me. Most of the time I could squash down my outrage, but this time, I didn’t want to. This time, I wanted to feel it. I wanted to yell, and I wanted everything that had been balling up in me to come crashing out. I needed it to.

  “There is a lot more, sweetheart; more than I think I could ever make you understand.” Her voice was pleading, and it only set me off more.

  “Try me,” I growled.

  She hesitated, our eyes locked as she tried to gauge how much she could tell me and how I would respond, just as I had done to her a few moments ago.

  Her arm moved back around my shoulders, pulling me into an awkward side hug. “When I met your father, we were in college. We were young and he was dashing.” She sighed and looked away, lost in her memories.

  “Some people say young love is fleeting, but I think that’s wrong. I think young love is perfect. It’s pure and full of hope and desire, but it’s more than that. Young love—true love—changes you. It’s like something deep down inside you grows and becomes part of the other person. It only takes a moment, but in that one fleeting glance of space and time, you change. You want to be with that person, and with no one else.”

  My fuming began to lessen. I had never heard my mother talk like this before, her voice was so soft and light. The way she spoke, I could see my parents meeting, the love she would have had in her eyes. My anger began to lull.

  “That’s how it was when I met your father. I couldn’t be without him, and in that one moment, when he first kissed me, I knew I never had to be. He was mine, and I was his. I know it sounds crazy, and you don’t have to believe me, but I still feel that way for him. I love him, Joclyn. Even though he left us, I still love him. I think you do, too. That’s why it hurts so much that he didn’t want to see you.” She scanned me as she pleaded for me to understand.

  I knew she was right, but at the same time, she was so very wrong. He did want to see me. He had sent me a gift and tracked me down. What hurt so much, what had broken my heart, and why I was so angry, was that he had betrayed me. He had used my blasted mark against me, told the world, and created some fabricated story that turned me into a science project.

  “So, you’re happy he’s alive, and not mad because you still love him?” I could feel the bile rising in my throat.

  “Honey, I—”

  “No! That’s not okay, Mom. He left us. He left you. He saw his broken daughter and bailed so he wouldn’t have to fix her. He didn’t even care enough to try! Where was his love for me? Where was his commitment to either of us?” The bottled emotions of eleven years returned and came flooding out of me in a rush, my tongue barely able to form words through the threatening tears.

  “Joclyn! Don’t say that. He thinks he left out of love—”

  “Which only proves that he didn’t love us! That he didn’t care.”

  “But he does,” she pleaded. “Don’t you see? He came to your grandparents; he asked about both of us, I’m sure. It only proves that he does love us; he does care.”

  This time, I kept my anger in check. This time, I slowed my heartbeat. I had to; I couldn’t tell my mother the truth. Her words were so desperate. The truth that she had somehow been waiting for him to return all this time made me sick to my stomach. I glanced toward the garbage can where the ripped up letter laid, the weight of my lie feeling like lead in my gut. I stood up, the forgotten cell phone tumbling to the ground.

  “I need to take a shower.” I felt numb as I walked away. My small breakthrough had opened up a chasm of forgotten pain and heartache that I didn’t want to revisit. Before I even hit the bathroom, I felt the tears fall. They splashed down my cheeks in warm trails that welcomed more.

  I turned on the hot water, hoping my mother wouldn’t hear my sobs, hoping the tears would take away all the pain. I stepped into the overly hot water, burning my skin before I could turn it down and then curled up on the floor of the tub, the water from the shower pouring over me. Only then did I open my hand. The tiny purple bead sat in my palm, glistening as the water ran over it. It shimmered and sparkled as the color danced and changed. No matter how much I wanted to throw it down the drain to be lost forever, I knew I couldn’t. This stupid thing would always serve as a reminder of what I had lost, and what my mother had so foolishly let slip away.

  Four

  Ryland

  The sun hadn’t even risen yet, but the hallways were already filled with my father’s minions. They hustled around in various states of panic, darting from door to door and dodging out of my way as I bolted toward the large door at the end of the hall.

  I would rather be in bed, but I was smarter than to argue with my father’s summons, especially when those summons came from Cail. As my father’s most favored minion, he had more authority than I did.

  A door to my right swung open and two warm bodies streamed out, one of which slammed into my side, sending me into the opposite wall.

  “Watch where you are going you ba—” The poor man’s tirade fell to silence as he looked up to me and stumbled back, his focus darting down to the ground. “I am so sorry, Ryland. I did not see you. I beg your forgiveness.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Okay, whatever,” I yawned, waving the guy off as I continued my shuffle toward my father’s office.

  The poor guy was still mumbling apologies as I walked away. Everyone else cleared an even wider path from me, like I was going to bark at them in my half awake state.

  I wish they would all stop treating me like they did my father. Yet another thing I hated about my role in all of this. I didn’t want to hurt people.

  I yawned again, pulling my back and muscles into tight lines as I faced the door, raising my hand to knock. And then froze.

  “I don’t care who you have to kill to bring them in. I want them in my possession before the end of the month.” My father’s voice was clear through the old wood, the hundred year old architecture rattling with the force.

  “We are trying, my lord. We don’t even know if the report is true, it’s been years since we’ve even heard a whisper of their existence.” Timothy was firm, the guy was a manipulative bastard and this was no exception. I glanced back at the nearly empty hall and took a step forward, turning my ear toward the door.

  My father always kept me in the dark. So, the more information I could get on my own, the better off I was.

  The safer I was.

  “Which is why you should be trying harder, yes?” I could barely hear my father now, the low threat was one I had heard many times. It usually preceded some kind of explosion. “I have already asked once. I have sent out my best hunters, if I have to ask again…”

  “You won’t have to ask again,” Timothy replied, his voice even lower, menace dripping from him. “I have all my best men on it. We will find them. We will bring them to you.”

  “Good.” My father’s voice was like a fuse growing lower. “Because if I lose the one thing I have been searching for after all this time, you do not wish to know what I am capable of!”

  And there was the explosion. I should have knocked before this. I had no idea what he had summoned me for, but what they were talking about seemed more important than entering the room when he wasn’t pissed off.r />
  But then again, he was always pissed off.

  “Hear anything interesting, Ryland?” All of the muscles in my back straightened as a grease filled voice hissed behind me.

  Cail.

  I should have known he would have followed me here after dragging me out of bed.

  “Besides your slimy voice in my ear?” I stepped back, not that it would cover the fact that I had been caught. “No.”

  Cail’s wicked smile barely even twitched at my jab, only to fall as my father’s voice raised through the door again.

  “I want them in my possession, Timothy! I want them now!”

  “Sounds like your daddy is in trouble,” I jabbed Cail further, not that anything could penetrate the guy's malice.

  “My daddy has better things to do than be your father’s errand boy.”

  “Isn’t that what you two are here for?”

  “Again, little bastard, you know nothing.”

  Well, nothing compared to him. But I kept my mouth shut.

  Cail had worked as the head of my father’s security since before I was born. Not that he looked it, he barely looked a few years older than I did. He was shorter than me, his dark auburn hair mixing with his black eyes and darkening his color so that he looked like a supervillain. The look wasn’t far off for him.

  “Who are they looking for, Cail? Have they found a Chosen?” I watched Cail carefully, I already knew he wouldn’t tell me. Cail liked playing with his food.

  “Even better.” My father was still wailing as Cail reached around me and opened the door.

  My father, Edmund LaRue, sat behind the ancient desk, Timothy on his knees on the other side. The second the door opened, my father slammed his fist into the desk, both Timothy and I jumping. Cail just smiled.

  “Your son, sir,” Cail said, knocking his head to the enraged man before he plastered himself against the wall, leaning against it like a 50’s gangster. He had the jacket for it, all he was missing was a switchblade.

  “Father.” I nodded once, his blue eyes twisting to me for only a second before returning back to Timothy.

  “Get out of here, Timothy. Get this done.”

  “It will be.” Timothy rose to his feet, jaw strong before he strutted out without giving me more than a glance.

  The door had barely shut before my father turned on me. I straightened my back, refusing to look away from him as I felt my blood heat.

  Rage, power, defiance. They all coursed through me, tingling in the tips of my fingers. But I held it back.

  Waiting.

  “Lose something, Father?” I was going to get this information one way or another.

  “More like something has been returned to me. I want you and Cail to retrieve it.”

  I nearly jumped out of my skin. It had been over a year since he had sent Cail and I out on a task together. In fact, after the incident in Greece a few summers ago I doubted he would have sent me out again. I would have been pleased, if Cail didn’t look like he had been force fed acid.

  “Isn’t that what you have all these minions for?” I asked, already trying to sidestep him.

  “Hm. True. But if I didn’t have you do my bidding, then why do I have you?”

  Best not to push it further, not with the mood he was in. “What are we retrieving?”

  “Never mind what, Cail will keep that information. But we need your skills, Ryland.” He wrote something on a piece of paper and stood, extending it out to me. “The person I seek was last seen here. Track it; return it.”

  “How can I track it if I don’t know what it is?”

  My father’s eyes flashed bright blue, the short fuse of his relit. “I have trained you better than that, Ryland. Just do what I ask.”

  “Is it a Chosen? Is it the last one?” I took the paper, watching him for signs of explosion. He just smiled.

  “Find them, Ryland.” There was no arguing with him, his dark eyes were already warning of what would happen if I did.

  The air was rippling with that warning.

  Cail was already shuffling me out when I finally glanced at the paper in my hand:

  La Fea Gato, Sunnyvale

  “The ugly cat?”

  “It’s a restaurant,” Cail provided, already guiding me down the hall to the stairs that would take us to the roof.

  “So we are not hunting an ugly cat?”

  “Don’t be an idiot, Ryland,” Cail snapped, waving his hand and sending the door in front of us slamming open, revealing the roof and the quickly lightening sky of dawn.

  “It’s a Chosen, then.”

  “Once again, Ryland, you are wrong.” Cail turned on me, the slight breeze tugging on our hair as he stepped so close I could smell his breath. “We hunt the bastard that started it all. The one your father will use to end it.”

  I just blinked at him. I knew Cail wouldn’t give me more than that, and his smile seemed to suggest that this prize was somehow better than the last Chosen that they had spent generations searching for.

  I didn’t get a chance to ask before Cail turned and jumped off the back side of the roof, leaving me no choice but to follow.

  Five

  Ryland

  “She’s not here, Ryland.”

  Angela and Mette were bustling around, preparing who knows what for the never ending line of food that was required to feed the army of people my father stored in this place.

  “I know. I just need… is there any coffee left?” I sunk into one of the barstools, which caused quite a few heads to turn, mostly from the younger, prettier kitchen staff. I guess without Jos around they thought I was free game.

  Think again.

  “Just a bit, m’dear. But I can always make ya more, you look like the dead.” Mette was grinning, pouring a massive mug of coffee before she shuffled back to the pastries that she was pulling in and out of ovens like a dance.

  “I feel like the dead.” Even sipping on the coffee wasn’t helping. I hadn’t slept since yesterday morning when Cail had dragged me out of bed. We hadn’t stopped moving, hunting the mysterious ‘no one’ was stressful enough. Joclyn only responding to my texts to say she was sick made it worse.

  Leave it to my father to do something to her while I was out of town. But her mother was here, that was a good sign.

  “How do you feel?” Joclyn’s mother, Angela, bustled over, her hand flying to my forehead, and then the side of my neck. “You don’t have a fever. Any body aches?”

  “I just haven’t slept well, Mrs. D.”

  It always felt weird when she gave a crap about me. She was the only one who ever did.

  I hated to think what my father would do when I finally reported to him that we had returned empty handed. If Cail didn’t beat me to it.

  Either way, I had every intention of hiding here as long as I could.

  “Maybe I just have what Jos has—”

  “Jos is not sick,” Mrs. D chuckled as she cut me off. I nearly spilled my coffee with how quick I jumped, something that earned me a look from both Mette and Angela. Angela folded her arms, Mette chuckled and went back to her pastry dance.

  “She’s not?”

  “Well, unless you gave her Mono and are both trying to cover it up.”

  “I would have to kiss her to give her that, wouldn’t I? Hell, I would have to kiss someone to get it.” I had said that last part under my breath, but Mette heard anyway.

  “Don’t be foolin’ us, boy. With a mug like that you probably have lines of lasses under the bleachers.”

  I only chuckled. She really knew nothing about me, or the school I went to.

  “So, she’s not sick. Just avoiding me,” I moaned into my coffee, avoiding Mette’s need for gossip.

  “Not just you.” Angela slid a bacon sandwich across the counter to me. “Something happened on her birthday.”

  Darn it. “Do you think it was the necklace? I was worried it was too much...”

  “No.” She shook her head. “Dinner with her father’s pare
nts is always an ordeal.”

  She pressed her lips together and went back to her work, she was clearly hiding something, but I wasn’t going to pry.

  “It must be hard to see them.”

  “Yes… I mean, no.” Now I lifted an eyebrow at her. “It’s probably just the food. That Mexican restaurant has always been a bit of a dive.”

  Okay, clearly hiding something. I didn’t want to be the friend that pried into my best friends’ life via her mother. I respected all of them more than that.

  I cared for Jos more than that.

  I would just have to head over there after I finished my sandwich. I would rather see Jos than speak to my father anyway, and it would keep me away from him and his wrath before my rugby game tonight. Prolonging our meeting and any punishment he had planned for me until after the match.

  “You still go to that same place?” Mette asked as I stuffed my face with bacon. “La Fea Gato?”

  “Yeah—”

  For the second time in ten minutes I jumped, although this time I choked on the massive bit of bacon I had just stuffed myself with. Everyone turned to stare.

  “Ryland!” Angela was already patting me on my back as I gasped for air. “What in the world?”

  “La Fea Gato?” I gasped, still hacking up bits of bacon. “That place in Sunnyvale?”

  “Yeah, we go there every year, and I guarantee that their food is not worth choking over.”

  “It’s not that, it’s…” I paused, looking from Angela, to Mette, to every other pair of eyes that were staring at me. “I was just there last night. It’s just weird you were there.” Luckily everyone else was starting to look away. “I heard there was an incident there Thursday night. Wasn’t that Joclyn’s birthday?”

  Angela gave me another very curious look before returning to her work, still giving me side glances.

  “Yes, but there was no incident. Other than Jos getting a really terrible skirt.” She chuckled to herself, the sound echoing in my head. “Nothing happened while we were there, anyway. Must have happened after we left.”