Treasure of the Fire Kingdom (The Elemental Phases Book 4)

by Cassandra Gannon

  “They’d think I was lying.” Sullivan corrected pointedly. “And –Jesus-- are you claiming you’re time travelers, now?”

  “Oh no. Of course not.” Ty paused. “Well, most of us aren’t, anyway.”

  “The Time Phases shouldn’t count as time travelers.” Alder scoffed. “I mean, they can travel through time, but they don’t. It kills them in –like-- fifty-two seconds or whatever. Total pansies. If the Fire House had those powers…”

  Sullivan cut him off with a “kill me now” groan. “Oh my God, you think you’re time traveling mutants.” What could he even say to that? He really liked Ty, but enough was enough. He leaned forward in his chair again, and went back to threatening Gion. “Alright, here’s how this is gonna work. I’m gonna give you the DVD and you’re gonna pack up your circus tents and get the hell outta my town.”

  “I’m not done searching this town!” Alder protested. “This is where my Match might be. This is where Uriel got his. I’m not leaving her stuck here in the human realm.”

  Sullivan glared over at him. Uriel’s “Match” was Melanie, Sullivan’s cousin.

  The door to the police station opened, the little bell attached to the hinge ringing merrily. Sullivan absently glanced at it, his attention still on Alder. “You try kidnapping any girls for whatever sick little fantasy life you’ve got going on and I’ll personally…” He stopped talking. Stopped blinking. Stopped breathing.

  Everything inside of him just stopped as he processed the woman who walked into his station house. She was so damn stunning it was a wonder his eyes weren’t bleeding just from staring at her.

  She was part of the Cult, that much was obvious, but he’d never seen her before. He definitely would have remembered. Dressed in a long letterman style cardigan and battered jeans, she still could’ve doubled for Sophia Loren’s waaaaay better looking sister. In less than a second, the woman recalibrated all of Sullivan’s previous ideas about beauty, blowing the curve for every other female on the planet.

  Oh, wait.

  The Cult wasn’t from this the planet. They lived in a different dimension or something.

  Right.

  “Thank Gaia!” Alder bounded out of his seat. “Someone’s finally come to rescue me from this hellhole. You have no idea what I’ve been through! It was total police brutality.”

  Sullivan barely heard him. In a last bid for sanity, he tried to remind himself that he wanted to evict the insane criminals from his life, not strip the clothes off this woman’s in.cred.a.ble body and beg to go rattle tambourines in airports right alongside of her. Rational thought was really hard to grasp onto in the face of a living, breathing fantasy.

  She was perfect. Seriously perfect. A scientifically perfect example of the feminine form. Perfect face, with perfect cheek bones and perfect lips. Perfect hazel eyes, with foot long lashes and radiant green flecks that glowed like emeralds. Her hair captivated him the most. Shoulder length and black, it fell in a halo of perfect curls. And, at her temple, there was a streak of pale blue. Sullivan had no idea why he found that so intriguing, but he found his gaze drawn to it, wondering what it would feel like against his hands.

  The woman was so far out of his reach that she might as well have been the moon, but he still felt a punch of heat as he gazed at her. Something inside of him woke up with a deafening roar, leaving him dizzy. Something familiar, but that he couldn’t explain. It burned though his usual resigned apathy, screaming at him to lunge over the desk and grab her before she could slip away.

  He didn’t. Obviously. He just gaped at her.

  It took him a moment to notice that she was gaping back.

  “Oh… shit.” She whispered, her hazel eyes wide with horror.

  …And that’s when Sullivan remembered the scar.

  Chapter Seven

  Woman is an essential element of perfect health and happiness to the soul of man.

  Henry C. Wright- “Marriage and Parentage”

  “You have such a comfortable home.” Hope turned in a circle, gazing up at the frescos on the two story high ceiling in Kingu’s torture chamber like they were touring a tea garden. “This mural with the blood is especially lovely.”

  Kingu was having a difficult time keeping his attention off of Hope’s face, so he didn’t bother to look up at the roof. He knew what she saw. He’d designed the damn paintings. Every body being torn limb from limbs by wild horses, every screaming victim of the iron maiden, every person begging for mercy that wouldn’t come as their skin was burned off by fire. All the stuff of his nightmares.

  There was no way this perky little gumdrop could find it “lovely.” His house was full of morbid instruments of death and grisly depictions of carnage. Most of the rooms were either painted demonic black or Satan red. Or both. Most the furniture was ominously big in order to accommodate his frame and decorated with bones. Most of the hallways were mazes that led straight down into his dungeons.

  Hope had to be faking about her delight in the macabre surrounds. He had a fish tank full of piranha and she petted them through the glass, for gods’ sake. It had to be a trick. A lie to lure him in and Kingu hated being lied to. No matter how unpleasant, he’d always rather just face the unvarnished truth and deal with it head on.

  He scowled at her. “You like it, huh?” His voice was too harsh. He should have been trying to win the girl over, but all wanted to do was push her away, before it was too late.

  She was so dangerous.

  “Oh, I love it. Especially the fire.” She took her eyes off the scenes of torment on the ceiling, her attention slipping past his extensive collection of racks, spiked wheels and other mechanized means of suffering. She cast a dreamy look at the fifteen foot tall fireplace. “Very homey.”

  Sure it was. Because the Color Phases always had raging infernos in their homes, with an iron spit inside suitable to roasting someone alive. Such a little liar. “Well, I think I have just the bedroom for you, then.”

  She glanced over at him, the picture of innocence. “Oh, I’ll have my own room?”

  The question cut through him. “Yes.” He bit off the word.

  What the hell did she think? That he was a rapist? That he’d force her to sleep next to him? Kingu wouldn’t even know what to do with this fragile creature in his bed. He wouldn’t know what to do with any woman. It wasn’t like his mother had let him date in captivity. The closest he’d ever come to sex was witnessing the twisted form of ecstasy Kay drove herself to while she tortured him each night.

  Kingu cringed, squeezing his eyes shut as if that could block out the remembered pain and humiliation. He had no idea how long he stood there silently, but it had to be awhile because Hope seemed to notice his tension.

  “Kingu?” She laid a gentle hand on his arm. “Are you okay?”

  The second she touched him, he felt cleaner. Like the purity of her soul washed away the stain of his memories. His breath shuddered out on a sigh.

  What was happening to him? How was she doing this?

  “Kingu?” She repeated when he didn’t answer.

  His name sounded like it had been dipped in honey when Hope said it. He wanted to listen to her whisper it in the dark and scream it in pleasure. He wanted her to smile when she said it and then he wanted to kiss the expression right off of her face. He wanted his to be the only name she called for help when she was scared and the first one she sleepily murmured in the morning.

  This was not good.

  Kingu slowly opened his eyes. “I’m fine.” He lied.

  She’d probably been sent to destroy him by Tessie or some higher Divine being set on weeding out the competition. Already Hope wielded too much power over him. He’d spared that bastard Lycus because she’d asked him to, which sent the wrong message. He was the captor here. He made the rules and she was to blindly obey. Very simple. Very…

  “I didn’t mean to upset you.” Hope slid her palm down to his wrist and he automatically stiffened.

  Although Kingu’s
fingers and nails were like a human’s, the texture on his hands resembled a dragon’s. The rest of his body looked normal, but Kay had made sure the parts that showed publically proclaimed him a monster.

  Fuck.

  Kingu cringed and started to pull away, but Hope stopped him. Her thumb moved along his wrist in a caress as if she didn’t even notice the rough feel of it his skin. Which was ridiculous. She had to notice. Kingu was always morbidly aware of the animalistic features of his face and hands.

  Transfixed, he watched Hope’s candy apple red painted fingertips trace along his skin. She wasn’t pulling back from him in disgust. She was touching him.

  Willingly.

  A firestorm of desire and fire roared through Kingu’s body. Hope might as well have sunk to knees and taken him into her rosy mouth. The intensity of his reaction couldn’t have gotten any stronger without Kingu blacking out from sheer lust, anyway. Hope was willingly touching him. The light brush of her fingers on his arm was like an electrostatic charge to the dead center of his brain. Blindingly bright and scorching hot. All his senses honed in on Hope like a predator sighting his prey.

  Breathing hard, Hope pulled her hand back like she’d been burned. Maybe she had been. Kingu was going to die from the fever building inside of him. She gave that same small gasp he’d heard in the arena the last time he touched her. A kind of whimper of surprised mixed with some mysterious heat. Whatever it meant, it had his whole body tighten with the need to claim her and mark her as his. Gasoline poured on the raging bonfire of his passion. He could feel the crackle of it in the air itself.

  Less than a second and he could have her beneath him.

  It was like a mantra in his mind. In less than a second, Kingu could sink deep inside her warm body and it would be like his own personal heaven. The other gods could keep their distant, unfriendly paradise. Kingu would find his own kind of rapture. The gatekeepers who judged him unworthy of admittance into salvation had missed a little blonde loophole. As long as he had his woman, Kingu was less than a second away from knowing what it meant to feel blessed.

  He finally had Hope and that was all he needed.

  Blue eyes flicked up to his face, the exact same shade as the infinite night sky. “Everything that’s happened today has been destiny.” She whispered. “Can you feel it, too?”

  Kingu blinked, breaking free of the sexual haze. Her soft words chilled him. “I don’t have a destiny.” Didn’t she know what he was? Did she still not understand?

  Apparently not.

  Her head tilted. “Of course, you have a destiny. How else do you explain the two of us meeting?”

  “You mean when I helped capture you? I explain it as you being unlucky and me being a monster.” There was no way to break it to her gently, so he didn’t bother to try. “I don’t have a soul, Hope.”

  Her eyebrows climbed. “Don’t be silly. Everyone has a soul.”

  “Well, I don’t. And if you don’t have a soul, you don’t have a destiny. I’m not supposed to exist at all, so the higher gods forsake me. Everything I do is unjudged and unguided. So everything that happened today just randomly happened.”

  Hope stared at him silently for a long moment.

  Kingu prepared himself for her pending shock and horror at the earth shattering news that she now belonged to an abomination.

  Instead, Hope snorted dismissively. “Wow, you are so wrong.” This time her hand came up to touch his cheek like she was trying to offer comfort to a man who’d done nothing but wrong her.

  This silly, fearless Color Phase could bring him to his knees.

  Panic took over where passion left off. He had to take some kind of control here or the woman would enslave him. Kingu’s powers purred that she was one, but this had to be some kind of trick. Had to be. She was so stupidly unafraid of him that he was halfway convinced she was deranged.

  Either that or he was.

  Kingu dragged his attention off her captivating touch and cast around for something else to focus on. Anything else was preferable to collapsing into a useless heap at her feet. He spotted her charm bracelet and it occurred to him again that it must have been a gift from some man.

  The monster inside of him snarled. Distraction fucking found.

  “Was that a token of affection?”

  “Yes.” She jingled the bracelet, so it sounded like laughter and magic. Kingu wanted to rip the damn thing off of her. “It was a present. Well, many presents, actually. It got put together over time. All the charms mean something, you see?” She held it up for him to look at, obviously proud of the trinket. “This is a trip Disney World. And this was a very fun war we had with the Wood House. And this was the first car that I set on fire. And this was a butterfly I caught in…”

  “How long did this take you to complete?” Kingu was more interested in the duration of her relationship with the unknown Phase who’d given it to her than he was in reminiscing about all the fun adventures they’d had together. Adventures that had taken place while Kingu was chained to a gods damn wall.

  “Since I was born.” Hope was lost in her memories now, flipping through the fanciful bits of silver and glass. “He never forgot to buy me new charms, no matter how busy he was.”

  Fucking hell. “You still love this Phase who gave it to you?” Anger boiled up inside him like the acid moat outside. The woman was his. No other man would have a claim on her.

  “Oh, yes.” It seemed to be whispered mostly to herself. “I love him more than anything.”

  Simple and devastating, the heartfelt words fogged Kingu’s mind in red. “Give me the bracelet.” He held out his palm.

  “What?” She glanced up at him in confusion, coming back to the present with a rapid blink. “Why?”

  “So I can destroy it. Here,” he snapped his fingers and tossed her a diamond cuff worth more than several countries, “take this one, instead.”

  Hope let the priceless piece of platinum and gemstones fall to the floor. “No. I want mine.” She stuck her hand behind her back like he might try to just take the charm bracelet right off of her wrist. Which was actually a good guess. “You have no right to steal it from me.” She regarded him with honest-to-God betrayal. Like she’d forgotten that he was the bastard who’d basically kidnapped her from her other kidnappers.

  That he didn’t have a soul.

  Her hurt expression did not make him feel like a monster. Or rather he was monster so the feeling was totally justified. Better that she learn to be afraid of him, right from the beginning.

  “If you want jewelry, I will give it to you.”

  “But I don’t want any other jewelry, I want my bracelet.”

  She backed away from him and that sent his rage spiraling out of control. Other women backed away from him, but not Hope. She never had before and Kingu wouldn’t tolerate her staring now, over some pitiful man she thought she loved.

  How could this Phase meant so much to her? What had he done to earn so much loyalty from the woman? Kingu could have given her rooms full of priceless treasure in exchange for the scrap of silver and still she wouldn’t let it go. It infuriated him that she would choose another, even in this.

  He would never have Hope without some kind of manipulation. Kingu knew it. She had come home with him willingly, but that just meant he’d been preferable to a prison cell and death in the arena. Any idiot would see that. He certainly wasn’t taking the plastic restraint off her ankle and giving her a chance to leave the Cloudland. No, if Hope truly had a choice, she’d flee from Kingu and never look back.

  Luckily, she didn’t have a choice. What was a tiny helpless Phase against a god?

  He stalked towards her.

  Hope’s eyes widened. “Please don’t try and take it from me. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  She thought she’d win if they fought? That there would be a fight, at all? Was she really that deluded? “You’re not wearing gifts from another man!” It came out less as an order and more like a roar.

&
nbsp; “But, my grandfather gave it to me when I was a little girl and now he gone.” Tears shimmered in her endless blue eyes, spilling down her cheeks. “It’s all I have.”

  Her… grandfather?

  Kingu froze, replaying what she’d said over and over, and realizing that he’d just made a complete ass out of himself. “Your grandfather gave you that bracelet?” He repeated, dreading either answer.

  One way he’d just terrorized an innocent girl for a childhood memento of her dead grandparent and the other way Hope’s heart belonged to some other man.

  Actually, no. Kingu knew exactly which answer he needed to hear.

  She bobbed her head, giving him the confirmation he wanted. “My grandfather raised me.” She ran a hand across her cheek and sniffed back more tears. “I was abandoned at birth and he gave me a home. He saved my life. He was so gentle and kind to me. The most noble man in the world.”

  Yeah. It just got better and better. Her grandfather had apparently been a saint. A wise and selfless old man, who probably lived in a forest glen and helped change the color of bunnies in the springtime. Or whatever the hell Color Phases did to make the world a prettier place. If Kingu did anything to try and separate Hope from her memories of this paragon, he’d lose her. He could see it in her eyes. Her love for her grandfather was a part of her perfect soul.

  “I didn’t know the bracelet was a sentimental token from your family.” Kingu hedged, trying to figure out a way to back down without making the situation even worse.