Kissed by Fire

by Shéa MacLeod

  “Not exactly. He didn’t tell me his name, so I figured I’d give him one.”

  She smirked. “So, what happened?”

  “We had a chat. I dusted him. Simple as that. One thing, though. He said someone hired him to follow me around. You know what that means?”

  She frowned. “It was a hit. No way he’d just follow you and not try to kill you again once he learned you survived. Nothing pisses a vamp off like learning a kill didn’t die.”

  “Or in this case did, but lived to tell the tale,” I pointed out.

  “Why would someone want to kill you? Other than the fact you’re annoying, of course.” She leaned back crossing one leg over the other and gave me a cool look. I very maturely stuck out my tongue.

  “I have no idea in this particular instance. He said the woman’s name was Jade.”

  Kabita sat up abruptly. “Did you say Jade?”

  “Uh, yeah. Why?”

  She hurried over to the desk and riffled through some paperwork. “I had a little chat with Simone Williams today. She didn’t know anything, but she did have an email Dara sent her after she disappeared. Adam traced down the IP address. I did a little digging. Here.” She waved some sort of official looking document at me. “Jade Vincent. Otherwise known as Dara Boyd.”

  I snatched the paper from her. “No frigging way. Bob said the Jade that hired him was a Hunter, but not like me.”

  “Obviously the same Jade. I don’t imagine there’s another Jade who is also a Hunter running around.”

  I scanned the document. It was an application for Miami University for a girl named Jade Vincent from Miami. The age was right, but that didn’t mean anything. Dara Boyd had last been seen in London. Miami was a long way away. “How do you know this is Dara?”

  She sighed and handed me another piece of paper. This one was a personal letter addressed to someone named William Rhodes. It looked innocent enough until I got to the second paragraph. “Holy crap. This is a request for witness protection. A personal request.”

  “Signed by my father. William Rhodes was head of the agency responsible at the time. They were friends. My father often visited the Rhodes home. In Miami.”

  Of all the crazy insane things, this I hadn’t expected. “So, your father asked his buddy to hide Dara inside the American system. Not only that, he wanted her close enough so Rhodes could keep an eye on her.”

  Her voice was grim, “William Rhodes has a sister named Ann Vincent. Jade Vincent is her adopted daughter. My father circumvented MI8 and all the safeguards to hide a dangerous woman in another country. And now she’s back.”

  “And she wants me dead.”

  “Apparently.”

  “Fantastic.” This really wasn’t my day.

  “What did Sandra’s friend have to say?”

  I sighed and flopped down onto the bed Kabita had vacated. I quickly told her about Alison’s diary and what Drago had told me, including the fact that the dragons hadn’t made Jade Vincent, a.k.a. Dara Boyd. I knew she’d figure out the connotations of that all on her own.

  “Drago’s fairly certain that whoever let the Dragon Hunter loose and murdered Alison is trying to start a race war between humans and dragons again, most likely in an attempt at genocide. Gods, can this day get any better?” You could have cut the sarcasm with a knife.

  Kabita didn’t say anything. She just swung open the mini bar and took out a tiny bottle of tequila. The liquor disappeared in one swallow. “You want something?” She waved at the rest of the selection.

  “Hell, yes. Make it a double.”

  ***

  I sat on the edge of my bed staring at the photograph I kept with me everywhere I went. It was late and I needed sleep, but the photo had caught my eye and so I sat staring at it like somehow I could reach into the past and unlock it.

  My mom had given me the photo on my twelfth birthday. I’d always known my father died when I was a baby, but mom never talked about it.

  She talked about him plenty. How brave he was, how strong and smart. When I was being particularly stubborn she’d tell me I was just like him. It always made me proud to be told I was like him. Even when it wasn’t exactly a compliment.

  Then she’d given me the photo. It was the first time I’d ever seen his face. Mom said it was the only one she had of him, but it was right for me to have it.

  In the photo, Dad was standing next to another man, slightly older. Dad was young, maybe twenty-five, with wavy brown hair and one of those ridiculous moustaches popular back in the seventies. Still, he was a handsome guy and confidence oozed out of every pore, even in the photograph.

  Around his neck hung a medallion on a short cord. I’d always thought it was pretty cool, that medallion. It was a starburst sun with the rays in wavy lines. No idea what it meant, but I always felt like I should know it. Like it was connected to me in a way.

  But as I stared at the photo, it wasn’t my father who drew my eye. It was the man standing next to him. The man with the thick, dark hair and the neatly trimmed sideburns. I knew that man.

  Why was my father in a picture with Alister Jones? And why hadn’t Alister said anything about knowing my father?

  My jaw grew tight and I rolled my shoulders to try to release some tension. Somehow I needed to find out, though I doubted Alister would ever tell the truth. Maybe Mom knew something. I’d never thought to ask before. Then again, I’d never met Alister Jones before.

  A pounding on my door drew me out of my reverie. I sighed when I saw who it was. “Trevor Daly. What the heck are you doing here?” I turned back to the room, assuming he’d follow.

  “I thought you might want to know Jack’s gone.” A wry smile spread across his handsome face. “He caught a flight this morning. He asked me to tell you, figured you wouldn’t be interested in seeing him.”

  “He got that right.” I stalked toward the desk to turn on the kettle. I suddenly felt the need for a hot chocolate. As I shooed him out of the way, I noticed something. Something I hadn’t noticed before. He was wearing a medallion identical to my father’s.

  I reached out and grabbed it so quick he didn’t have time to move. “Where did you get that?” I snarled.

  “It was given to me.” He tried to place his hand over mine, but I snatched it away. He was hiding something. I could tell.

  “That’s my father’s medallion. What the hell are you doing with it?”

  He swallowed, “Listen, Morgan ... ”

  “Don’t you ‘listen Morgan’ me,” my voice rose. “I want to know what you’re doing with that medallion and I want to know now.” I knew I was acting like a spoiled teenager, but I couldn’t stop myself.

  “It was given to me.” I could feel the tension radiating off his body.

  “Who gave it to you?”

  “Your father.”

  I swallowed. Hard. “Liar,” I meant it to be loud and forceful, but it came out barely a whisper. “My father is dead.”

  “I know, Morgan.” This time he did place his hand over mine and even though I tried to shrug him off, he held on. “He gave it to me before he died.”

  I shook my head. “That’s impossible. He died when I was a baby. You couldn’t have been much older than that. Why would my father give you a gold medallion? That’s ridiculous.”

  “I’m sorry, Morgan. This isn’t how I wanted to tell you.” Trevor’s voice was a little strained, his mocha latte skin glistening with fine sheen of sweat. He was obviously nervous, which was kind of freaking me out.

  Anger surged through me so hard and fast it nearly knocked me over. “Tell me the truth, Trevor. Now!”

  “Your father didn’t die when you were a baby.”

  “What are you talking about? Of course he did.” My mom had told me so and she wouldn’t lie about something like that. “He was a salesman and he died in a car accident.”

  He shook his head. “No, the sales job? That was something he told your mother because he couldn’t tell her the truth. And his death?
That was a lie, too. To protect her, and you. He worked for the government. For the Supernatural Regulatory Agency, just like I do. He died, but not until years later. He was investigating something he shouldn’t and he got too close.”

  “Did you kill him, Trevor?” I didn’t know why that thought crossed my mind, but I had to be sure.

  “Not me, Morgan.” He squeezed my hand as if willing me to understand. But I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand any of it. “The government had him killed. He was too dangerous. They thought he was too dangerous.”

  I looked down at the photo of my father standing side by side with Alister Jones. “Why? Why did they think he was dangerous?”

  “Partly because of the investigation and partly ...” he hesitated. I looked up. Whatever he saw in my face pushed him forward. “ ... and partly because he wasn’t entirely human.”

  If he expected me to be surprised, he was disappointed. I already knew the freaky weirdness about my DNA. My Atlantean genes had to come from somewhere.

  I gave Trevor a good hard look. He worked for them. For the government that killed my father. It didn’t matter that his hand hadn’t held the knife or the gun or whatever they’d used. It mattered that he worked for an agency that killed people just because their DNA wasn’t entirely human.

  My right hand clenched into a fist. “So, I guess that means I’m a threat, too, huh? Daughter of a monster. I guess that puts a price on my head then, seeing as how I work for the same government.” Probably not the best idea to taunt a government agent, but what the heck.

  His voice was so quiet that I almost didn’t hear. “Well, then I’m a monster, too, and there’s a death price on my head.”

  It took a minute for his words to sink in, and even then I wasn’t sure I understood what he was saying. Wasn’t sure I grasped the entire picture. “What did you say?”

  His chocolate brown eyes stared directly into my mossy green ones. “He was my father, too, Morgan.”

  “Get the fuck out.” I searched his face, his features, but there was nothing familiar. Nothing like mine. I was sure of it. “You’re a liar.” It came out a lot less confident than I was aiming for.

  “No. I’m not. And you know it.” He pulled the cord up and flashed the pendant. The same pendant my father wore in the picture my mom had given me. “This is the sun symbol of the Atlantean Royal Bloodline passed down from father to son for generations. I’m your brother, Morgan.”

  As though from a distance I watched him take my hand, his dark skin a sharp contrast to my pale skin. For the first time I realized we had the same shaped hands. Hands like my father’s. Like our father’s.

  My brother. Trevor Daly was my brother.

  I needed something a lot stronger than hot chocolate.

  I let go of his hand and backed away. It was all too much, but before I could say anything my cell phone rang. “Yeah?”

  “Morgan, I think I’m in trouble.”

  “Inigo? What’s wrong?”

  There was a crackling on the other end of the line. “I’m being stalked. Someone wants me dead.”

  “Shit. What happened? Where are you?”

  “I’m at home. I’m safe for now, but Morgan, hurry. Please! There isn’t much time.”

  The phone went dead.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I slid a look at Trevor out of the corner of my eye. Kabita had opted to take a seat in another aisle of the plane so Trevor and I could “talk.” I made a mental note to “thank” her later. The good thing about flying first class was that there was enough space between us and the rest of the passengers we could have a decent conversation without anyone overhearing.

  I hadn’t told Kabita yet about Trevor and me. It was all too weird and I was trying to get used to the idea before I told anyone else, even my best friend. Still, she’d had that look that told me she knew something was going on.

  A low chuckle escaped him. “You don’t have to be subtle, you know. If you want to stare, go ahead. We’re family, remember.”

  Family. Until now, family had been my mom, my grandma and various aunts, uncles and cousins. My dad had been a bedtime story and siblings hadn’t even factored into things. Now I had a brother. A freaking brother. Dear gods. My mother was going to blow a gasket.

  “Um, so obviously we don’t have the same mom.” I winced. Way to go, Captain Obvious. Fortunately Trevor appeared to have something of a sense of humor after all.

  “No. My mother’s name is Anita. She married our father when she was just eighteen. Dad was twenty. They married because she was pregnant.”

  “With you?”

  He nodded. “Yes. I’m an only child.” He glanced at me and smiled. “Was an only child. You can imagine the scandal at the time, an interracial couple pregnant out of wedlock. It wasn’t easy for either of them.”

  “No, I imagine it wasn’t. Did they love each other?”

  He gave me a smile that was held a hint of sadness and maybe a little pity. I ignored the pity. “Yeah, they did. They were crazy about each other. At least, for a while. Then Dad discovered what he was.”

  I cleared my throat. “The Atlantean gene?”

  He nodded. “Not just that, but the Royal Bloodline. His dad was ill, dying, so he gave him the amulet along with the story. That’s how it’s done.”

  Would have been nice if someone had bothered to tell me the story. “So, what happened? How did he meet my mom? I mean, I know how they met. They ran into each other in a grocery store, literally.”

  He grinned. “Yeah, Dad told me about that.”

  I was surprised. “He did?” I couldn’t imagine a man telling his son about the other woman in his life. Then again, what I knew about my dad could fill a thimble.

  “Yeah, he told me a lot of things.” He leaned back in his chair, hands folded over his stomach. I could tell the memories were making him sad, but I needed to know. “I think he knew they were going to kill him, that it was only a matter of time. So, he passed the amulet to me when I was fifteen.

  “He told me about your mom, then. How he was sent to Portland on a mission. How they met, fell in love. By then my parent’s marriage had fallen apart. They barely spoke to each other. It was ... ” He shook his head.

  I don’t know what made me do it, but I reached out and laid my hand over his like he’d done with me back at the hotel. Family. Solidarity. I think I kind of got it. It was so weird, though. I was used to being on my own.

  He shook his head as though to clear it. “It was love at first sight with your mom. She got pregnant with you right away. I don’t know what he planned to do, if he planned to leave us or what. In the end it didn’t matter.”

  “Why?” I frowned.

  He turned his head and looked me straight in the eye. “Because the minute you were born he knew what you were.”

  I was truly baffled over that one. “What does that mean?”

  “Morgan, I have a single Atlantean lineage from the Royal Bloodline passed to me through my father. You, however, have two bloodlines, both Royal.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your mother is Atlantean, too.”

  I gaped at him, mouth open like a fish. “Are you nuts? My mother? The woman who obsesses over my love life and spends her time playing gin rummy with my grandmother?”

  “That’s the one.” He grinned.

  “Nuts.” Yeah, my mother would definitely freak.

  He laughed. It was good to see him relaxing. Damn, why was I all protective of him all of a sudden?

  “Anyway, he had to leave you and your mother in order to keep you safe, prevent the government from finding out about you. He did a damn good job of it, too. They never knew he had a second child.

  “After he left, he had a friend contact your mother telling her he’d been killed in a car accident. He went back to my mother and they had several more years of being miserable together. He never regretted it either. Hiding my lineage was one thing; he faked the tests so it looked like I
hadn’t inherited the gene, but hiding yours was another thing altogether. Especially with your Hunter abilities, though they were latent.”

  “But surely they know about you, the government? If they knew about Dad. They must have retested you when you joined.”

  He shook his head. “Daly is my mother’s maiden name. I use it so no one suspects who my father was. And I have friends who help to keep my true identity hidden. Didn’t your mother ever tell you Dad’s name?”

  “No. She left it blank on my birth certificate. She just always called him my dad.”

  He nodded. “Probably he asked her to do that. Again, to keep you both safe. Our father’s name was Alexander Morgan.”

  I swallowed hard. “Mom named me after Dad?”

  The smile on his face was warm and genuine. “Yeah. She did. Dad told me that, too.”

  “Why did he tell you about me? Surely he must have known it would upset you, to know he’d loved someone besides your mother. That he had this whole other family out there.” I knew it hurt me, even though part of me was thrilled to know I had a brother.

  “I guess it did, at first.” He tilted his head back, thoughtful. “But Dad told me you’d need me. That I needed to find you, protect you. He made me promise. So, that’s what I did. I joined the agency under my mother’s name so I could use their records to find you, and when I did, I made sure I was put in charge of your team.”

  I blinked back tears. All this time he’d been watching out for me as best as he could. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  He shook his head. “The time never seemed right. And for a long time, you were just another Hunter. You were safe. All that’s changed now.”

  I tucked my hand back in my lap. “This is weird. Sorry, but I’m sort of ... wigged out a little. I mean, it’s cool. I always wanted a brother, but ... ”

  “But this isn’t quite how you pictured it?” His grin was wry.

  “No, not exactly.” I grinned back.

  “That’s OK. You’ll get used to it. We both will. I’m not going anywhere.”