by Hati Bell
Amber waved when she saw Pinky standing in the doorway, with Benn right on her heels. He’d exchanged his eternal dungarees for jeans and a flannel shirt.
Pinky joined her and put her purse on the table. As always, she looked great in a hot pink cocktail dress.
“Cally’s not here yet,” Benn said, sounding disappointed.
“She’s not coming,” Pinky said. “She’s with her mum who was discharged today.”
“Flowers,” Benn said. “Sick people get flowers when they leave the hospital. I’ll buy her some chrysanths.”
“Why chrysanths?” Pinky asked disapprovingly. “No one was ever impressed with a bouquet of chrysanths.”
“Cally’s name starts with a ‘c’ just like chrysanths,” Benn said.
Pinky rolled her eyes. “So does chlamydia, but you don’t want to give her that, do you?”
Logan was the next to appear. With his fashionable I-just-left-the-catwalk gear and good looks he got a lot of stares, but he hardly seemed to notice. He saw Benn and sauntered their way.
“Where’s your other half?” Pinky asked when Logan arrived at their table.
“Shaking off possible goblins off his tail and parking the car.”
“So, he’s doing okay,” Pinky remarked.
Amber tried to appear as if she wasn’t soaking up every word. She hadn’t seen or heard anything from Drake since all hell broke loose in Seven Hill. She was worried sick about him, but his phone went straight to voicemail.
“The rumors about the extinction of our race were slightly exaggerated,” Logan said dryly. “I told Drake to stay in the Dome, but he wanted to see his muse perform.”
Pinky snorted. “Of course he did.”
Logan’s baby blues slid over Amber. “Can I talk to you for a second?” It wasn’t really a request, for he didn’t give her the chance to refuse when he put his arm around her and pushed her to a corner near the cloak room.
“What is it, Logan?”
“I’m glad you asked. That will make this easier. I came to collect my favor.”
“Of course you did. What do you want?”
“Tell Lisa Mutterson that I asked about her. Tell her I’m smitten with her pretty eyes.”
Huh? She’d expected for him to saddle her up with another homework assignment or something, not this. “You’re in love with Lisa?”
Logan looked surprised. “What on Earth makes you think that?”
“You just said… oh never mind. I’m sorry to be the one to break this to you, but Lisa has a boyfriend. His name is…”
“Dave Addison and he’s an annoying little prick I have a score to settle with.”
“You’re trying to get back at him by stealing his girlfriend? There’s no way telling Lisa she has pretty eyes is gonna make her dump Dave. Only stupid girls in stupid teen movies fall for cliches like that.” Seriously, what was he thinking?
Logan’s cocky grin told her he disagreed. “I guess, then, there’s no harm in doing as I say.”
Except Amber hadn’t forgotten her vision about Lisa. She was vulnerable. It didn’t seem smart, however, to tell Logan that. He’d be like a shark smelling blood. “It won’t work,” she repeated. “Besides, what do you need me for? Go tell her yourself.”
“It will work because Lisa grew up surrounded by people telling her how pretty she is. When people tell you something often enough, you start believing it. And I’m not telling her myself, ’cause it will make a bigger impact coming from someone else. That way the first seed will be planted without me having to do anything. She will come to me. It’s a simple matter of supply and demand.”
It sounded like he was quoting from Flirting for Dummies by Using Economics. “This is all just a game to you, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, well, life’s a cruel game, little flower. One I plan to win.”
She was amazed by his take on life. Lisa needed help, instead of another reason to push a finger down her throat. “She won’t fall for your little ploy,” she snapped.
Logan raised his brows. “Well, look at that. The lamb has claws after all. I’m almost impressed.”
Amber decided to help him, just to see him fail. Not owing him any favors anymore was a bonus. “Fine, I’ll do it. It will give me great pleasure to see the high and mighty Logan Stark take a hit to his ego when his cliche is smashed to smithereens.”
“Cliche?”
“You know very well what I mean. Like in a romantic comedy where the guy tells the girl she’s beautiful and her eyes resemble the stars. A movie featuring a hot guy in a shiny car and a naive girl walking into the sunset. After, of course, the girl tells the guy that she’d rather die than live without him. And then they live happily ever after. Real life doesn’t have such a perfect ending.” Somewhere during her little rant she’d forgotten about Lisa and was projecting. She knew that. Judging by Logan’s gaze, he knew as well.
“Maybe human cliches only happen in movies,” he admitted. “But when a dragon says certain words, like when he makes the promise ‘Till death do us part,’ we mean it.”
Now that couldn’t be true, could it? “Are you telling me that during a dragon wedding ceremony dragon promises, actual binding promises, are exchanged? What if they’ll want a divorce?”
Logan’s eyes had an amused glint in them. “We take a commitment for life very seriously. The divorce rate among dragons is extremely low. One could even say that it’s as low as the cheating rate among married couples is high. We live in the twentieth century, but the life of the social elite doesn’t differ much from Victorian times. Since most of us can’t divorce without literally dropping dead, lovers are commonly accepted. There are even couples openly living with their new lover.”
“That just sounds… bizarre.”
“No, what it is, is practical. A divorce means splitting up one’s fortune. The Rockefellers and Rothschilds didn’t get to be where they are today by squandering their family fortune to ex-wives. Having said that, can we get back to business please? Oh, one more thing. What color eyes does Lisa have?”
When she practically growled at him, he laughed and walked away.
Amber didn’t get a chance to go find Lisa. Teddy called her on to the stage. It was time to play her part in Cindy’s expression of her “undying love” for Bryan. She took her place behind the mic, relaxed and ready. The music stopped and the lights were turned off. It didn’t take long when the front door opened and Bryan was ushered inside by Ian.
“Surprise!” A chorus of whistles erupted, followed by exploding confetti cans.
Amber saw Bryan’s eyes widen in genuine surprise. She could also almost hear him groan when Cindy launched herself into his arms. A second chorus of whistles and catcalls followed when she kissed him on the lips, claiming him in public.
Teddy turned on the music and Amber’s attention shifted from the new ‘couple’ to her ballad, though she wasn’t sure if her brother even knew he had a girlfriend now.
The sultry ballad she started singing drove the first couples onto the dance floor. One of them was Dave and Lisa. Lisa’s lips were a thin line and Dave looked bored, studying the walls.
Suddenly Amber’s eyes met Drake’s. He stood next to the bar, leaning against the wall, staring at her. It was like déjà vu. He wasn’t alone; Logan stood next to him. He gave her a wink and disappeared into the dance floor with some blonde.
After four more songs, her part of the deal with Cindy was over. Dj Teddy would take care of the rest of the night.
She went looking for Lisa and found her in the ladies room. “Hi, Lisa. Great party, right?”
Lisa shrugged while re-applying her make-up. “I’ve seen better.”
“You probably don’t care, but Logan Stark has been asking about you.” She was hoping for another uninterested shrug, but Lisa put away her lipstick and spun around.
“Really? Asking about what?”
“He just wanted me to tell you that you have the prettiest eyes.” She caught herse
lf studying Lisa’s eyes only to find out they were a generic shade of brown. There were literally like a billion people with eyes like that.
Lisa grabbed her purse from the sink and left with a secretive smile on her freshly painted lips.
Amber wasn’t sure how to take that smile. She decided that Lisa had seen through Logan’s roundabout pickup line and had found it amusing.
After combing her fingers through her hair and a final glance in the mirror, she followed Lisa outside, only to stop in her tracks.
Three minutes.
She’d left only three minutes after Lisa.
Lisa who was standing at the bar, flirting with Logan. It didn’t take long for Dave to spot them, for he came storming from the other side of the dance floor. Logan either had eyes in the back of his head or impeccable timing, because he grabbed Lisa’s hand and took her outside, onto the terrace.
Shit. Perhaps she shouldn’t have gone along with Logan’s plan after all. She quickly followed them outside. It seemed as if an icy fog had wrapped the world in gauze, and she started shivering. She heard a sound and turned around the corner, leaving the Oasis premises. A green container blocked the small alley she’d walked into. It didn’t seem she had another choice but to climb over it. A rotting rubbish stench filled her nose and made her gag. When she jumped from the container she stepped into a banana peel and something green she didn’t want to think about.
That’s what you get when you become an instrument of evil.
The alley led to an abandoned playground. Judging by the rundown slide and broken swings, no one had been visiting it for a long time.
Dave and Logan were standing face-to-face a few feet from the swings, their backs to a graffiti-ridden wall. Lisa was leaning against said wall. It took Amber a second to decipher the expression on Lisa’s face: satisfaction at being the reason for a street fight.
“Where the hell do you think you’re taking her?” Dave growled.
“To my car, so she can admire the ceiling,” Logan drawled, with a self-satisfied look on his face.
Lisa pursed her mouth, but remained silent. After all, she was still the center of attention.
Dave was less calm. He propelled himself to Logan, giving him a right hook which slammed the dragon against the wall.
“I was hoping you’d do that,” Logan said, an angry gleam in his eyes.
Amber noticed how he kept his hands hidden behind his back. This was turning bad, really fast. “Stop it! You are not alone,” she reminded them, pointedly nodding at Lisa, which she hoped would have the same affect as pointing a neon sign to her that said ‘human.’
“No, we’re never alone and at peace anymore since his kind came around,” Dave spat. “They are everywhere, all the time, like cockroaches.”
“You poor thing,” Logan mocked. “Your mother never taught you to share your toys?”
“You take that back!”
They both began circling each other, looking for an opening.
“I’m not a toy,” Lisa protested, irate, but no one was paying her any attention.
“Taking something back is a bad habit,” Logan claimed. “It’s a sign of weakness, having no backbone, like a snail.”
“Trying to steal my girlfriend is just as fucking weak.”
Logan cocked an eyebrow. “Trying? You insult me by implying I haven’t already succeeded at that.”
The comment drew Dave’s attention back to his treacherous girlfriend. His face turned into a cruel mask. “Since you’re so successful, why don’t you try to have Lisa keep a meal inside instead of puking it out?”
Lisa paled. She spun around and ran off like a kicked dog.
The moment she had disappeared from sight, there was no stopping the brawl. A fire burned in Logan’s eyes, and his claws were ready to do some serious damage. The two went head-to-head, neither of them gaining the upper hand for long. What Dave lacked in strength, he made up for with his dryad speed.
“Stop it!” Amber yelled, trying to break up the fight. Unfortunately they weren’t paying her any attention either. She knew this had been a long time coming, but she couldn’t just stand by and watch them tear at each other. She spun around to get help, when she saw the cavalry had just arrived.
Her brothers rushed to her side, Benn and Drake at their heels. It took all four of them to break up the fight. Logan’s shirt was shredded. Dave was sporting a split lip, his eye all swollen up. Strangely, they seemed satisfied, as if everything was okay now they had had the chance to bash each other’s skulls.
Men. She would never understand them.
Just when she was about to breath a sigh of relief, the mist surrounding the park dissolved and a ghostlike shadow in an Italian suit appeared in it. Her body froze and a chill went down her spine.
SIXTEEN
Amber’s heart dropped when she saw Zacharias. He was surrounded by a wall of goblins, heading their way, his cane rhythmically bouncing on the tiles.
Bryan placed himself next to her. “Mr. Zacharias,” he said, ice dripping from his voice. Ian and Dave immediately flanked him.
Zacharias clucked his tongue, sizing them up. “It appears that I’ve unwillingly given you a common enemy.” Unlike Amber, he didn’t seem worried at all. Maybe she wouldn’t have worried either, with a group of thugs behind her, outnumbering them.
“You have no business here,” Drake snarled.
Zacharias straightened his scarf. “Still, here I am. Just like you.”
“Our debt has been settled,” Bryan said. “You have nothing to claim from us anymore.”
Amber suppressed a shiver when the older dragon’s eyes bored into hers. She didn’t dare ask what it was Meg had saddled her up with this time.
“I’m not here for the girl,” Zacharias chirped. “Though I am beginning to wonder why I keep finding her in the midst of events she’d do better to stay clear from. Fortunately for her she is well-protected, albeit by an unusual alliance.”
“No more unusual than yours,” Drake pointed out. His eyes were fixed on the goblins who had formed a semi-circle around the businessman.
Zacharias’ eyes narrowed, and all amusement left his face. “Drake Cage. Or is it officially Kincaid now? I’ve heard you fought like a lion last night. It appears that Kincaid’s Dome has gained another soldier.”
A muscle throbbed in Drake’s cheek. “You attacked my home in the middle of the night. Your men killed the gardener. The old man didn’t even put up a fight.”
“Oh, you know what they say: all is fair in love and war,” Zacharias said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “What fascinates me though is you calling the Dome your home. Apparently there’s more of Kincaid in you than you like to admit.”
“What is it that you want?” Drake growled, obviously having run out of patience.
“I’m here for Stark’s son,” he answered to their surprise. “Since I was in the neighborhood I couldn’t let the opportunity pass by to pay him a visit. We need to have a chat. In private.”
“I’m listening,” Logan said, sounding wary.
Zacharias pointedly looked at the crowd surrounding the place. When nobody budged and Logan didn’t move either, he sighed. “Have it your way. I have a message from your father. He offers you a place at his side. Kincaid’s era is as good as finished. You’ve heard what happened in Seven Hill. It won’t be long before a fresh, stormy wind will cut through all Somerset. Your father is giving you the opportunity to join the victors. All… incidents from the past will be forgiven and forgotten.”
Logan’s face went stone-cold. “Forgiven and forgotten? Do I bloody look like Gandhi?”
“Oh, well, I tried,” Zacharias sighed, not sounding the least bit disappointed that Logan had told him to take a hike. “If the dryads would excuse us, we have some unfinished business to discuss,” he said, ever so polite. His bored expression moved to Drake. “I suppose you will try to make this more difficult instead of standing by?”
It was as if the pla
yground was split into two, in a way that only Mozes’s staff could have accomplished. Amber was forced to stand by and watch as Drake took a stand by his brother’s side, while her own brothers and Dave stepped back, pulling her with them. Dave’s lips curled into a self-satisfied grin like the Cheshire Cat’s.
Nine.
There were nine of them. Well, eight, if she didn’t count Zacharias. Somehow she didn’t see him in the middle of a brawl. He’d probably remain standing on the sidelines, a hand casually on his cane. His eyes were at half-mast; then he nodded.
A wall of determined goblins stormed towards the dragons. The first blow landed on Drake’s jaw and knocked him against the wall, driving him to his knees.
The wind was tearing up Amber’s eyes and making her shiver, her dress being no protection at all. All she could see and hear were the sounds of pained grunts, flashing limbs, and then the bang of a swing crashing onto a goblin. Drake was back on his feet, but bleeding profusely.
“Bryan, you have to do something,” she pleaded.
“We are,” Ian chimed in. “We’re enjoying the show.”
She gave him a glare. “Please…”
“This isn’t any of our business,” Bryan said.
“Let the vermin kill each other,” Dave added and went to sit on a bench next to Ian.
Ian pulled a pained face when two goblins knocked Logan down and a third one started bashing his head. In some miraculous way Logan managed to get out of the dangerous circle of goblins and jumped up, just when one wanted to kick him in his ribs. His claw was showing a trail of blood when he swiped it over his mouth. Drake moved backward so he covered his brother’s back. He wasn’t much better off than Logan, but both brothers had a determined gleam in their gaze that said they wouldn’t go down without a fight.
“Looks like they don’t need a hand, anyway,” Bryan said. “They might actually make it.”
Dave let out a satisfied laugh. “Fat chance of that. Finally, they’re getting what they had coming.”