Amber (Amber trilogy Book 1)

by Hati Bell

  Drake knew he took pleasure in being the chess master, while the pawns took their place on the board. He dropped his hand in his neck, staring outside the window while the heated conversation continued in the background. He was here not only because Kincaid demanded it, but because information was power. It was the same reason why Henry, semi-enclosed by his bodyguards-his mother wouldn’t let him leave the house without them-attended this meeting.

  His own thoughts were playing a tune on a different wavelength. In a warm, peaceful place where he had been welcome but had banished himself from. If his activities in that specific part of Somerset became known, it would be the cause for a whole new Council meeting. Unfortunately his self-proclaimed banishment meant that he only saw his object of affection from a safe distance now. She was like a ray of autumn sunbeams-just enough to want more but not enough to actually warm him-before it disappeared behind a cloud of dryads. It was almost unbearable and a quite new phenomenon for someone such as he, who usually just took what he wanted, without giving it another thought.

  “Are you bored?” Henry’s irritating voice stirred him from his thoughts.

  “What was your first clue? Me staring outside or my yawn?”

  “Everything that lacks passion comes from boredom,” Henry said haughtily.

  Drake internally rolled his eyes at Henry’s nth attempt to channel Kincaid. “That’s some major wisdom you spout there. You got that from Quotes for Dummies? Remind me to buy you a copy of the advanced version next year Christmas.”

  Red spots dotted Henry’s neck and Drake knew he had hit his mark.

  A chair roughly scraped back and pulled their attention back to the negotiation table.

  Zacharias jumped up. His little army that covered his back followed him. “You’ve heard our demands. The ball’s in Kincaid’s corner now. That is, if he can get himself to bother to speak.” He spun around and started to walk away.

  “Zacharias?” Kincaid suddenly said. You could almost hear people breathe in the silence that followed.

  Zacharias froze and turned around, a brow up in the air.

  “The next time we meet, one of us will die,” Kincaid finished his sentence.

  “Now, now, Alec, that’s not very hospitable of you,” Mrs. Hofland chided, in an attempt to stop matters from exploding there and then.

  “We passed the stage of courtesy when Guy Fawkes left a trail of bodies in my back yard.”

  Zacharias’ lips curled up with disdain. “Don’t think for a second I’m impressed by your threat or don’t see the hypocrisy of it. We haven’t done anything different from what your own grandfather did not too long ago, on the back of a horse with a sword in his hand.” One of his men opened the door for him.

  “There’s a sword on my wall with your name on it,” Kincaid said deceptively softly.

  Zacharias looked as if he’d swallowed a broom before he stormed out.

  ***

  Back in the Dome Kincaid was marching up and down his study as if he was having a war council.

  Gregor stood by his side, a phone in his hand. “Is it time to call upon the other families?” he asked.

  A short nod was his answer. “The die has been cast. Zacharias has obviously forgotten that he was able to do his shady business in Somerset as long as he stayed in my good graces. It’s time to remind him of that. Coordinate with the police chef and start at the harbor where he holds his illegal street fights. Have it shut down. Anyone who resists, or even so much as says a word, have them arrested.”

  Drake suddenly wondered if his arrest for illegal street fights had been a coincidence. A voice in his head hissed, disappointed in him for only connecting the dots now.

  “Never bite the hand that feeds you,” Henry chimed in. He sat at a chair opposite Kincaid’s desk. “We should crush that bloody traitor, so no one dare follow in his footsteps.”

  Drake counted the minutes until he could sneak away to his light, that even from a safe distance shone brightly and blanketed him in a peace like nothing else did. A nightly gathering with the heads of other families was the perfect timing.

  “And what advice has my other grandson to offer me?” Kincaid suddenly asked.

  Oh, how he had waited for this moment. Drake spread his hands, while from the inside he rejoiced. “Didn’t you once say that power isn’t about hitting hard or often, but about hitting at just the right place? May the best dragon win.”

  Kincaid’s eyes transformed into lasers that could cut through a diamond, but he nodded. “Well spoken. Just like Queen Elizabeth’s favorite pirate Sir Francis Drake once said: there must be a beginning of any great matter, but the continuing unto the end until it be thoroughly finished yields the true glory,” he quoted. “I knew I chose well by naming you after him.”

  Drake tightened after learning that piece of unwanted information, but he refused to comment.

  “I was named after King Henry VIII,” Henry professed.

  Kincaid snorted. “Despite what my daughter claims, she named you after a lover from her youth and the poems of Henry Miller he read to her. Of course, opposed to Drake’s father, she made the right choice by dumping him. Then again, she was always more of a man than her brother. She has rarely disappointed me.” A glance to Henry, who was tying his shoes, told the way in which she had let him down.

  “I’ve heard this before,” Drake said. “And I’m sick and tired of hearing it. Not everyone shivers in his booths when hearing your name. I think Zacharias was a good demonstration of that tonight. One could even think the first bricks of your empire were pulled down.”

  Gregor coughed behind the phone in his hand, his eyes sending a message to Drake to be silent.

  Kincaid uttered a gruff laugh before he continued his verbal lynching. “You may not want to hear it, but being the guardian of the Dome comes with certain responsibilities. It raises expectations and attracts all kinds of people. Users and abusers. Leeches and liars. Something your father never understood. Do you know for how long your father lived happily with your mother?” he snapped, while pouring himself a drink. “One day. Just one cursed day, until she showed him her true colors. I believed he called it ‘one perfect moment of bliss.’ He gave up everything for the illusion that every day with her would be as blissful, never mind the fact that he was spoiled and would have grown tired of her within a few weeks. He was living a fairy tale. It didn’t take long for him to crawl back to me. It made me sick to see my own flesh and blood at my feet, squirming like a worm, begging for forgiveness. Zacharias knows that what I haven’t given my own son, he also won’t receive. You would do well to remember that you will be one of Zacharias’ next targets should he get past me.”

  He’d heard enough. Drake got on his feet. “Guess I should be relieved then that no one has risen to your level of cruelty and cunning just yet.” The door slammed shut behind him, while he took the stairs down. His car keys burned in his pocket.

  He barely had to look what route to take. It was as if his truck automatically carried him to the corner of her street. He sprinted from shadow to shadow until he stood below her window. From there it was no feat at all to climb up and peek through the corner of the window. He couldn’t see the TV from this angle, but he immediately recognized the booming voice of the actor. In this scene Christopher Lambert was fighting an immortal highlander in a kilt. He hated the movie, the franchise, but Amber loved it.

  A peek in the room showed him she wasn’t there. That meant that either she was in the bathroom or went to the cabin in the woods, forgetting to turn off the TV. Fifteen minutes later, still no Amber in sight, he took off to the cabin.

  In the dark, there was barely a moon, and a veil over the stars, he almost didn’t see her sitting on the rickety table. The nearby lamp post hardly provided her with any light. He stared at her from a distance, lost in thought for probably an hour. This was the only time he could gaze at her freely, without worrying someone would catch him. There was no one here who could call him ou
t for falling for a dryad or-worse-would hurt her to get to him. He was unworthy of her in so many ways that he’d lost count while summing up the reasons why he should step out of her life permanently.

  For a second there he thought he saw a shadow moving behind a pile of rubble. He moved further into his own shadow that kept him out of her sight. He was leaving just as soon as she’d return home, where she would be safe. It didn’t take long for Amber to slide off the table, her fingers massaging her head, and walk back home.

  He stepped out from the shadows, staring after her. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. Sorry that he could no longer help her ease her pain. Sorry that life had dealt them a stack of cards which meant they could never be together. Sorry that they were as day and night, like the sun and the moon. He could only appear when she went out of sight and vice versa.

  A puff of smoke wafted under his nose, like someone had lit a match and a hot breeze warmed his back. Then something as hard as steel smashed into his back and dropped him to his knees. Agonizing pain lanced through his body just as he felt a movement behind him.

  “She isn’t destined to be with you, draconi.”

  Drake pulled the steel pipe from his back and spun around, hissing in pain when his back protested. His body automatically went into dragon mode, while he held the pipe in front of him. The moon didn’t provide enough light for him to see the face of the shadowy figure standing before him. “Who the fuck are you?” he growled to the shadow.

  “To you I’m Azazel, Belial, Lucifer, and Shejtan, all in one. Keep your puny claws away from my promesi or you will regret it. Treaty or not, I doubt anyone would miss a draconi stalker.”

  Another man claiming Amber felt like a kick to the guts. He told himself that he shouldn’t care. It wasn’t like she was his. She never would be. Still, he couldn’t placate his aggressive dragon side that roared for retaliation.

  He lanced forward and felt a perverse satisfaction when he returned the favor by pushing the steel pipe into the stranger’s chest. The shadow grunted but then he laughed. A bloody condescending laugh that had Drake grit his teeth, right before the stranger pulled the pipe from his body.

  A beat later he dissolved into thin air. The blood-stained pipe lay on the ground, a silent memory of what had just happened.

  Drake groaned and leaned against a tree for support. His head filled with questions and a sense of foreboding washed over him.

  He wasn’t the only one paying secret visits to Amber’s window. There was another player on the board. Someone faster than him and more indestructible.

  EIGHT-TEEN

  Amber had been in a panic mode for the past week, ever since her burn. But as the days passed and nothing happened, she shrugged it off as an incident, refusing to let it get her down.

  Before she knew it, a couple of weeks had passed and she was on the bus to London. So far the outing went a little differently than they had planned. First of all, Pinky and Cally had the flu and were absent. They weren’t the only ones absent. Most dragons from Seven Hill had stayed behind as a precaution with the underground turf war going on. The other dragons, amongst them Drake and Logan, were in the other bus. She was chatting in the back with Jimmy as she tried to ward off the feeling that something bad was about to happen.

  They reached outer London by the afternoon and within a few hours the buses stopped at a parking lot near Buckingham Palace. They were divided in groups and her group was the first to leave to the Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament before they took off to their last stop, the British Museum. Logan was in her group and was walking at the end of the class following their history teacher into the Romano-British section. His face was void of the usual half-smirk she had gotten used to. Instead, he absently stared in front of him.

  Their teacher was obviously enjoying what the museum had to offer. He stopped at the display of a mummified body. “The Lindow man wasn’t the first bog body to be found naturally mummified,” he started to tell. “In 1983 a skull of a woman was found in the bog. Forensics determined it to belong to a woman aged between thirty and fifty. Years later a local man, who had been under the suspicion of murdering his wife and disposing of her body, confessed to the murder of his wife. He was under the belief that the skull was of his wife. After it was found out the skull fragment was almost two thousand years old, the husband tried to revoke his confessions. However, he was still convicted for the murder of his wife, even though no trace of her body was ever found.”

  Their next stop was at the Ancient Egypt and Sudan department. In front of the Rosetta Stone, to be precise.

  “… the decree stone was discovered by a French soldier during the Napoleonic campaign in Egypt and proved to be the key to deciphering Egyptian hieroglyphs…”

  Amber had visited the museum a few years ago and she wasn’t hearing anything new. She wandered off to a quiet section with tombs and other ancient artifacts. When a gentle breeze hit her face and a shadow appeared on the wall she was facing, she froze. When she spun around the corridor was still abandoned. Oddly a smoky scent wafted under her nose as if someone had just put out a match.

  She hurried back towards her classmates and bumped into Logan’s back. When she lost her balance and almost ended on her butt, he grabbed her hand. She felt the blood drain from her face. He must have noticed because he immediately let go of her.

  “Logan…”

  His eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. “I don’t want to know.”

  “But…”

  “No.” It sounded cold and final.

  “But you don’t know what I…”

  He grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her against the wall in a secluded corner. “Have you ever considered that perhaps I don’t want to know? Keep your freaking Nostradamus complex in check, will you? Judging by your horrified look, you don’t exactly have a pleasant message for me. Maybe you should concentrate more on your own pathetic little life than on the future of others,” he said in a brusque tone. A beat later he was gone.

  Amber was left behind, perplexed by his hostility.

  Logan avoided her for the rest of the afternoon. When the teacher announced they were free for the rest of the evening, most of them bolted to the exit. They had all evening until the buses would leave back to Somerset.

  The moment she left the museum, she spotted them. Two men in a suit, wearing sunglasses on a cloudy day, next to a car with darkened windows. The reason she noticed them was because she’d seen them earlier when she’d touched Logan. He had seen them by now as well. His face darkened.

  “Logan…”

  He ignored her call and kept walking.

  “Logan!”

  He still didn’t turn around.

  She reached him a few feet before he was going to pass the car. “Logan, wait.”

  “Go away, O’Neill.”

  “No, will you bloody listen to me? You have to get away before they push you into the car. I saw…”

  He came to a halt and grabbed her arm, his eyes boring into her. “If I’m not mistaken, your visions have a tendency to come true so there’s no point in trying to stop this. Some things are just inevitable.”

  Amber refused to listen to that fatalistic horseshit. “Not if I scream my lungs out,” she said, taking a deep breath to do just that.

  Logan pushed her face into his chest. Her screamed died a quick death when all she could produce was some mumbling into his shirt. Anyone passing them by would no doubt take them for a couple, hugging. “They will hurt you if you make a scene,” he whispered.

  What scared her wasn’t his stern grip but the tone of his voice. She was used to him being sarcastic, arrogant, and spiteful but never tense with a hint of fear. “You don’t have to go with them,” she mumbled.

  He kept stroking her hair as if to soothe her. “When I let you go, I want you to run away. Don’t turn around. Keep running.”

  “You don’t know what they’re going to do to you,” she tried once again.

  “I
’ll be fine.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” a voice suddenly said.

  Logan’s iron grip on her lessened and Amber was able to move again. When she lifted her head, her cheek pressed against a black umbrella. Shit. The perfect cover for their assailants to hide behind.

  Before she could make another move, she was pushed into a car. She felt a sharp pinch in the back of her neck and within seconds her world began to grow darker.

  ***

  Amber woke up on a carpet of sand and gravel. She tried to jump back on her feet but groaned when her stiff muscles protested. It took a while before her eyes had adjusted to the dark room, which was basically pitch-dark.

  She took out her phone but saw she had no signal. At least it provided her with enough light to make out where she was. The room she was in had a low ceiling. The walls had wood cabinets attached to them, filled with empty wine bottles. The ramshackle wine cellar smelled as if it hadn’t been aired since the Industrial Revolution and had a room temperature that would fill a polar bear with joy.

  Right in the middle of the room was a wine barrel. Someone was sitting on it, with his back turned to her and his hands tied behind his back. Just like in her vision.

  Inwardly muttering, she kicked away a few empty wine bottles and carefully walked up to Logan. The floor creaked under her unsteady footsteps, while she was wading through the mine field of shards of glass and broken bottles.

  “Why did you follow me?” he asked, his voice gravelly and echoing through the darkness.

  “This is what I was trying to warn you about,” she said to his back, finding her way to him under the light of her phone.

  Her eyes searched the cellar for a way out, flapping her arms in her efforts to get warm. A staircase led to a wooden door, which was hardly a challenge for a dragon. Why was he still here?

  She held her phone over his body and gasped. Two iron bars, as long as her forearms, poked out of his back. His shirt was ripped into shreds and soaked with blood. “Oh my God…”