by Hati Bell
“Actually there were just two. Both equally selfish, I guess.” He paused when their dessert was served.
As much as she enjoyed their talk, cheesecake wasn’t something she could lay off of for long. She dived into creamy chocolate heaven. Her happy groan made him smile. “So, do tell. Your reasons?”
“Isn’t it obvious? You are the other reason.”
Her heart fluttered and she saw him stare at her lips. They both looked away at the same time. All she could do was simply smile and scoop up more cheesecake. Perhaps Logan’s philosophy wasn’t so bad. Maybe the best way to forget about a bad day was by replacing it with sweet memories. “What happened to all the reasons why you had to stay away from me?” She remembered their easy camaraderie, nightly chats, and heated kisses. She also remembered him taking all that away. Regardless of the sound reasons for doing that, this time she wanted to know where they were heading.
Drake put down his fork and pushed away his plate. “Those reasons are still there. That is, in Somerset. Here we are free to be whoever we want to be. If you want.”
He looked at her expectantly and her heart fluttered. He was telling it as it was, no promises, just the plain truth of the way things stood between them. “I could use some better memories of this night as well,” she said with a sigh.
“Then let’s make that happen.”
Except there was one more thing they had to discuss first. A topic she could no longer ignore. “I saw Logan’s tattoo. I know now why, that first time at school, you made me promise not to tell anyone about my nightmare. Logan is going to murder someone in the gym.”
He scowled. “You can’t know that.”
“Then why ask me for a dragon promise to keep my mouth shut? I understand you wanting to protect him, but it won’t work. The Council will eventually find out anyway. Lying isn’t exactly my strong suit. Also, the moment they will hear me choking they will know something fishy is going on. It won’t take long for them to put two and two together.”
“I don’t want you to lie.”
“Then what do you want?”
“For you to hear me out first. Then I will free you from your promise.”
“You can just do that?” There was so much she had yet to learn.
“I’ll explain everything once we’re back in Somerset. But tonight I wanna follow Logan’s philosophy. For just one perfect night where life is exactly the way it should be. A night to remember.”
“A night to remember,” she agreed.
He got up and left some money on the table. They left together, hand in hand, and stepped into the chilly night. She couldn’t help herself when she looked for the black car she got shoved into earlier. Only when she saw it wasn’t there could she relax.
They wandered through the streets of Soho, passing pubs, restaurants, small shops, and galleries. The buildings in this part of London were a mishmash of modern to architecture of the sixties.
“So, where are we going?” she asked.
“Wherever you want.” He took her hand and looked at her, a question in his eyes.
“I want to see all of London.”
“I’ll try my best, but I’m afraid someone will notice if I start running around like the Flash from one touristy sight to the other with you on my arm.”
“No one ever sees the Flash,” she admonished.
He gave her a sidelong look. “You know the Flash?”
“I know every superhero,” she bragged. “My brothers collect comics. When I was little I used to sneak into their room and read them. I was hoping to discover why they were so fast, stronger, and could stay under water for hours without drowning while I wasn’t blessed with any superpowers. Not only that, but I was stuck with unwanted visions, not exactly a fair trade.”
“So, what did you discover?”
“Well, unless I get bitten by a radioactive spider or turn out to be an alien from the planet Krypton, I’m just gonna be plain old Amber O’Neill. I’m never going to be like other dryads.”
Drake threw back his head and laughed. “I kinda like anything-but-plain Amber O’Neill. But since I’m no Flash and you’re even slower, how do you suppose we see all of London in one night?” He stopped a cab and looked at her questioningly when they got in.
“I have a plan,” she said and gave the cabby their destination.
Drake took her hand in his own and tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear. “I want you to see everything you desire. I want you to have the world. A day, a night, a whole life of whatever makes your beautiful eyes shine like this.”
She heard the true meaning behind his words. “But it’s not going to be more than this, is it? A stolen night in London. It’s okay, you don’t have to answer. I understand. This moment, being here with you is already perfect, because you’re here. We are together and nobody has died. No one has tried to kidnap me, not really. I call that a win.”
He gently massaged the scratches on her knuckles. “I won’t let anyone hurt you again.”
“Despite my track record for the past few months, I can take care of myself, you know.” These were just exceptional times, meeting dragons, an ongoing goblin-versus-dragon war, seeing your own death.
“He’ll pay for what he did.”
She didn’t like the vengeful gleam in his eyes. “Have you ever considered that what he did, he does out of revenge himself? Can you imagine what the world would look like if everyone went at it that way? Stabbing each other’s eye out, like he threatened Logan with?” It had been pretty clear there was history between Eyepatch and Logan, going way beyond a strained father-son relationship. She suspected it had something to do with his missing eye, since dragons usually healed from such wounds. Unless of course the wound had been too severe and remained a wound for too long.
“We all do what we have to do,” Drake said, which was basically no answer at all. Another thing she decided to let go for their night.
The taxi finally stopped at the South Bank of the Thames and they got out. Before them stood proudly London’s giant Ferris wheel: the Eye. This was where she wanted to spend their night. Not in some crowded pub where they could hardly hear each other and where she had to share him with others.
It started pouring and he put an arm around her shoulders, and held her against his side. They were probably the only ones without an umbrella. Good thing there were tourist shops everywhere that sold practically everything, among which umbrellas. Drake put the umbrella on the counter. He was clearly in a whimsical mood, because he bought a plastic tiara as well.
“‘Cause you’re my princess,” he explained, as he placed it on her head, rearranging her hair. “One day I’ll get you a real one.”
Yes, it was corny but she loved the gesture. He seemed determined to make their night resemble a first date.
The rain was an unexpected ally as it shortened the line before the Ferris wheel. More and more people disappeared into pubs, no doubt wanting roofs over their heads.
The Ferris wheel turned so slowly that it wasn’t even stopped when it was their turn to get into a capsule. They got comfy on a bench they had the luxury of having for their own. He draped her legs over his lap and she snuggled into his side. Their view was a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree panorama of London’s skyline at night.
“Everything seems so quiet and peaceful from up here. Somerset feels like a world away. It’s like no one can touch us here,” Amber said.
“They can’t,” he assured her. “Not tonight. Don’t forget this evening’s theme. Nothing exists but the here and now.”
Living in the here and now sounded perfect. “Is this your first trip to London?”
“No, that was a few years back. I was looking for my mother.”
She hesitated for a second, seeing his closed-off expression. “Want to talk about it? You never mentioned her before.”
He looked up at the dark sky which showed them a mix of old and new buildings. “There’s not much to tell. I’m not even sure why I
wanted to see her. Guess I was just curious, or maybe I was looking for a reason why my father had become the man he was. Gaby Stark might have saved him from getting even worse, but even after he shacked up with her he sometimes fell off the wagon. He gave me her address during one of his drunk days. I caught a bus the same evening, before he could sober up and try to stop me. But when I arrived at her apartment, she’d already left. The place was totally stripped.”
She snuggled up to him, giving him her support. “Do you think your father called her?”
“Don’t know. I never asked. All I know is that she had been warned about me coming ’cause she’d left a letter on the fridge. Actually, a letter is too much of a word to describe the note. It said not to look for her again.”
“Well, she doesn’t know what she’s missing.”
“I think she knows exactly what she’s missing.”
“Or maybe she just feared the confrontation after all those years. It’s no excuse, but it might be a reason. Everyone’s afraid of something. It sometimes makes us do stupid things.”
He looked at her questioningly. “And what is Amber O’Neill’s greatest fear?”
That was an easy one. It was a fear that had replaced the horror of ending up in an asylum like her great-grandmother. “Ever since I learned what death means, people not ever returning, like my mum, I’ve had this fear that I’d die young, just like her,” she confessed. “Obviously, no one can cheat death, but I’m afraid to die before I have really lived, if that makes any sense. There’s so much I want to experience, places I want to see. So, in a way, you could say I’m afraid of the future. There, now you know my biggest fear. What about you? What’s Drake Cage’s Achilles’ heel, his greatest fear?”
“Actually those are two different things you ask. About the first, it’s sitting right here next to me,” he said pointedly, smiling when she blushed. “And the second one, my greatest fear, that’s the past,” he said.
She frowned. “How can you fear something that has already happened? You know, since it’s kind of already set in stone.”
“Exactly.”
She didn’t want to ruin their evening by pushing him for an explanation. But she could see something tearing him up. “I’m a good listener, you know. You don’t have to keep everything bottled up inside.”
“Yes I do.”
“Why?”
Drake took a deep breath. “Because when I allow myself to think about her… I feel so much rage. I’m afraid of what I’ll be capable of once I unleash it. To be unwanted by the one person who should love me is the shittiest feeling. I mean, what kind of person abandons her child right after giving birth?”
She knew he wasn’t expecting an answer and she couldn’t give him one anyway. What she could do was place her hands on his face and pull him towards his lips to take his mind of the agony shining in his beautiful moss-green eyes. His mouth crashed down onto hers, while he kept a hand on the back of her neck. Her heart slammed against her ribs. Then he hunched down, slowly brushing his lips over hers, and flicked his tongue over the seam of her lips.
She parted her lips, but he suddenly pulled away and she tried to catch her breath. His eyes were burning with a different heat now. Drake didn’t say a word, but tucked her to his side. She melted into him, loving the feeling of him against her as the Ferris wheel spun around.
Time had no meaning in their little glass world. She knew, however, that it couldn’t last for ever. Apparently the universe agreed, because when they left the Eye, she saw them again. The dreaded black car with the equally colorless men she’d seen before were awaiting them across the street.
“Those are the men that kidnapped Logan,” she exclaimed.
“And you,” Drake growled, pushing her behind his back.
She nudged him in the side. “Don’t you dare do that again,” she hissed, standing right next to him, grabbing his hand.
A muscle in his jaw worked and she could almost feel his body temperature rise. For a second there he seemed to want to argue, but his attention shifted to the situation at hand. A different black car, followed by two smaller replicas, turned the corner and stopped right before them. A chauffeur got out and opened the door. The back window rolled down and an older dragon in a crisp black suit, with silver eyebrows, appeared in it.
Drake immediately let go of her hand. Though she knew the reason why, it still hurt.
“Shouldn’t you two get inside?” the man asked coldly. “As you can see, you are no longer alone.”
A tense silence filled the car when they plopped into the back seat.
“Amber, this is Gregor, Kincaid’s right hand,” Drake introduced her.
She wanted to thank the man, but he hardly even acknowledged her existence.
“I see you’re in the company of a dryad, yet again,” Gregor said stiffly.
“I couldn’t leave her behind. Not after she helped my brother. Don’t want to owe a dryad.”
Gregor looked pensive. “Let’s hope that’s the only reason. The alternative, that you actually want to be with her, is too horrific to even contemplate. Can you imagine? A Kincaid with a dryad.”
“There’s nothing to imagine and I’m not a Kincaid,” Drake replied.
Amber tried not to feel self-conscious when Greg sized her up. Though she was getting tired of his surly attitude.
“Good,” he clipped.
“How long have you been following me?” Drake asked.
“The second you left Somerset. You didn’t really think Kincaid would let one of his heirs go unprotected during these times, did you? It would give his adversaries a powerful trump card should they get their hands on you. Stark is a highly dangerous and complicated man. A man who would torture his own son is capable of anything.”
Drake froze. “You knew he had Logan and Amber.”
“Of course. Stark isn’t the only one keeping tabs on his enemies.”
Amber could almost feel Drake fuming with rage. He kept seething, but didn’t say a word until the car stopped at the bus station. She could see her classmates through the car window, going to the buses.
Gregor opened his mouth, but Drake opened the door so they could get out and slammed the door in the older dragon’s face. They walked towards their buses in front of the station.
Amber saw her reflection in a window and took off her tiara. “Farewell fairy tale, hello reality,” she said and she felt Drake stiffen next to her.
“This is why I can only give you one night. Everywhere I go, I drag my cursed heritage with me.”
She felt like she had to say something. Something like that they should fight for what they could have one day, because that was how she felt. She grabbed his hand, intending to be courageous by just throwing it out there, when she felt a painful sting in the palm of her hands. Her mouth went dry and she choked on the words when a familiar fear nestled in her guts.
“Thanks for the tiara,” she croaked. “I loved this night. It was special. You made me feel special. In a good way for a change, instead of like someone from the Freak Show.” She didn’t wait for his reaction but hurried off to the toilets that, luckily for her, were empty. She didn’t need an audience while holding her hands under the cold water. Her blood began racing when she saw her hands were slippery with blood from the blisters that had formed on her palms.
TWENTY
It had been two days since they had returned from their trip and Amber still hadn’t had the chance to hold Drake to his promise about her nightmare concerning the tattoo on Logan’s chest. She decided today would be the day she’d hear him out. After all, there was a potential murder waiting to happen and she couldn’t put this off any longer.
When on Tuesday morning Ian killed the engine a hundred yards away from Trinity College-the road was blocked halfway through by flashing lights, an ambulance, and a swarm of cops-she knew it was already too late.
Ian parked the car on the curb and stared at the packed school yard. “Shit, look at that. It lo
oks like a set from CSI.” He whistled between his teeth.
Before Amber knew it, she’d opened the car door and walked to the police line as if in a trance.
“Oh, look, there’s the corpse.” Ian’s chin jerked to a body bag being transferred to the ambulance. “I wonder who’s in it. Let’s hope it’s one of those dragons and not one of us.”
Bile rose in Amber’s throat and she covered her mouth with her hand.
“I don’t think there’ll be any classes today,” Bryan said, which seemed like a fair assumption. The front of the schoolyard was filled with teachers and students, busy taking pictures and making phone calls.
She hugged herself, shivering, while searching the crowd for Drake, but there was no trace of him. Dave had spotted them from a distance and made a beeline towards them through the crowd of students, police officers, and paramedics. Judging by his unusually pale face, he knew and regretted the passing of the victim.
It’s one of us. Of course it’s one of us.
“Do you also know who it is?” Bryan asked, making her realize she had spoken out loud.
She shook her head, immediately regretting it when she felt her stomach churn again.
Dave’s head gestured to the empty bus stop across the street and they followed him there. They looked at him expectantly, not missing having seen him leave the school premises.
“It’s Nurse Croft,” he said, sounding sad and angry at the same time. “I was at football practice shooting penalties when I heard a woman scream. It was one of the cleaning ladies who found her body in the women’s locker room. There was blood everywhere. It looked as if she’d been attacked by a wild animal,” he said pointedly.
Amber pushed Bryan aside and vomited in the bushes. When she was finished, her brother gave her a handkerchief.
“You look horrible. I’ll take you home,” Bryan said.
She followed him back into the car. Ian stayed behind with Dave, discussing what effect the murder would have for their out match later this week.
They had just buckled up when a car turned around the corner and Drake and Logan stepped out. It was as if Drake felt her gaze because after he cast his eyes over the ambulance and police line, he found her.