by Hati Bell
“You can’t know that,” Drake countered. “She’s a half-breed and it’s unsure if she’s just as untouchable and strong as a full-blood phoenix.” According to Gregor, she wasn’t.
A strange heat wafted over him, as if the Sahara had suddenly decided to pay Amber’s room a visit. It smelled like someone had lit a match and his muscles pulled taut.
“Where are you taking my promesi?” a curious voice sounded.
Between the window and the sink stood a man and a boy. The man was fully dressed in black. Dark curls spilled onto a chiseled face that was drawn in an expression of boredom mixed with arrogance. The teenager next to him wore a blue track suit and large headphones around his neck.
Drake immediately knew who the man was. His presence evoked the same aggression in him as it had done a year ago, right before the phoenix had stabbed him in the back with a steel pipe. Unfortunately, he was the same person who had the power to wake Amber. If he desired to. “Someone tried to kidnap her tonight, so we’re moving her to a secret location,” he said calmly. After having lived under Alec Kincaid’s roof for over a year, he knew how to keep his emotions in check.
The man stood with his hands crossed behind his back, like a captain on a ship. “Moving her where?”
“It wouldn’t be a secret anymore if we told you, now would it?” Drake drawled.
The phoenix gave him a haughty smile. “You think to keep her away from me, her promesi? You think to have to protect her, against me?” He looked impassively at the bruises on Amber’s throat.
Drake pulled the titanium knife from under his jacket. He wouldn’t underestimate the phoenix again. “Yeah. I think I do need to keep her away from you since you have the ability to wake her, but refuse to do so. I also think to need to protect her from you since apparently you don’t give a rat’s furry ass that she was about to be abducted.”
The phoenix walked to Amber’s side in a jiff and gently stroked her hair.
Drake tightened his fists, clenching his nails into his palm. “Wake her,” he pleaded. “Before someone tries to chain her like an animal again.”
“It is not up to you, inferi, to decide when I will wake my promesi.”
The boy with the headphones crossed his arms and nodded.
Drake couldn’t keep his hands form into claws. An intense rage fell over him and changed his skin into steel-hard scales.
Once again, Logan was the calm voice of reason. “Before we all start to growl and redecorate this room, may I propose we work together?” He looked directly at the older phoenix. “I’m sure you want to keep her safe as well. Someone tried to kidnap her. Who knows what for? Maybe he’ll try to kill her next time. She’s vulnerable in her current condition.”
“Death is only the beginning, draconi.” The phoenix put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and they disappeared, leaving only a faint scent of smoke behind.
“Bloody hell!” Drake balled his fists before he smashed something into bits.
His brother cocked a brow. “You were saying about superstition?”
“I have to go,” he said, walking to the door.
“Remember the last time you thought you’d found a way to wake her from her coma?” Logan said. “Maybe it’s time to let her go.”
“Call me when Benn has watched the surveillance tapes and knows who did this. I would like to be there to pull out his intestines.”
Logan let out a sigh. “Are you sure you want to do this? Can you trust Gregor not to hand her over to Kincaid? He is his lap dog, after all.”
“Gregor showed me something I could use against him if he betrayed me. A form of insurance.”
“Have you considered that he might have done that in cahoots with Kincaid? That he’s playing the double spy game, manipulating you?”
Of course Drake had, but he had his back against the wall. “Not on this. If Kincaid discovers what Gregor has been keeping from him, he’d kill him.”
“Fine,” his brother said. “Obviously I’m not going to change your stubborn mind. See you later.”
“Later?”
“Benn’s engagement party,” Logan reminded him. “Our big friend the brilliant IT guy in his eternal dungarees. A Steve Jobs in the making. Or have you forgotten about him?”
He hadn’t forgotten. He just had more pressing issues on his mind. “I have one more stop tonight before the party. See you later.”
***
Amber was dead. She knew it. She felt it. Everything was a stark white, as if she were covered in sheets with shadows dancing behind them. Oddly enough she heard voices of souls she didn’t remember, but somehow recognized.
“Hey, love, it’s me again. Drake.”
Drake-or the Pained Voice, as she called him‒sounded full of sorrow and filled with a hint of rage.
“Sometimes I wish I’d never met you. Never got to know you. Never smelled you, tasted you.”
Now that didn’t sound very nice. She tried to open her mouth and tell him that, but her body refused to follow her directions.
The voice continued. “However dark my life was before you, it was less painful than the emptiness I feel now. Still, I can’t let you go. Not yet. Not now and perhaps never. I don’t know if you’d cheer me or hate me for not letting you go. Every morning when I look into the mirror I remind myself that I’m your champion. The man of steel, even though you would hate being treated as some helpless princess. But that’s exactly what you are. Helpless. Surrounded by monsters circling you, wanting to destroy you.”
She felt a finger brushing her cheek and lips touching her forehead.
The voice wasn’t finished yet. “I broke my promise to you once, but it won’t happen again. A Kincaid never makes the same mistake twice.”
A Kincaid? Glass-green eyes and a goatee manifested in her mind. The voice turned cold, tinged with bitterness, and internally made her shiver.
“No one will hurt you again. I won’t bloody allow it. Not even if I have to hang a hundred goblins for it.”
The voice disappeared and she once again faded into oblivion, feeling oddly reassured.