Desert Flame

by Nicole R. Taylor

  For the first time in his long life, Frederick Marmaduke Hardy told his entire sordid tale to the Exiles of Solace…and in the presence of one human police sergeant. He wasn’t a superhero with an origin story; he was just a pitiful man who’d had his mortality stolen from him.

  “Little did I know that fun to a man like Darius was more akin to mindless slaughter. He inflicted worse than I’d seen or received at Port Arthur. Ten times worse…”

  “He said you’d betrayed him,” Kyne said.

  “I did.” He raised his gaze to the elemental. “I’d agreed to give him my unwavering loyalty, but in the end…I left him. It seemed I still had remnants of humanity lingering inside me after all.”

  “Now I understand why you signed the shop over to me,” Eloise murmured. “When you went out there, you saw him.”

  Kyne narrowed his eyes and turned his glare onto the vampire. “You signed the shop over to Eloise?”

  Hardy nodded. “It needs to be a safe place. Darius won’t be able to enter.”

  “He seemed to know you were here,” Kyne went on. “He wasn’t even a little surprised to see you.”

  “I would’ve said something if I had known Darius had his fingers in this,” Hardy told him.

  Would he have, though? His history with Darius was troubled to say the least. The vampire’s idea of teaching was to bring out all his worst qualities. Torture, blood, and pain—that’s what Darius was…and it was why he’d left.

  “Who is he exactly?” Vera asked. “What’s his deal?”

  “Darius is the oldest vampire to have ever walked this Earth,” Hardy replied.

  “This Earth?” Eloise frowned.

  “He claims he comes from another Earth, just like this one,” the vampire went on, knowing there were multiple realities existing alongside theirs. “He was the first of our kind in this world and the origin of all vampires here. He was made by another, almost two thousand years ago, by a man who was said to be the first created.”

  “Created,” Vera mused, “not made. What kind of magic could create a vampire?

  “It doesn’t matter if he was made or created,” Hardy said. “He’s still the oldest vampire in the world, and that makes him the most powerful. His meddling in human affairs goes back a thousand years, making him beyond influential amongst the elite of our world, and that’s without using compulsion. Darius is all the bad things about being a vampire. He’s ruthless and unfeeling, a hunter who relishes each kill.”

  “That’s how he got EarthBore to follow him so easily,” Kyne said as if he hadn’t heard the last part of Hardy’s explanation.

  “They’re compelled,” Drew said. “That’s what I sensed.”

  Kyne turned. “Who?”

  “The human workers,” the shifter replied. “Their auras had this strange taint… I reckon he’s mind controlling them all.”

  “Since when can you see auras?” Finn asked with a pout.

  “Since Coen has been teaching me,” Drew fired back. “When I shift, I can see more than you’ll ever know.”

  “Give it a rest,” Vera scolded. “Trust you two to make this about yourselves.”

  “What’s he doing here?” Finn asked, leaning down to peer at Clarke. He narrowed his eyes at the sergeant. “You finally seal the deal, Vera?”

  “Rack off, Finn,” Kyne snapped.

  “Rack off where?” the fae asked with a sneer. “We’ve got vampires up to our eyeballs, and now a cop is sitting here listening in on all our secrets. You may as well give him the password to your Bitcoin wallet, Kyne.”

  “Hell,” Blue muttered. “I don’t even want to know how a fae trapped in the outback knows about Bitcoin.”

  Hardy was only half-listening to the Exiles as they descended into their usual bickering.

  “Now that’s all cleared up, the question still remains…” Finn said. “What are we going to do about the vampire and his massive drill?”

  Vera choked and grasped Clarke’s hand. The sergeant tensed, his brow creasing.

  Hardy peered at him but caught the shake of Kyne’s head out the corner of his eye. The miner had decided Clarke was Vera’s problem to deal with…if it was a problem.

  “It’s a cover,” Hardy murmured, disregarding them. “He’s after the seal, but I don’t think he knows where it is.”

  “I want to say we need to go on the offence,” Vera began, “but he could come back at any moment.”

  “He won’t come back straight away,” Hardy said. “He’ll give me a chance to go to him first.”

  “That’s out of the question,” Kyne said.

  “If you go there, he’ll rip you to bits,” Wally said. “I know alpha behaviour when I see it. He made you, Hardy. In his mind, the bloke owns your entire existence.”

  “The way I see it, we’re screwed,” Blue said with a heavy sigh. “The Nightshade was a hell of a fight, but a thousand-year-old vampire…? How can we defend against that? He could sweep in here and mind control me.”

  “Vampires can’t enter human dwellings,” Wally told him.

  “The pub’s not a dwelling,” Blue declared, his cheeks turning red, “it’s a business.”

  “I might be able to help with the mind control,” Vera told the publican, wincing at the mention of the Nightshade. “Vampires aren’t of this Earth, but there has to be a way to combat their abilities. There’s a balance to everything, and nature corrects itself constantly…even in different realities.” She glanced at Clarke. “I need a little time to experiment, though.”

  Kyne snorted and turned to the sergeant. “You’ve been silent as the grave. What would you do, Sergeant Clarke?”

  The Exiles all turned to stare at the newcomer, who didn’t yet understand he wasn’t so new to the supernatural shenanigans of Solace.

  “Make him wait,” the sergeant murmured. “You need time to strategise, and the longer an arrogant man like that waits, the angrier he’ll get. Angry men make mistakes.”

  Hardy stared at Clarke, his unblinking gaze making the man squirm.

  “You want us to face an angry vampire?” Kyne asked. “I know this is a stretch for you, Clarke, but—”

  “He’s right,” Hardy interrupted, rising to his feet. “We need time.”

  Vera needed to figure out a way to protect Blue, and they needed to create as many safe zones in Solace as they could. Darius would rain hell on them the moment they attempted to challenge him, and the more thresholds they had, the better.

  Eloise stood, her expression full of worry, but he shook his head.

  “I, uh…” He swallowed hard.

  Before anyone could reply, he’d flown out the door.

  Eloise followed Hardy outside, leaving the other Exiles behind. Kyne had wanted to come with her, but she’d pushed him back in his chair, forcing his arse to stick in it with a little elemental magic.

  The proverbial crap was about to hit the fan in there—what with Clarke now one hundred percent aware of Solace’s little secret—but she was more concerned about Hardy. He’d unloaded some pretty heavy stuff, tearing open old wounds in the process.

  It wasn’t because he was a vampire and everyone was worried he’d snap and go on a bloodthirsty rampage. It was because he was her friend.

  She found Hardy standing outside the opal shop, holding his hands out in the sunlight. He turned them over a few times, and as she approached, she saw they were shaking ever so slightly.

  “Eloise,” he murmured.

  She stepped into the shade of the verandah. “Are you all right?”

  He lowered his hands. “You’ve been asking me that a lot lately.”

  “I know.” She shrugged. “So, are you?”

  “As well as I could be.” He turned his gaze on her. “You have questions.”

  A sigh escaped her lips. “About a million of them.”

  “Have at it, then.”

  She hesitated at first but took her chance. “You didn’t say how you ended up at Port Arthur. I can’t reconc
ile a convict with the man I see now.”

  “In those days, they needed people to build up the colonies,” Hardy told her. “Not enough were going voluntarily, and they needed numbers. Convicts were the solution. It was slave labour without it actually being classified as slavery. People would get sentenced to transportation for stealing a potato.” He said it bitterly, as if his sentence had been for something just as paltry.

  “Hardy?”

  The vampire scowled and lowered his gaze. “Theft,” he said. “I’d never broken any laws before, but my sister was sick and…”

  Eloise felt his anguish and she placed a hand on his arm. Her touch startled him and he blinked away tears, turning his head so she wouldn’t see.

  Too late, she thought.

  “She was sick and you needed medicine,” she murmured. “Oh, Hardy…”

  There was so much more he wasn’t telling them, but Eloise knew enough about Australia’s convict past to know what kind of treatment he would’ve received at Port Arthur. Conditions were as bleak as the weather at the southernmost point of Tasmania. The next stop south was Antarctica.

  “They sent me away the next morning,” Hardy said, startling her. “I was caught, sent before a judge, and put on a tall ship leaving London that morning. One hundred and fifty-five days at sea…”

  She felt the burn of her tears. “You never got to say goodbye?”

  He shook his head.

  “What was her name?”

  “Mary,” he whispered.

  “Mary. That’s a beautiful name. Regal.”

  “Mary, Elizabeth, and Tom,” he went on. “Our parents were dead, and it was up to me…”

  Eloise didn’t know what to say. He’d had a whole family and some judge had sent him to Port Arthur for trying to save his sister’s life. It was easy to look back and be outraged on his behalf, but times were different. They were harder, and the gap between rich and poor was a gaping divide.

  “What was wrong with her?” she wondered.

  “Consumption,” he replied. “Known as tuberculosis these days. No cure, no treatment, only mercy.”

  “God, Hardy. I’m—”

  “I know,” he interrupted. “Just don’t say it.”

  “Okay.”

  She looked across the road where Wally was rolling up the door of the garage. The metal rattled, the sound echoing through the stillness of Solace. He spotted them standing in the shade of the opal shop and raised his hand.

  Eloise waved back, but Hardy simply sighed. They were all worried about Darius and EarthBore, but they also worried about their friend. His story was a lot.

  “Can I show you something?” the vampire asked once Wally had gone inside.

  “Sure.” Eloise nodded. He unbuttoned his shirt, and she let out a nervous cough. “Uh…”

  He grimaced and turned around. “My back,” he said, shucking off his shirt. “This is what almost killed me.”

  The khaki material fell away, revealing a twisted mess of scars. She gasped and her hand flew to her mouth to stifle the sound, but it was far too late. Whatever she’d thought he was about to show her, it hadn’t been this.

  Some scars were thin and long, while others were clumped knots. His flesh had healed poorly, a sign they’d barely been treated at all. Her eyes narrowed as she realised what had caused them—a whip.

  “The night Darius came to me, it wasn’t the first time I’d been lashed,” Hardy told her. “Those wounds healed the moment he gave me his blood, but the ones that came before…they became permanent.”

  “How many?” she whispered.

  “Fifty.”

  She reached up and traced her fingers over his scars, making him flinch. He turned and put his shirt back on, fastening the buttons with lightning speed.

  “The first time, it was ten,” he told her. “The second, it was twenty, but third time’s a charm.”

  They said nothing for a long time after that. There wasn’t anything Eloise could say now that she knew some of the things Hardy had been through. His scars were a mark of the brutal punishment he’d faced, and a constant reminder of what he’d been forced to leave behind.

  He’d shown her simply because he had to tell someone, and he trusted her the most. More than Kyne, who’d lived with him for years before she’d arrived, and more than the old guard—Blue and Wally.

  Eloise didn’t know what she’d done to earn it, but she’d never betray him. Never.

  “Did you ever find out what happened to your brother and sisters?” she asked.

  “No. Blue said something about using one of those websites. Ancestry.”

  Well, fancy that. “Blue figured it out? Or did you tell him?”

  Hardy smirked. “Blue’s a perceptive bloke.”

  “He is a publican,” she said. “Their prowess at diagnosing what ails someone’s heart and mind is only second to actual therapists.”

  The vampire chuckled and leaned back against the wall. “Thanks.”

  “What for?”

  He looked at her and narrowed his eyes. “You know.”

  She fancied she felt his spirits lift despite the threat of Darius hanging over them all, and smiled. “Frederick?”

  “Not so many Freds around these days.”

  “It’s not so bad. A little old-fashioned, but still totally fancy pants. Do you have a middle name?”

  “No,” he said with a faint smile. “Of course, I don’t.”

  He was deflecting, which meant it was more embarrassing than Frederick.

  “You’ll tell me what it is one day,” she told him, shouldering open the door. “Just you wait.”

  Vera walked along the highway, her sandals filling with dust. Girt rubbed between her toes, chafing her skin, but she didn’t care.

  Clarke followed, his expression unreadable. Hardy had just dropped one hell of a story on them, but as far as he remembered, the standoff with Darius was his first encounter with the supernatural. Things, that to him, didn’t exist.

  Vampires, witches, werewolves, shapeshifters, fae, and elementals were the stuff of stories. They didn’t live in little outback towns. They didn’t run businesses or mine opal. They…

  Vera sighed as they approached the boab. The tree was ancient, the trunk so bloated it’d become a landmark in its own right. It was impressive, but also harboured its own latent magic that protected the entrance to the mine that led down to the seal.

  The seal. The creepy bluestone that started this whole mess.

  Vera stood underneath the twisted branches of the boab and looked up at the stars. She wanted to ask Hardy about the witch he’d met in Hobart all those years ago, but it wasn’t appropriate. The covens rarely left Ireland in modern times, let alone in the nineteenth century. Who was she and what magic had led her to Tasmania in such a turbulent time? It was a story for another time.

  Now she had to explain things to Clarke and hope… Bloody hell. She wanted to burst into tears but trying to explain witchcraft while bawling her eyes out would be the least crazy way of breaking the news to him. Not that anything she was about to say would be classified as ‘sane’ to a human police officer.

  “You didn’t say much in there,” she said, finally looking at him.

  “I don’t seem to be qualified,” Clarke told her. “There were a lot of things I didn’t understand. Compulsion, shapeshifting dingoes, elementals, and a thousand other bloody things I thought were Halloween stories.” He ran a hand over his face. “Christ, Vera. What am I supposed to say?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted, scuffing the toe of her sandal in the dirt. She wanted him to be okay with it. She wanted him to take her in his arms and say it didn’t matter, that he loved her anyway, but the look on his face dashed her hopes.

  “So, I either accept it or have my memory wiped…again,” he said. “Hell of a choice, Vera.”

  “I won’t let them. I’ll get Hardy to return your memory.”

  Clarke ran his hand over his face. “I don’t know
if I want to know what happened to me last time.”

  Vera didn’t either, considering what she’d done to him as the Nightshade. Locking him in a mine frequented by a werewolf during a full moon wasn’t something easily forgiven.

  “I guess I should be grateful I’m still alive to have a second go.”

  “No,” she cried. “It wasn’t like that.”

  “And I suppose that day we met outside the bank in the Ridge was all a setup?”

  Vera’s cheeks heated and she bit her lip.

  “I knew it.” He scoffed. “Is this real?” He pointed back and forth between them. “Or is this all a convenient play for police backup?”

  “No!” She took a step towards him. “It’s real. It’s all real.”

  “Are you sure? Because I’m having a hell of a time trying to figure it out.”

  “You deserve the truth, Andy,” she said. “All of it, no matter how painful.” She took a deep breath. “If you love me, if there’s a future for us…then I want it to be without secrets. I want you to understand what Solace is. What I am.”

  “What Solace is?” He frowned, his brow creasing so deep, she was worried he’d have permanent lines.

  “We have a responsibility,” she began. “Uh… We protect it from others like us and sometimes from ourselves.”

  “Christ.” Clarke sighed, the sharpness of his breath piercing the night air. “Damn right you owe me an explanation, but am I going to understand it?”

  “Yes,” she murmured, “you will.”

  “Then you better get on with it.” His stare was cool, and she almost let go of her tears.

  It was a fifty-fifty chance, right?

  Vera took a deep breath and centred her magic. This was going to be one hell of a story, and she wanted to tell it right.

  “I think you better sit down,” she said, picking a comfortable root beside the boab.

  Clarke sat beside her, which she hoped was a good sign. He wasn’t running away screaming or trying to put her in handcuffs, though when she told him about Roth and the Dust Dogs, maybe it’d be Drew and Eloise in her place. Or maybe he’d call in a paddy wagon for the whole lot of them. Darius would be the least of their problems, then.