Frost Fire (Tortured Elements) (25 page)

BOOK: Frost Fire (Tortured Elements)
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She shifted nervously. “Oh.”

That wasn’t the response he was expecting. He had anticipated something like
‘That’s wonderful’
or
‘I can’t wait to meet them’
. After the messed-up life she’d lived, the girl should crave normality.

“What’s the matter?” Drake asked.

“It’s just… I don’t think they’ll be very willing to accept me. I mean, I’ve always lived with Demons, and I’ve never even known I have magic. I’ll be—”

“Different,” Drake finished. “Yeah. You won’t be normal. But that’s okay. I’m not normal, either, and I live with them. Most of them are okay with it.”

“Most of them?”

“Pretty much all of them,” he amended. “Jada is really the only one who hates me. She’s the one I told you about before, who saw your future.”

Allai went quiet for a long moment. Then she sighed and said, “Jada is your ex, isn’t she?”

Was it that obvious? Drake bit at his lip. Sure, the break-up was recent. But he hadn’t thought he’d made it that apparent.

“She is,” Allai said. “Isn’t she?”

“We only lasted like four months,” Drake replied carefully. “It wasn’t much of a relationship.”

He tasted blood and realized he’d bit through the skin of his lip. He really had to stop doing that. And he really had to stop talking about all this sensitive stuff, because it was just getting awkward, and dealing with awkward conversations wasn’t his forte. Just plain conversations weren’t his forte. Maybe that was the solution: To just shut up.

“I think four months is actually pretty long,” Allai said.

She was right: It’d been a long four months. One-hundred and twenty days of waking up every morning and wondering if that day was the day Jada would dump him. Because it was inevitable. Boyfriends were supposed to be supportive, and make their girlfriend feel special, and make-out with her when the time was right. Boyfriends
weren’t
supposed to disappear for days at a time, make their girlfriend cry with worry, and then refuse to let her even hug them when they returned.

Boyfriends weren’t supposed to be like him.

“What made you break up?” Allai asked.

She started trailing her finger along his scars, absently tracing the crescent outlines. He tensed, waiting for that familiar, gut-wrenching pain. But her touch was so gentle, it didn’t hurt at all. Actually, it felt
good
. He took a deep breath, inhaling her sweet scent. Damn, he’d missed this.

“Did something go wrong with Jada?” Allai pressed.

“Yeah, something went wrong.
You
went wrong.”

Shit. Just
shit.
That shouldn’t have come out. He held his breath and just focused on the road, hoping Allai wouldn’t respond. Maybe she hadn’t heard that, or maybe she’d misheard him, and he wouldn’t have to worry about this conversation taking a nosedive into more emotions and feelings and awkwardness.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Allai murmured.

He didn’t answer. There was no way he could even
try
to answer. He’d just straightened things out with Allai; he didn’t need to mess everything up again.

“Drake?” Allai glanced up to him, her lips nervously pursed together.

He wanted to kiss those lips. Just kiss her and make her forget this entire conversation. But that probably wouldn’t work. And, besides, it wasn’t exactly the best time for kissing: He was driving, and she was discussing his ex-girlfriend.

“Forget it,” Drake said. “It’s nothing.”

“No, it
is
something. What happened?”

What could he do? The obvious answer was to tell her to shut up, stop asking questions, and never bring up the subject again. But this was Allai. He couldn’t talk to her like that, because she wasn’t him. She was still sweet. He wasn’t sure how long that trait would last, considering all the shit happening to her. But he sure as hell wasn’t going to be the one to take her sweetness away.

If he couldn’t tell her to shut up, that only left one option: He had to tell the truth.

“We kind of broke up because of you,” Drake said slowly. “Well, not really you. It was more because of me, I guess.”

Allai shook her head. “I don’t get it. What happened? I don’t even know Jada.”

She made it sound so stupid. Of course she didn’t know Jada. He’d ruined a perfectly good relationship for a girl who didn’t even know about his girlfriend. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He wanted to just close his eyes and to get away from this conversation, from his pain, from the girl. Well, maybe not the girl. The girl could stay, if she’d just be quiet.

But he couldn’t close his eyes; he had to keep driving. So he took a deep breath and started to explain.

“Like I’ve said, Jada sees the future. When she saw your future, and you getting attacked by Silas, she showed me. You know, through her memories. And… I kind of flipped out. Jada told me I shouldn’t care about another girl so much, and she dumped me. And, yeah. That’s it. That’s what happened.”

Saying all that didn’t hurt as much as he’d anticipated. The break-up hadn’t been that hard, since he’d been constantly expecting it. But he figured he should still feel at least a little pain whenever he spoke about it. Because wasn’t that what normal people felt? He rubbed his temples and sighed. He wanted to be normal. Just for once, he wanted that pain.

Allai stopped tracing over his scars. “I’m sorry,” she murmured.

Drake kissed her forehead. “Don’t be sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But—”

He kissed her on the lips, cutting her off. She gave into the kiss faster this time, and for a moment, he forgot everything. The uncomfortable conversation, their deadly predicament,
everything
. There was just Allai’s sweet scent and her soft lips pressing against his.

He pulled away only because he didn’t want to crash the truck. Allai rested her head on his shoulder, and went back to trailing a finger along his scars.

“What happened with Jada doesn’t matter, Allai,” Drake said. “You matter. That’s all.”

The cell phone started ringing, cutting off any response Allai could have given. Drake snatched up the phone from where it sat on top of the dashboard. “Hello?” he answered.

“Drake.” It was the viper’s voice. “It’s you.”

“Why do you always expect someone else to pick up?” He didn’t give Luke enough time to answer before saying, “I’ve tried calling you like twenty times. Why the hell weren’t you picking up?”

Luke sighed. “I’ve been busy.”

“Busy? Are you kidding me?” Drake took a deep breath. He couldn’t get angry with Luke, not if he wanted the viper’s help. “Look, Allai’s dying, and I need to know who her parent is. Immediately. You said you’d help find them. Have you?”

“It’s Flacks. Her father is Flacks.”

“Don’t mess with me,” Drake snapped. “I know it can’t be Flacks. His kid died years ago.”

Drake still remembered that event clearly. He’d been six, and he’d been happy. Drake knew he shouldn’t have been, and that he should have felt bad for the poor kid who was killed. But he couldn’t help it. The kid’s death had kept Dad busy with the Keepers, so he wasn’t around much. But the girl was always around, whenever he got a chance to sneak into her room. For once in his life, he’d had a friend, and things had felt almost normal.

Drake learned the details of Flack’s loss as he got older. Flacks was a powerful man—the leader of the Keepers and of the three Caedes Mages—and people generally agreed that whoever killed his kid had a death wish. But the culprit was never found. They were traced back to the Sentinel, tensions had heightened, and a full-on war almost started. But Flacks never was able to get revenge.

“Flacks’ kid didn’t die,” Luke replied, bringing Drake’s thoughts back to the conversation. “She disappeared, and it was assumed the Sentinel killed her. But she’s not dead, Drake. She’s Allai.”

Drake didn’t answer. Instead, he looked for a turnout on the highway, and pulled over as one came up. He couldn’t drive anymore. He could hardly think, his mind spun so hard.

How many years ago did Flacks’s kid disappear? Twelve. And it was twelve years ago that the girl had showed up at Dad’s place, terrified out of her mind. But she didn’t just show up at Dad’s place; she was at his summer house, where Drake grew up. Flacks never came there, and Dad knew that.

Drake thought he might puke. Because Dad hadn’t just kidnapped the girl; he’d kidnapped her from Flacks, the man who he saw and worked with nearly every day. The man Drake saw, too. And a person who Drake could have told about the girl.

He could have saved her.

“For Christ’s sake, Drake, say something,” Luke snapped.

Drake took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He didn’t want Allai to see the rage in them. “Does he know?”

“Does who know what?” Luke asked.

“Does Flacks know what Rhaize did?”

“I was able to tell him the basics,” Luke said. “You’ll have to eventually fill him in on what details you can. But Rhaize is now a dead man walking. All Keeper Agents have been alerted that he’s now an enemy, and they’ll kill him on sight.”

“It won’t be that easy,” Drake replied. “He has his own resources and connections the Keepers don’t even know about. And then there are all his men loyal only to him.”

“You’re right,” Luke said. “It won’t be easy. The bastard has survived five centuries. This is a minor roadblock to him.” Luke paused for a moment. “He’s probably still going to come after Allai.”

“That doesn’t matter now. Look, I need Flacks to undo a spell he set on Allai.”

“Why?” Luke demanded.

“Because it’s killing her, damn it!” Drake gritted his teeth and forced in a deep breath. He didn’t dare look over to Allai; he didn’t think he could handle watching her reaction to his words.

“It’s that spell he cast on Allai to mask her species,” Drake said in a quieter tone. “It’s splintering and killing her. He needs to reverse it soon, or she’ll die.”

Luke let out a string of curses, and Drake covered the speaker with his palm in case Allai overheard. She probably knew every word Luke was saying—she’d grown up with the guy, after all—but some part of him still felt the need to shield her from the extravagant profanity.

“Okay,” Luke muttered. “Okay. We’ll get her to Flacks, and he’ll reverse the spell. But that’s a potent spell. If it’s splintering, she doesn’t have much time.”

“I’m about four hours from the Chimeras’s.” Drake didn’t comment on Allai’s time limit. He couldn’t talk about that, or he’d never be able to concentrate on the conversation. “I can make it in two. When can Flacks get there?”

“He’ll be there before you,” Luke replied. “He has a transportation spell.”

“If he can transport, can’t he just get to us right now?” Drake asked.

“No,” Luke said. “It’ll take him at least an hour to activate the spell. If you wait around for him in the same place for an hour, you’ll be sitting ducks for Rhaize.”

“He can’t do it any faster?”

“Even doing it that fast is dangerous, but he’ll do it for Allai. He’ll do anything for her.”

“How do you know that?” Drake asked. It was just one of the many questions he wanted to ask. How had an agent of the French contacted Flacks, how had he guessed Allai’s parentage, how did he know so much about magic?

“That doesn’t matter,” Luke said. “Just get to the Chimeras. Flacks will save her if you can do that.”

“I can do it.”

He managed to get the words out of his mouth. But he didn’t manage to get a glimpse of what hit the truck; there was just the squealing of tearing metal and Allai’s scream. Metal feathers and claws flashed in the corner of his eye, and he had time for one thought before adrenaline kicked in:

He’d probably just lied.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Splinters of glass rained down on Drake. He threw himself over Allai, shielding her from the shards. She screamed, and Drake almost let out a yell of his own. Because this couldn’t be happening. Not now, not when they were so close.

The truck rocked back and forth a couple times, and then settled on its side. Drake blinked, and dull light filtered into his vision. Fog swirled around the shattered windows, concealing whoever was out there.

He shifted his position, so that his arms wrapped around the girl in a more comforting hold. She let out a quiet sob, and he kissed her cheek.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

Her lips moved, and Drake knew she said something in response. But he didn’t hear it. All he heard was the sound of wind-chimes drifting through the fog. His stomach churned, and suddenly he wished the girl was holding him, and not the other way around.

There was a flash of a metal wing in the corner of his vision. The feathers were long and slim, and they rustled together to create the chiming sound. Drake looked over his shoulder, hoping to find his wings there, hoping that maybe it was his own feathers he was hearing. It wasn’t. He was still in his human form.

And there was only one other Demon with wings like his.

Drake snarled. He regretted it the moment the sound left his mouth. Because it was a direct challenge, and no one challenged Dad. Or at least no one who was still alive.

Drake pressed his forehead against the girl’s and closed his eyes. It was just for a moment, but it was enough. Enough to breathe in her scent, to listen to her heartbeat, to feel her skin against his. Enough to remember why he had to face Dad.

“Stay here,” he murmured to Allai. She nodded, and Drake took a deep breath. Then he leapt out the broken windshield. A shard of glass sliced open his forearm, and blood poured out of the wound as he landed outside the truck. But there was no pain, no sensation. Just his pounding heart and fast breaths which were making him a little dizzy.

Drake peered through the fog, but couldn’t see anyone. His heart sped up even faster, and he thought he might faint. Because Dad was watching. He was somewhere out there in the fog, and he was
watching
.

Dad always watched. And he waited, just anticipating any kind of mistake Drake could make. Only, this time, Dad didn’t have to wait. Drake had already made a mistake: He’d challenged Dad. And there was no way he’d survive that.

BOOK: Frost Fire (Tortured Elements)
7.97Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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