Furious Flames (Elemental Book 3) (25 page)

It took him five years to get her to marry him, but
only because Star turned out to be the cat that had drove her to him in the
first place. She was a hippy at heart, a diamond among glass in beauty, and had
neither magic nor the desire for power. She seemed to enjoy listening to him
talk about the problems he had on the council, and even went so far as to offer
suggestions.

Logan also got his own wife, not to Vincent’s surprise.
Recognizing her from his visions, he was unable to be happy for his friend and
that drove a wedge between them. He wanted to tell Logan, but he didn’t want to
ruin the few years they would have. He didn’t want Logan to kill himself trying
to save someone who was fated to die. He didn’t want to deprive Logan of the
sanity he needed to love the daughter that Emilia would have.

Unwilling to witness the demise of his own love,
Vincent used the lessons he learned since becoming a member of the council, to
effectively shut off his visions. He would regret that decision for the rest of
his life.

On their wedding night, Maria was asleep in her new
husband’s arms. Star appeared at the foot of the bed in obvious distress. “
John
is coming and he plans to take a position on the council
.”

“There can only be thirteen members and every seat is
full.”

The next morning, Luis Sterling, the most peaceful
and clever man on the council, was dead. John arrived at the front door, all
smiles, and settled himself right into the sudden vacancy. No one could say
anything, whether by magic or just shock, Vincent never really knew. Within a
few weeks, it was just a matter of fact that John was a council member.

But that wasn’t all John wanted. He set his sights on
Maria right from the start. He blatantly ignored Vincent in the room as he
flirted shamelessly. Maria, to Vincent’s horror, ate it up. Some part of him
knew she was a victim of John’s terrible power, but his heart never got the
message.

A furious hiss woke him from a light sleep in time to
see Star attacking John. His younger brother had a knife, which he used to stab
the cat trying to claw his eyes out. When Star fell lifeless to the ground,
Vincent screamed her name, waking Maria. Vincent slammed into John before he knew
what he was doing, wrestled the knife away, and aimed it as his brother’s
heart.

A vision took him then of a little boy about three. The
child was sitting in the back of an SUV at a gas station in the desert. When he
tried to look up at Vincent, he had to shield his eyes. At that point, Vincent
saw Maria asleep in the seat beside him.

“Juice,” he said.

“Not now,” Vincent answered.

The child’s bottom lip stuck out in a pout. There was
something in the boy’s eyes that warned Vincent with every fiber in his being
that this child had John’s power. The little boy could control minds.

The boy squirmed where he sat, not saying a word. His
power was instinctual; if he demanded juice, no one could deny him. Instead,
the child gave a lazy, wobbly nod and flopped over onto his stomach for a nap.
He was self-aware enough at three to control his power. Vincent wanted to
believe it was just luck, that the child would be as much of a nightmare as
John. He wanted to hate the child.

He didn’t. The child was more Maria at heart than
John.

He returned to reality in time to see John’s smirk.
“Do it. Kill me; you’ll kill us both.”

As Maria was crying for him to stop, screaming that
she loved John, Vincent studied the mark over his brother’s heart. Logan was
right; it was blood magic. Their father had a curse, which he passed down to
both of his sons. Despite that, he couldn’t kill John knowing he would be
killing that child as well. It was Maria’s child.

Maria left him and married John. No one on the
council said anything directly, though they had plenty to say behind their
backs. The only thing that held him together was Logan. With his familiar dead
and his wife in his brother’s arms, he no longer worried about doing any good on
the council. To rub salt in his wound, the backlash of losing his familiar
caused him to go blind in his left eye.

He decided then that it was him and Logan against the
council and any other force that stood in their way.

*          *          *

It was a year later when he lost what little hope he
had left. After returning from a stressful and unsuccessful attempt at making
peace with some fae in the northwest United States, Vincent was feeling pretty
useless, so the last person in the world that he wanted to see was his brother.
Unfortunately, John barged into his room uninvited with a big grin that meant
trouble for Vincent.

“How was your trip?” he asked, knowing full well how
it went.

“Bad timing.”

“Is that so? Well, you know I can fix the problem in
just a few minutes.” John’s voice was too innocent; he obviously wanted
something from the fae tribe.

“A treaty created under mind control is not peace.
Leave them alone.”

“If you insist. By the way, I’m going to destroy a
vampire coven in Canada and the council will support me completely. You keep
Logan Hunt out of it, or he will die with them. I know you’re friends with him,
so it is in your best interest not to cross me on this.”

Vincent couldn’t really cross him even if he wanted
to. “I’ll ask him to betray his own beliefs and let innocent vampires die.”

“There is no such thing as an innocent vampire. But
don’t be depressed; I have a gift in return for your compliance.”

“I don’t want it.”

“I didn’t ask if you wanted it. You seem depressed
lately, so I’m giving you what you want more than anything else in the world.”

“You’re going to kill yourself?”

John smirked. “Do you think Maria is happy? She’s
not. She smiles because I tell her to. She sleeps with me because I tell her
to. But I can hear her thoughts. When she’s in bed, where she belongs, she begs
me like a bitch in heat. She wants me to be rough and hurt her, because she
wants to be punished. The self-loathing grows every time she sees you. She
spends all day imagining ways to kill herself.”

“Stop.”

“Never. I’ll ask her sometimes if she wants me to
kill her. It makes her so happy. And then, when I tell her I never would… oh,
Vincent, the agony she feels as her hope is crushed… it’s the most wonderful
emotion. There is really nothing better. Unfortunately, she has come to expect
that from me, so she no longer gets so excited. I even had one of the servants
attempt to kill her, just to cheer her up. It worked, and she was bedridden
with misery for three days when I saved her, but now I need something bigger.
She wants you even more than she wants to escape me. That’s why I’m going to
give her one last night with you.”

“To make her feel guiltier or to crush her hope?”

“Both. As well as to hurt you, of course. You’re
going to have her for the night, and I’m not even going to force you. You’ll
take her into your arms because you love her and you honestly think that one
more moment with her, only to lose her all over again, is better than not
having her at all. And while you do, I will be in my room laughing, because
tomorrow, you’ll realize it wasn’t worth it.”

“Why?”

“Because I already broke her, and now I’m going to
break you.”

Vincent did exactly what John had planned that night,
but his spirit didn’t break, and he never regretted it. He knew then that Maria
did love him, no matter what John did to her. He would never have her as his
own again, but he would make sure she escaped. The plan was simple.

Unfortunately, John heard the plan in Vincent’s head
before he could follow through. John sent her away to hide her and told Vincent
he killed her because of Vincent’s plan. At first, Vincent believed his
brother. Then he had a vision of Maria and her child, Devon.

When the council found out about her and Devon, they
tried to assign Logan to kill the boy, but Logan was with Vincent one hundred
percent. John was no longer interested in his wife, so the order didn’t faze
him in the least. Vincent and Logan took Devon and Maria away. Rosin drove,
since between the computers in the newer vehicles and the development in their
magic, neither Vincent nor Logan could drive without risking the truck stalling
out in the middle of the road.

On the drive, Vincent told his friend that he really
didn’t know why he was so keen on saving his brother’s child, who had the same
malevolent power. Logan just patted his back and smiled warmly at Devon. “You
feel this way because that is not John’s child. He should have been yours and
your heart feels this too. I will always think of him as yours, which makes him
my nephew.”

He reached out to rub Devon’s cheek and the child
promptly bit his finger, eliciting a shout of shock from Logan and laughter
from Rosin. “You’re excited about being a father, aren’t you?” Vincent asked. “I
thought you didn’t want children.”

“Ema did and she has a knack for getting her way. I
never wanted them before, but now… This is my chance to be better than I am.
Remington Hunt will have everything she needs, so Ema and I will never have to
yell at her. She will have a sweet and calm nature, never argue with us, and
find a–”

“Please stop,” Rosin said stoically. “I might die of
laughter. She’ll be a stubborn, vengeful brat, just like her father. Keeping
her out of trouble will be a full time job that no one is prepared to handle.”

Logan just laughed, not believing it at all.

The drive took several days, which gave Vincent
plenty of time to think. Logan frowned as they pulled up in front of the small
house in Sedona, Arizona. “Joseph used to be a good friend, but he can be quite
rude when he gets drunk.”

“Maria will kick him where it hurts if he treats her
wrong. I want her to forget about me.”

“Why?”

“Why do you think? I don’t want her to have any
regrets. She hasn’t even agreed to come here. Make her forget about me and make
her feel comfortable here.”

“I can give both Maria and Joseph the memories of a
fairytale life… but you must understand that no one can live in a dream
indefinitely.”

“At least give them a chance. She deserves a good
life. She’s a strong, loving woman who should never have gotten involved with
me. I’m cursed to be miserable because of who my father was.” He was
interrupted as a tiny hand landed on his shoulder and he turned. Devon put his
arms around Vincent in a hug. Vincent hugged him back. “At least he doesn’t
have to be.”

“Everyone wakes from their dream eventually,” Logan
muttered, facing the window.

Two weeks later, Emelia died giving birth to
Remington. Logan lost part of the light in his eyes and when he did smile, it
was fake. He tried to push Vincent away, but Vincent and Rosin were the only
ones who understood him. It was all Logan could do to let Remy go to school,
for he feared that she would be taken from him too. Over time, he learned to
trust Rosin to protect her, and that changed their relationship drastically.
Logan no longer played pranks on his familiar or taught his own classes at his
schools.

*          *          *

On Vincent’s fiftieth birthday, Logan asked him to
take care of a wizard who was trying to poison the minds of his students. The
wizard hounded the schools, carefully studying the students without getting
close enough to Logan to get caught. Logan himself was busy protecting his
daughter, who seemed to attract every power-hungry psycho in the country. The
matter was supposed to be simple and it only took him fifteen minutes to
destroy the wizard.

Vincent was prepared when he absorbed the defeated
wizard’s power. He was not prepared for what came with it. Ghost was the
saddest example of a familiar Vincent had ever seen. The cat was summoned when
he was less than two days old and treated as a disobedient pet every minute of
his life since. He was never taught the duties of a familiar, nor did he know
of the respect he was owed.

Ghost was in a miserable, malnourished state, since
he was expected to hunt for his own food while constantly defending his violent
and foolish master. His master’s carelessness had also resulted in Ghost being
completely blinded. By the time Vincent came along, the cat didn’t care if he
and his master died.

He followed Vincent at a distance for weeks, sensing
his old master’s power but not willing to approach the stranger he couldn’t see.
Eventually, Vincent started feeding him, although he assumed the cat was too
far gone and thus, it was more of a last meal sort of thing. But Ghost didn’t
die. He learned even without sight that this wizard was worthy of at least
gratitude.

A pack of wolf shifters that had come down from
Alaska were trying to stake their claim over the eastern region of the United
States. They might have succeeded had they not challenged the wizard council.
They never faced the council themselves; instead, they infiltrated the
council’s grocery supplier and poisoned the tea shipment. Unfortunately,
Vincent had learned to like tea after all the time he spent being pressured to
drink it with Logan.

In the middle of a meeting, Ghost appeared and swept
Vincent’s teacup to the floor. Only then did it occur to anyone to check it. It
was the absurd way they were brought together that convinced Vincent it was
fate. Whether he liked it or not, they needed each other. Still, the one-eyed
wizard and the blind cat did not make a terribly frightening force.

Logan then came up with the idea for an ancient,
painful, and dangerous spell to create the bond between Vincent and Ghost.
Logan warned him that it would never be as strong as the bond between him and
Star. But for the wizard who lost his familiar and the familiar who lost his
wizard, it was enough. One unexpected advantage was that Ghost got his vision
back.