by Camilla Monk
March retreats into a darkened corner of the garage. With the door now destroyed, he takes another shot, and I glimpse a blond guy falling to the ground in the street. Stiles? No . . . it’s not him. The remaining men momentarily retreat, right before one of them throws something our way that clanks onto the concrete floor and rolls under the car. I immediately picture a grenade, and panic explodes in my chest. But instead I register a low hissing sound, and a thick, acrid smoke starts filling the shed.
March roars, “Island, cover your face!”
I lift my sweatshirt’s neck to protect my nose and mouth . . . a second too late. The first inhalation makes me choke and cough through the fabric. My eyes are stinging so badly tears blur my vision; the men storming the garage are little more than terrifying shadows. Over the blood pounding in my ears, the hoarse shouts, and the gunshots, I manage to focus on a single goal: hinder their progression. One after another, I kick at the tires stacked in front of me and send them rolling toward the blurry shapes barreling inside the shed. A few feet away from me, a chilling scream echoes through the smoke, and a splash of blood arcs into the air, landing with a splatter on the car’s rust-covered side. I grit my teeth, panting fast. Please . . . not March. Please!
I crawl toward a pearly gray smudge that could be the sky outside, the heavy bulletproof blazer hindering my progress. In the midst of the confusion, I recognize the sound of March’s suppressed gun right before a body crashes to the ground inches from my right hand. Lifeless eyes see past me, and the blood runs and runs, dark, from a wound on the man’s forehead. I look away and drag myself toward the light, hoping I’ll be able to breathe, see something at last, and maybe March already got out, and we can escape . . .
I hold on to that tiny sliver of hope, and when gravel scrapes my palms, I barely feel it. All I know is I made it out. I try to scramble up and find my bearings, but the moment I start to rise on shaky legs, pain explodes in my ribs. I roll onto my back, blinking up at the ghost who kicked me back to the ground. It’s when he bends down to grab my hair that I see the eye patch, and an inhuman scream rips through my throat. Pirate Morgan hauls me to my knees while I desperately claw at his gloved hand to ease the agony blazing across my scalp. I struggle for oxygen, certain that he’s going to tear my hair off if he tugs any harder. Around us, more men have gathered. There’s no escape.
“Party’s over, Mr. November!” Morgan yells cheerfully. I see a blade snap open in his left hand; I go perfectly still, frozen at his feet. “Please get the fuck out, or I’ll be delivering daddy a one-eyed bitch.”
Seconds tick, one after another. In the garage, the chaos turns into quiet rustling. March tears through the smoke and walks toward us, unarmed and flanked by two men. He’s a mess, covered in dust and blood that I’m not sure is his—but he looks okay, and it’s all I care about.
“On your knees,” Morgan orders.
March’s eyes are set on him. He still wears that odd, impassible mask, like his features are paralyzed, but his gaze . . . it’s deadly, focused. If they give him the slightest opening, I know those rings of dark blue ice are the last thing Pirate Morgan will ever see. Yet he obeys. He looks at me and drops one knee to the ground. My heart breaks into a thousand razor-sharp shards.
“He wants you both . . . unharmed,” Morgan admits with a huff of disappointment.
“Then you might want to let go of her,” March warns, hate cracking through the thin veneer of civility in his voice.
A snarl bares Morgan’s teeth. “Believe me . . . the only thing keeping me from gutting you both right now is that I know he’ll hurt you more than I can.”
In his hand, the incurved knife remains, but his grasp on my hair eases a little. I let out a trembling exhale and I block everyone else to focus on March. I feel our bond, beating inside me like a second heart. I hold on to it. We’re alive; nothing else matters right now.
The sound of an engine snaps me out of the moment. Behind us, a long black Citroën sedan has stopped. The rear door opens, and the first thing I see is a gray suit. My stomach knots as I recognize Stiles’s eternal black tie before he’s even stepped out. Butterfly stitches cover the wound March inflicted to his forehead yesterday, yet his gaze is as compassionate as ever as he walks to us. Maybe there really is no anger in him after all, nor any kind of moral compass . . .
Morgan acknowledges his presence with a disdainful glance. “I told you it wouldn’t be hard. Honestly, I have no idea how you managed to fuck up twice in a row.”
Stiles all but ignores the jab and flashes March a cordial smile. “I’m glad to see you again, Mr. November, but you never do anything quietly, do you?”
Indeed. Glancing up, I notice terrified faces observing us through the surrounding buildings’ windows, most half-hidden behind their curtains. And that concert of howls growing louder in the distance: someone called the cops, and probably the fire station too . . .
March’s eyes narrow as he replies in an emotionless voice, “Dries was very surprised to see you alive at the Poseidon. He almost didn’t recognize you, in fact.”
With a chuckle, Stiles bends to free me from Morgan’s grasp, who lets go with a hateful glare—one that’s child’s play compared to the expression on March’s face when Stiles’s gloved hands touch me. The muscles in his neck and jaw bulge, as if he is ready to pounce.
Stiles strokes his chin. “It’s been over fifteen years, and some days even I still don’t recognize myself,” he muses, his tone deceptively soft, even as he adds, “but I’ve gotten used to my new face. It ain’t so bad, considering I didn’t even expect to survive after he was done with me.”
As he says this, I stare at him, trying to find evidence of some sort of surgery in his drab, regular features. He could be anyone; I can’t find the other man underneath, the one Dries left for dead . . . I avert my eyes as he helps me up. It’s already taking all I have to stand straight and not tremble. He tips his head to the sedan. “We’re gonna have to leave. Island will be riding with me.”
With this final push, March detonates. His elbow flies into the face of the man standing to his right with a nauseating crack. The man’s body is taken by spasms, and he collapses, his nose cleanly shoved all the way up into his brain. Past the millisecond of shock, a second goon pulls out his gun, but with a swift movement March breaks his arm and takes the weapon while the guy staggers back with a groan of pain. March leaps forward, almost fast enough to reach me. But not fast enough to dodge Morgan, who jumps in the way and . . . aims his gun at me.
March freezes, his finger on the trigger.
Stiles makes no attempt to help me this time, watching coolly as Morgan presses the barrel against my temple. “I’ve been told I got some serious anger-management issues,” he hisses. “And you’re wasting my fucking time.”
March’s hand is shaking as he lowers the gun. He’s fighting himself. I wish I could tell him he didn’t fail me, that it’s going to be okay, but Stiles steps in at last. He places his hand on Morgan’s gun, casually pushing it away. “Enough . . . Mr. November knows we can trust each other.”
With this, his arm wraps around my shoulders, and I register a flash of despair in March’s eyes when Stiles opens the door for me to climb into the sedan. I look at March; I try to keep our bond alive as long as possible, even after the door slams shut and I’m alone with Stiles in the back seat. The engine starts, and I still look, until Morgan kicks him hard, over and over, and they drag him away to the Hummer. I feel hot tears rolling down my cheeks, and my mouth falls open, but no sound comes out, only air whizzing from my throat in a silent sob.
There’s no sign on Stiles’s features that he understands the depth of my distress, but the compassionate smile never wavers as he hands me a tissue. “There, don’t cry. You’re gonna be fine.”
TWENTY-FOUR
THE BLUE DANUBE
My tears have dried, and I’ve retreated as far as possible from Stiles in the back seat, but there’s nowhere to escape. With a
sigh, he presses a button in the arm of his door, and a tinted privacy screen slides up. Now it’s just the two us. I shudder.
His tongue clicks, the sound unnervingly loud in the silence. “Island, when did you stop taking your treatment?”
I press my forehead against the window. We’re driving away from Fetești-Gară and toward the Danube, across a white countryside that blends with the ashen sky like watercolor. I wrench my hands on my lap. “What are you going to do to March?”
“Me? Nothing. But I’m afraid Anies is going to make an example of Mr. November.”
My gaze settles on the mirror outside, where I can see the Hummer following us. My stomach heaves at the idea that March is in there with that sick piece of shit Morgan . . . “Why do you keep calling him that? Is that his real name?”
“No. Just a nickname.” He leans back in the seat, crossing his arms. “Island, you didn’t answer me. When did you stop taking your meds?”
“About a week ago,” I admit.
“Thought so. Why? What happened that made you decide that?”
My head snaps up, sudden anger flaring in my veins, as if he’d branded me. “Do you even need to ask? I trusted you, and you drugged me . . . Every. Fucking. Day! You stole my life. You took everything!”
“I obeyed Anies’s orders.”
I ball my fists, trembling with a mixture of pain and rage. “So you and I could build the future together?”
He tilts his head, studying me with curiosity. “Do you want to? I thought you’d chosen Mr. November for that . . .”
“You people are all insane . . . How could you ever think—”
“Spare me that.” His lips curl up, and the mask falls—gone is the sympathetic smile, replaced by a smirk that suits him much better. “We both know you’d have given in eventually if Dries and Mr. November hadn’t come back from the dead.” His expression softens again as he summons the old Stiles back. “I was growing on you, wasn’t I?”
“No! I never thought of you like that, and when Anies started hinting that’s what he expected . . . all I wanted was to get away from you.”
“You’re breaking my heart.” He chuckles. “But do you understand what Anies really needs? He wasn’t playing matchmaker for fun, you know.”
“I started thinking about it after I learned Dries was my father. Anies . . . he’s old and ill, and he doesn’t have children, but he wants to leave some sort of . . . dynasty. And Dries’s genes were good enough for that, right?”
Stiles ducks his head in confirmation. “Correct. He’s hoping to start a hereditary tradition.”
“A bloodline,” I murmur.
“He thinks it’s the only way to avoid another succession war.”
I’m mentally picturing the greenish, milky absinthe sloshing in a heavy crystal glass. The peace on Anies’s features every time it took over his mind and body. My eyes widen in realization. “He’s dying.”
Stiles shrugs. “Aren’t we all? But yes, he’s running out of time, and there are things he wants to achieve before he’s gone.”
“Odysseus?”
One of his eyebrows cocks in surprise. “There’s that. And there’s you. Believe it or not, I think you actually matter more than Odysseus to him.”
I gave you everything I couldn’t give your mother, Island . . .
Anies’s words take their full meaning as they ring again in my ears. I am my mother’s ghost, and she’s alive in my heart, my blood, even though I’ve lost my memories of her. I wonder if he ever saw me at all, or if it’s been her all along in his sick mind. “Was it what he wanted to do with my mother? Did he want to cage her like that? Is that why”—my voice falters and I have to force the words out—“is that why he killed her?”
Stiles gazes through the window at the faint outline of a truss bridge over the Danube, emerging from the mist ahead of us. “I’ve been at his side for a long time, but there are things even I don’t know. I think he never got over your mother’s rejection though.”
“She rejected him . . . and he murdered her,” I manage through gritted teeth, feeling a surge of hate electrify my body.
Stiles shakes his head with a sigh. “These things are always complicated . . . Here, I brought something for you.” He produces a small plastic bag from his pocket, which he hands me. “You forgot it in Constanta. I thought you might want it back.”
My heart skips a beat. Covered in dried blood is the butterfly in amber Anies gave me. I left it in Viktor’s office, when I changed for the scan . . . I breathe fast through my nose, clutching the red-stained plastic. “W-what happened to Viktor?”
He winces. “Let’s just say he won’t be able to operate on you. I’m really sorry about that, Island.”
I slip the packet into the breast pocket of March’s blazer with a trembling hand and sit still, straight. Viktor, who tried to help us, is dead.
Next to me, Stiles checks his watch, his gaze still locked on the steel beams supporting the bridge we’re now crossing. “Island, fasten your seat belt.”
I look at him in confusion. He’s stopped smiling, his eyes focused and unblinking.
The muscles tighten in his jaw, rippling under his skin. “It’s an order.”
There’s a coldness and an authority in his voice I don’t think I’ve heard before. My hands jerk and automatically reach for my seat belt. I manage to secure it in spite of a case of terminal jitters. I see Stiles reach inside his coat—for a gun?—and it takes me another whole second to notice the shadow growing in the distance, speeding on the Danube and tearing through the layers of viscous fog.
Under the sedan’s wheels, a low rumble shakes the bridge. All I can do is watch, petrified, as a dark shape storms toward us in a massive cloud of water. Less than a hundred yards from the bridge is something I can neither clearly see nor identify. That long, aerodynamic body could be a jumbo jet, except I don’t think I’ve ever seen six . . . no . . . eight engines sitting atop the head of any aircraft. The wings are way too short for that thing to possibly take off, like they got chopped in half . . . and the dual tail? It must be, what . . . a hundred feet wide? What the ever-loving deuce?
Unfazed, Stiles is removing his coat. He shakes his head. “Your father was never subtle.”
Dries? But . . . how? All I can process at the moment is that this giant jet-like thing that doesn’t fly isn’t going to stop, and it’s headed straight for us: now would be a good time to start panicking. Panting erratically, I grip my seat belt and the door handle as the sedan takes a powerful acceleration, likely to avoid impact. But the unidentified gliding object doesn’t hit the bridge; rather, it barrels underneath in a deafening roar. For a moment, the car is shaking so badly I’m sure the entire structure must be collapsing. Yet the road is still here, and we drift through a titanic downpour, like a giant, surreal car wash. Waves crash against the car’s windows, engulfing the road, as the monster slows down under the bridge. I can practically feel my skull buzzing from the continuous roar of its engines.
When the sedan spins to a stop, Stiles grips my shoulder, steadying me before I smash my head against the window. He too has fastened his seat belt. A dry laugh shakes his shoulders. “Hold on. I’m afraid we’re only getting started.”
Which is exactly why I’m craning my neck and straining desperately against my seat belt to see the Hummer that took March. A black blur drifts past us, hits the railing and topples dangerously before coming to a stop. “March! He’s in there, I have to—”
Stiles flattens his hand over my chest roughly, blocking my movements. “Don’t worry about Mr. November . . . his fairy godmother watches over him.”
What the hell does he mean by that? Before I can ask, I register two loud shots, like a cannon just got fired. Through Stiles’s window, I see several projectiles rise in the air with a hissing sound, connected to some sort of metal rope. They bite into the side of our car and the stranded Hummer’s with a clanking sound. Grappling hooks? Oh shit . . . Around us, the bridge’s
massive steel beams rattle as the mystery machine’s engines pick up, soon enveloping us again in a storm of vaporized water. I pick up the ominous moan of metal straining under pressure, and that’s when I feel like we’re . . . moving. Slowly, inexorably, we’re getting dragged toward the railing by a powerful pull.
This isn’t really happening.
Against my better judgment, I grip Stiles’s forearm, clutch it until my nails dig into his skin through his jacket. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! What are they doing?”
Already resting precariously against the rusty and damaged railing, the Hummer topples first: I scream March’s name, witnessing, powerless as the vehicle takes a fifty-foot plunge into the icy waters of the Danube.
“Calm down!” Stiles shouts—the last thing I hear before the sedan hits the railing hard. There are a couple of excruciating seconds during which the car teeters and tilts, tilts, until I see the steel beams above us, then the clouds, and with a rush of horror, I know it’s over; I feel the railing give way with an earsplitting creak, and we go down. I’m weightless, conscious of the fall until we hit the water, and it’s like my body shatters, pain erupting from all sides. My shoulder and knee hit the door hard while my head slams against the headrest.
Through my daze, I see greenish water splash on the windows while the car rocks and tilts downward, sinking in the river, it seems. Through my panicked daze, I’m vaguely conscious of Stiles undoing my seat belt, of his voice. “You’re gonna be fine . . .”
No I’m not! He’s a shadow at the edge of my vision, and I reach for him as he seems to drift away . . . before I become aware of water rushing in. Nothing could have prepared me for the shock of being immersed in this icy tomb. Air whizzes out of my lungs, I gasp for oxygen, and by the time the ring of ice clamps down around my neck, I’m disconnected from my body, disoriented. My legs jerk uselessly, perhaps in an attempt to swim, but I can’t.