DARK FAÏZ Book 3: Dawn never keeps its promises

by Sandra L. Kiss

  "Get away from her!" he ordered us.

  Ray and Julio jumped on the girls and me to force us to step back, then put themselves in a defensive position, ready to throw themselves on the young woman.

  "No, stop!" Barthey intervened. "Listen to what we have to say."

  Masha seemed to be gloating over this show without letting go of her cruel little smile that always appeared on her lips.

  "Please, Masha, introduce yourself," implored Karl, feeling the situation degenerating.

  "I'm the only daughter of a man who gave his soul away to darkness a few years ago."

  The tone of her voice expressed a certain determination. She stared at us one after the other and stopped at me, before continuing:

  "My father wasn't always that monster. A lonely painter, he raised me alone. My mother abandoned us shortly after I was born. The trauma of that abandonment left him with a wound that never healed, quite the contrary. Long story short, he changed over the years. His weaknesses opened a breach in his soul and spirit, and then he began to hear voices. Or rather, insistent, deep whispers. I watched him drown, little by little, in the darkest abysses until his body became a terrifying, nameless ghost. You're fighting the Maestro just as I am. When that evil entity took possession of his body, it took my father away from me too. I'll hunt him down to hell if I have to."

  The young woman's smile had faded and the clarity in her eyes had evaporated. Her previously unshakeable self-confidence was beginning to waver. Her gaze was still on me, and she continued in a voice which she tried to keep as firm as possible, though the tone had changed. Indeed, the pain and sorrow was perceptible.

  "He wants you more than anything! Athanasius wants the work, the creation that man has engendered with the prayers of this world."

  I closed my eyes, then opened them again. Feeling dizzy and short of breath, I asked, "Is the end near?"

  Masha nodded slightly, without any expression in her eyes.

  "Do we have a chance of defeating the Maestro?"

  "Even so. What would be the price? No one here would come out of it unscathed."

  Victoria's words came back to me in the last vision I had of her on Eros. She, also, had warned me of the price to pay for this fight against evil. In front of me, Ray threw a dark glance, full of mistrust against Faïz who didn't pay attention to him, too busy watching the slightest moves and gestures of the young woman.

  "Masha already has one foot in the army ruled by her father... well, the Maestro," Martinez argued. "It's her who came to us on her own and offered us her help to fight him and the thousands of souls in his service. We can't do it without her."

  The icy tension in the room didn't go down. Julio then questioned Ray then Faïz with his eyes.

  "All right," he said, "You can stay. We'll listen to everything you have to say, but I want you to know I don't trust you. I will call an emergency meeting tonight with the other Sylphs in the territory, to spread the message around the world. We'll have to do the same with the Leviathans, soon enough. Time is running out."

  Faïz nodded before returning to Masha, his forehead wrinkled by anxiety:

  "What do you know about the upcoming attacks, organized by your father and his followers? Are there already people infected with a virus in the L.A. population?"

  Immediately, Masha's eyes glowed again and a sarcastic look appeared again on her face. She left to sit in one of the armchairs in front of us. When she crossed her legs, her dress, already short, rose a little more along her thighs.

  "I have some information that isn't insignificant," she said, satisfied while joining her two hands. "But I intend to share them only with Mr. Mattew... face to face. That's the condition."

  This surprising confession didn't help to warm up the room, which was now plunged into a heavy silence. All heads suddenly turned towards the concerned party. The seconds that went by were a real torture.

  "So would you be free now?" asked Faïz in a cautious voice with a charming little smile.

  Masha's face lit up. Triumphantly, she nodded. All eyes then turned to me. Asarys, furious, could barely contain her rage as Lexy stuck a finger down her throat to mime her disgust at the surreal scene. Faïz took the keys of his Mercedes out of his pocket and handed them to Masha, adding:

  "Wait for me outside! I'll be right with you."

  Masha didn't have to be asked twice. Before she left, she insisted on giving me one last of the most sneering victorious glance. The girls approached me, staring at her with the utmost disdain.

  "Hey, is it me or are they attracted to you?" Lexy said to me as she watched our strange guest leave the room. "After Rachelle, the crazy bohemian, here comes Masha, the gothic nutcase!"

  "I agree. You have a knack for luring them, all these lunatics," Asarys said. "But then again, let's look on the bright side. At least, thanks to Faïz and his fatal beauty, my Ray will be left alone."

  I gave a nasty look to my friend who raised her shoulders, looking sorry. At the same time, Faïz called out to me, beckoning me to come close to him. I did with low morale.

  The two of us were a little out of the group.

  "Stay here, I'll come back for you afterwards."

  "After what?" I crossed my arms.

  Uncomfortable, he sighed and began to scan the room with his eyes. The others had regrouped and pretended to be in the middle of a discussion, but it wasn't the case. I could feel all their attention on us.

  "We need that information," Faïz snarled, "Don't make a fuss now."

  "I'm not going to do anything! You're free to do whatever you want."

  "Good!" he snapped.

  "As am I."

  He looked at me with a look full of questions.

  "Agent Martinez!" I called, supporting the angry look on Faïz's face.

  My head turned towards the young man and I gave him my best smile. The FBI agent was immediately shaken by it. His cheeks began to turn slightly pink.

  "Would you take me back to Elora, please?"

  "Uh... yes, Miss Reyes," Martinez replied with difficulty after clearing his throat. "Did, uh..."

  "Give us a moment, please!" Faïz cut him off brutally, his eyes threatening.

  The young man walked away after making sure I was safe. This behavior had the gift of annoying Faïz who was boiling on the spot. He grabbed me firmly by the arm and pulled me towards the entrance of the living room to avoid everyone hearing our quarrel.

  "Stop this little game right now!" he exclaimed, revealing a certain aggressiveness on his face. "Why don't you want to do what I'm asking you for once?"

  Aware of how bad things were going, I tried to defuse the anger I had provoked in him:

  "The girls will take me back. How does that sound?"

  With an impenetrable expression and pursed lips, he seemed to assess the situation.

  "I want Georgia back," I insisted. "I miss my daughter. I haven't seen her in days. Then I'll go home with her and make her pancakes."

  Faïz sighed deeply and then shook his head, disagreeing with my plans:

  "Pick up a few things from your place, and then you can stay in Elora."

  When I tried to retaliate, he added:

  "I want to know you two are safe. Stay at the villa for a few days, until this mess dies down and we know more about the Maestro's intentions."

  Undecided, I watched the room for a little while. Everyone was examining and giving their opinion on the plans and notes scattered all over the large table. David was the one who talked the most. My eyes focused on my friend. I couldn't leave her.

  "Zoe? What's wrong?" Faïz worried.

  "No, Lexy's on her own. She's staying with me and I can't..."

  "I know. She's been in Elora since the first day you were hospitalized. I'm the one who asked her to stay."

  The cold and distant woman I tried so hard to embody in his presence was cracking up as the days went by since his return to Los Angeles.

  "Thank you," I whispered sincerely. "What
about Elijah?"

  Faïz, looking abrupt, frowned:

  "Now you're asking too much of me, Zoe. How could you let such a crazy man into your life and the life of my... daughter?"

  Those last words sounded strange. It would take me a while to get used to them.

  "He's not a danger to anyone. Elijah saved me, Faïz. The day I met him, all I wanted to do was die of grief. When you left me, he was the only one I confided my despair and sadness to. He is our rock. After William died, Elijah plastered all the cracks and crevices in me so I could continue to breathe and live for my daughter."

  The sudden pain of this revelation seemed to overwhelm him as his eyes revealed. His eyes impregnated me and caught me in a black, endless abyss. At that moment, the gravitational force seemed to suspend time with it. He approached gently and with his finger, raised my chin.

  "So if he saved you, as you claim, I owe him everything. If this senile uncle makes you happy, yes, I owe him everything, but he has to stop calling me the bad guy. I have a name! He can keep his arrogance to himself."

  A small laugh escaped from me. The palm of Faïz came to delicately caress my cheek. It was over. I lowered my guard. He had just won and it was my turn to make up for my past mistakes.

  "Masha will surely try to seduce you," I declared with an anxious little voice.

  Faïz, with his face a few inches from mine, didn't back down.

  "I know, but don't worry. Nothing's gonna happen."

  His words comforted me a little, but the front page of the American tabloids of the past few years suddenly came back to haunt me.

  "Zoe, I swear!" insisted Faïz, guessing my dark thoughts.

  I put my head against his chest and closed my eyes before adding, "Take care of yourself."

  "I promise you that. Go home in Elora with the girls and not Martinez!"

  On the way, David, in the back of the vehicle next to Lexy, was giving her the names of people to contact in order to make progress on her Vegan restaurant project that she wanted to set up. Life went on despite the very present danger. I looked at the contours of the Dome, now very conspicuous. Feeling the ball of anguish in my throat, I tried to think of something else. It was at this point that I thought back to my interview with my colleagues this morning. I turned the mirror on my sun visor towards Lexy and called her:

  "What happened on your date with Jul last time?"

  The latter, surprised by my sudden question, looked away from her phone and started to think.

  "This guy is beyond me," she sighed, raising her arms to the sky, "He took me out for a drink at the Blue Lounge on Malibu and it was almost good until... until he took an interest in me and asked me tons of questions about my life."

  "A guy who wants to get to know each other, there's nothing wrong with that," David replied, annoyed.

  "The problem is him!" Lexy cried out, "His manners, his little piercing eyes that try to analyze me to maybe write another future article to shit on me. I told him everything I thought about his job and the way he works. Yeah, I have..."

  "Lexy, damn it!" I cut her. "You were supposed to get information out of him and turn his brain upside down. Have you forgotten that?"

  My friend froze. She tapped her mouth with her fingers and then swelled her cheeks, looking sorry. I closed my eyes and banged my head on the headrest behind me.

  "What's going on with Jul?" Asarys asked.

  "He is due to release a major article tomorrow or in the next few days about what the government is hiding from the public and about a possible threat to California."

  "No, no!" exclaimed Asarys. "It could cause a riot all over the country, or even worse."

  "How did he get all this information?" asked David, just as worried. "And does Faïz know?"

  Asarys parked the car in the parking lot of Wil Rogers State Beach overlooking the Pacific Ocean. In this early afternoon, the panoramic view on the coast of Santa Monica was superb. In other circumstances, I could have admired this wide horizon embracing the ocean as well as the numerous colored radiations dancing on these peaceful waves.

  "There's a mole in the FBI, I'm sure about it. Jul wouldn't tell me anything. In fact, I suspect my name came up during his investigation. Mine, yours and Faïz's."

  I turned my head towards Asarys who stared at me without a smile, her expression diluted in a disturbing silence.

  "He doesn't know," I continued, "I haven't told Faïz anything. I don't know what he would have been able to do to him. I like Jul and I don't want to put his safety at risk."

  Asarys turned sharply towards Lexy and pointed her menacing index finger at our friend:

  "Get on your damn phone right now and meet Jul tonight! You need to get the article and all his notes before it goes to print."

  "But he's going to suspect something from the way our last date went," she strongly disputed.

  "I don't want to know!" Asarys cried out. "The article mustn't get out in the papers. Do you understand me?"

  "You're all annoying me!" Lexy protested, grabbing her phone. "I would have preferred to leave his case to Faïz. One thing is certain, we wouldn't have heard about him again."

  FAÏZ

  "This place is just perfect. The view is magnificent," Masha said, her eyes wide open as she stroked her fingertips on the large table in the living room.

  At the tone of her voice, Faïz understood that she didn't intend to maintain the conversion for very long. The young man knew how to analyze body language and translated without any difficulty the signals, even contradictory ones, of the women who were in his presence. Most of them were attracted at first by his charisma and then by his comfort in life. Why wouldn't an unsociable billionaire with an obscure soul fit into the box of the perfect psychopath, all good to be locked up? A penniless man with a tortured mind had no interest in being saved from himself?

  Masha turned towards the man, leaning against one of the walls of the living room, her hands stuck in her trouser pockets. He stared at her without blinking. Embarrassed, she tried as best as she could to hide her lack of confidence at that moment. Faïz tilted his head slightly, which destabilized her a little more. Indeed, usually it was her who had the cards in hand and easily played her trump cards, rather advantageous, with men, but this was different. She could feel things slipping away from her.

  "Have you lost your tongue?" asked Faïz in a voice both firm and soft.

  The young woman turned around and walked towards the glass window, rubbing her hands, which were becoming more and more sweaty.

  "Mr. Mattew, I think you're just playing with me. You know exactly how to exercise control over women."

  Masha took a deep breath before turning around again to face the icy gaze of her interlocutor lurking in the shadows.

  "Am I wrong?"

  Faïz, with a small grin on the corner of his lips, moved slowly towards her. Without her being able to control anything, her heart began to race. She felt herself shriveling with every step he took towards her.

  "You already know the answer," the young man said now very close to her.

  He then gaged her from head to toe before adding, with a piercing look:

  "Don't waste your time! I'm not interested."

  Masha, hurt, hesitated to return fire. She couldn't believe her ears. Until today, no man had ever turned her away.

  "Let's cut to the chase and talk about your father's plans, Miss Bukovski."

  Masha was at a loss for words. A look of resolution settled on her face. Disappointed that her charms could have no effect on the one thing she wanted above all at that moment, the young woman, with death in her soul, decided to talk about the burning subject.

  "It's a matter of weeks, even days," she began by distancing herself. "First, they will blow up the Dome with a very elaborate process, and then there will be well-targeted nuclear attacks all over the country, but also all over the world. The army, formed by the Maestro, will blow up chemical plants throughout the region. Viruses will contamina
te the population and an infectious agent that is very dangerous to humans, developed by virologists in my father's service. This will cause the greatest health crisis the world has ever known. The air will become unbreathable and no water will be safe to drink."

  Faïz's features, which until then betrayed no emotion, were tarnished by deep anguish.

  "Is there anything else? I have the impression that you're not telling me everything," said the young man without taking his eyes off of her.

  "A dozen container ships are currently heading towards the Arctic Circle with thermonuclear bombs on board to destroy as many ice caps as possible."

  Faïz squinted his eyes before looking away to the living room window. He thought for a moment, skeptical about the words he had just heard.

  "Why the Arctic?" he ends up asking.

  "To accelerate the dissolution of the permafrost."

  "The ice contains many viruses," Faïz reasoned aloud. "They need the heat, hence the threats of attacks on oil wells and nuclear power plants."

  "That's right! The Maestro will use thermonuclear fusion."

  "They will destroy the structure of the atom in order to fuse others with the same electrical charge to obtain plasma. The same matter that makes up the stars and the sun. However, technological locks have always prevented this excessive production of electricity from being envisaged. The army of Athanasius will probably use this energy to destroy the Dome as well."

  "Engineers, industrialists, but also physicists built the H-ignition machine. It produces an intense magnetic field for a short time, but it's enough to obtain a temperature of a few billion degrees."

  "Enough to speed up the melting of the ice on our planet in just a few minutes. This is the most powerful weapon ever imagined by mankind."

  Faïz paused and twisted his eyes in Masha's irises.

  "What is your role in this story? Why do you agree to work with the government?"

  The young woman raised her face and stared at the ceiling. She closed her eyelids with all her strength and then her eyes returned to rest on Faïz. With a slow step, she began to walk around him.