Cast Into Darkness (37 page)

Look at me, damn you. Look at me.
Do
something
.

But he hadn’t met her eyes since the guards had brought her out here a few minutes earlier. Hadn’t spoken to her. Hadn’t done anything more than exchange a few words with Dmitri, lounging on the rocks. He’d done nothing but stare at the quay and fiddle with something in his pocket. If he had a plan, she couldn’t tell.

Melina had her hair pulled back in a twist and the sun reflected off her white linen suit as she stepped inside the circle stones. The servant girl from Kate’s room trailed her, holding a small black bag. Melina walked around Kate and set the bag down on a flat-topped rock tall enough to be used as a table. The bag pulled at Kate with a dark intensity, willing her to come closer.

The Pandora Stone.

Melina had brought the stone inside the circle.

Shit, oh shit.

Melina’s eyes scrunched up, and the circle stones lit with an inner fire. A fine violet shimmer—the energy barrier—rose from the circle in a sphere that surrounded Kate, Victor, Dylan, Melina, and her servant.

So much for help from Kristof. Now nothing and no one could get in to interfere with whatever Melina had planned.

Melina took out the red silk bag Kate had seen in her Sanctum and set it on the rock next to the black one. Even through the fabric Kate felt the bowl inside reach out to her, a gentle tug of power.

The sun neared its zenith and still no sign of Dad. Sweat itched at the silver bindings of her hands and at the collar of her shirt. How much time remained?

Footsteps sounded from above. She peered behind her. Nico Makris lumbered down the walkway from the estate, one heavy leg at a time, his bodyguards hovering before and behind him. He sat in the stout wooden chair that had been set out for him on the beach, facing the quay. A servant poured him a glass of wine.

He sipped. And waited.

The sun rose higher. It gleamed into Kate’s eyes from the water, causing her to squint in pain. Her knees hurt with a fierce ache now, as if all the weight of the world was driving down between her shoulder blades, straight down her body, and through her knees into the hot granite ground on which she knelt.

Come on. Come on. Where’s Dad?

Victor shifted next to her. “How much time?”

“I don’t—” Kate began.

“You have about seven more minutes of life,” Melina broke in. She opened the red silk bag and pulled out the bowl, black now like the stone from whatever Melina had done to activate it in the Sanctum.

The bowl whispered to Kate with a voice like a thousand rats chittering through a mile-deep cavern.

Dylan’s eyes widened.

“What is that?” she whispered.

“The Chaos Bowl,” Dylan said. “A primal magic artifact. I’d heard the Makrises had it.”

She remembered what he’d told her about primal magic artifacts—using the spells contained in one required a sacrifice. Just like her magic. Making a primal magic artifact the perfect executioner’s axe.

“Is that what she’s going to use to…”

Dylan nodded. “It can drain the life force from a person. Using it is illegal. But so’s their whole operation, and that isn’t giving them pause.”

Seven minutes. Just seven minutes and she would know Melina’s intentions. But by then it would be too late.

Kate watched Kristof pace across the sand. If he had a plan, he’d better make it happen now. Forget pretending to be her boyfriend—did he really think she’d ever forgive him for letting Victor die? For murdering Dylan? Either he was the greatest actor in the world or there was a man inside trying hard to get out and stand up for himself. Which one was it?

Her eyes jerked back to Dylan. A subtle purple glow glinted at the corner of his spellcuffs. A tendril of purple light crept into the green gem with a tiny finger of power. His eyes scrunched up with pain.

Melina strode over to Dylan and seized his head in her grip. Red fire shot from her hands into the back of Dylan’s head. The acrid smell of sulphur filled the air. He stiffened, then slumped.

“Don’t try that again.”

She returned to the rock outcropping.

Kate pulled against the spellcuffs, her hands slippery with sweat. The edges bit deeper into her already-tortured flesh, and she winced. How much time remained? Five minutes? Three? Oh God, what the hell could she do to free them?

She glanced back at the dark bowl sitting on top of the rock. Only one thing to do. Reach inside and dig up that dark power inside. Touch it once more. Ignore the inevitable backlash from the spellcuffs and tell it to free her, free Victor and Dylan.

Now. She needed to make her move right—

Melina put her hand above the black bowl. “Time’s up. Too bad about your father, Kate. Apparently he’s like everyone else: loves himself a little more than you.”

Kate went still. Nico Makris rose, a gleam of anticipation in his eyes. Kristof, eyes intent on Kate, took a step toward the circle, then another. His hand reached into his pocket. Melina said a single harsh word, and black energy swirled inside the bowl like a gathering storm.

A flash of opaline light whitened out the sun. The light glistened off the ocean like a shockwave traveling along the horizon, exploding where it met the beach. At the center of the light, he was there, striding down the quay as if hovering on the surface of the calm ocean.

Dad.

The sunlight haloed
his black hair. His navy suit jacket swayed gently as he strode toward the beach, eyes glancing from Victor to Dylan and then settling on Kate. She read everything in those eyes, everything she’d wanted to see and know and hear for so long.
I’m here. Don’t worry. I’ll save you.

Her hands shook, and her lips trembled. A tear spilled over from her eye.
Thank God, thank God.

Behind her, Melina’s hand stroked the top of the bowl, almost as if she were containing the black energy still swirling inside. Her eyes were dark and filled with tempests.

Her father stopped at the end of the quay—the barrier where the security grid hit the beach. Arms crossed, he waited. “You asked me to come alone and unarmed. I’m here. Give me my people back.”

“Kate, perhaps. The others have forfeited their lives,” Nico Makris said.

“We’ll see.”

Makris motioned to Kristof, who went to the barrier and tapped out a spell. A beam of purple light sailed through, scanning her dad from his windblown hair to his Italian leather shoes. Kristof squinted. He appeared to hesitate for a moment, then turned and nodded to his father.

“Let him through.” Makris waved his acquiescence as if welcoming an enemy leader to the execution of his own people was routine.

Kristof passed his hand down the barrier, and the shimmer in the air grew lighter. Kate’s father stepped across, his form wavering for a second as he passed through the security grid. He paused, his gaze remaining for a moment on Dmitri, standing with the guards surrounding the circle, then on Kristof. He walked with her father in the wet sand to where Makris stood waiting.

“You cut the timing close. I was beginning to think you did not love your daughter,” Makris said, motioning her father to take the seat next to him.

Her father didn’t move. “I told you not to hurt Kate.” His eyes flicked to Dylan, then Victor, lingering on his neck and chest. “Or any of my people.”

“You are in no position to make demands. You—”

“I’m here to make you an offer. Do you want to listen?”

Nico Makris stared into his rival’s face. “I could kill you. You could do nothing to stop me.”

“Perhaps. But remember the story of the last time one clan leader assassinated another? Nothing brings the families together like closing ranks against a rule-breaker of such magnitude.”

“Hmm…point.”

“Papa, the time for negotiation is over.” Melina took a step out from behind her rock altar. “He has nothing to offer us. We need to proceed with the execution.”

Kristof studied Melina, then turned to his father. “I think you should hear what Hamilton has to say.”

“Why?”

“The Rules exist for a reason. You taught me that, a long time ago. We break them more than most, maybe, but a few of them have to stand. If they don’t, like Hamilton says, what separates us from the rogues?”

Melina shot Kristof a glare.

Nico Makris looked from his daughter to his son and then said: “Very well, Cooper. What do you offer for your people?”

Her father sat next to his rival and began to talk. He started small. Noninterference in the matter of who ruled Rome. That wasn’t large enough for Nico Makris. Then came bigger concessions. Handing over control of a small town, long fought over, in the Golan Heights. Makris salivated for a moment, then refused.

Dad leaned back and steepled his hands. “Why are you charging such a hard bargain? Victor and Dylan aren’t worth anything to you.”

“They came here. They broke through my security, wrecked my estate. They should pay.”

“Don’t you think they have? Look at Victor. What I did might have been illegal, sending them here, but what you did to him was worse.”

“Perhaps.” Makris shrugged. “The matter remains. What are they worth to you?”

Her father leaned forward. “London. Free and clear. No more fighting, no more backstabbing. You can have it.”

Victor groaned. “I’m not worth that,” he muttered.

Dylan’s eyes closed. Kate could imagine how he felt about the Makrises getting his family’s old territory to save his life.

“Tempting, but no. You have yet to offer me anything I can’t take for myself. Eventually.”

Kate started. He refused? Refused
London
? What kind of a game was Makris playing?

Her father didn’t seem surprised. He studied Makris, then Melina, the wind whipping little strands of brown hair around her forehead. He held her gaze just long enough to make her lower her eyes, then turned back to Makris.

“All right. Let’s change the terms of the negotiation. I want all my people back, unharmed. Dylan and Victor, unharmed. Kate, the same. And the Pandora Stone.”

“Hah! You don’t want much. And what will you give me for your people and this treasure?”

“Your arsenal back. All the artifacts my grandfather stole from your grandfather Arkady, those long years past. The Chronos Dagger, the Pearls of Remembrance, Xue’s Dream Needles, all of them.” He reached into his jacket, his hand moving slowly. Makris’s bodyguards took a step toward him. He brought out the amulet Kate had seen hanging in his office all her life: Arkady Makris’s amulet.

“In exchange for my people and the stone—the pride of the Makris Family, restored.”

Kristof’s head jerked
up. Here it was. His opportunity.

His father stared at Hamilton, his eyes blank. Then, “You are serious? Everything, all our artifacts, for one little stone?”

“And my people.”

“You know what I could do with those artifacts. What I
would
do.”

“Maybe. But the Rules are still the Rules. Try it and every family will turn against you.”

His father stood and paced. “It might not matter if they did.”

“Papa—” Melina began.

“Shush.”

“No. Papa, that’s not what we discussed. I need the prisoners. I need—” Melina said.

His father cut her off with a sharp slash of his hand, then turned to Hamilton. “How do you propose making the trade?”

“The artifacts are packed and ready to go. Grayson is prepared to deliver them here on my command. Provided you hold up your end.”

His father stroked his chin. He stared at Hamilton for a long moment, then Melina. He had to take to deal. Once Kate was free, Kristof could use his father’s bad decision against him with the Synedrion. Undermine his authority, weaken his leadership. Secure his own position as heir and oust his father the old-fashioned way. Without the stone.

Which is why he had to speak against Hamilton’s proposal, cement his position with the Synedrion.
Maybe we can all walk away from this standoff.

“Papa,” Kristof said. “This is a bad deal. If the Hamiltons have the stone, and Kate, our old arsenal doesn’t matter. They can still—”

“No. I want my artifacts back. Melina, put away your weapon. Today there will be no killing.”

Well, his opposition to the deal had its predictable effect on his father. Kristof’s hand eased in his pocket. He slid it away from his cell phone.

Kate’s shoulders relaxed. Victor’s head slumped a bit, and the tension in Dylan’s eyes lessened.

“No.” Melina said the word with a finality that echoed off the cliffside rocks of his family home. “No, today is a perfect day to die.”

She brought her hand off the top of the bowl, and its dark energy lashed out straight for Kate.

The ancient energy
of the bowl called to Kate—an awful, screeching sound that raced straight for her, trying to pull her down inside its deep, dark roundness where nothing, not even light, escaped.

The spell, the white light. I need to try the spell.
If it worked on primal magic, it would work on the bowl.

She chanted the words, the same ones Brian had muttered in the dimness of the Sanctum last week, stumbling over the unfamiliar pronunciation. She traced the symbol—a triangle with an indentation halfway into the longest side, like a ginkgo leaf. But the image, the one in her mind…what should it be? She had no idea.

Light. She held on to light—a vast white sheet of it, filling her mind as she focused on the ginkgo-leaf pattern, chanted the words she’d heard Brian speak, and felt the burning pain of defiance begin in her spellcuffed hands.

This is going to hurt.

All around her chaos had busted loose.

“Kate!” Kristof faced the circle stones, hands glowing green, about to cast at the shimmering screen trapping her Then Dmitri barred his way, a lightning bolt launching from outstretched hands. The bolt hit Kristof with a crash, and he flew back onto the sand.

The energy barrier stayed up.