Sons of Thunder (2 page)

CHAPTER 1

Markos Stavros would not go to war on the eve of his brother’s wedding.

Even if he wanted to murder his best friend.

“Lucien! Come up!” Markos hung with one hand to the mast of his skiff, the pomegranate red hull of his fishing boat a sufficient buoy should Lucien need underwater navigation.

Of course, Lucien had to pick
now
to detour their trip back to their village on the crisp shore of Zante Island, just off the coast of Greece. And with a catch in their nets too. A glance at the bleeding horizon suggested his mother might be waiting for him with a sharpened tongue.
Markos, do you care nothing for your brother’s nuptials?

Apparently, the wind cared nothing for cooperation, either, dying to a trickle, leaving the skiff to barely list upon the smooth Ionian Sea. Perhaps it hadn’t helped that the elusive yet delicious
barbouni
had played the sea nymph, unwilling to be captured in the heat of such a glorious day. The red-mulleted delicacy flopped, angry and zealous, in the live-well of the boat’s stern, the mustard yellow nets in a tumble at the bow.

“Lucien!” Markos hung over the side, searching for his friend’s porpoise body. He glanced at his brother, fourteen-year-old Dino, leaning over the edge of the boat, peering into depths so clear the algae-mopped rocks appeared within grasp, the sand, scurried up by sardines and shrimp, a puff of crystalline magic. “I swear he did this on purpose.
Theo was right. Lucien is a Pappos, and his big brother probably put him up to ruining the wedding dinner.”

A wedding from which Markos and Dino just might be banned if they arrived home with rancid fish.

Dino shook his head. “No, Lucien wouldn’t do that, even if Kostas asked him to. He loves Theo. He doesn’t care about romance or Zoë Ramone and her father’s olive groves.”

“No, but he cares about his brother. And Kostas doesn’t forgive easily. He’ll not soon forget how Theo stole his bride—even after their betrothal. Not to mention the lost dowry that Zoë would have given the Pappos family. Yannis Pappos has his eye on a new fishing boat.”

“Or a keg of
retsina
.” Dino grinned, his teeth white against his bronzed skin. Under the wine-soaked sky, he appeared every inch the ruddy fisherman’s son, a younger, reedy version of Markos, with his salt-slicked skin, a dark shank of hair tumbling over his eyes.

Maybe Dino was right. What did a fisherman’s family want with an olive grove?

But Kostas—and nearly every other man in the village of Zante—certainly pined over brown-eyed Zoë, with her sun-dipped skin, her black-as-the-sultry-night hair. And Theo, in his drunken singing during last night’s embarrassing party, only turned the knife in Kostas’s open wound as he sang of his devotion (while emptying the family’s supply of retsina and inviting all of the three hundred souls in Zante to the feast). It didn’t help that his singing bore the edge of triumph, a conquest won.

No, Lucien probably hadn’t given one errant thought to Theo Stavros’s nuptials when he’d yelled,
I have to catch it!
and vanished over the side of the boat, slicing through the turquoise water after a dewy-eyed loggerhead turtle.

Lucien then disappeared, of course, into the maw of the whitewashed caves that tumbled from the cliffs straight into the sea.

Indeed, the sea beckoned, the azure blue nearly hypnotic with its lure, and on a different day, Markos, too, might have surrendered to the chase. After all, he’d been bred for the taste of salt on his chapped lips.

Not today. “Lucien!”

Dino stepped up, a bare foot curled around the edge of the boat.

“Dino—you’re not going after him. You’re not strong enough—the waves will smash you against the opening.”

“I’m not afraid, Markos.”

Markos put warning into his eyes. “It’s too dangerous.”

How Markos hated Whistler’s Drink.

Even if Dino managed to swim into the puckered lips of the cavern, the cave had already begun to fill and soon would engulf the escape, perhaps purge any air supply from the deep veins inside. Moreover, once inside, the cauldron could grab Dino’s lanky body and thrash it against the rocks. Worse, legend spoke of tunnels that channelled inland, emerged into the lush olive groves overlooking the city, and enticed young divers to lose their lives in the twisted channels.

“I know he went into the caves—I’m going after him.” Dino poised now on the boat’s rim, one hand on the mast for balance, his eyes shining.

“No.”

“I’ll be right back!” As slick as a sardine, Dino sliced the water, a clean dive to the bottom of the sea.

“Dino!” But the boy was a fish, and slipped away, toward the overhanging tongue of rock that lapped the water.

Why couldn’t his brother see Lucien’s fate? He worshiped the too-bold Pappos boy, tracking his footsteps through the golden sand,
taunting crabs, swimming under the docks, despite Markos’s warning. Didn’t Dino see Lucien’s reckless grin, the way he always teased danger, arms open in a dive, the wind in his face, a wildness in his dark-as-olive eyes? Someday Lucien would find himself in too deep to surface, maybe even drag one of the Stavros brothers down with him.

Not today.

Markos speared the water. The cool lick of it scooped his breath, slicked from his body the heat of the day.

He surfaced fast, gulped air, and dove back to the ocean floor, kicking toward the cave. A deep thrumming rumbled his bones even as he scrabbled over the slippery rock outside the entrance. The jaws raked his skin as he levered himself through a crevice just big enough for a boy of seventeen.

Just as his lungs begged to open, he surfaced hard and drank in the clammy air. Punctures of light from holes in the walls above illuminated enough of the cave to make out its yawning expanse. Of course, he’d been here before, too many times—most of them on the trail of Lucien, who explored these caves with too much abandon. Still, a shiver found his bones in the oily water, as the shadows pressed upon him. Here, in the gullet of the cave, creatures slithered along the bottom, sharks found hibernation, and an unprepared swimmer might be swallowed into the murky gullet of the mountain.

“Lucien! Dino! Are you here—”

A tentacle tightened around his ankle—yanked him under.

No! He thrashed, frenzied, and connected with flesh.

He broke free and surfaced so fast he slammed his head on the overhanging cave wall. Panic sent him back to the bottom. His head burned. This time his feet found purchase on the jagged wall and he
shot out into the foamy whirlpool in the center of the cave. He surfaced again and accidentally inhaled the malt collected from the sea.

Laughter, sharp, high, ricocheted against the walls of his tomb. “You’re a squid, Markos! I think you blackened my eye.”

Markos pressed his hand to the hot spot on his head. His eyes hadn’t yet adjusted, and his lunch of chilled
garides
slid up his throat. “Lucien!” He gulped back a curse. “You could have killed me.”

“Aw, naw—I would have rescued you.”

“I don’t need your rescuing!” Markos lunged for Lucien’s spiny outline, now pale in the darkness. His fist closed around water. “Where’s Dino?”

“Dino?” Splashing. “Dino!” Lucien’s singsong voice echoed in the cave. “Oh, Dino!”

“I’m here, brother!” Dino’s adolescent voice reverberated close, laden with humor.

Then, again, hands clutched Markos’s leg. Tugged him under.

He kicked out hard, clunked something solid. The grip released.

Treading water, Markos surfaced. “Dino?”

The waves rushed through the gap in the rock, slammed against the unseen epiglottis deep inside, thundered, then sprayed over him.

“Lucien?”

Nothing. “Dino! Lucien!”

He circled the cave—dove, scrabbling for a hand, a foot.

Nothing. He treaded water, listening, hearing only the thunderous gulp of the cave. Only felt the darkness pressing into his pores. Only tasted the brackish water that filled his lungs, pressing him to the bottom, unseen.

He dove again, hating his brother for the fear that burned through him.

How many times had he and Dino played hide and seek—certainly amidst the fishing boats in the bay in front of his family’s taverna and, of course, around the ruins of the sunken ship caught in the white shoals, but—

“Dino, this isn’t funny!”

He dove again, burned his lungs scouring the bottom of the cavern for his brother. Why wasn’t Lucien here, helping, why?

He caught his hands on the side of the cave wall, hanging there, breathing hard. The sun had dwindled to a trickle of hope in the cave. “Dino!”

Maybe Dino had floated farther, back into the network of arteries. His little brother possessed a curiosity that frightened Markos, something in his eyes that told him someday Markos’s sharp word wouldn’t be enough to save him.

He let the current urge him toward the now-submerged opening to the tunnels. He hung on to the lip, letting his legs drift inside. Perhaps it opened into another escape hatch, maybe—

A wave slammed him against the rocks, sheering skin off his chest.

With a curse he dove toward the mouth of the cave, riding the current as it spilled back out to the sea. He gouged his leg as he kicked through the maw, fighting as the wave recoiled, clawing him back toward the cave.

Diving deeper, below the tug of the current, he kicked out, to the blue-skied sea.

The water had darkened, filled with shadow. Beyond the grip of the wave, he banked his feet on a ledge and launched to the surface. Air, quick and sharp, caught him. He sucked it in. Bobbing, breathing in hard.

“Markos! Where’ve you been?”

He wiped the water from his eyes, blinking fast against the amber sun.

Sitting astride the skiff, feet dabbling the water, Lucien lounged back on his hands, laughing, his dark hair long and sculled by the wind. “Did you find the turtle?”

Beside him, a towel around his neck, Dino grinned.

Markos clutched the edge of the boat, a roil of darkness choking off the hot relief.

Lucien pulled his legs in, stood, and hooked one hand on the mast, the sun in his smile, a sort of victory in his eyes. The other hand he held out to Markos. “We were just having some fun. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

Dino’s eyes shone, an innocence in them that absolved him. Clearly, he hadn’t yet caught on to the game.

The one between Lucien and Markos, with Dino as the prize.

The final blade of sun edged the horizon, turning the sea to blood. The wind had returned, adding chop to the waves.

The skiff bobbed, even as Markos dove for Lucien’s hand, snagged it. For a moment, he braced his feet on the edge of the boat, his hand squeezing Lucien’s. Lucien’s knuckles folded inside it. His other hand whitened around the mast. His smile vanished. Almost imperceptibly he nodded, his olive black eyes darkening, acquiescing.

“Really, Markos, we’re sorry. We were just having fun.”

Of course they were. Because Lucien would do just about anything to escape the sorrow of his birth. The grief of an infant left to nourish upon his widower father’s bereft anger. The terror of living under the scrutiny of a father who still fought the Turks, mostly in his sleep, except when it spilled out into the day, the taste of wine only riling his demons.

Yes, Markos understood that Lucien longed for someone—even a younger brother—to lure, to trick, to amaze.

Markos released his feet, bobbing in the water. Lucien hauled him aboard.

He tumbled into the bottom of the skiff. Lucien towered over him, his shadow pressing across Markos, cool to his already prickled skin. Now he cast upon him a smile, white teeth against his amber face, a hint of warmth nudging into his expression. Markos made out the foreshadow of a bruise on Lucien’s face—probably his foot on Lucien’s cheekbone. He winced at his own violence. How many times had Lucien shown up with the history of his father’s fists imprinted on his body?

Markos cast a look at Dino dripping water onto the skiff’s belly. His younger brother shivered, his eyes now absent their humor. “Sorry, Markos.”

With each slowing breath, the anger uncoiled. Especially since Lucien held out his hand, seasoning the gesture with a look of chagrin. “Friends?”

Markos closed his eyes. Inside the caress of the Ionian Sea, with twilight skimming his face, his older brother poised on the eve of his marriage—today was not a day for war.

Friends?

“No, Lucien—brothers.” Always.

CHAPTER 2