Sons of Thunder (4 page)

Go home, Kostas.
Markos drew Sofia close.

For a moment, everyone stilled, as if drawing a breath. Beyond the taverna, the sea clawed at the shore, a storm in the wind, the chilly breath snaking into the party.

Kostas threw down his glass. It exploded against the stone floor. “You’re a thief, Theo Stavros!” Kostas glared at Zoë. “And you’re a harlot.”

“That’s enough, Kostas.” Galen stepped across the floor, two giant steps, voice solemn, but enough to thunder. “You are not welcome here.”

Hours later, Markos still fought to sort it out. He wanted to will it all into stone, something he could snatch and fling away into the night.

Perhaps if he’d been faster, slipped up beside his father, taken Kostas’s blow on his own chest…

Heeded the impulse inside.

Because, in the sliver of time between Galen’s words and Kostas’s attack, Markos knew. He heard it—a warning, or more of a moan, winding out behind him. Saw it, too, an omen written on the face of Lucien, who appeared at the edge of the portico, his mouth bloodied, his eyes wide with a warning that bespoke his mysterious absence from the party.

Markos even sensed it in a tremor through him, like the storm edging in on the shore. A cold, slick turning of the tide—“No!”

But he hesitated, afraid of the thunder inside.

Kostas outgirded Galen, and wine made him bold. He slammed his fist into the center of the older man’s chest, the full weight of his sodden fury behind his blow.

Galen stumbled back, his mouth open, without a breath.

He fell with a deadened thud.

Mama screamed as Theo erupted.

He tackled Kostas, knocked over tables, drawing blood, brawling at the feet of the musicians. In the chaos, a man roared and charged into the brawl—Yannis Pappos, bully drunk, dangerous. He pushed aside Kostas to beat Theo.

Sofia had let go of Markos’s hand. Which was better anyway, because Markos might have hurt her as he threw himself at Yannis.

Kostas turned to the first man who tried to intervene, threw him down, and broke his jaw with a kick. He then caught Markos off the top of Yannis’s back and threw him with the force of a mule across the room.

Markos landed, stunned, the breath whisked out of him. He gulped like a fish to live.

At once, Lucien appeared. His hands closed around Markos’s wrists, pulling him up. “Run!”

But Markos had no sight to recognize his friend’s warning. He shoved Lucien away and turned back to the fight.

Dino had his skinny legs clamped around Yannis’s beefy back, a crab even as Kostas closed his hands around Dino’s scrawny neck.

Theo, on the floor, had gone limp, his face white, his eyes unseeing.

“Dino!” Markos lost himself to his rage, unable even to sort through his movements as he snapped.

Kostas unhanded Dino, whirled around, yet not fast enough to catch Markos. He tackled Kostas with the speed of a wild boar, slamming him with a bone-jarring crash into the wall.

Kostas screamed, writhing on the floor, hands to his neck.

The ugly shard of a broken plate protruded from his neck. Blood poured onto the stones.

“Markos!”

His mother bent over Galen, her hands on his chest, her twined hair undone. “Help me!”

His father’s eyes had swiveled back into his head, leaving only the eerie white of a fish’s underbelly. Markos skidded to his knees, put his ear to his father’s mouth. No breath. He grabbed his shoulders, shook. “Papa!”

Everything stopped moving then, a silence broken only by his mother’s quiet pleading. “Galen, Galen…”

Markos looked up. Dino, white-faced, crawled to his father’s feet. He bled from the mouth.

Theo lay in a widening pool of blood, his mouth slack, his skull crushed.

And Kostas’s blood spilled freely, as he slumped against the wall, his eyes glassy.

No one moved to rescue him, even as Yannis pressed his hands against the wound. “Kostas!”

Markos looked away, a fist in his chest, crushing him, squeezing his breath.

“Kostas!”

Markos winced. Tightened his jaw. Because he’d seen the whites of Kostas’s eyes too.

And then—“You—Stavros!”

Markos glanced up to see Yannis, blood dripping from his hands. He found his feet.

“Leave him be!” Mama threw herself at Yannis, intercepting his rage. “Leave him be!”

She held on, even as Yannis slapped her, held on as she screamed to her sons, “Run!”

Run.

Markos grabbed Dino’s arm, yanked him to his feet, and, bile in his throat, fled from the wedding of his oldest brother.

In the distance, thunder shook the heavens, and it began to pour.

CHAPTER 3

“Please, Mama, don’t make me do this.”

Markos stood in the stone doorway of his bedroom where his mother thrust his clothing into a battered suitcase. Probably the one she’d carried from Athens.

This morning, with the storm clutter on the shore, the skies clear, the stench of death marinated their tiny stone house. No one came to visit, to stand vigil in the Stavroses’ grief, as if fearing the family, by one passionate act, cursed themselves and all at the wedding. In Zante, death had never arrived so abruptly, with such violence or arrogance.

Theo. Kostas. Galen.

And, if Yannis made good on his threats, Markos and Dino.

“You
will
go.” His mother walked over to the stack of books on the rough-hewn mantle, swept them off—classics he’d never read for himself, but the kind that would make his little brother, the one who actually listened to Mama’s readings, wise. The writings of Homer, including his poetry, a book by Aristotle, which always seemed to Markos to be a textbook, a history of Greece, the binding frayed and gray, and finally her holy book, a Bible she’d brought with her into marriage.

“Mama, you’re not listening to me. I’m not afraid of Yannis.” Although, the memory of his scrabble through the dark sand, a mutinous Dino in tow, curdled Markos’s words. Yes, last night, with the stench of Kostas’s blood on his hands, Yannis’s chilling threats chasing him into
the storm, he’d been afraid. He had reacted on instinct, dragging Dino toward the safety of the docks and into the water, pinning him under the moorings of the fishing boats as a rabid Yannis searched for them, vowing his revenge until the storm drove him inside.

Hidden in the sea, Markos had gripped the legs of the pier, arms around Dino as the waves crashed into them. Lightning crackled against the pane of night, the thunder shaking his bones until, exhausted, he let the troughs sweep him to shore. There, they found shelter under an overturned skiff.

Morning burned him awake, and they’d skittered back to their house under the cover of dawn to find his mother packing their belongings.

“
You
may not be afraid—” His mother rounded on him, her eyes flashing, her face reddened with grief. “But I am. I—
am
.” She shook her head then, as if freeing herself from the darkness he’d seen flash in her eyes. It hollowed him out to see her like this.

Mama wasn’t fragile.

She dumped the books into the suitcase, grabbed the knitted blanket from his bed, wadded it, and threw it in on top.

“I don’t need a blanket—”

She turned and caught him, her strong, village-woman’s arms around his neck, bowing his head down to her bosom. Her chest heaved, as if she might be weeping, but she remained strangely silent. He closed his eyes, wrapped his arms around her waist.

She always smelled of olives and feta cheese, of cucumbers and roast lamb. He savored it.

Then, abruptly, she pushed him away. Found his eyes with hers, a power he’d never escaped. “You will go. You will take Dino, and you will be away from here and this place of grief. You will find my brother in America and you will start a new life—”

“What about you?”

She turned, closing the suitcase, shaking her head. “I will live with Zoë…on Ramone land.”

With Zoë’s widowed father? Markos said nothing about the strange taste in his mouth as he lifted the bag, followed his mother down the stairs.

Dino perched on a chair in the living room, his legs knotted to his chest. He’d said nothing—not a word—since Markos dunked him under the frothing black water. Since Yannis had marched down the pier shouting their name.
Stavros! You will die, I swear it.

The worst part was the lingering fear that the village might agree with Yannis’s vengeance. After all, Theo had stolen Kostas’s bride.

And Markos had killed Kostas.

Markos pushed the thought away, fearing the swell of dark, rabid satisfaction.

Killed. He’d
killed
a man.

And death, in the crisp light of a summer morning, was not pretty.

Even when laid out on the kitchen tables in wedding clothes, faces cleaned, boots oiled. Theo’s head bore a clean white bandage, covering the debris of his wounds. Whoever said a dead man appeared as sleeping should take a closer look at the sagging cheeks, the sunken stomach, the whitened skin.

Markos looked away before he became sick. Again.

He had stumbled up the seaweed- and shell-strewn beach, past the taverna, past the blood on the stone floor, now dried nearly black, past the shattered plates and rancid lamb. Past the redolent casks of wine, and through the kitchen, to his home.

Stepping down into the main room, he had spotted Theo, still in his wedding clothes, his mouth open, as if in a silent scream, his body
tossed onto the floor, disposed of by one of the village men. Zoë bent over him, shaking with grief, her moans almost guttural.

It was then Markos emptied his stomach for the first time onto the stones.

Now Markos glanced over at Dino, at his gaunt expression, and knew that to escape might be the only way to survive.

Either that, or allow the rage to pour into his empty spaces, to nourish. To rule.

His mother picked up a bag of food from her stone counter, shoved it into his hands. “This should keep you until you get to the ship. Your passage money is there—”

“Where did you get the money—”

She tightened her lips, gave a shake of her head, and he knew. Ramone. Still, he buried his words, seeing the pain furrowed into his mother’s face. Her cheek bore the blush of a bruise from Yannis’s hand.

Markos took the bag.

“Gaius Frangos will meet you at the pier. He is there now, waiting. And God bless him for his generosity.”

Gaius
— “Sofia’s grandfather? Why?”

“He will go with you—he and Sofia had already arranged passage. He will stay with you until America and help you find the train to Chicago.” She turned and shoved an envelope into his hands. Stained, yellowed, the edges fraying. “This is from my brother, Dmitri. Find him, and he will take you in. I will try to send a telegram but…”

She shoved the envelope into his shirt pocket. Then she cupped her hand to his chin. “You will return, one day, Markos. I promise.”

She held his gaze, again, as if daring him to argue. He nodded, albeit caught on her words—
Sofia had already arranged passage
.

So, that was Sofia’s message—that she would leave him. He refused to recall her soft hand in his.

“Dino.” His mother’s tone softened. Dino looked at her, unwinding himself from the chair, moving toward them as if ill. He didn’t even look at their father, at Theo. Or, indeed. Markos, as he came to stand, lifeless, beside his older brother.

Mama swept him into an embrace. “You will listen to Markos. And you will read.” She let him go, wrapped her hands around his shoulders. He stood eye to eye with her, but even Markos felt tiny under Mama’s gaze. “You will become something—a doctor, or lawyer. A judge. You will be someone great, and leave your mark on the world.” She kissed him hard on his forehead.

He barely blinked.

She stepped back, nodding, her eyes back on Markos. “You are the eldest Stavros now, and it’s up to you to take care of him. Don’t let me down.” Her gaze turned fierce. “And learn how to write so you can send me a letter. I want to know you’re safe.”

“Yes, Mama.” His voice emerged as if from far away, and like Dino, he couldn’t move.

“And—oh, I nearly forgot. Wait—” She left him and disappeared into her room.

Wait. The word boiled inside him. Wait.
Wait!
Stop—he couldn’t leave, not with his brother’s body hardening on the table, his father’s fishing nets empty, his mother forced to leave her—

“Take this.” She shoved a coat into his hands. His father’s coat, worn on the cuffs, with the hand-carved buttons and salt dried into the wool. “He’d want you to have it.”

“Ma—”

“Please, Markos.” Only now did her voice break, just a crack, and
perhaps it was this that made him take it. Then, her fingers still dug into the cloth, she stepped close. “Keep it, as if it were your life.”

He nodded, shot a glance at Dino. He hadn’t moved.

“Now go. Before Yannis sobers up.” She pressed her hand to his cheek, tears flush in her eyes. “Go, Markos. God will deliver you.”

She swept another kiss across Dino’s cheek.

Markos pulled the boy out after him.

The sand seeped into his shoes, hot and gritty as he plowed toward the pier, the suitcase banging against his knees. Dino stumbled beside him as if on a tether. Markos’s chest boiled, tears clogging his throat. He would not cry, would not turn back. Nor would he spare a glance to the sea, calm now after spending itself on their village.