Cast Into Darkness (36 page)

Kristof pushed off the wall and reached for her. The brush of his hand against her brought a shiver to her skin. Heat rose in her cheeks. She flinched back as he touched her cuffs. They disconnected from each other at a word from him.

“Better?” he asked.

“A little.” She leaned forward and circled her shoulders, restoring some of the impeded circulation. Pins and needles rushed into her arms, and she winced.

“Sorry.” He sat next to her. Close. Too close. The sea breeze scent of his skin mingling with the sharp, coppery tang of blood from the cut on his shoulder filled her senses. The solid presence of his body next to her felt comforting and familiar. But his eyes were shuttered behind his dark lashes, his mind analyzing, strategizing, playing the Game.

“Are you going to let your father kill me?”

He looked away from her.

“Are you? Is that the kind of man you are?”

He shot to his feet and stalked away. “Events are spinning out of control. Melina—”

“You’re the heir, right? Doesn’t your father listen to you?”

He laughed a bitter laugh and turned to her. “Maybe it works that way in your family. Not here.”

She’d seen who had the influence in the Makris family. The one who whispered in her Papa’s ear.

“You said you had a plan.”

“Between my family and yours, it’s pretty much shot to hell right now.”

“Why didn’t you let me go? You had the chance, you could have—”

“Yes. I could. But if I had, my father would have known I’d betrayed him. One betrayal too many. I would have been left without the means to fight him. I’d prefer a plan that leaves us both free, not one of us dead.”

Kate peered up at him. She couldn’t tell whether he was lying or not. But then, when had she ever known his thoughts? “So what now?”

“I…don’t know yet. Either your father shows up tomorrow and my father executes Victor and Dylan or he doesn’t, and…”

“And you’re okay with that?”

He looked at her, his eyes a desolate wasteland. He turned and walked out the door, slamming it behind him. The lock clicked with a finality that almost stopped her heart.

Kristof opened the
door to the Pit and stepped inside. He walked down the narrow staircase, watching his steps in the glow of the dusky gems lining the black walls. He felt like one of his father’s fishing boats that had lost its moorings, rudderless and adrift. He fingered the long silver chains he’d taken from Victor. One of them provided the key to the Hamilton’s ability to clone Dmitri’s aura and slip through the grid. They might provide the key to much more. He shoved them in his pocket. What he needed was a plan.

Victor hung in midair, upside down from the center of the room, inside the circle stones. His eyes were half open, chest rising and falling slowly. A single drop of blood fell from his clenched hand to the black floor.

Dmitri leaned against the wall, arms crossed. Melina stood beside him, a hand on his shoulder. She let it trail down his arm and leaned in close to whisper something in his ear.

Melina and…Dmitri? A vague discomfort arose from the depths of Kristof’s gut. He’d told Melina he’d back her. A lie, but she didn’t know that.

“We need to talk,” he said to Melina. “Now. Outside.”

Melina let go of Dmitri and walked up the stairs to join Kristof. A brief flicker of her eyes in the dim light betrayed nothing of her intentions.

Dmitri posed another problem. Dmitri couldn’t be allowed to find out how Victor had cracked the security grid. Not while Kristof might have his own uses for that information.

He knew just the words to achieve his goal. “Dmitri.”

His cousin’s head snapped up toward him. “What?”

“Go easy on Victor. I don’t want your usual over…
enthusiasm
wrecking Papa’s show tomorrow. We need him presentable.”

“I know how to run the Pit. Aren’t you still feeling the result?” He shot a hand out and green lightning hit Victor in the back, shaking his body back and forth until something cracked. Red spittle flew from Victor’s mouth, and his eyes rolled back in his head. His limp body swung above the circle stones, around and around, until it gradually came to a stop.

“Shit. Out cold.” Dmitri stalked to Victor and hit him, a sharp slap meant to wake him. Nothing.

Kristof hid a smile. With spells like those, Victor wouldn’t be providing Dmitri with information anytime soon. It wasn’t like Victor wouldn’t have done the same thing, in his place. Besides, Victor could take the punishment. After all, Kristof had, time after time.

He opened the door for Melina and stepped outside. The night was quiet, with the sharp wind from the sea calming down to a gentle breeze that brought the scent of fig and apple blossoms wafting by. Cicadas buzzed as they walked up the stone path toward the courtyard behind the estate.

Kristof reached out to stop Melina before she walked through the vine-covered pergola. He pulled her over to a small wooden bench and sat her down hard, crushing the apple blossoms that lay on it. “So. What the hell are you doing?”

She turned to face him, her eyes hooded. She tapped out a cloak spell, and when its purple light had settled around them, she said, “What do you think?” She frowned, then smoothed her face out in an effort to control the backlash from the spell. “Going ahead with our plan.”

“Tell me how executing Dylan, Victor,
and
Kate has anything to do with using the stone and overthrowing Papa.”

“I told you to leave the stone to me. Your job is to deal with the Hamiltons and keep Papa’s attention away from the stone. Focus on that.”

“I can’t if you keep interfering. What does luring Cooper Hamilton here have to do with our plan?”

“He won’t come. No clan leader has ever come into another leader’s stronghold. Alone. Unarmed. And when he doesn’t show, we can kill Kate without Papa suspecting why.”

The warm night air turned cold against his skin. “How do you plan to do that?”

“You’ll have to trust me on that one, brother dear. Do you want to run this family or not?”

“Yes. You know that.”

“What are you willing to sacrifice? Is sitting in Papa’s chair worth a few Hamilton lives or not?”

He pictured Kate’s hair lying on the pillow next to him, smelled the rose-petal scent of her perfume, remembered the soft feel of her skin.

Depends on the Hamilton.

If you want to save her, you need to concentrate
, he told himself.

“How are you going to kill her?” he asked. “Are you going to use Victor’s and Dylan’s deaths to power the stone?”

She put a finger to his lips. “Be ready to move against Papa when I give the word and make sure the Hamiltons don’t interfere. You’ll leave the stone to me, yes?”

He nodded, watching her eyes. Where the hell was the sister he’d played with for hours on the beach as a child? The one who’d hidden him in her closet when his father had his rages, who’d held him tight when their mother passed? He didn’t see that girl in Melina’s eyes. The ambition that shone like a hard beacon he understood all too well. But when had the little girl in the pink jumper and the happy green eyes disappeared so completely?

“Good,” she said. “I have a lot to do before tomorrow. So do you. Make your preparations, and stay away from the Hamilton girl.” She rose, her dress swirling around her, and shut off the cloak spell.

He let her go. When she disappeared from sight over the crest of the hill, he pulled Victor’s silver chains from his pocket. Kate’s pearl buttons fell to the ground. He picked them up and smoothed them over in his hand. He tucked them back in his pocket where they would be safe.

He focused his magesight on Victor’s silver chains. He peeled away and put back the lightning-bolt talisman, glowing with the green power of the spell, then the kinetic-punch chain, then the fire talisman, and the others he could identify until there was only one left. It shone with a purple iridescence that sparkled under the moonlight.

Piece by piece, a plan formed in his mind. He’d have to keep this one loose and limber. No battle plan survived contact with the enemy, and he had a lot of enemies.

Maybe he could level the playing field a bit.

He took out his phone and searched his contacts. Time to bring in an asset.

But first things first. He couldn’t just walk his asset past Anton, who was watching the grid as his backup, or his father’s eagle eyes. He needed another way to sneak his ally through the grid in time for tomorrow’s deadline.

He put the chain, still shimmering with a faint purple glow, in his pocket, next to Victor’s lockpick. He got up and strode toward the prison cells.

Kate finished picking
at the stewed greens and rice in the wooden bowl in her lap. If this was her last meal, it sucked.

She threw the spoon in the bowl and tossed it on the floor. The
clang
echoed across the small cell. What was the point of eating anything? In a few hours—best case—Victor and Dylan would be dead. Worst case, she would be joining them.

And everything would be her fault.

If she’d refused to take the stone from Brian, it wouldn’t have possessed her. Brian would still be alive. She wouldn’t have this horrible…power inside her. Wouldn’t have sneaked out to seek comfort from Kris. Damn, from
Kristof
. Wouldn’t have taken the conch shell from him, letting Dmitri through their security spells. She wouldn’t be a prisoner. And Victor and Dylan wouldn’t have to pay for her mistakes with their lives.

So what was she going to do about it?

She stared down at the spellcuffs around her hands, the wrappings so tight they raised red welts against the skin of her fingers. Even if she could get the damned things off again, the darkness inside her would only try to eat her up. Her heart sank.

Across the cell, a line of the red ants attacked the last remnants of greens and rice, marching in the bowl to efficiently devour the food. A black bug with huge pincers on its head darted in to rip a piece of spinach away, then another joined it, then another.

There was still a chance that Victor could escape and get her and the rest of the Hamilton team home. Yeah, right. She’d heard of the Pit—the torture Sanctum of the Makrises. She should be the one trying to free Victor, not the other way around.

And she couldn’t count on Kristof for help. He’d said he had less power than she thought. Tears welled up and spilled down her cheeks to land in a wet puddle on the scratchy blanket of the cot. She wiped them away.

Screw him. He had his own agenda—one that had nothing to do with her. Kate curled up on the small cot, hands tucked into her sides. But there had been that deep yearning in his eyes right before he’d left her cell, the same connection their eyes made at the beach yesterday, the look that told her heart that there had been more between them than operational necessity.

But if he didn’t act on his feelings, then his love might as well be ash.

The light glaring from the bare bulb would have made it difficult to sleep, even if the threat of death wasn’t hanging over her head. But who was she kidding? Dad would get them all out. Dad always won. Always. He had to.

But what if he didn’t?

Oh, he would come, sure. Or pull some other rabbit out of his hat. But what if Dad’s scheme didn’t succeed? What if his plan ended in the spectacular failure of the last one?

A column of ants broke off from the main line and swarmed the pincer bugs, pulling them from the greens. They tore the pincer bugs apart, piece by piece, until nothing was left but one twitching mandible.

She had to come up with an idea. Something that would give them an ace in the hole.

The spell. The white light Melina, and Victor, had cast. The same spell Brian had cast in the Sanctum when he’d tried to save himself. Dylan told her Brian had cast a counterspell—one aimed at stopping primal magic.

She stretched out her hand. The spellcuffs would prevent her from actually casting, but she could go over the spell in her mind—try to remember the symbol, the chant.

Better get started. It wasn’t like she was going to get any sleep.

Kate had seen
the north side of the Makris estate once before, in grainy photos smuggled out by Hamilton agents. Grayson had shown her photos of the entire estate in his briefing, before Brian’s funeral. She remembered the pictures. Craggy rocks set in a cliff above a narrow expanse of pebble-and-seaweed-strewn beach, a small quay for boats to tie up, a narrow staircase leading to the whitewashed estate house at the top, ringed with groves of apple and fig trees. Not very welcoming, but that wasn’t the point.

The next day, as she knelt in a broad circle of turquoise stones on a rocky ledge just up from the beach, nothing about the place had the distant feel of a photograph anymore. The wind whipping the strands of her dirty hair around her face, the sand grinding into her cramped legs, and the stink of dead sea creatures rotting in one of the tide pools behind her told her that everything was real.

She was here. About to die.

Sunlight glinted off the water. The line of boats bobbed up and down on the quay, their sails flapping lightly in the breeze. Everything on the other side of the Makrises’ security grid had a hazy, unreal look to it, as if Kate were viewing the scene from behind a painted veil. She blinked, and her vision cleared. Another sunny day on the Aegean.

Victor knelt beside her, hands cuffed behind his back like hers were. She couldn’t see any open wounds, and the welt around his neck had been healed. Blood flecked his uniform—much more than yesterday. Deep lines carved tracks on his face—evidence of suffering so bad she shied away from thinking about it. His eyes were half shut, his jaw tight.

Victor didn’t have a way out. Victor could hardly breathe.

Dylan knelt on her other side, eyes blinking against the sun, sweat dripping down into the collar of his sand-stained uniform. His foot tapped against the rocky ground, a nervous twitch of anticipation.

Kristof stood outside the circle, rigid as a tuning fork, eyes focused on the quay. Probably waiting on her dad.