Emerald Blaze

Chapter 10

As soon as the three of us made it to the main bridge leading to the PRP island, the security force sprang into action. We were surrounded and marched to safety by guards bristling with flamethrowers and giving the swamp ugly looks. The echoes of the mind in the mire had receded, but it didn’t make me feel any better.

Security deposited us at the main building, where a paramedic wrapped us in foil blankets despite the hundred-degree weather, ushered us into Marat’s office on the first floor, and promptly cut up Marat’s jeans. Small silver drops studded the summoner’s legs, embedded in his flesh.

Alessandro leaned over me, his hand on my shoulder, his face close to mine. To an outside observer, it would look like he was comforting me.

“What’s going on?” he murmured.

“There is an alien intelligence in the swamp. It’s telepathic.”

He took a second to come to terms with it. “Tell me about the spike.”

“Telekinetic, long-range, probably a Prime. He launched at least a dozen spikes, so he came prepared to kill us. I grabbed his mind, and he took off.”

Alessandro nodded and straightened, his eyes calculating.

If Marat had wanted to kill us, he wouldn’t have used a telekinetic. First, if something happened to us, he would be the obvious suspect. Second, if he was dumb enough to try to murder us, he could have just shot us and had his guards dump our corpses into the water, where the nightmare that lived in the Pit would finish us off. Third, the telekinetic made no move to save him. No, the telekinetic had to belong to Arkan.

The paramedic, a lean dark-haired white man in his thirties, got a set of tweezers and a bucket and sat on the floor. He plucked the first metal drop off Marat’s hairy calf. The summoner winced. The silver drop stretched and wiggled in the tweezers.

Alessandro took a step forward, caught the paramedic’s arm, and looked more closely at the wriggling thing. “A metal leech.”

He released the man’s arm and the paramedic dropped the leech into the bucket and wiped the blood off Marat’s leg. “One down.”

He didn’t seem rattled by pulling a metallic leech out of his employer’s leg.

“How many times have you done this?” I asked him.

“Don’t answer that,” Marat snapped.

“No, do answer that.” Despite being drenched in swamp water, Alessandro morphed into a Prime complete with crushing authority in his voice.

“Terrence,” Marat warned.

The paramedic looked from Marat to Alessandro and back to Marat again.

“I’m here as Lander Morton’s proxy.” Alessandro’s voice held no mercy. “For all intents and purposes, I am Lander Morton. I cut your paycheck. Answer her question.”

Terrence swallowed. “About seven or eight times. It happens if people fall in the water and survive.”

“How many people didn’t survive?” I asked.

The first responder opened his mouth, eyed Marat, and said, “Several.”

Loyalty. Victoria respected it. At this point she would acknowledge it, abandon verbal gymnastics, and crack his mind open. She would let him keep it, because loyalty deserved to be rewarded, but she would leave him curled into a ball on the floor sobbing. It would take him weeks to recover.

“I’ll be right back.” I got up, and left the room to retrieve the canvas sack from Rhino.

As I walked back from the car, voices floated down through the open door. I stopped to listen.

“. . . are you fucking her or something?” Marat growled. “Does Lander know? Because that old pisshead isn’t going to like that.”

“You’re alive because she asked me to save you. I would’ve let you drown.”

“So what? You want a medal?”

“I want you to answer her questions.”

“Because you’re fucking her, right?”

Alessandro’s voice dropped into a dangerous calm. “Say that again.”

“What the fuck are you going to do about it, Eurotrash?”

Something thudded.

“Hey!” Marat screamed and choked off.

Oh shit.

I stepped into the room. Terrence was on the floor, pressing himself against the wall on my right. Alessandro must’ve thrown him out of the way. Marat sat frozen in his chair, his eyes wide, trying not to breathe, because Alessandro leaned over him, one foot on the chair, holding a knife to Marat’s throat. The razor-sharp blade hovered a fraction of an inch from slicing Marat’s jugular. Magic, potent and vicious, splayed from Alessandro, coursing through the room, sparking with orange fire here and there. It wrapped around me and licked me, flashing its fangs, like a wolf who decided he wanted a pat. Goose bumps covered my arms.

Alessandro’s face was impassive. Marat had ripped open a portal without an arcane circle less than twenty minutes ago. He was either tapped out or close to it. Even if he’d been at full power, the sheer force of magic saturating the room would’ve terrified him. It was like a high-voltage wire dancing with a live current. But the look in Alessandro’s eyes was worse. He was looking at Marat as if the summoner wasn’t even human. An obstacle to be removed. A bug to be squished. Marat saw his death in Alessandro’s eyes, and it rendered him mute.

I walked over to them and put my hand on Alessandro’s right arm. “I leave you alone for a moment, and you’re killing people again.”

Marat swallowed.

“He’s still alive,” the Artisan said.

“He’s crude, but he didn’t kill Felix. He’s just a loud asshole.” I slid my hand to his wrist and gently pushed his hand away from Marat’s throat.

Alessandro looked at Marat and hurled the knife backward without looking. It bit into the wall an inch from Terrence’s head.

“Leave,” Alessandro said.

The first responder jumped up and scrambled out of the room.

Alessandro uncoiled from the chair, walked over to the door, shut it, and leaned on it. Marat watched him like he was a rabid tiger. I needed to redirect his attention, or I wouldn’t get anywhere.

“Marat,” I called.

He tore his gaze away from Alessandro and glanced at me.

“The last summoner we fought produced a swarm of flying ticks with long scorpion tails and big mouths. I believe you designate them as a Class VII summon.”

“Face-suckers,” Marat muttered.

“Do you want to know what happened to him?”

He stared at me.

“They ate him in the end. It wasn’t Mr. Sagredo who caused the swarm to turn on the summoner. It was me.”

Marat winced. Alessandro smiled.

“When we gathered his skeleton into his coat, I could carry it in one hand.” I walked over to the table. “You asked us earlier why we were late.”

I held the bag open and let the four rings fall out.

Marat turned paler.

I sat down in the chair by the table. “Here is what we know: there are biomechanical creatures in the Pit that shouldn’t exist. They are actively fighting you. Felix knew about it. You also know about it. Felix wanted to get help. Someone killed him. I don’t think that someone was you. What I don’t understand is your hostility.”

Marat looked at Alessandro.

“Don’t look at me,” Alessandro said. “Look at her.”

All the bluster drained from Marat. He looked haggard.

“Fuck it. I’m so fucking tired. There is something in the Pit. It keeps dragging equipment into the water and killing people. Bodies disappear.”

“When did it start?” I asked.

“About three months in. We drained the outer perimeter with no problem, but when we tried to move closer to the center, we ran into Razorscales. Arcane beasts, about seven feet long, green, look like some mutant gator on two legs.”

“I’ve seen them up close,” I said. “A pack of them chased me through a park.”

“Somehow they got into the Pit and bred in there. They love it. They eat just about anything, swim like fish, and their reproductive cycle is only three months. Each Razorscale female lays between forty and sixty eggs. About half of the hatchlings survive. They eat each other, the fuckers, but they breed so fast, it doesn’t matter. I put a leviathan-class armored serpent in there, twice. They ate them both. Tatyana wanted to section off the swamp and evaporate it, bit by bit.”

“Bad idea,” Alessandro said. “The cost would be prohibitive. Money could be found, but there are at least three environmental groups lobbying to designate the Pit as a wildlife preserve. You’ve told them to relocate any native endangered species. If they found out that you burned them alive instead, the public outcry could force the city to cancel the project.”

Marat laughed. “Yes. People who never ran from Razorscales want to preserve the vicious bastards. They’re welcome to take a stab at conserving them. Maybe they can take one home as a pet.”

“How did you deal with it?” I asked.

“Well, the serpents didn’t eat them, and Tatyana’s plan was nuts, so Cheryl animated some mechanical monstrosity and we dumped that in there. It worked at first. It killed three nests, and then they must have gotten it somehow, because the Razorscales came back and Cheryl couldn’t feel her construct anymore. My guess is, it must have gone deeper into the Pit and found whatever it is we’re fighting now. The Razorscales killed a girl, one of our workers.”

Marat grimaced. “See, I have a pond. You’re supposed to aerate it and if you do it too fast, the toxic sludge that accumulates in the bottom rises to the top, and all the fish die. I asked Jiang to do it in the Pit and the bastard flat out refused. Said it would kill all life in a mile radius and it would be a crime against nature. The most he would do is set up a strong current away from the main island to drive the fish deeper into the Pit. The Razorscales followed the food supply and we started to get a foothold in the swamp. We thought we were home free, started building again, and then one morning the arcane circle powering the current was gone and the ring crap started.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I mean that the Razorscales started swarming and every swarm came with one of those rings in its center.” Marat nodded at the gyroscopes on the table. “They spin in place and there are glowing flowers in them.”

“Is it always Razorscales?” Alessandro asked.

“No. Sometimes we get a big monster, with some smaller monsters.”

“A hunter with his hounds.”

“Exactly. I think it’s making them out of people it kills. Felix and I took down a hunter once. There was a human corpse in it.”

The Abyss stole humans, killed them, and used their bodies and minds to create hybrid constructs. This was a nightmare.

“This is a disaster,” Alessandro said.

Marat skewed his face. “You think? Welcome to my life. We are eighty million into this project, fifteen of them mine. Maybe that’s not shit to you, Count Moneybags, but for my family, it’s everything. This project employs four hundred people. They’re counting on it to put food on the table. I have to make this work. I’m here every day. While Cheryl is going to her charity lunches, Tatyana is burning shit for fun, and Jiang jerks off to his House’s corporate logo, I’m here in the mud, trying to keep people from dying. It was me and Felix. One of us has to be here to fight it off or more of our people will die. Now it’s just me.”

“How did Felix feel about the thing in the swamp?” I asked.

“It bothered him. An environmentalist snuck on-site, a kid, barely sixteen years old. It dragged her into the water, and Felix raised a damn island to keep her alive. Saved her, sent her home, but it kept him from sleeping at night. He worried. When the surveyor disappeared, he wanted to shut everything down.”

“Did you agree?” I asked. I already knew the answer.

Marat laughed, a cold, bitter sound. “He called an emergency meeting on Thursday, the day before he died. We put it to a vote. Four against one. I knew exactly what was going on and I voted against him. If I had opened my stupid mouth and convinced them to listen to him, he might be alive today. They might have still outvoted us, but at least I would have tried.”

Now the anger made sense. Marat was eaten up by guilt. He felt trapped. They had abandoned him to the Pit, where he’d sunk all of his money, and he couldn’t get out. And now the only person who understood and worked with him was dead and he had done nothing to prevent it.

“We had a fight the day before he died.” Marat grimaced. “After we voted against him, he’d said that if we wouldn’t see reason, he’d find someone who would. When we came back here, I had argued with him over it. I told him that if the city shut us down because he did something stupid, my House would go bankrupt and he’d be taking food out of my family’s mouths.”

“I know you didn’t kill Felix.” I leaned forward. “Who do you think did?”

Marat spread his arms. “Hell if I know. Could be any of them. Jiang doesn’t say anything, and if you ask him a direct question, he’ll talk for five minutes about how House Jiang is a respected and responsible House. With responsibilities. And respect. Because our Houses are apparently garbage. By the time he’s done talking, you’ve forgotten what you’ve asked him in the first place. All Cheryl ever cares about is her charity crap. I don’t know if she’s applying for sainthood or what, but she wants the accolades. I can tell you, it costs a lot of money to be that cherished. Not that she needs the goodwill as much as Tatyana does. That snot-nosed punk brother of hers gave her family a black eye and she’s desperate to heal it. At least my solution was environmentally responsible. Her solution is to burn it all down. Maybe she can make a bonfire out of the mountain of lawsuits we’ll be hit with to keep herself warm at night.”

Okay then.

Marat slumped in his chair. “There. That’s what I think of everyone. Are we done now?”

“You’re not going to win this fight,” I told him. He would like this part even less than Alessandro’s knife, but I had to explain it to him, because his people’s safety depended on it. “While you were wrestling with tentacles, I was attacked by a telekinetic.”

“Not me.”

“I know. I jumped into the water and struck his mind. The thing in the Pit felt my magic and came in for a closer look. I felt it. The reason you haven’t made progress is because it’s not in the Pit. It is the Pit. It’s a vast enormous consciousness. A single entity that stretches to the farthest reaches of the mire. It’s malicious and telepathic. You need to get shielders.”

“There is no money. Who’s going to pay for that?”

“I will.” Alessandro pushed away from the door. “I’ll talk to Lander. Find some telepaths, and don’t be cheap or you’ll have no workers left.”

“It won’t make a difference,” Marat said, defeated.

Despair rolled off of him. At the core of it, Marat wasn’t a bad man. He was unpleasant, but he cared about his family and about his workers. Felix’s death crushed him. He was already wading through a lake of guilt and that had pulled him all the way under.

“Felix did reach out for help,” I told him. “I am that help.”

He gave me a weary look. “What are you going to do about it?”

I raised my arm and pushed. The trickle of magic slid into the star within a circle under my skin, projecting it into the air. Marat’s eyes went wide.

“The National Assembly appreciates your assistance in this matter, Prime Kazarian. Your cooperation has been noted. You will not speak of this conversation to anyone. You will not reveal my true affiliation. If called upon, you will assist me in any way possible.”

He nodded, mute.

I faded the star and rose. “It will be okay,” I told him. “There is a light at the end of the tunnel.”

Ten minutes after we left the main island, Alessandro stopped the car and leaned over to me. “Hospital.”

“You don’t have to menace me.”

“Yes, I do. I’m taking you to a hospital. That was our agreement. Pick one.”

I gave him the address of Rogan’s private physician. He plugged it into his phone, and we were off.

I stared out of the window at the Pit.

“Does it hurt?” he asked after a while.

“A little.” The painkiller was wearing off. The four wounds in my side burned like someone was hammering red-hot nails into me.

“We’ll get there soon.” He reached over and squeezed my hand.

“I don’t like threatening people to get what I need.” And I shouldn’t have said that. We weren’t in a position to have a heart-to-heart and I had no business looking for support in him.

“Marat is . . . un mulo . . . a mule. He’s strong and stubborn. He won’t listen to reason, but he understands consequences and authority. He didn’t recognize yours because you’re younger and female and he didn’t recognize mine because I’m young and spoiled Eurotrash.”

“Well, that shirt was a bit much. I kept waiting for you to strategically unbutton it to display your chest.”

He looked at me. “Are you interested in my chest?”

“No.” Why did I even open my mouth?

“I can take my shirt off for you, if you’d like.”

“No.”

“I had no idea the presence of my shirt has been bothering you all this time.”

“Alessandro!”

He laughed. Then his smile died. “Is showing Marat the badge going to carry consequences for you?”

“No. Linus allows me to reveal who I am when it’s absolutely necessary. It was necessary. That’s the only way to keep Marat quiet.”

“I don’t think that was it. I think you did it to reassure him, because you felt sorry for him.”

“Think whatever you want.”

“Arkan has a pet telekinetic,” Alessandro said.

I reached over and rested my fingers on his forehead. “Strange. No fever.”

“Why would I have a fever?”

“Because you just shared information without prompting.”

I took my hand off and he leaned slightly, as if he wanted to prolong the touch, but caught himself.

“I jumped into the nasty water for you and you still don’t trust me. I probably do have a fever from that. You don’t even know what’s in that water . . .”

“If you have a fever, Dr. Daniela will take care of it.”

“I don’t think Dr. Daniela can do anything for my kind of fever.”

Yeah, right. “Tell me about Arkan’s telekinetic.”

“Young, very powerful. Arkan is grooming him as his protégé.” Alessandro frowned.

“How powerful?”

“He lifted a semi once and threw it.”

“Threw it where?”

“At me.”

Don’t ask. Don’t ask how or where. Don’t tempt yourself to care. “Did you dodge it?”

“I did.”

“Good.” I nodded and looked out the window.

Dr. Daniela Arias ran a state-of-the-art private clinic located in a bunkerlike building that was guarded better than Fort Knox. She was none too pleased with the condition of my wounds.

“So, you got clawed by an arcane construct, then you ran around the Pit, and for an encore you jumped into the filthy, magically tainted water that’s probably full of sewage?”

“Exactly,” Alessandro volunteered.

Dr. Arias turned to him. She was six feet tall, built like an Amazon, and when she scowled at you, you wanted to become very small and squeak “yes, ma’am” to anything she said. The stare she leveled at Alessandro was withering.

“And you didn’t stop her why?”

“Yes, why didn’t you stop me?” I demanded.

Alessandro gave us a dazzling smile. It bounced off Dr. Arias like a laser beam from a mirror.

“I did try to stop you. I jumped into the water instead of you to keep you from drowning and being eaten. How was I supposed to know you would follow me?”

“You’re expected to use common sense.” Dr. Arias glared at the two of us. “The two of you are old enough to know better. I need to run some tests and fix this mess. Catalina, make whatever calls you need to make before I start, and you, whoever you are, occupy yourself with something. She’ll be here for a couple of hours.”

I texted Arabella. Are you there?

Is you dead?

No. Need clothes.

Did you have sexy times with Alessandro?

No, I fell into the Pit. Don’t tell Mom. Don’t tell Nevada either. I need clothes to see Cheryl Castellano.

Where are you?

Dr. Arias.

Okay.

I called Bern. It was faster than texting, because when he concentrated on something, he ignored the texts. “Hey. Could you please do an aerial surveillance of the Pit and compare it to any records we have of it in six-month intervals?”

“How far do you need me to go?”

“Three years should do it.” Three years ago, the Pit looked normal, and I wanted a baseline. “Thank you.”

Alessandro parked himself by the door, leaning on the wall.

“You might want to go home,” I told him.

“I don’t think so.”

“You smell like a swamp and I’m safe here. This is Mad Rogan’s private clinic. He provides the security.”

Alessandro sniffed his sleeve and grimaced.

“I won’t leave without you,” I promised.

“If you try, I’ll find you and I’ll be angry.”

“Is that supposed to be some sort of threat?”

“No, it’s a warning. Don’t leave without me.”

“Go away.”

He left.

The CT scan detected no bleeding or swelling in my brain. I escaped without any broken bones, but there was a lot of soft tissue bruising and some arcane bacteria decided to throw a party in my lacerations, which we found out when Dr. Arias removed the bandages and neon-green pus leaked out. She shot me with another dose of antivenom and set about cleaning my wounds.

“Did the pretty boy patch you up?” Dr. Arias asked, working on the cuts.

“Yes.”

“He didn’t do a terrible job. He has some training.”

“I’ll tell him that you think he’s pretty. That will make him happy.”

Dr. Arias smiled. “I have a feeling he knows he’s pretty.”

My sister showed up, accompanied by Runa and two of our security people. They delivered clothes and makeup. I told them about the telekinetic and Marat being pulled into the swamp, and then Runa used her magic to purify my cuts and accidentally neutralized the antivenom, and Dr. Arias kicked them both out. On the plus side, my cuts were now taken care of and infection was unlikely. On the minus side, I received my third injection of antivenom “just to be safe,” and the skin on my left side felt like it was about to give up and peel off my skeleton.

I kept the existence of the Abyss to myself until Dr. Arias left me to rest, and then I called Linus.

“Yes?” He sounded like he was in a helicopter.

I kept my voice low. “There is an alien mind in the Pit. It’s beyond anything I’ve ever felt and it’s malicious.”

He pondered it for a few seconds. “Do you want me to shut the project down?”

“Not yet.”

“Keep me updated.”

I hung up and stared at the phone. I needed to get the hell out of this bed. It was almost 2:00 p.m. Cheryl expected me in two hours. But I was so tired and my whole body hurt.

I picked up my purse, which Alessandro had brought into the room, took out a piece of chalk, and drew a charging circle. The base charging circle was one of the easier designs to draw: a large circle, a smaller circle inside that, then three circles inside that inner circle arranged in a triangle, and finally three outer circles opposite the inner triad. In the past six months, I’d begun to develop my own version. Eventually it would become a Key, a complex charging design particular to our House. For now, it was about two-thirds of the way there. I drew it so often, it took me less than three minutes to complete it. On a good day, when everything didn’t hurt like now, I could do it in half the time.

I stripped to my underwear and bra, stepped into the circle, sat, and put my phone in front of me. I didn’t want to leave the circle if some emergency popped up.

The chalk lines waited for me, inert and so mundane. I sent a pulse of power through the circle. The chalk ignited with pale silver, sending tiny puffs of dust into the air. Power splashed against me. I relaxed and opened myself to it.

Before Runa left, she told me that her expert friend examined the gyroscope Cornelius had dropped off yesterday. Runa didn’t like her conclusions, and I liked them even less.

How did an alien intelligence come to be in the Pit? Was it summoned? In the hundred-plus years of the serum being active, nobody had ever found a human-level intelligence in the arcane realm, but it didn’t mean one couldn’t exist.

How would you even fight such a mind? Mental mages didn’t really come together the way other combat mages could. Our fights were duels, one-on-one. Having more than one mental mage wouldn’t help, because when two minds engaged each other, they became locked, like two wrestlers gripping one another, exerting every ounce of strength they had to trip their opponent while keeping their balance. I had no idea if the Abyss could be engaged by more than one mage. Most likely, it would just crack our minds one by one like a bull trampling eggs.

An hour crawled by. Then another. I barely noticed.

My phone chimed. Bug.

I found your thing. Watch it by yourself.

He’d sent a link to a private server we used for confidential communication. I logged in and checked the file box. A single video file waited for me. I clicked it.

A lawn stretched in front of the camera, the lush grass a fresh spring green. Ancient stones, cracked and darkened with age, crossed it, leading to rows and rows of white chairs, forming an aisle. Stone pedestals flanked the entrance to the aisle supporting marble urns overflowing with white and pink, and at its end, in the shadow of a large tree a flower arch waited, poised against distant hills.

People dressed in white and pastels occupied the chairs. It must have been a spring wedding.

The guests were laughing. On the right, a man turned around and leaned on the back of his chair, caught in a conversation with two women one row behind him. On the left, a handsome man with a white smile bounced a baby on his knee. The baby giggled, and people around them snapped pictures. A gaggle of young kids ran past the camera, the girls in white frilly dresses, the boys ridiculous in miniature versions of adult clothes. A priest waited at the arch, the only person dressed in black. He looked onto the gathering with a small smile. It was a happy scene. I almost wished I was there.

I fast-forwarded the video, switching to normal speed when something significant happened. One of the kids fell and cried and the adults got up to comfort him. A woman waved her hands at another woman and dramatically went to sit elsewhere. A flurry of Italian floated about the crowd, fast and muffled, but clear enough for me to pick some of it up. Jokes about the groom, jokes about married life and getting fat from being happy, teasing about who might get married next.

Eventually, the gathering quieted down, and the groom made his way to the altar, a lean man in his early thirties, with a bright smile, handsome face, and tousled wavy brown hair. Several groomsmen followed him, the first tall and broad-shouldered, walking with a particular light gait. From the back, he looked just like Alessandro.

He turned to the side and took his spot next to the groom, and I saw his face. No, not Alessandro. The chin was too narrow, the nose too fragile, but most importantly, he seemed to lack the intense focus I’d seen in Alessandro’s eyes. Alessandro had stared at death too many times. It had given him a sharp edge, and although he hid it well, I recognized it even when he pretended to be carefree. He was ready to resort to violence at any instant.

This man looked confident and sure that he could handle anything life threw at him, and brute force wasn’t his first answer to it, which meant he didn’t have to fight for his life that often. He was Instagram Alessandro, with a charmed life and few worries, and I couldn’t tell from the recording if it was genuine or a front. If it was a pose, Marcello Sagredo had been an even better actor than his son.

The groomsmen milled about, waiting. I fast-forwarded again until the bride walked down the aisle to the familiar music, accompanied by an older man. The train of her lacy gown brushed the grass. Wind stirred her white veil. The videographer moved around the chairs, capturing her walk. She glided to the altar, a vision in white with long dark hair. The groom stared at her, starry-eyed. A fairy-tale wedding.

The ceremony started.

The groom said his vows. “Io, Antonio, prendo te, Sofia, come mia sposa . . . and promise to be faithful to you always, in joy and in pain, in health and in sickness, and to love you and every day honor you, for the rest of my life . . .”

A man strode down the aisle, smiling, walking as if he belonged there. He was tall and powerfully built. Not slabbed with muscle like a bodybuilder, more like an athlete or a soldier in prime condition. The videographer swung his camera and it caught his face. Perfectly average. He could have been an American or a European. Blond hair cut short but not military short. Tan, clean shaven, nondescript features, average nose, average mouth, no distinctive scars, no strangely colored eyes. A teacher, a bank manager, a furniture salesman. There was nothing odd about him.

Hello, Arkan.

The groom frowned. The bride turned and looked at the man, stunned at the interruption.

Arkan shot forward. There was no warning. One of his steps became a powerful lunge, so fast, I barely saw the long knife in his hand. And then Alessandro’s father was there, in front of him.

The stranger stabbed. Marcello moved out of the way, fluid and fast, and redirected the attacker’s thrust with a lightning-fast block. He moved so quick, no hesitation, no delay. Real life fights happened instantly. There was no bowing, no touching of gloves. Nobody blew a whistle or rang a bell, and most people with martial arts training froze, if only for a moment, expecting someone to give the go-ahead. Marcello hadn’t. This wasn’t just training, this was experience. He had fought an attacker with a knife before, and he had won.

The assassin stabbed again. Again, Marcello used his own movement against him, guiding the knife to the side.

Thrust—block.

Another thrust—block.

Arkan was shockingly good, but Marcello was better and knew he was better. He was looking for an opening, but he was in no hurry. And everyone else just watched it. They were fighting for a full five seconds, and nobody jumped up and hit the bad guy with a chair.

Arkan tossed the knife into his left hand with ridiculous precision and slashed, sure and fast. Somehow Marcello had anticipated it and leaned out of the way. The camera caught his face. His eyes glinted. His lips stretched, baring his teeth. It almost looked like anger, but I had seen that exact expression on Alessandro’s face. Marcello was having fun.

Finish him. Stop playing with him and finish it.

The assassin kicked at Marcello’s leading leg, aiming for the kneecap. Alessandro’s father stepped out of the way and hammered a quick jab into the attacker’s face.

Ouch. Straight shot to the nose. That had to hurt like hell.

The video froze. Nothing moved. Marcello paused, one arm extended, fingers ready to grab. To the left, an older man half rose from his chair, caught in midmove. To the right, a woman stopped in midscream, her hands halfway to her mouth.

I tapped the pause button a couple of times. The timer was still going, counting off the seconds. The video didn’t freeze. Somehow, Arkan had petrified the entire wedding party.

The assassin uncoiled from an aborted kick, his movements smooth, almost lazy. He raised his hand and slit Marcello’s throat with a dramatically wide swipe. It was almost a flourish. He made a little show of it.

Marcello stared straight at the camera. His neck had to be cut, but there was no blood.

I had never heard of this in my life. I had never seen it, I’d never read about it. How?

The killer moved past Marcello, sliding between the bride and the groom. Someone had pressed the invisible play button, and suddenly people moved. The man on the left collapsed into his chair. A piercing scream cut through the silence. Marcello gulped. Blood drenched the front of his neck, a hot, vivid scarlet.

The assassin looked at the bride and stabbed the groom in the chest. A textbook thrust to the heart, easy to understand, almost impossible to execute.

“Francis says hello,” the killer said.

The groom collapsed. The bride spun and ran from the altar, clutching her gown in her hands. The wedding guests fled in all directions, knocking over chairs in a human stampede. The camera shuddered and became still. The photographer must’ve fled, abandoning it on its tripod.

At the altar Marcello fell to his knees, his hand clamped on his throat. Blood spurted between his fingers. He sagged to the ground and folded on his side, his eyes terrified.

A lone boy stood in the middle of the aisle, staring at Marcello with Alessandro’s eyes. I had no idea when he had gotten there.

Arkan put his foot on the groom’s chest, pulled the knife out, wiped it on the groom’s jacket and strode past Marcello down the aisle. The boy watched him come. He didn’t move. He didn’t even blink, like a baby rabbit seeing a wolf approach. His fear locked him in place, shivering in his eyes.

My heart was beating too fast. I wanted to reach through the video and grab him and run away.

Arkan paused by him and put his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Sorry, kid. It’s business.”

The boy gazed at him, glassy-eyed.

The killer nodded and walked away.

The video stopped.

My mouth tasted bitter. The muscles of my face contracted, too tight, squeezing and making me dizzy. I closed my eyes, waiting it out.

It was like watching Runa’s mom die again, only it was worse, because it was Alessandro’s father and Alessandro was there, helpless and terrified. The look on his face . . .

My hands rolled into fists.

How long had Alessandro stood there watching his father die?

He must have felt like his whole life ended right there, on that lawn. He must have been like me. I divided my life into before Dad died and after, except I had my mother and my sisters and my cousins, who all loved me. He had his grandfather, who called his dead father an idiot. He also had his mother and his siblings, but he barely mentioned them. Whenever he talked about his family, it was in terms of obligation. It was never in terms of love.

It should have shattered Alessandro. It probably had. At some point he must have thought about revenge and grasped it, like a lifeline. The need to avenge his father became his new core and he pulled himself together around it. I understood now. He must have dedicated himself completely to his vengeance. He probably only took the jobs that aligned with his goal of tracking down his father’s killer.

Alessandro was a great liar, but when he said he wanted to protect me, he was sincere. And sometimes, when he didn’t think I was paying attention, he watched me with a raw, desperate want in his eyes. It couldn’t be a lie. He looked at me like I was everything that anchored him to life.

But he’d wanted his revenge for so long, and if he told himself that the killer of his father didn’t matter, he was lying to himself. Alessandro would not stop until Arkan was dead. If it was a choice between my life and Arkan’s death, who would he put first?

I had no idea.

I knew one thing. If I ever had a chance to kill Arkan, I would take it. I would hunt him down and make him suffer. He didn’t just kill Alessandro’s father. He murdered his childhood, he destroyed his family, and until he was punished for it, Alessandro would never be free.

By the time Alessandro appeared in the doorway of my room, I had wiped off the circle, taken a shower, blow-dried my hair, twisted it into a bun with a hairpin, and gotten dressed.

He’d switched to a blue-grey suit with a crisp white shirt with the two top buttons undone. The suit hugged his waist and broadened his shoulders. Instead of minimizing his physique, he accentuated it. His hair was brushed back from his face, and his five o’clock shadow drew the eye to his perfect jaw and sensual mouth. He left the jewelry back at his hotel. Combined with the casually unbuttoned shirt and tousled hair, the effect was unsettling. He looked like a man who’d spent the entire day working and now was ready to relax, but more than that, he looked ready for intimacy. I could imagine stepping close, running my hands over his hard chest, and nudging the coat out of the way to kiss his muscular neck and feel the scrape of that sexy stubble on my lips.

I knew it was a pose, I knew it wasn’t for me, but I saw him and just stared for a long moment, unable to help myself.

“You dressed up for Cheryl.” I managed to keep the annoyance out of my voice.

“Yes. Your makeup is done. Were you going to leave without me?”

“No. I waited for you.”

Alessandro’s eyes narrowed. “Did something happen while I was gone?”

Somehow, he could tell. Something must have been off in my tone or expression. I needed to do a better job of hiding.

“Yes. I got my third shot of antivenom and no additional painkillers to deal with it. Let’s go before my willpower gives out and I start crying like a five-year-old.”

We were walking down the hallway to the front door when he said, “Catalina, I won’t let anyone hurt you. I won’t abandon you.”

A few days ago, I wouldn’t have believed him. He had abandoned me, and he’d done it during one of the worst times of my life, when I’d needed him most. But I knew better now. I still didn’t understand why, but Alessandro was determined to put himself between Arkan and me. And I would do the same for him.

“I know,” I told him and made myself smile.