by Julia Mills
Shooing her away, Kat almost ran to the bathroom. She could feel his eyes on her with every step she took and breathed a sigh of relief when the lock on the old wooden door clicked shut. Flipping on the light, she looked in the mirror. All she could do was groan.
I’m a sight and not a good one.
She resembled a sad clown who’d gotten caught in the rain. Her mascara was everywhere but on her lashes. The red she’d lined her lips with before heading out with Viktor was still on her mouth but was spread and smeared until she looked like a five-year-old playing in Mom’s makeup. Her hair was flat on one side, sticking out on the other, and a quick reach behind her head let her know it was absolutely no better in the back.
Thankful for the respite from her captor but sure it wouldn’t last long, Kat took a washcloth from the shelf over the toilet. After smelling it to make sure it was clean, she did her best to remove the cosmetics from her face.
Tackling her wayward locks was another story. Reaching into her pocket, Kat retrieved the hair tie she’d worn the night before. The one Viktor had pulled from her hair during their dance. Visions of his arms around her came rushing back. Followed almost immediately by images of their kiss. Her lips, although still slightly swollen, tingled at the memory.
Kat wasn’t even sure she could call it a kiss because it had been so much more. One of those amazing, all encompassing, earth-shattering, life changing events that strip you bare and leave you wanting more. Viktor had made her feel things she wasn’t even sure how to describe.
In retrospect, Kat knew she’d started falling for Viktor from the first time her name had crossed his lips. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t see his face. Didn’t matter that they were separated by thirty-five hundred miles and an ocean. And it was of absolutely no consequence that they’d never met. It was simply there. She felt it between them. Heard it in his voice.
That elusive something that people spend their entire lives searching for, praying to find and more often than not, leave this earth without. The something that defied explanation but was brilliantly beautiful and endlessly priceless.
It had been called love...infatuation...passion. She’d heard it referred to as devotion and more often than not—soul mates. But those were just words. Letters put together in a predetermined order to convey information. They were nothing when compared to the feelings that filled her very soul as his eyes met hers.
There was no mistake, no going back, life would never be the same. It had been there all along and she'd almost missed it. Almost missed the chance to experience something so perfect, so monumental, that Kat would be rendered completely transformed, better than her original self. Now, all she had to do was reach out and hold tight because everything was about to change.
Regrettably, she’d put her work ahead of all else. Had been unwilling or afraid to acknowledge the mystical existence of the connection she could have if she just took a chance. In all actuality, Kat had thought she had all the time in the world to come to terms with her dreams, her feelings...with Viktor.
Now, she was sitting in a bathroom in what she figured was an abandoned house with a mad man, praying for a miracle. Kat wondered if she would ever see Viktor again. She squeezed the hair tie in her fist. If she concentrated hard enough she could feel Viktor’s arms around her. Feel their hearts beating as one.
A whisper floated across her mind, “Katarina...Kata...”
A loud knock at the door broke the spell then came her kidnapper’s arrogant voice. “You can’t hide in there all day, Katarina. Nor can you contact your mate with your bond. I have wards placed all over this home. Come out. Let’s have a chat.”
My mate? Wards? Yeah, this guy’s ducks don’t waddle in a row.
One deep breath later, Kat opened the door and marched right past the bastard without so much as a glance. Ignoring him wouldn’t change her situation but it made her feel better, and that was all that mattered. He’d turned on the lights to make it easy for her to see the food on the small table under the window. It looked like a tea party instead of a last meal. Maybe the psycho was telling the truth. Maybe she would live to see another day. Stranger things had happened. She was living that fact right now.
“Stop thinking so hard, Katarina. I promised no harm would come to you and I meant it. Now, sit down and eat. You have to be famished after sleeping an entire day away.”
Kat froze. A whole day? She’d lost a whole day? How was that even possible? Those must’ve been some good drugs they knocked her out with. Sitting down in the chair her captor was holding out for her, Kat wondered exactly what rabbit hole she’d fallen down. Nothing was as it appeared.
It all seemed simple in its inception. Go to London, make the deal, go home. Easy peasy. Wow, had she been wrong. Not only was her heart involved in ways she’d never imagined but Kat was an honest to goodness kidnap victim. The only bright side was her captor hadn’t taken one of those awful Polaroids with her holding a newspaper in front of her tear-stained face as proof of life.
Blurting out a random thought as it floated through her mind, Kat asked, “What time is it?”
“Almost six a.m. The sun will be coming up shortly.” He looked out the window while sipping his tea, as if they were we old friends having a nosh.
Bells and whistles sounded in her head. Her intuition was screaming for her to pay attention. She’d been in this situation with this man sometime before...sort of. Trying with all her might to figure out where she knew her captor from, Kat just stared.
Turning to face her, the bastard set down his mug and returned her stare. Raising a single eyebrow, he asked, “Figure it out yet?”
His voice was mocking. He knew something she didn’t and was holding it over her and that pissed Kat off more than being a prisoner. Doing her level best to hide her frustration, Kat answered, “No.”
If possible, his gaze intensified. The contained aggression Kat had sensed earlier returned and this time it was coupled with rage. There was something her captor wanted very badly for her to figure out. He wasn’t going to tell her. She had to do it herself. It was just a damn shame Kat had no clue what it was.
When he spoke, it was little more than a whisper, which added to the menace. “Let’s see if I can refresh your memory.”
Pulling a leather cord through the collar of his crew neck sweater, a pendant in the shape of a golden apple appeared. He let it dangle at the end of the rope like that was going to help her glean some vital information from a fruit-shaped charm.
Speaking with an eerie reverence while gazing lovingly at the apple, he asked, “Do you know what this is, Katarina? How important it is to the future of my people? To your future in a roundabout way?”
All she could do was shake her head. The air was rife with tension. Something big was about to happen. She could feel it in her bones. Big...and horrible...
“This is the Golden Apple of Discord given to me by the Goddess Eris – ruler of chaos, strife, and discord. I was honored above all others of her followers. Given the power to wield her magic here on earth. The same magic that allows me to do this.”
From one breath to the next, her tall, dark kidnapper turned into Bjorn Makris, the blonde-haired Nordic looking supermodel she’d had breakfast with before her meeting with Viktor. Closing her eyes, Kat shook her head, praying it was all simply a dream, a very bad dream. There was no way in heaven or hell a man could change his appearance in the blink of an eye. It had to be another side effect of the drugs. Or maybe it was a hallucination caused by the stress of her current situation. Either way, there had to be a rational explanation for what she’d just witnessed.
Forcing her eyes open, Kat wanted to cry, thought about screaming, and was most definitely sure she preferred blissful unconsciousness to what she was now facing.
“There it is. The recognition I was looking for,” he said with an heir of superiority that made Kat bite her tongue to keep from lashing out. Maintaining eye contact, the bastard changed back to the
man of Mediterranean descent she knew as her kidnapper.
“This is my true form.”
He didn’t wait for her to comment. Her jailer let the pendant fall to his chest, picked up his mug, took a sip of his tea, and started talking as if they were old friends. The only difference was the malevolent vibes filling the air around them. It made it hard to breath. This man was dangerous, more dangerous than Kat originally thought.
“This,” he motioned back and forth between them with his free hand, “had its start in Ancient Greece almost three thousand years ago.”
He paused and Kat knew it was for dramatic effect but she was still stuck back on the ‘three thousand years ago’ part.
Add delusional to the list of adjectives when describing this man to the police if you make it out alive...check.
“Instead of making you listen to me drone on, I have a way for you to see the events of the past that led up to this moment. Look right here.” He pointed to his golden apple again.
The air around his pendant grew cloudy, somewhat fuzzy and then, as if he’d flipped a switch, images started to flow from it. The images stretched and grew until the people in them were almost life-sized.
Kat was thrown into the middle of a battlefield. Bodies, bloodied and broken from the skirmish, covered the ground. It was just as Bjorn had said; it looked to be taking place in Ancient Greece. The soldiers protected themselves with circular shields made of wood with bronze inlays that glittered and shone in the setting sun, while thrusting long wooden spears at their advancing adversaries.
The spears had to be at least seven feet long with incredibly imposing ten-inch metal tips that Kat witnessed ripping through the skin and bone of more Grecians than she could count. The greaves and breast plates of their uniforms were also bronze and fit over stiff leather that matched the shin and forearm guards each man wore. The crack and clash of their bronze helmets broke through the roar of the fighting as the different colored plumage signifying their allegiance floated to the blood-soaked ground.
In the distance, she saw a squadron of men marching side-to-side, their shields locked together. Spears strategically jutted through the infantry line as they protected their supreme commander and his generals while they issued battle plans.
For a split second, the advancing battalion disappeared behind a ridge in the landscape. As they reappeared, the man on horseback leading the charge came into view. There was no mistaking those chiseled features, the strong line of his jaw, or the laser sharp focus of his obsidian eyes.
Even as her mind balked at the irrefutable image, Kat’s heart knew it was him. It was Viktor. She tried to reason that the officer was his ancestor. That her thoughts of him were somehow clouding her vision. But those were feeble attempts to reconcile what was right before her versus the impossibility of the same exact face being on two people.
“Halt!”
The barked command was the last piece of the puzzle. It was impossible for Kat not to believe, no matter how fantastic it might seem, that she was indeed looking at the man who made her body burn.
The scene changed. She was in a courtroom. There were men in tunics fastened with pins and brooches at the right shoulder and olive branch wreaths around the back of their heads. She knew they were the Law Givers from long ago. Kat had loved Ancient History in school, specifically that of the Greeks and Athenians. She debated the foreshadowing of that fact while watching a prisoner being led to the raised dais at the front of the room.
His tunic was tattered and torn, his back a mass of long fiery wounds, some still bleeding, while others oozed the unmistakable yellow puss of infection. A single tear rolled down her cheek when the prisoner turned to face the court. Even with bruises marring his impeccable complexion and his long hair greasy and matted with his own blood, Viktor stood tall. There was a glint in his eyes that assured he would not bow to his accusers.
The charges of treason and dereliction of duty were read. The crowd jeered, screaming their disbelief at the travesty before them. By all accounts, Viktor was their hero. No one believed he would do what he was accused of.
Bjorn was there, leading the prosecution. He and his witnesses told the same tale over and again, swearing that Viktor, Viktoras in this case, had taken bribes from their enemies and left his men to die horrible deaths on the battlefield. Thankfully, but not before the damage had been done, Viktor’s supporters took the stand.
She recognized some of the men she’d met at Sanguinem. It was all starting to fall into place. These men had known each other for ages...literally. Kat knew without a shadow of a doubt what she was watching had really occurred. It was inconceivable, totally something out of a Twilight Zone episode, but in her heart of hearts, there was no doubt it was real.
Lastly, Bain took the stand. Interestingly enough, aside from Roman, he was the only man who’d kept his given name all these years later. Bain gave impassioned testimony about Viktor off the battlefield. More tears wet Kat’s face. Viktor was a good man, which made listening to the Law Givers pronounce him guilty all the more heartbreaking.
Another venue switch and Kat was transported to a scorching mountaintop in the heat of the day beside a dying Viktor. His wrists and ankles were tied to posts. His eyes swollen shut from the sun. His lips as dry as the sand on the beach below them. And his skin blistered and raw from the elements.
Using his last breath, he wheezed a prayer to Zeus asking the Father of the Gods to show favor upon his men and a promise that Bjorn would know vicious vengeance for his treachery. Kat wept just as she had for her parents. Her brain knew it was ancient history, Viktor was alive and well, but her heart was broken, shattered into a million pieces at the mere thought of losing him.
The pictures before her blinked out of existence but Kat still wept. She sobbed for what he’d endured, for the long life he’d lived, for the benevolent man he was, and out of fear that she might never see him again. Looking across the table, she saw satisfaction and anticipation on Bjorn’s face. The bastard had something else up his sleeve and Kat knew it was going to suck.
Handing her a linen handkerchief, he said, “Dry your eyes. Viktoras is not worth our tears. You should not be crying over his death but over the fact that Zeus stepped in and granted him and the worthless lot who pledged allegiance to him resurrection and immortality.
“They should’ve all stayed dead. Although I only had a hand in the demise of Viktoras’ human life, I do admit to celebrating every time one of his men was slain. After I was told of my greatest enemy’s recovery and that of Roman and Achilles, I sent men to watch over the graves of the others, but those men died tragic deaths, drained of all their blood.
“How do you think that happened, Katarina? Why would I find my men completely exsanguinated next to the empty graves of those foolish enough to follow Viktoras?”
Kat’s tears had dried but her pain was still nearly crippling her. Listening to Bjorn spout pure heresy against the man she was just realizing the depth of her feelings for after holding her hostage for only God knew what, caused the usually calm, levelheaded woman to snap.
Standing so quickly the chair beneath her hit the floor with a loud crack, Kat let all her frustration at the events of the last twenty-four hours fly from her mouth like bullets from a gun. “Why? Why did the murderers you had lying in wait to kill good men die horrible deaths? I don’t know and quite frankly, I don’t care. What I want to know is what these honorable men ever did to you? What did Viktor ever do to you? Why did you find it necessary to have him killed? Not just killed but shamed, slandered, and left to die like an animal?”
Inhaling deeply, she raged on, her voice rising with every statement. “You want to know what I think, Bjorn?” Kat said his name with such derision he stood, but she kept going even though he clenched his fists at his side. “I think you were scared of him. I think you knew he was a better man than you. Viktor made you look bad simply by existing. He makes you look bad now. You are what we call back home a coward. L
ike I said, you were afraid of him then and you’re afraid of him now. Why else would you kidnap a girl? Afraid Viktor and his boys will kick your ass? Well, come closer, I have a secret for you.”
Kat planted her hands on her hips, leaned over the table, and poured all the disdain she could into her sweetest southern drawl. “You fucked with the wrong guy, baby. He may have been tough when y’all ran around in skirts but now he’s a force to be reckoned with. He’s gonna make you pay for everything you’ve done. You’re going to die a horrific death. One not even your goddess can bring you back from. You...”
Kat’s words were interrupted by Bjorn’s hand around her throat. She could see the fire in his eyes as his grip tightened. Feel her body fighting for its next breath as he kicked the table out of the way and lifted her feet from the floor. Black spots danced around the edges of her vision as he brought her to the level of eyes.
Growling like a feral animal, he spat, “You, little girl, will die after watching your precious blood king forfeit his life at the end of my sword. But first...”
Bjorn’s last words were inaudible as Kat’s vision faded and the sound of Viktor bellowing her name tore through what was left of her consciousness.
Chapter Six
“KATARINA!” Viktor roared.
Seconds became hours as the ancient warrior prayed for any sign his mate still drew breath. Blocking out the turbulent thoughts of the other Kings, Viktor focused solely on Katarina, willing her to still be alive with all the power bestowed upon him by the Father of the Gods.
She gasped.
A tidal wave of relief washed over the King. The keeper of his heart lived but was unconscious, making it impossible for him to locate her using their bond. Unable to control his need to find her, Viktor raced to the dungeons in the depth of the castle he’d called home since the late sixteenth century. Reaching the steel and concrete reinforced oak door in the farthest corner of the keep, the King pierced his finger with the dagger from his belt then carefully let a single drop of his life’s essence drop into the golden lightning bolt inlaid on the heavy oak.
