by Camilla Monk
We all sat around at a table under a beach umbrella. Once he’d settled in his chair, Ilan pinned me in place with a hard stare. “So why are we here?”
Stiles too was looking at me with guileless, expectant blue eyes. I fidgeted in my seat. Nice soft cushion by the way. “I wanted to help you guys find Gerone, like I said.”
Ilan’s brow lowered, and his gaze turned dark, drilling holes in my head. “Santa knows when you’re lying.”
Santa was very perceptive, but admitting the truth in front of Stiles was out of the question. What if the CIA didn’t know about the dome being the Board’s property? The Board might later investigate the leak and come to the conclusion that either March or Phyllis was responsible for spilling the beans. What would happen to them then?
I was noticing the ache in my arm again, and the more I tried to think, the more it hurt. I gave up. “I can’t tell you anything.” I breathed through my nose. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
Ilan attempted to glower me into submission, while, unexpectedly, Stiles’s gaze softened.
“It’s okay,” he said. “We knew before Mr. November’s assistant told you. Well, I mean, not everyone. But Erwin and I knew. And a third agent, from another directorate too, I think.”
A sudden cold sweat made the light cotton tunic cling to my back. “Um—”
Stiles went on, with a sheepish smile. “It was my car and my laptop, you know. I keep an eye on them.”
Ilan’s gaze flittered between us, waiting for the rest. Stiles dealt the finishing blow while I disintegrated on my chair. “The whole resort belongs to the Board. Once in a while, the Queen and the Towers gather here, to review sectoral performances, mostly.” When he saw us both blinking back at him, he added. “Tower is a code name for some sort of super sector manager. There’s about twenty of them—we don’t know them all.”
Ilan leaned back in his chair and let out a low whistle. “So that Crystal Whisperer guy is”—he cleared his throat, like something was stuck in there that wouldn’t go down—“he’s singlehandedly taking on the entire Board?”
“Well, more like his employer is,” Stiles corrected with a shrug. He paused to look up at the trail left by a little Cessna circling the dome. “Your uncle is a very ambitious man.”
After he placed his hands on his lap as if to signal he was through blowing our minds for now, I sat there, stupidly, staring down at my cast and wondering if Alex and Murrell had ever realized that neither of them was Stiles’s boss.
It was the other way around.
30
The Magic Flutes
Her sensual and perfect mouth played his big instrument, his voluptuous growls the soundtrack to their effervescing passion.
—Tory Fierce, Chamber Music
“So what do we do now?” I asked.
Still sitting on the terrace, Ilan and I gauged Stiles with uncertainty. He hadn’t physically changed over the past five minutes. The blond buzz cut was still the same, and his worn gray suit retained the same unfortunate cut, just a little too big. But it was kind of like when the Canadian devil appears in South Park: You know he’s not so bad, and he won’t do that much damage, mostly flying around farting fire. Still, he’s a devil nonetheless.
Stiles had pulled out his phone and finished typing something. “I updated Mr. November on our current situation.” A few seconds passed, and he looked down at an incoming message. His eyebrows jumped. “He says he’s going to kill me, and that sublevel four is well guarded, but there’s no sign of the guests yet. They are expected to arrive tonight.”
“Sublevel four, what’s that?”
“It’s a level that’s closed to the public, located at the base of the resort, underwater.”
“Is that where they meet?” Ilan asked.
“Yes,” Stiles said, before he looked down at his phone. “Mr. November will join us in front of the flutes in fifteen minutes.”
I tried to look at the screen, in vain. “The flutes?”
Ilan tipped his chin toward the mall. “I think he means those guys doing a show inside.”
Trusting Ilan’s eagle eye, Stiles and I got up to follow him back inside the resort. We strode past luxury stores and expensive restaurants toward the central area of the mall. The Poseidon, fortunately, wasn’t full. Listening to the tourists chat, I gathered that July would be the height of the season—by then, people would be bumping elbows in the pools and restaurants. Next to me, Stiles was busy scanning the crowd—literally so, I realized, when he angled his sunglasses on the bridge of his nose, and his forefinger tickled the left branch repeatedly, as if scrolling through something.
“Oh my God, can you see them naked?” I whispered in horrified awe.
“No, just their rap sheets,” Ilan commented with a smirk. “Nice toy, by the way.”
Stiles acknowledged the compliment with a duck of his head. “Thank you.”
Looking back and forth between them, I was practically drooling. “Can I . . .”
“Have fun,” he said, taking off the glasses and handing them to me.
They weren’t significantly thicker than a regular pair of Ray-Bans, but they did feel heavier in my hand, made of metal rather than plastic. I put them on, and my mouth formed an admiring O. Augmented reality at its best! Relying, I figured, on the NSA’s considerable databases, Stiles’s glasses performed multiple real-time face recognition scans and returned any relevant intel to the wearer. Such as the fact that the fat guy currently offering a chocolate cone to an unsuspecting little girl was Colin’s German pedophile!
“Stiles!” I tugged at his sleeve. “It’s him!”
Ilan’s hand moved to his back and the gun no doubt concealed under his shirt. Stiles stopped in his tracks and looked around. “Who?”
“The pedophile! The one with the ice-cream cone, between the palm trees!”
He swiftly took the glasses back from my nose to check for himself. The corners of his lips tugged down. “You two wait here.”
It wasn’t part of his mission, but Stiles did great. He just casually walked past the guy, and all of a sudden, bam! He grabbed the chocolate cone and squished it on his face. Temporarily blinded, the German staggered back toward a wooden bench. Stiles kneed him in the balls, sending him falling onto his ass, before a swift karate chop rendered him unconscious. The whole thing didn’t even take ten seconds, and the German was left sprawled on the bench, looking like a shit-faced unicorn. After he was done rescuing the little girl, Stiles smiled to her, but she ran away, crying to her parents, because kids are just ungrateful little toads really.
We resumed our quest, walking through a seemingly endless maze of tiki huts selling golf clubs or Roberto Cavalli dresses, until we reached our goal. The water wall that stood at the center of the mall’s first floor had been turned into a spectacular background for a Magic Flute–themed mall show, clearly aimed toward a young audience. Cartoonish characters inspired by the opera sang and danced on the small stage, while parents forced their kids to applaud like puppets.
The problem with mall shows is they’re often the product of a short chain of command, where bad decisions are made under pressure and without any rational counterpoint. Regardless of whether the underlying artistic concept makes sense, the organizers are given little time and budget to see the show through, and no one cares. Until it’s too late, and a couple of dudes prance around dressed up as giant soprano flutes and . . . blow each other’s beaks to the sound of an actual flutist playing in the background. I’m sure they didn’t mean it like that, but a few parents glared at the stage and left with their children. Someone would certainly get fired over this.
Anyway, the flutes didn’t matter as much as who I saw walking on the opposite platform, invisible to all in his “I love Polynesia” T-shirt, even to the magic glasses, who ought to have known better.
I gripped Stiles’s forearm, my breath suddenly short. “On the other side of the bridge, walking toward the escalator, gray T-shirt, shaven skull.�
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“Who is he?”
“He was with Alex. He’s the guy Karl recognized.” I gulped, fighting a wave of nausea at the memory of Karl’s lifeless body on that bedroom’s floor back in Croatia.
Stiles turned to Ilan. “Okay. You stay here with her and wait for Mr. November. I’m gonna follow him.”
“Are you sure?”
There was nothing tender in his baby-blue eyes as he said, “Yes.”
Ilan held me back, and Stiles vanished before I had a chance to protest. With nothing else to do until March came for us, we waited and watched the ballet of unsuspecting tourists coming and going in this trap of steel and glass. Seldom had I felt so powerless, knowing that the worst might happen, but there was nothing I could do for now. Yelling for everyone to evacuate would at best cause a panic and at worst get us arrested by security—who, by the way, had been called on the giant flutes by an angry mom. The twerking had been the last straw, and the audience was now convinced that there was some sort of double entendre to their performance, which did not serve the cause of opera in any way.
Ilan had seen the ruckus too. He ran a hand across the stubble on his chin with a sigh of consternation. “N’importe quoi, putain . . .” Fucking nonsense . . .
March wasn’t there yet, and the flutes were fighting back, with claims that art knew no limits, except those of right-wing censors and, might as well say it, Nazis. Nothing suggested that those security guys were SS, but they certainly weren’t joking: A brawny Polynesian head-butted one of the flutes, prompting the other one to denounce a case of police brutality. The second security guard said they weren’t cops anyway, and Tasered him under the discreet applause of the most conservative onlookers.
Someone brushed past me. I ignored them, my eyes glued to the pair of guards handcuffing the protesting flutes to take them away.
“Good riddance. I would have shot them,” a deep voice remarked.
I jumped out of my skin at the same time that Ilan spun on his heels. There was the answer to my earlier question: Where was Dries? Standing before us, watching misunderstood artists getting beat up.
Ilan’s hand hovered near his back, but he looked mostly nonplussed rather than about to shoot the newcomer. As for me, I was just angry. There he was, looking just fine and smug in his cream linen suit, hiding behind a pair of goddamn sunglasses. How nice to know he’d found the time to tan a bit while I broke my wrist in the woods!
“What the hell? Couldn’t you let us know . . .” I was trying to keep my voice low, but a young couple stared at us suspiciously.
Dries casually raised my cast to examine it. “Vis?” He asked.
“No, it was after that. But wait . . .”
Ilan’s hand rested on the gun at his back, and he looked ready to pounce. “I don’t care who you are. You step back. Now.”
It would have taken a lot more to impress Dries. He cocked a condescending eyebrow at Ilan. “You may not care, but you know exactly who I am. Don’t worry; I left my black helmet and light saber at home today.”
I smacked his arm with my good hand. “Very funny. How long have you known Alex was a frumentarius?”
“I was on the fence in Venice.”
In other words, basically from the start. I searched his gaze. “Erwin told me about his sister . . . He said she was in the plane. She was only sixteen. Did you know?”
His arm sneaked around my waist. “How about we go somewhere a little more private to chat?”
I slipped away. “Did you know?”
Something flickered in his eyes, perhaps the closest thing to regret he’d ever allow himself to feel. “I told you before, little Island. I live with my ghosts. All of them.”
I looked away. “How do you sleep at night?”
“Sweetie, I don’t have time for this; follow me—”
“No, March is going to look for us.”
Dries huffed. “Now don’t worry about that. Look—there he is.”
I whirled around to see a familiar silhouette in a navy blue jacket and jeans striding toward us. I have to give credit where it’s due: Nothing filtered on March’s face. His features were a perfect blank mask as he stopped in front of us. Impressive, when I could tell he was in fact utterly, epically, a century-in-the-trunk mad.
31
The Plan
Rhäpihst had ruled over the Secret Vampire Billionaires Brotherhood for over a thousand years. Now the council wanted him dead, but he wouldn’t go down without a fight. He would become the garlic to their bread, the silver spoon in their mouth!
—Forest Belle, Secret Vampire Billionaires Brotherhood #I - Sucked
Even king of brazen assholes Dries sensed the danger. A smirk still hung on his lips as March approached us, but his shoulders rolled back and his spine straightened. He was getting ready to dodge a potential punch.
It was Ilan who stepped forward though, his expression somber and apologetic. “Stiles ditched us after he spotted one of Morgan’s men in the mall. He went after him. He’s gone silent since, and”—his gaze cut to me, filling with guilt—“I am responsible for this.”
March barely acknowledged him, his gaze settling on me instead. Arctic cold. “No, Ilan, you are not.”
He moved close enough for me to smell the mints, feel the anger roaring inside him. “I had a discussion with Phyllis regarding your . . . initiative. She no longer works for me, and I’m getting you out of here immediately. You’ll wait for me at Le Sauvage as you should have, and when I return, we’ll talk.”
He scared me, and I hated that. I didn’t want to feel like that around him. I needed our bond, the one that always made me safe, warm . . . and that was nowhere to be found. Inside me, too, resentment surged, swelled into rage. It felt like I was punching a mile-thick, sky-high concrete wall with my bare hands, banging, banging desperately, so much that my fists were getting bloody . . . yet I could never break through. We still couldn’t understand each other. My right hand moved before I knew it, to push him back.
My palm met the very wall I’d been picturing—it was actually me who staggered back, while March’s own body remained rooted in place. I stared down at the marble floor and the tips of his shoes, spit shined. “You lied to me. Again. I came here for you because I was scared to lose you. And”—my voice broke—“I can’t believe you fired Phyllis.”
I registered his hand moving, reaching for me. I recoiled.
“Don’t touch me. I won’t go back to Rangiroa. I’m going to stay here and help you lure Alex and Gerone out. And when it’s over”—I pictured myself standing at the top of a building, overwhelmed by that mysterious urge to jump. L’Appel du vide, as the French call it. I swallowed the lump in my throat—“when it’s over, I don’t know if we’ll talk. Maybe . . . it might be best we just go our separate ways.”
March’s hand dropped at his side. I still couldn’t meet his eyes as he simply said, “Very well.”
Not a word was uttered while Dries led our little group away from the mall and toward the entrance of the resort’s palace. In the lobby, an interior designer had been let loose and covered the place with tropical plants and flowers, to the point where I could hardly see the walls underneath. March kept his distance; even in the elevator, he leaned against the wall opposite, as far as possible from me. I felt a little nauseous, physically ill at the realization that I’d gone too far and said words I wasn’t certain I meant . . .
Numbers flashed one after another on a screen in the wall. I felt a weight on my left shoulder. Ilan’s hand squeezed it, a tentative smile stirring his whiskers. March didn’t react, apparently now reduced to a wax statue. Dries watched us drift apart with impenetrable golden eyes, until the elevator stopped on the fifth floor, and he gestured for us to step out.
I found my voice again as he swiped a card to unlock the floor’s only door. “Sabina, she’s with you?”
He smirked. “Yes. We’ve been chatting a lot. I believe she’s warming up to me.”
We followed
him inside a lavish suite with a view of the ocean. A bucket of champagne still rested on the carpet. The king-size bed was undone, embroidered covers strewn in complete disarray. Ilan and I exchanged looks. The fragrance of a vase of orchids standing on the coffee table covered a different scent, a faint, musky note I now recognized, although my own experience in this department was meager at best. A blush crept to my cheeks.
I side-eyed Dries as he crossed the room to casually open the doors to what seemed to be the bathroom, judging by the white tile I could glimpse.
Splashing sounds and a yelp reached us.
Dries grinned like a schoolboy. “Get dressed, sweetheart. We have company.”
“I don’t even wanna know.” I murmured.
“Neither do I.” March’s voice cracked like a whip. He sent Dries a chilling glare. “Was she able to tell you anything?”
“She led me here. She believes Gerone will strike during the opera tonight. That repugnant clown intends to be part of the show.” He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “God, I hate his kind. Why does everyone need to be so showy these days? What happened to solving your problems with a bullet between the eyes?”
“Is that how you’d have wanted Anies to deal with you?” I lashed out.
“Yes, in fact,” he shot back, without missing a beat.
“You know why he sent Gerone here, right?”
The wry smile that was his self-defense mechanism was instantly in place. Of course he knew. With the Lions, Dries had started serving the Board long before March had. Surely he too had one day been “introduced” to the Queen and those Towers people who managed her empire.
Dries’s gaze drifted away from me to the windows, losing itself in the blue immensity surrounding the dome. “I’ve sometimes heard idiots say that Anies took over because he was the firstborn, and that being the younger one, my legitimate place was second to him.” A dry laugh burst from him. “As if the brotherhood ever cared for primogeniture . . . This isn’t the British crown. He just had what it took. I didn’t. I wouldn’t have been capable to pull the trigger on him. And”—he shook his head—“I never, ever thought of taking down the fucking dome.”
