DARK FAÏZ Book 3: Dawn never keeps its promises

by Sandra L. Kiss

  "You are?" asked Faïz in an unpleasant voice.

  "And you are?" Elijah replied dryly, and didn't hesitate to force his way inside the villa.

  "It's Elijah, Georgia's uncle," replied Asarys, who stood in the middle of the stairs with Ray behind her.

  It was with a grunt that the man walked to the living room where Lily still was, without paying attention to the people he was leaving behind. He immediately noticed the wet eyes of the latter who tried as best as she could to hide them.

  "Wherever he goes, he can't help but hurt others," he said, "I'm sorry to see this woman so beautiful and usually so fulfilled, in this state."

  "I ask you to leave the premises," ordered Faïz, annoyed by the attitude of this invasive guest, "You're nobody's uncle!"

  Elijah slowly turned around to face the young man with his eyes. Gathered in the living room, Lexy and his friends held their breath and didn't dare to say a word in the face of this situation that was slipping from their grasp.

  "I'll leave with my princess. There's no way she'll spend more time with someone like you!"

  Faïz stepped forward threateningly towards this man who was an affront to him. Ray succeeded in interposing himself in time between the two and added, "Eli's been a big part of Georgia's life since her birth. His protective instincts often take over, you can't blame him."

  The young man squinted his eyes into two narrow slits, ready to jump at his rival's throat. His pulse beat so strong that it seemed to resonate in his chest. Fortunately, Ray's words of succeeded in calming him a little. He looked at Elijah with disdain before walking away from him with clenched fists.

  "My daughter stays with me! And this is non-negotiable," he barked as he looked at everyone in the room.

  "My daughter?" repeated Elijah, astonished when he heard these words. "Do you hear that, Condor? He thinks he can just appear into the life of our princess and assume the role of father without being accountable to anyone!"

  His words hung in the air. Faïz, with a small gesture of retreat, frowned, thinking he had misheard the words of his interlocutor.

  "Wait, am I dreaming or are you talking to someone who doesn't exist?"

  "Condor exists! Much more than your crazy myths and legends. He's with us right now, and believe me, he doesn't like you very much either."

  Faïz turned towards his mother who immediately looked away to one of the paintings on the wall, suddenly very interested in the color of this painting. His eyes then fell on Lexy, busy at that moment contemplating her nails while nervously twisting her mouth and then on Ray, who shook his head, embarrassed, eyes glued to the ground.

  "Can someone explain this to me? What the hell is this crap again?" exploded the impatient young man.

  Asarys advanced timidly towards Faïz while playing with his fingers then and chimed in, "Condor is Elijah's imaginary friend!"

  6

  At the end of the morning, the three of us, Cait, Jul and I, were sitting around the small round table in my hospital room.

  "You can't get that Front page out tomorrow!" I exclaimed, "Jul, with this one, you're not only endangering national security, you're endangering international security as well."

  My colleague put his head in his hands, undecided about the choice he had to make.

  He quickly recovered by pointing at the documents I had in my hands, "I've made a lot of progress on this in the last three weeks while you were in the hospital. The top-secret file I got from someone close to the government shows the state of emergency in the country. It's going to hit hard! When will it hit? I don't know yet."

  Panicked that Jul would find out the truth about the threat to our world and put his life in danger, I decided to buy some time:

  "Leave all this to me," I sighed, hoping to dissipate the uneasiness between us, "I'm going to go through all these documents and read your article again. Then I'll give my approval for printing."

  Jul gave me a suspicious look. He pinched his lips and shook his head as he took the file from my hands.

  Cait, embarrassed by this situation and our disagreement, preferred to remain silent, "I can't! It's confidential."

  "What?" I wanted to scream, "You're gonna drop a bomb on the world with your damn article. Why don't you let me see the notes from your investigation so I can give you my opinion? We've always worked like this until now."

  "I can't tell you anymore than that. It's my investigation, it's my subject."

  "Jul," intervened our colleague, who decided to come out of her silence. "We're a team. You can't sideline us. I don't recognize you here."

  He sighed deeply and began to put the documents away in his black leather briefcase before my desperate eyes, "Not this time I'm sorry. I am, as is Zoe, editor in chief. I don't need your consent to publish or not publish an article in the Los Angeles Times."

  He got up from his chair, looking serious, and added before he left us, "Zoe, you should have agreed to investigate this case with me from the beginning instead of staying in your comfort zone. There's no way any other paper's gonna take over this front page. I've worked too hard to back down."

  Seeing my distress, Cait tried to reassure me:

  "Let me talk to him. Jul is like that. He'll go for it, but our opinions matter to him."

  I nodded, still confused by this meeting that went in the wrong direction. Just as she was gathering her things to leave me too, the door to my room opened. I hoped my friend would reappear to tell me that he had come to his senses, but it was Faïz who entered the room.

  "Oh, my God!" murmured my colleague, who, in surprise, dropped some files on the floor.

  Without wasting any time, I bent down to help her pick them up.

  "It's Faïz... Ma... Mattew," Cait whispered, her cheeks burning. "He's here, in your room."

  "Yes. He came to take me home," I said in a neutral and unenthusiastic voice before standing up.

  Confused, Cait nodded, but Faïz barely gave it back to her. She left the room, completely overwhelmed by the man's physique. I couldn't help but look up to the sky, then offered him a small smile in turn before returning to my bed where my bag had been placed. I could feel his gaze and his maniacal concentration weighing on me. He had come to see me every day during my stay at the hospital, but he always decided to leave before my eyelids opened. Only the fragments of his perfume in the air were evidence of his presence. His reaction was legitimate after what he had learned.

  "Faïz?" I called him in a calm voice, "Sit down for a moment, please."

  My hand was placed on the bed to invite him to sit on it. The latter, with a cold expression, remained silent for a moment and then moved closer, preferring to stand facing me. Without losing my motivation, I decided to face reality:

  "I'm really sorry," I said in a sincere voice.

  "What for?"

  His jaw tightened and his eyes, as intractable as night, shot me on the spot.

  "I never wanted anyone else to die instead of William, not even you. I never should have said those words the other day at your house."

  I lowered my head, as his gaze was so hard to bear, and then added in a low voice:

  "And I'm sorry I kept Georgia from you. I can only imagine how much you must hate me. When you left me, that time was... you can't even imagine."

  I raised my face when I noticed that Faïz was staring at me without saying a word. I was ready to endure the flood of reproaches that didn't come, to my greatest surprise. He plunged his hand into the inside pocket of his jacket where he grabbed a carefully folded paper. He hesitated for a moment to take it out, and then finally changed his mind.

  "What is it?" I asked, suspiciously.

  "Nothing!" he retorted coldly. "Finish gathering your things, we must go to the Mansion of the Seventh Earth."

  I hurried to pack my bag to leave this room where I had to fight against the fever the first week of my hospitalization, but also against my nightmares, because Pavel's face had haunted me every night since then. Not being
contagious for several days now, I was looking forward to going back to the outside world and Georgia.

  After closing my bag, Faïz put the necklace with the jewel and the pearls of Eros on the bed. Shocked, I took it delicately in my hand.

  "It broke during your altercation with Pavel. The beads were scattered all over the road. I had it repaired."

  "Thank you," I whispered, touched by the attention.

  The first few kilometers in the Mercedes were spent in religious silence. I took the opportunity to quickly check my father's e-mails and my messages. Lexy told me that everyone had already arrived at the mansion and was waiting for us. I was happy to see the girls again. I'd even missed Lily and Charles. I bit my lip as I suddenly thought of the impact of Georgia's revelation to their son. My God, I hadn't been there to protect them from Faïz's cataclysmic fury. I couldn't imagine the state of their heated exchange after all that.

  "You... you stayed in L.A.?" I asked shyly.

  Looking at the road, Faïz cracked his neck on one side and then on the other and rolled up his lips in an evil grin, which immediately made me regret my words.

  "What did you think? That I would abandon my daughter after I just met her?"

  His restrained tone showed how hard he tried to contain his anger. I looked up to restrain myself from crying before I answered him.

  "OK, you hate me, and you're in your rights. I should have done things differently."

  My voice was rising and I couldn't hold it back.

  "I didn't want you to come back out of obligation!" I continued. "I wanted to heal so I could forget you. Why don't you try to understand that I too had the right to move on with my life? It's you who left me, it's you who wasn't able to love me!"

  My sight became blurred and my eyes filled with tears. Without me expecting it, Faïz suddenly turned the steering wheel, making us leave the deserted road and stopped the car dead in its tracks. Fortunately, my seat belt prevented me from flying through the windshield, even though the impact woke up a sharp pain due to my broken ribs. Burning with rage, he grabbed the back of my neck with his hand and pulled me towards him.

  "I didn't leave you because I didn't love you. I left you because I loved you too much!"

  His face, inches away from mine, paralyzed me with fear. His features, full of fury, described all the torments that filled his obscure eyes. My breath stopped. Entrenched in my intimate hell, I measured at that moment the intensity of his suffering.

  "You have revealed the best, but also the worst of me," he continued in a sour voice, his eyes glowing. "On Eros, I saw doubt in your eyes when I told you about my departure for New York. You doubted us, you doubted the future you wanted with me! In that moment I knew and I wasn't mistaken. "

  Faïz's eyelids wrinkled as he spoke at full speed.

  "The feelings you had for me changed over weeks, months and years, until they finally turned to dust. While my love for you has remained steadfast and will always be, even when I die. Living without you has been the most horrible torture and nothing on this Earth justifies this endless abyss. What can you say to that?"

  His jerky, angry breath was burning my skin. His lips so close to mine were unsettling me, almost making me forget the pain of his fingers embedded in my skin.

  "I... I say that you only wanted to see what you wanted," I whispered, choking on my words.

  "But in the end, you would have chosen him. Wouldn't you?"

  I opened my mouth, but immediately closed it again without knowing what to say at that moment. Faïz had just exposed a truth that I had perhaps ignored until now. His hand still held me firmly. Then he dipped his nose in my hair and took a deep breath. This violent gesture, full of despair, broke the last pieces of my heart. Suddenly he released me without saying anything more and moved back to his seat. The Mercedes started again like a burst of wind. The gleaming engine broke the deep silence that had once again settled between us.

  When we got to the white room, everyone turned around. Julio couldn't hide the resentment he felt against Faïz. Looking furious, he looked away so as not to have to face him. Lexy took a quick look at Asarys who did the same. They seemed to suspect something at the sight of my condition, yet I hadn't yet told them about the lively exchange between Faïz and me in the car a few moments earlier. A little further back, Officer Martinez and Inspector Barthey were examining a map with David and Ray. Faïz left immediately to see what was going on, while I joined the other group.

  Asarys was the first to hug me, followed by Lexy.

  "We were so afraid for you, Zoe," she whispered to me, "I'm glad to see you look better. I wish I'd come to see you more often, but the doctors were very strict about visits."

  "I know," I replied with a smile, "I've missed you."

  "Where's Georgia?" Julio asked me before dipping his lips in his drink.

  "With Lily. Thank you for taking care of Georgia during my stay at the hospital."

  Lexy looked disappointed, "Faïz spent most of his time with her. We haven't seen much of her.”

  "She is eager to see you again," Asarys looked widely at her friend, "She missed you so much."

  My gaze rose above her shoulder. Faïz was watching me attentively with a particular expression on his face as he exchanged information with the other team. He had opened his heart to me so brutally that I no longer knew where I stood. My feelings were a mixture of regret and bitterness, animosity and love. One step separated these conflicting emotions, and I was lost in all of this.

  I closed my eyes to find my thoughts and asked, "I haven't heard from Elijah. How's he doing? I'm worried."

  Lexy and Asarys, uncomfortable, seemed to throw the ball back and forth with small gestures.

  "Faïz forbade your friend to come in the villa and see Georgia," Julio ended up saying in an unsympathetic tone.

  This revelation froze me in place. My anger spread throughout my body and then rose like a burning tingling at the top of my skull.

  "Where is he?"

  My voice, too calm, betrayed my impatience to settle this matter with the man who was a little further away, in front of me.

  "He went home... well, I mean, out, where he likes to stay," said Lexy.

  I closed my eyes and ran my hands over my face.

  "We must find him," I said worriedly. "The streets of L.A. aren't too safe anymore. We're in danger."

  David's group came towards us, forcing me to keep quiet. Barthey cleared his throat before speaking:

  "Glad to see you're feeling better, Zoe. As far as our investigation is concerned, intelligence services have intercepted several phone calls indicating that attacks are being prepared across the country and beyond our borders."

  "Do you think they'll take place on the same day? At the same time?" asked Julio.

  "Certainly," replied Martinez.

  "Do we have any leads on where the most likely targets are?" said Asarys.

  Faïz took out a sheet of paper from the file he was holding in his hands. I recognized the map of Los Angeles where William had listed the sensitive sites there.

  "We need to dig in that direction," he says. "Based on the attack on Zoe, we should also not rule out a major threat to global health. Indeed, nuclear attacks wouldn't be the only weapon of the occult masters."

  "The government is currently looking at different emergency situations to be put in place," Martinez continued. "Strict lockdown is being considered."

  "We mustn't wait until it's too late," Barthey murmured without much hope, "The world isn't ready for this kind of threat. They must be stopped before a global pandemic spreads."

  Faïz suddenly stood up, his eyes turned towards the entrance of the room. I perceived the tension that emanated from him and followed his gaze. Suddenly, footsteps resonated within the walls of the mansion and seemed to come closer to us. As the seconds stretched, the tension rose. Faïz and Julio placed themselves in front of us, ready to protect us in case of an assault. It was then that a young woman, with sil
ver hair and a brush cut, military style, appeared. She was dressed in a short black dress, very tight, beautiful to damn a Saint. Her large gray eyes on her pale face contrasted with the matt black that colored her lips.

  Martinez put a hand on Julio's shoulder, "It's all right, our people are in touch with her. This is Masha Bukovski."

  We eased the pressure with questioning looks. The memory of that name, written at the bottom of William's plan, came back to me.

  "Damn it, why didn't you tell me about her?" cried Faïz, turning to Barthey.

  "Her? You may speak to me directly, Mr. Mattew."

  The young woman exuded an aura of quite strong character's nobility and a self-confidence beyond reproach, which wasn't enough to destabilize Faïz who was advancing towards her by thundering her with his darkest gaze.

  "I think you went to the wrong little party, miss," he said severely.

  Masha held up her interlocutor's gaze with a cheeky grin on the corner of her lips.

  Then, with her index finger, she came slowly to caress Faïz's cheek before adding, "It's crazy, you're even more attractive in person."

  Asarys and Lexy suddenly turned to me, apprehensive of my reaction, but I shrugged my shoulders in shock, as did the rest of the group as we watched the scene unfold before our eyes. Faïz cleared his face.

  "Martinez, Karl, please escort the lady to the exit and next time consult me before inviting anyone!"

  The moment he turned his back, she called out to him sharply, "I'm Masha Bukovski."

  "Great, that will change my life!" cried Faïz who didn't bother to turn around.

  "Pavel Bukovski's daughter."

  A shudder ran through my whole body. The memory of this terrifying, macabre-looking man exploded in my face. Faïz went back on his steps. His shirt, the sleeves rolled up, revealed forearms contracted to the extreme.