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For breathless seconds alarm flared in Jackson’s eyes, a recognition of the true situation, a glimpse past the illusion.
Then Garrett said, “I heard grouper’s on the menu tonight. Cayman style. Have you ever tried that, Jack?”
The apprehension drained away. He gently pulled her hands from his face and turned to his uncle. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Well, let me tell you. The secret is all in the sauce. The peppers and onions are mixed with…”
Cassidy couldn’t look at them any longer. She stared at her soup, stunned, a drone filling her ears as if a jet engine were howling right behind her. Slowly, she pushed back her chair and stood on legs as clumsy as stilts. Both Monica and Kambyses watched her, the former with concern, the latter with calm curiosity and darkening eyes.
Anger rattled in her voice. “Do you really think that playing these sick games is how you’re going to get all those things you want so badly? To be known? To be accepted? Even loved?” She spat the word at him and leaned forward, both hands splayed on the table. “No one in their sane mind would want to know you. They would sooner loathe you than accept you as anything other than the freak show you are. And love? You’re not worthy. I’m guessing you never were. Even all the way back in ancient fucking wherever-you-came-from!”
Silence.
The Strikers stopped spooning their soup. Monica blanched. Kambyses didn’t move. No expression on his face. Only his eyes had gone full black, aroused no doubt by her unbridled emotional outburst. Like a skittering mouse might arouse a cat. Something trivial, to use and dispatch at will.
That thought kicked her rage up one final notch. Seizing the bowl of soup, she pitched it across the table. Kambyses caught the flying dish with a lightning-fast reflex. The same could not be said for its contents, which hit him square in the face. Monica yelped when veggies and broth splashed on her shoulder. He put down the empty bowl but made no move to clean himself.
Cassidy was as close to snarling as it was possible for a human to get. “Rot in hell!”
Lowering his head, Kambyses closed his eyes—and disappeared.
29
Choices
Every night Dominique woke to dig himself out of the dune, he grew more certain that something had gone terribly wrong. Kambyses still lived. The hunters had failed.
The first night, he called Jackson’s phone and even Garrett’s. Both went to voice mail immediately. Samantha inquired about them with her stepfather, who paused long enough before hanging up to accuse her of being complicit in luring his son and brother into an ambush they were unlikely to have survived. She cried in Dominique’s arms until he took pity on her and compelled her into believing that all would be well.
Too bad he couldn’t compel himself. Every time he thought of Cassidy alone with Kambyses yet another night—and he thought of nothing else—impotent fury boiled his blood.
More rage filled him when he realized that his oblivious houseguest—Cassidy’s fickle, selfish father—had abandoned her yet again. Her absence was too long, his business too urgent, explained the note he left behind with his phone number. The man wouldn’t know how much danger his daughter was in, but his disappearance now felt too much like another betrayal of her, another piece of Cassidy slipping from Dominique’s grasp.
Serge had nothing to say about any of it, not even when Dominique tried to force the matter. Even slammed to a wall, the old pirate fidgeted and squirmed and quivered, wide-eyed, terrified, and silent. That prophesied glorious new world of night had clearly taken a detour into the unspeakable.
Powerless to do anything but wait, he took up a desperate vigil at the most likely place for Apokryphos to reappear—the last place he had seen Cassidy.
Near dawn, Bijou joined him on the sloped roof of her mansion. She hesitated at the sight of his swords, but didn’t comment as she squatted down and joined him in staring at the sea.
“Did you know he is the source of us all?” he asked without looking at her.
“I do.”
“You might have told me.”
“I told you we all belong to him, cher, but you don’t hear what you don’t want to.”
“I belong to no one.” No one but Cassidy.
Bijou sighed, and pity touched her voice. “Spare yourself the grief and heartache of this struggle, young one. Accept his will and find your peace.”
His nerves bristled, but he remained silent.
“D’accord,” she sniffed and got up, the impeccable green silk pantsuit whispering around her curves. Her face and hands gleamed in the morning gray. “But you will only have yourself to blame for your misery. You are welcome to spend the day. You will be safe here.”
When he still made no reply, she vanished. He didn’t leave to sink himself and his misery into the dune until several minutes later, when the looming sun threatened to overwhelm his newly enhanced tolerance.
The next night, the fourth following the Strikers’ disappearance, Dominique hunted, unleashing his anger on all the dealers and petty criminals he could find. He managed not to kill anyone, but he was unapologetically gluttonous with their blood and less than scrupulous about what he allowed them to remember of the encounters. Some of his prey would be in therapy for the rest of their lives. No matter. He needed all the strength he could get for whatever Kambyses had in store for him next.
