TWENTY-FOUR
THE BLUE DANUBE
My tears have dried, and I’ve retreated as far as possible from Stiles in the back seat, but there’s nowhere to escape. With a sigh, he presses a button in the arm of his door, and a tinted privacy screen slides up. Now it’s just the two us. I shudder.
His tongue clicks, the sound unnervingly loud in the silence. “Island, when did you stop taking your treatment?”
I press my forehead against the window. We’re driving away from Fetești-Gară and toward the Danube, across a white countryside that blends with the ashen sky like watercolor. I wrench my hands on my lap. “What are you going to do to March?”
“Me? Nothing. But I’m afraid Anies is going to make an example of Mr. November.”
My gaze settles on the mirror outside, where I can see the Hummer following us. My stomach heaves at the idea that March is in there with that sick piece of shit Morgan . . . “Why do you keep calling him that? Is that his real name?”
“No. Just a nickname.” He leans back in the seat, crossing his arms. “Island, you didn’t answer me. When did you stop taking your meds?”
“About a week ago,” I admit.
“Thought so. Why? What happened that made you decide that?”
My head snaps up, sudden anger flaring in my veins, as if he’d branded me. “Do you even need to ask? I trusted you, and you drugged me . . . Every. Fucking. Day! You stole my life. You took everything!”
“I obeyed Anies’s orders.”
I ball my fists, trembling with a mixture of pain and rage. “So you and I could build the future together?”
He tilts his head, studying me with curiosity. “Do you want to? I thought you’d chosen Mr. November for that . . .”
“You people are all insane . . . How could you ever think—”
“Spare me that.” His lips curl up, and the mask falls—gone is the sympathetic smile, replaced by a smirk that suits him much better. “We both know you’d have given in eventually if Dries and Mr. November hadn’t come back from the dead.” His expression softens again as he summons the old Stiles back. “I was growing on you, wasn’t I?”
“No! I never thought of you like that, and when Anies started hinting that’s what he expected . . . all I wanted was to get away from you.”
“You’re breaking my heart.” He chuckles. “But do you understand what Anies really needs? He wasn’t playing matchmaker for fun, you know.”
“I started thinking about it after I learned Dries was my father. Anies . . . he’s old and ill, and he doesn’t have children, but he wants to leave some sort of . . . dynasty. And Dries’s genes were good enough for that, right?”
Stiles ducks his head in confirmation. “Correct. He’s hoping to start a hereditary tradition.”
“A bloodline,” I murmur.
“He thinks it’s the only way to avoid another succession war.”
I’m mentally picturing the greenish, milky absinthe sloshing in a heavy crystal glass. The peace on Anies’s features every time it took over his mind and body. My eyes widen in realization. “He’s dying.”
Stiles shrugs. “Aren’t we all? But yes, he’s running out of time, and there are things he wants to achieve before he’s gone.”
“Odysseus?”
One of his eyebrows cocks in surprise. “There’s that. And there’s you. Believe it or not, I think you actually matter more than Odysseus to him.”
I gave you everything I couldn’t give your mother, Island . . .
Anies’s words take their full meaning as they ring again in my ears. I am my mother’s ghost, and she’s alive in my heart, my blood, even though I’ve lost my memories of her. I wonder if he ever saw me at all, or if it’s been her all along in his sick mind. “Was it what he wanted to do with my mother? Did he want to cage her like that? Is that why”—my voice falters and I have to force the words out—“is that why he killed her?”
Stiles gazes through the window at the faint outline of a truss bridge over the Danube, emerging from the mist ahead of us. “I’ve been at his side for a long time, but there are things even I don’t know. I think he never got over your mother’s rejection though.”
“She rejected him . . . and he murdered her,” I manage through gritted teeth, feeling a surge of hate electrify my body.
Stiles shakes his head with a sigh. “These things are always complicated . . . Here, I brought something for you.” He produces a small plastic bag from his pocket, which he hands me. “You forgot it in Constanta. I thought you might want it back.”
My heart skips a beat. Covered in dried blood is the butterfly in amber Anies gave me. I left it in Viktor’s office, when I changed for the scan . . . I breathe fast through my nose, clutching the red-stained plastic. “W-what happened to Viktor?”
He winces. “Let’s just say he won’t be able to operate on you. I’m really sorry about that, Island.”
I slip the packet into the breast pocket of March’s blazer with a trembling hand and sit still, straight. Viktor, who tried to help us, is dead.
Next to me, Stiles checks his watch, his gaze still locked on the steel beams supporting the bridge we’re now crossing. “Island, fasten your seat belt.”
I look at him in confusion. He’s stopped smiling, his eyes focused and unblinking.
The muscles tighten in his jaw, rippling under his skin. “It’s an order.”
There’s a coldness and an authority in his voice I don’t think I’ve heard before. My hands jerk and automatically reach for my seat belt. I manage to secure it in spite of a case of terminal jitters. I see Stiles reach inside his coat—for a gun?—and it takes me another whole second to notice the shadow growing in the distance, speeding on the Danube and tearing through the layers of viscous fog.
Under the sedan’s wheels, a low rumble shakes the bridge. All I can do is watch, petrified, as a dark shape storms toward us in a massive cloud of water. Less than a hundred yards from the bridge is something I can neither clearly see nor identify. That long, aerodynamic body could be a jumbo jet, except I don’t think I’ve ever seen six . . . no . . . eight engines sitting atop the head of any aircraft. The wings are way too short for that thing to possibly take off, like they got chopped in half . . . and the dual tail? It must be, what . . . a hundred feet wide? What the ever-loving deuce?
Unfazed, Stiles is removing his coat. He shakes his head. “Your father was never subtle.”
Dries? But . . . how? All I can process at the moment is that this giant jet-like thing that doesn’t fly isn’t going to stop, and it’s headed straight for us: now would be a good time to start panicking. Panting erratically, I grip my seat belt and the door handle as the sedan takes a powerful acceleration, likely to avoid impact. But the unidentified gliding object doesn’t hit the bridge; rather, it barrels underneath in a deafening roar. For a moment, the car is shaking so badly I’m sure the entire structure must be collapsing. Yet the road is still here, and we drift through a titanic downpour, like a giant, surreal car wash. Waves crash against the car’s windows, engulfing the road, as the monster slows down under the bridge. I can practically feel my skull buzzing from the continuous roar of its engines.
When the sedan spins to a stop, Stiles grips my shoulder, steadying me before I smash my head against the window. He too has fastened his seat belt. A dry laugh shakes his shoulders. “Hold on. I’m afraid we’re only getting started.”
Which is exactly why I’m craning my neck and straining desperately against my seat belt to see the Hummer that took March. A black blur drifts past us, hits the railing and topples dangerously before coming to a stop. “March! He’s in there, I have to—”
Stiles flattens his hand over my chest roughly, blocking my movements. “Don’t worry about Mr. November . . . his fairy godmother watches over him.”
What the hell does he mean by that? Before I can ask, I register two loud shots, like a cannon just got fired. Through Stiles’s window, I see several projectiles rise in the air with a hissing sound, connected to some sort of metal rope. They bite into the side of our car and the stranded Hummer’s with a clanking sound. Grappling hooks? Oh shit . . . Around us, the bridge’s massive steel beams rattle as the mystery machine’s engines pick up, soon enveloping us again in a storm of vaporized water. I pick up the ominous moan of metal straining under pressure, and that’s when I feel like we’re . . . moving. Slowly, inexorably, we’re getting dragged toward the railing by a powerful pull.
This isn’t really happening.
Against my better judgment, I grip Stiles’s forearm, clutch it until my nails dig into his skin through his jacket. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! What are they doing?”
Already resting precariously against the rusty and damaged railing, the Hummer topples first: I scream March’s name, witnessing, powerless as the vehicle takes a fifty-foot plunge into the icy waters of the Danube.
“Calm down!” Stiles shouts—the last thing I hear before the sedan hits the railing hard. There are a couple of excruciating seconds during which the car teeters and tilts, tilts, until I see the steel beams above us, then the clouds, and with a rush of horror, I know it’s over; I feel the railing give way with an earsplitting creak, and we go down. I’m weightless, conscious of the fall until we hit the water, and it’s like my body shatters, pain erupting from all sides. My shoulder and knee hit the door hard while my head slams against the headrest.
Through my daze, I see greenish water splash on the windows while the car rocks and tilts downward, sinking in the river, it seems. Through my panicked daze, I’m vaguely conscious of Stiles undoing my seat belt, of his voice. “You’re gonna be fine . . .”
No I’m not! He’s a shadow at the edge of my vision, and I reach for him as he seems to drift away . . . before I become aware of water rushing in. Nothing could have prepared me for the shock of being immersed in this icy tomb. Air whizzes out of my lungs, I gasp for oxygen, and by the time the ring of ice clamps down around my neck, I’m disconnected from my body, disoriented. My legs jerk uselessly, perhaps in an attempt to swim, but I can’t.
With a final desperate gulp of air, I go under. In the murky water, I glimpse shadows undulating away from the car—swimming. My brain wants to, urges me to paddle, move, do anything, but I’m struggling in icy treacle, my muscles petrified by the cold. Even reaching the door handle seems impossible. I strive toward it uselessly, but I’m not the one to open it. Hands clasp around my shoulders, someone snakes an arm around my torso, and I’m being hauled out of the car.
I recognize March’s black turtleneck right before asphyxia kicks in. I hold on to him and fight the urge to breathe, as hard as I can, until my lungs betray me, and I inhale pure ice. Spasms shake my body as I start drowning, but all of a sudden, the cold becomes a prickle on my face, an icy wind biting my skin. My head is out of the water, and I cough until I’m on the verge of throwing up. March is little more than a shivering blur, but I feel his chin against my cheek, and I can’t believe I’m still alive.
Splashing sounds alert me to the presence of several men around us. Most are swimming away, crawling toward the shore. Amid the chaos, I glimpse an eye patch, and Morgan’s face, distorted with rage. Renewed chills threaten to make me suffocate when I hear March’s pant in my ear. “Hold on tight.”
Am I not? I’m not sure; my arms are so numb. I’m trying to squeeze him, but maybe I’m slipping away. I don’t get what’s happening until I see his fist, closed around a grappling hook similar to the ones that dragged us into the river in the first place. Suddenly, we’re gliding so fast I’m sure it’s not March swimming like that. I mean, he’s amazing, but he’s not a dolphin. Or a speedboat. My eyes flutter shut, choosing to close the curtain on reality and replace it with bright, colorful spots and dolphins, dolphins everywhere.
I think I’ve passed out.
•••
“For God’s sake, does he need to be under the blanket too? He looked fine! A little swim never killed anyone.” That hushed growl . . . it’s Dries, bitching to someone from behind a door.
I’m warm. Almost too much, in fact: there’s a burning ache in my extremities. My head hurts too; a lingering headache throbs under my temples. As I come to my senses, a single thought boomerangs in my skull. March . . . is he okay? My rising pulse eases at the feeling of hot skin against mine and the best chest hair in the entire universe tickling my shoulder blades. His breath fans over my cheek; we’re spooning on a narrow mattress under something weightless and shiny that hurts my eyeballs and my brain when I crack an eye open. I immediately screw it shut. No light for now. I stir painfully while March nuzzles my hair and readjusts the thermal blanket over us. “Take it slow, biscuit . . . You’re safe.”
I roll to face him with a wince. Braving the wretched glare, I make another attempt at opening my eyes to examine his face. I stroke his cheeks, the soft bristles on his temples. There’re bruises on his forehead, at the corner of his mouth, a shiner under his left eye . . . all eclipsed by that warm, boyish smile I realize I’ve come to need like oxygen. I feel his dimples crease under my fingertips, and I can’t help but grin too. “Let’s agree to bring floaties next time,” I rasp.
His smile falters. “Island, I’m sorry I—”
I know what’s coming next; I press my lips to his to silence his apology, tasting him. If I never learn anything else in my life, at least I can say I understand the meaning of carpe diem better than most people ever will. And true to that motto, I intend to make the most of each passing second, savor them while I can . . .
I let March pull me closer, noticing for the first time that we’re almost naked, our underwear the last shred of propriety standing between us. I do experience a fleeting moment of embarrassment, but it’s little more than an ingrained reflex. In truth, nothing has ever felt so good, so right as his body stretching atop mine. The kiss grows feverish, exploratory, and I don’t miss the way his hands stroke my sides, massage me, eager for more . . . but ultimately shy. He gives one last tug to my lower lip. “Biscuit, I really wish we could keep going but—”
“We’re not alone,” I complete with a sigh, taking in my surroundings for the first time. The continuous hum in the background suggests a plane, and indeed, we’re in a small cabin, entirely lined with a dull combo of gray plastic and carpet. Hold on . . . Through a pair of round windows on the wall, I glimpse stormy weather muddying the sea horizon. So that thing I saw on the river was a boat after all? I sit up, fighting the shivers coursing across my skin when cool air insinuates itself under the thermal blanket. “Dries . . . I heard his voice. He’s here? What happened?”
March presses a kiss to my shoulder. “A lot. First let’s find you something to wear and a hot drink.”