Cast Into Darkness (26 page)

Kristof Makris couldn’t
be Kris Stevens. That was impossible.

Then Kate remembered the conch-shell key fob Kris had given her, glowing a bright purple in her purse right before she and Dylan were attacked. How Dmitri Makris managed to get through the security grid, how she couldn’t call Victor on her phone.

Looking like someone else was child’s play for a caster. A caster who could use his disguise to get close to her. Get her to confide in him about her family. Make her fall in love with him.

The last trusting place inside her started to fracture.

“Shouldn’t have been so cautious,” Kristof said to Victor as the amber glow around his hand spun off into the night. “Gave me a chance to get set up.”

“Shit,” Victor said. “Teleport block’s down.”

To Victor’s left, a gleam of light shone from a talisman on Dmitri Makris’s chest. He shimmered and disappeared. Victor cursed.

Gordon stretched his hands toward Kristof, prepping a kinetic punch. Victor yelled, “
Stop
. You’ll hit Kate.”

“Forget about me,” she shouted at them. “Get
him
.” She concentrated on a fire spell, tried to focus on its symbol. But while glowing flames flooded her mind, the symbol itself faded. Hell with it. She could do the other magic again—will the spell to life. She tried to concentrate, visualize the Old Bear, the long staircase. The images evaporated in the heat of her anger.

Screw it.
She jabbed the heel of her shoe into Kris, Kristof, whatever his name was. He shuddered, but his fingers flicked out a new spell, weaving the complex symbol faster that she would have thought possible.

The Hamilton casters looked to Victor for orders, but Victor didn’t move or speak. His eyes shifted from Kris to her, and something strange and unfamiliar flickered across those sharp features for a brief moment.
Fear.

Then Victor’s hand shot out, a spell forming around it. Which promptly died as Missy, a smirk flashing across her face for the briefest instant, jostled Victor’s arm, disrupting his spell.

Kristof teleported them both out before Kate could do more than draw in a disbelieving breath.

Kate felt a
cool breeze against her skin, a hint of moist sea air mixed with the scent of apple blossoms. The pain in her head had become even worse, crushing and throbbing as if her skull had shrunk two sizes too small.

Kristof still held onto her. His arms were wrapped around her, her back rubbing against his chest, her curves pressing oh-so-tight against him.
No
.

“Let go of me, you asshole.” She jerked away.

He didn’t try to stop her. She stumbled forward a few steps, catching herself before she fell. Rocks jutted beneath her feet, wet and slippery under her sandals. Seabirds cried as they dove for fish in the clear, blue ocean a few yards away.

She had no idea where Kristof had brought her.

Groves of fruit trees bloomed up a steep hill, and through their branches an imposing white estate house kept watch. Over the water, islands sparkled in the turquoise sea.

Kristof gazed at her with those deep-blue eyes of his, eyes so like and yet so unlike Kris’s. It seemed he was fixing her face in his memory, like he didn’t expect to see her again.

She took in his tanned skin, his wavy brown hair, his hard, closed face. The resemblance between Kristof Makris and Kris Stevens was superficial. Then she thought about how her memories of Kris came raging back when she’d breathed in the scent of his skin, how her heart sped up every time Kristof touched her.

Kris Stevens and Kristof Makris were definitely the same guy.

She studied him again. The corner of one eye twitched, an irregular, asynchronous beat. His mouth was tight. One hand struck his thigh repeatedly. She knew the signs. How many spells had he cast?

She took a step back, waiting a moment until the intensity in his eyes eased and his stance relaxed.

“Why? Why pretend to be Kris Stevens?” she asked. “I’m not important. I’m not…anyone.”

His head jerked up. “You know—”

“Give me some credit.” Did he think she was too dumb to figure out that he and Kris Stevens were the same person after he stood so close to her that she could feel his heart beat? Oh God. She
had
been an idiot. Her face burned. Too clueless to figure out she’d been played by a Makris spy. A spy who should never had targeted
her
.

“Why break the Rules?” she said.
Why break my heart?

“Did you think your father’s enemies wouldn’t try to get to him through you? Are you really that naive?”

“I’m a
Null
. I’m supposed to be off-limits.”

“You think that’s going to protect you? From us?”

Oh God. What had she told him? About her father, about Grayson, Victor, Hayley, Brian…the stone? He’d seen her with it, how it had possessed her. He probably figured out that it had killed Brian. She had told him so much, more than she ever should have, about her training, about how her status had changed. She kicked the stones under her feet. Had he figured out she was a caster?

She had played right into his hands. Confiding in him, taking his damn conch-shell love token, giving him and his bastard cousin the opportunity to kidnap her and trade her for the stone, as if she were a piece of property. Was that what was in his laptop bag? Did he handle the trade-off while Dmitri…

“So whose plan was it to kidnap me? Yours?”

“I was in charge of the mission.” His eye twitched.

“You let your cousin…” She jerked Dylan’s jacket closed around her.

“No.” Kristof’s eyes travelled from her torn blouse to her face. His voice softened. “I told him not to touch you. He’ll pay. I promise.”

“Do you care about me at all? Did you ever? Or is this a game to you, a job? Sleep with Hamilton’s daughter, spy on her for Papa, get a prize?”

“Kate,” he said. “Kate…” His hand touched her cheek. He let it fall and stepped away from her. His voice went harsh. The operative was back. “I’m Kristof Makris. Not Kris Stevens. I did my job, a job I’m good at. Getting inside my enemies heads, finding out how they tick. You were just a mission.” He smiled at her, a self-satisfied smile so unlike Kris’s. “A really pleasant mission until the end, I have to say.”

She slapped him, hard.

“Feel better?” he asked.

“I’ll feel better when I’m home, I know the stone is safe, and I can focus on grinding your pathetic little family’s empire into dust.”
I should stop. Saying more is really bad idea. But I don’t care.
“You think I’m naive? Maybe I was. But that’s over. I’m done with sitting out. As of now, I’m in the Game.”

His eyes widened, for a moment, then they closed like the shutter of a camera.

“Quite a speech. But you’re on the Makris estate, inside our security grid. You aren’t going home until we let you.”

Her hand lashed out at him again. He stopped her before she’d swung halfway to his face. The shock jolted her already sore arm. Heat rushed through her body, burning her skin and making her muscles tremble.

She would not be his captive, held hostage against her father. There had to be some way out of this.

She didn’t know how to teleport. Oh, she knew the theory. Visualize your destination, fix it in your mind and hold it steady, then merge the symbol for the spell over the picture of where you want to go and tap out the spell. Sounded simple enough. But according to her uncle, not so easy. Make a mistake and she could materialize inside a wall. Or deep in the earth.

But even if she could teleport, she didn’t know how to break a teleport block. An operative learned to break a block, or a security specialist like Victor. Not a student like her.

But there might be another way.

Kate turned around, head down. Let him think she’d given up. She walked a few steps forward on the rocky ground. The less Kristof saw her do, the better. She blocked out the sea, the cries of the gulls, the pain in her head, her rib cage, everything except the power deep inside her.

Running down the staircase in her mind, she threw open the doors that held the power back. The vastness inside lunged toward her. It promised her so many things, if only she would let it out.

Later. I’ll deal with it later.
Now, she wanted one thing. To leave.

She touched the dark power and sent her magic out. It searched the Makris’s security grid for the teleport block.
There
. The violet strands of the block entwined themselves all around the island, from the rocky shores of the beach to the top of the lonely white estate that capped the hill. Break a few strands, squeeze through the hole she’d made, and she’d be home.

Break
, she willed.

The strands snapped as if they were guitar strings plucked by a too-rough hand. Two seabirds, fish in their beaks, plunged from the air and hit the ground, their lifeless bodies breaking on the rocks.
Now. Quickly.
Before he saw his spell had broken and fixed it.

She searched out the remnants of the teleport spell he’d used to bring them here. There, glowing bright orange in her magesight, the last few motes of energy swirling listlessly against the rocks.

She dipped down into that well of darkness again and threw its power into the remains of the teleport spell.

Home
. She envisioned the foyer at their Hamptons estate, the black-and-white checkerboard pattern for incoming teleports, the little Queen Anne table, always topped with fresh flowers, the smell of freshly baked cookies from the kitchen. Home.

The sky brightened with a flash of light. A figure darted into view just inside the range of Kate’s vision. A rush of energy hit her, a burst of white light that surrounded her and caused her vision to blur and waves of dizziness to wash over her. Her teleport spell disintegrated, losing all her connection with the feel of home. The orange motes of the teleport spell fizzled and died.

Her head spun. A young woman only a few years older than Kate, with long brown hair trailing down the back of her green dress, strode toward her, light blazing from her outstretched hand.
Is that Melina Makris? Kristof’s sister?

Kristof said something in Greek to his sister, then took a step toward Kate.

The woman’s eyes darkened, and she tapped out another spell. Before Kate could even think of willing a spell into existence, the pain in her head flared into an exquisite agony as a tight band of pressure flexed around her skull. The sky, the sea, the cries of the gulls, all faded into blackness. She fell to the ground and knew nothing more.

“Why? I had
her under control. What made you—” Kristof rushed toward Kate.

“You had nothing under control,” Melina said. “She was seconds away from teleporting out.”

“She can’t. She’s a Null.” He bent down to check Kate’s pulse.

“I think she’s a little more than that. Your girlfriend broke our teleport block, using a spell I’ve never seen before. The security grid alerted me. When I got here, she had prepped a teleport spell.”

“That’s impossible.”

Melina regarded him with cool green eyes. “That’s what happened.” Her gaze flicked to the laptop bags. “I see you got the stone.” Her tone went cold.

Damn
. He’d blown off their plan to hijack the stone so that he could save Kate from Dmitri. A waste of time—he could have left the rescue to her own people. Then he’d wrecked his plans further by coming home instead of taking Kate and the stone someplace secure, like his mother’s old house in Istanbul.

Returning home while under fire was a reflex drilled into him since childhood—the Makris estate had close to invincible shields. After casting so many spells, his paranoia about the Hamiltons had gotten the better of him.
Damn, damn.

“We can still—” he began.

His father’s voice, from behind him. “I see you carried out the mission, my son.”

Kristof turned around slowly. His father stood on the beach, no bodyguards, only his ever-present shield protecting him, holding out his hand.

I could strike now. I have a chance, a small one.

He glanced at Melina. The brief shake of her head told him everything. He unslung the laptop bag from around his chest, handing it to his father. “Of course. That’s my job.”

I hope you choke on it, monster.

His father took the case containing the stone from the bag, then tossed the bag at Kristof’s feet. “We’ll discuss the mission later.” He nodded toward Kate. “Lock her up, Melina. With caster bonds.”

Kristof started. How did he know about Kate?

“Papa—”

His father stopped and turned his deep-pitted eyes on Kristof. “What?”

“We have the stone. We don’t need Kate. You should return her—”

“If your brain wasn’t so addled by the girl, you’d realize that she is far more than she appears. Perhaps the stone had something to do with making her a caster or perhaps Hamilton has been lying about her Null status all along. Until your sister figures out the answer, I’m not giving her back.”

“Holding her is against the Rules. Hell, you’re begging the Hamiltons to throw everything they have at us.”

“You brought her here. Deal with them.” His father turned and strode up the stone steps to the estate house.

When his father’s form had disappeared over the rise, Kristof yanked the remains of the monitor talisman from his shirt and dashed its broken form against the rocks.

Melina looked up from Kate’s unconscious body and frowned.

“We need to talk,” he said.

“Yes,” she replied. But her eyes said something more. They said he wouldn’t enjoy that conversation.

Kristof trudged up the wooden steps set into the hillside to the stone courtyard behind his father’s estate house. He didn’t have much time before his father got tired of admiring the stone and summoned him for a report. Minutes, perhaps. Not enough time to consider all the implications of Kate being a caster.

But he had an eternity to consider his monumental screwups. Bringing the stone with him instead of carrying out his and Melina’s plan. Grabbing Kate and teleporting home, like a first-time operative too tweaked to consider a better alternative. A strategic retreat may have been his only option, but he’d picked the worse possible location.