Poisoned Kisses (21 page)

R
enata woke to the piercing cries of seabirds and the desolate scent of salt water. Opening her eyes, she found herself in a canopied bed, propped up on downy pillows and nestled beneath a cool white comforter. Pulling away the canopy netting, she took in the simple surroundings of a beach house. Shuttered doors were thrown open to allow a breeze and beyond them stretched a stone patio upon which her captor appeared to be taking his morning coffee.

Damon—who was bent over a newspaper—was wearing a linen shirt open at the collar. The stark white fabric set off his tan and made him look like a bronzed god. Of course, she remembered that Damon thought he actually was some kind of god. At least he dressed the part.

“Come have breakfast, Renata,” he said before she could find an avenue of escape. So, in her rumpled green dress, Renata padded towards him on bare feet, squinting in the sunlight. He motioned her towards the bowl of fruit on the table and said, “Make yourself comfortable.”

“I’d be more comfortable if you took me home,” Renata replied, tucking errant curls behind her ears and folding her arms in front of herself like an armor breastplate. “When the police catch you, you can say goodbye to this cushy lifestyle, you know. They don’t have breakfast service in prison.”

He seemed amused by her hostility. Then, leaning back into the patio chair, he studied her. “Ah, Renata, that presumes that the police could catch me. It presumes your kidnapping would ever go to trial. It even presumes that you’d want to see me brought to justice, instead of taking revenge yourself.”

Something about his words took a vague and disturbing shape, much the same way dark outlines of her sculptures formed in her mind before she had even carved them free of the stone. Something about what he’d said made her bitter, angry…furious. “I know from personal experience that there’s no justice in this world.”

“Perhaps there would be justice if people were brave enough to tell their stories.”

He could only be talking about her unwillingness to testify before the War Crimes Tribunal. Maybe he was a thug sent to silence her after all, but if so, then why was she still alive? Perhaps it was these thoughts of mortality that made her, quite suddenly, ravenously hungry. “Is it safe to eat these grapes? Or are they also laced with something?”

“Sometimes a grape is just a grape,” Damon said, looking out over the cobalt waters.

“Where are we?” Renata asked, taking a seat across from him and popping a few grapes into her mouth.

“I’m not going to tell you where we are, because if you ever managed to escape and get to a phone, you’d be able to tell someone where to find you.”

Yes, yes, she would. The first chance she had, she’d call the authorities. Then she’d fish out the business card secreted in her bra and call Ms. Kokkinos and warn her that her nephew was dangerously unhinged.

“You know, I like your brother better,” she said, searching the table for utensils. Maybe if she could get a fork or a knife…

Damon looked disappointed. “Are you looking for something with which to stab me?”

Unfortunately, he’d only served fruit and pastries. There wasn’t a weapon in sight, so Renata saw no point in denying it. “Yes, and I should warn you, my therapist says I have unresolved anger issues.”

“Oh, I know you do.”

Absently, Damon put the newspaper down on the table. Renata snatched it up and found an article about her kidnapping on the inside page of the
New York Times.
Renata had to admit that this was higher billing than she’d ever received for her art shows, but she gaped at date on the masthead. “It’s been three days! You kidnapped me three days ago? Have I been asleep that long?”

“The precise passage of time isn’t my strong suit,” Damon admitted, momentarily losing the smugness from his expression as he folded his hands. “But the effects of even a tiny bit of ambrosia can be unpredictable.”

Renata stared at his folded hands, the clean fingernails and the unblemished skin. For a moment, a sudden, unbidden thought came to her. She wondered what it would feel like to have those hands seizing her again, and what it would feel like if clutching turned to soft caresses. Then she gasped and covered her mouth.

“Renata, what’s wrong?”

“I bit your hand,” she rasped. “When you kidnapped me, I bit your hand and broke the skin. I drew blood, I know I did. I tasted it in my mouth. But there’s not a mark on you. Not a scratch.”

“That was days ago,” he said dismissively.

Renata feared she was losing her mind now, but if there
was anything she understood it was wounds. “There should be a scab. A bruise at the least!”

“I heal quickly,” he said, finishing his coffee.

Renata breathed slowly, in and out, her eyes widening with apprehension. “What are you?”

“A son of Ares,” he said, pausing as if to let it sink in.

Renata tried to match it to the names of any Bosnian separatist groups she’d heard of, but could not. She looked into those dark mesmerizing eyes and realized that he was not toying with her. He believed it.

But did she? “You’re really a god?” she asked tentatively.

“Not as you think of them,” he said. “But neither am I a mortal man.”

“What are you, then?” she asked.

“A son of Ares,” he repeated, slightly exasperated, then, perhaps sensing that answer wasn’t going to suffice, he attempted an explanation. “A long time ago, my twin brother and I drove my father’s chariot whenever and wherever war came to a land and people called upon the ancient gods. My brother instills panic. I inspire terror.”

He lifted his chin in defiance, as if to challenge anyone who might doubt him, looking halfway torn between pride and shame; and though she couldn’t accept the truth of what he was saying, she knew he wasn’t lying. “Terror?”

“Yes. I inspire it and I feed off of it,” he said.

Renata wasn’t able to hide her distaste, but she had to ask, “You said that was a long time ago. You’re not driving your…your father’s chariot anymore?”

“My family and I have had a…falling out,” he explained. “It’s a very complicated matter that has set off a series of struggles around the world, but let it suffice to say that we no longer see eye to eye.”

Son of Ares. Could it be true? “So the Olympians are real. When there’s thunder, it’s Zeus? When there’s love, it’s Aphrodite?”

As the seafoam inched its way up the sand towards the patio where they shared breakfast, he shook his head. “Certainly not as you’ve read about them. There are old gods of all kinds. Greek, Norse, Hindu, Meso-American…the list goes on. But most of the old gods no longer hold any power.”

Renata was forced to ask, “Why not?”

He folded his napkin and sat back in his chair. “Because the forces that they fed upon and the people that called them are dispersed. But war is powerfully present in every age, and in some places where war comes, the people still call upon the war gods—the oldest immortals—even if they don’t always know our names. And when they call, we answer.”

Renata knew with sudden certainty that Bosnia was such a place. A meeting of Greeks, Russians and Macedonians, Slavs and Gypsies, Christians and Muslims, Serbs, Bosniaks and Croats. How many old gods had been called upon in the war of her childhood? Lost in thought, Renata watched the ocean waves lap against the shore.

“Are you looking for Poseidon?” Damon asked, pulling her back from the memories that haunted her. “You won’t find him today, but this island is lovely and the water is warm, so why don’t you take a swim?”

It was an abrupt change of subject, as if he couldn’t bear to speak of such things a moment longer. Truthfully, Renata needed a few moments to gather her wits, too. She looked down at the dress she’d been sleeping in for three days and wanted to be rid of it. “As an immortal, can you conjure up a swimsuit for me out of thin air? Do you have that power?”

“No,” he said. “But I can make it so that you’re not the slightest bit afraid. I can consume your fears—make you so fearless, you’ll happily strip naked and step into the sea.”

Renata shivered. The sun-warmed patio stones were toasty beneath her feet and the day was warm, but still, Renata shivered. Whether it was the way he spoke to her, the hungry look on his face, or the words he spoke, she couldn’t say. But
neither could she help wondering what it would be like to swim naked, to no longer be self-conscious about the scars on her back, to be unafraid to let a man see her completely and utterly exposed.

Still, Renata was confused. “You said you and your brother instilled panic and terror…”

Damon leaned forward over the table until his face was inches from hers. Then with great deliberation, he pursed his lips as if he might kiss her. Instead, he blew a soft breath upon her face and it stirred happier memories inside her. She smelled jasmine, the scent of her mother’s perfume, and she felt the tension loosen in her shoulders. The thought that she was being held captive against her will seemed far away, unimportant. Instead she felt she was only the guest of an impossibly handsome man at his beach house retreat.

“I can terrify,” Damon told her with sad eyes. “But I can also take some of it away.”

His face was still inches from hers, and she wondered what he had done to her that she so wanted to kiss him. More than that, she wanted to reach out with the fingers of a sculptress and trace the lines of his mouth. Would his lips feel smooth like marble, rough as granite, or soft like her own? “But why would a Son of Ares want anything to do with me?”

Too late, Renata realized she’d spoken the question aloud. But Damon didn’t look surprised by it. “Because, Renata,” he said, simply. “You’re a gorgon.”

A
gorgon? Renata didn’t know whether to laugh or be deeply insulted. She’d studied ancient art in school. She knew that gorgons were monstrous harpies with metal claws, snakes for hair, and faces so hideous they turned anyone who looked at them to stone.

Not her disfiguring burns, nor the scars left after plastic surgery, nor even a single bad-hair day had ever made Renata feel so ugly that she’d have called herself a gorgon. Not even in jest.

“What? Literally a gorgon?” Furious, Renata shot up out of her chair and stalked to the edge of the little patio, wondering if she should leap into the sand and just start running away from Damon as far and as fast as she could. But something made her stay. “What are you saying? I remember being a child—I remember my father and my brother and my mother. You’re saying I’m Medusa in disguise?”

“Medusa is dead,” Damon said, very seriously. “A vigilante named Perseus cut off her head.”

A flash of her little brother’s severed hand passed through Renata’s mind and deep tremors shook her. She was so overcome with revulsion she couldn’t speak.

“You see, Renata, not all gorgons are immortal. Some gorgons are not born—they are made.”

“How? How are they made?” Renata demanded to know.

“They’re forged of righteous rage against a horror they were helpless to stop. That’s what happened to Medusa. That’s what happened to you.”

Renata turned back to him, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “And so what does it mean? I have no scales, no claws, and my only snake is an escaped pet python.”

“Your monstrosity is on the inside,” Damon replied.

It was, quite possibly, the most hurtful thing anyone had ever said to her. It wounded her so deeply her muscles all tightened, like she’d been struck, like she’d been shot.

Damon’s shoulders sagged as if he realized he was hurting her, but felt he must continue. “Some might say that all the rage you feel, all that ugliness, is coiling around your heart.”

Some might say that. Like all the men who had ever tried to love her. Is that why she’d driven them all away with her remoteness and secrecy? Had she been afraid they would see her ugly inner gorgon?

“How am I any different than all the other survivors of war-torn countries? What good is it being a gorgon?”

“Gorgons take revenge,” Damon said, coming towards her.

Together they watched two seagulls battle for a scrap of food in the surf, each bird fighting with angry shrieks.

“I don’t take revenge,” Renata said, bitterly. “I run and hide. I’ve never gone back to Bosnia and I never will. I can’t even face the men responsible for what happened to my family. I can’t face them.”

“I know you can’t,” he said, touching her arm lightly, as if to comfort her. “So you turn them to stone. Two of them
now have died after you carved them. Did you think it was an accident?”

No. Not in her heart. Somewhere inside her, she had known it was more than coincidence. She had thought it’d happened because she wished them dead, and now Damon was telling her that she had the power to make those wishes come true. She couldn’t deny the small thrill of empowerment that flowed through her, alongside the guilt and horror. If she was a gorgon, it meant she never had to see these evil men, never had to face them or relive her story. She only had to put them into her artwork to end their miserable lives.

Being a gorgon meant never being a victim again.

Tears wet her cheeks, but she didn’t remember crying. She wanted to say something, but her throat closed shut. Damon tried to make her look at him, but she turned away and her stony gray eyes fixed upon the depthless ocean and all its secrets.

Damon tried again. “I didn’t tell you this to hurt you—”

“A boat is coming,” she interrupted, forcing herself to speak over the lump in her throat. Her voice sounded foreign and far away.

Damon looked as if he weren’t ready to let the matter drop, as if he wanted to encourage her to talk about the confusion swirling inside her, but he seemed to think better of it. “The boat is early,” he said, clearly frustrated. “But the boat is for us. It’s time to go.”

“Where are we going?” she asked, fists clenching at her sides. “I won’t go back to Bosnia.”

“I won’t ever force you to go back there,” Damon reassured her. “But we must leave this place now. The cell phone reception is terrible and there’s no internet connection. I have work to do in the real world.”

The real world? Renata wondered what that even meant anymore. “What kind of work does an immortal do?”

“We do any kind of work we like,” Damon said. “My aunt
is a professional benefactress. She has always had a special eye for the gifted and a unique way of fostering their talents. She has a stable of favorites. Meanwhile, my brother is in law enforcement—he feeds off the fear of crime victims.”

“And you?” Renata asked.

He eyed her with scant amusement. “I’m a security consultant for the global banking industry.”

“Security,” she sputtered with surprise.

He towered over her with barely constrained menace. “Trust me when I say that I’m an expert at frightening people away from taking things that don’t belong to them.”

Renata didn’t fight against leaving the island with him. She hadn’t seen the point. Did she really want her kidnapper leaving her on a secluded island by herself? Moreover, she was still in shock at everything he’d told her. Her hands were cold and she couldn’t catch her breath. And as the boat ferried them towards their destination, she almost didn’t care where they went. As long as it was somewhere far, far away.