Cristos pondered his response.
“What is on those pages that is so important to you?”
“The names of the people,” Cristos said slowly, “who kill me.”
Jack looked at him as if he was crazy. “So you can kill them first?”
The rays of the lighthouse swept over them.
Cristos’s mind was working. He looked around him as if some answer could be found out at sea.
He finally dug back into the bag, drawing out his father’s money, some papers, the drawings of Jack and Mia, and finally, the wooden prayer necklace. He examined it, rolling it around in his hands. He finally turned to Jack. “Where is the necklace?”
Jack stared at him, confused. He pointed at the prayer necklace as if it was obvious.
“These are prayer beads.” Cristos looked back in the bag, but it was empty.
“Where is my father’s necklace?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Blue stones on a silver chain.”
Jack stared back, trying to hide his shock.
“Don’t tell me that it wasn’t here, that you don’t know where it is.”
And Jack realized… He avoided eye contact with Mia, fearing that he would reveal the location of the blue necklace that hung around her neck.
Cristos grabbed Mia, pulling her close, laying the gun against her temple. “Remember what I said before you had me executed? Hold tight to your family.”
Jack’s eye filled with rage.
“Where is that blue stone necklace?”
The moment hung in the air as Cristos dug the gun into Mia’s head.
“Ten seconds, and I’m going to start with her.” He scraped the gun through Mia’s dark, wet hair. “Know this. Your daughters are sleeping just across the water. Why do you think I chose this place?”
Cristos wrapped his left arm around Mia’s neck, holding her tight in a headlock. He turned the gun on Jack.
And as the revolving light of the lighthouse passed over them, a shard of blue light hit the jewels of the necklace in the gap above Mia’s sweater. Cristos saw it, spun her around, and tore open her sweater.
And there it was, hanging from her neck against her skin, the blue stone necklace that belonged to his father, the one that was spoken of in rumor, in mystery, said to keep him alive. It was passed down through the years to the leaders of their small country and would have passed to Cristos if his heart was true, if his father so deemed.
But Cristos didn’t need his father’s blessing now to take possession of it, to avail himself of its power.
Cristos smiled. What he sought had been under his nose for hours.
But in all of his distraction and focus on the necklace, Cristos never saw Jack lunge for his gun.
Jack grabbed it, wrenching it away, launching it toward the cliff’s edge.
Mia tore herself away from Cristos, backhanding him in the cheek with amazing strength before scurrying away for the gun. And Jack attacked with all of his strength, but the powerful man fought back, possessing the training that Jack could never match, blocking his blows, anticipating his moves. He spun a kick to the side of Jack’s head, sending him sprawling backward to the ground.
But Cristos didn’t continue at Jack-he dove at Mia and the gun she was picking up near the cliff’s edge. He punched her hard, sending her dazed into the mud. He grabbed the gun, spinning back, bringing it to bear on Jack.
And as Jack scrambled up along the muddy ground, Cristos saw a flash of Jack’s left arm and became momentarily distracted by the Cotis lettering on his tattoo.
“Where did you get that?” Cristos demanded.
Jack stared at Cristos, seeing a look on his face that he thought impossible. It was fear, a look he had seen on Mia when she had asked Jack to hide the case.
“Do you understand what that is?” Cristos said. “It’s a prayer for the dead.”
“I don’t want to hear any of your-”
“You died, Jack, and someone saved you. Who was it? What did he look like? Was it my father? Is he alive?”
Jack covered his arm with his hand as if in shame, as Mia slowly got to her feet behind him.
“Let me see that!” Cristos screamed, thrusting the gun at Jack.
Jack slowly rolled his sleeve down, taunting Cristos.
“Let me see it, now.” Cristos jabbed the gun toward Jack for emphasis.
Jack let a smile slip out, mocking Cristos. “How does it taste, the flavor of fear?”
“Why don’t you tell me?” It was Cristos’s turn to smile coldly. And he pointed the gun at Mia.
Without warning, he pulled the trigger. The gun exploded, its report echoing across the island. Mia stumbled backward, the bullet hitting her just above the heart. Her eyes fell on Jack, wounded, not comprehending what just happened, and she began to collapse. Jack lunged for her to catch her, but her legs gave out, and she stumbled backward over the cliff’s edge.
“No!!!” Jack’s scream came from his soul as he watched in pure shock as she fell away, her body tumbling end over end, crashing to the rocky shore below.
Jack turned his rage on Cristos, grabbing the barrel of the gun, wrenching it out of his hand, but Cristos snatched it back, only to toss it over the cliff.
Cristos smiled at Jack, his dark eyes filled with malice and hate. He drew back his fist and attacked Jack with a series of blows. He was the expert destroying the novice; there was no need for guns to bring death.
But despite being outmatched, Jack remained on his feet. He drove his fist into Cristos’s jaw, all of his anger, all of his pent-up rage unloading into the man, shattering his jaw.
As if he had had enough, Cristos grabbed Jack, hurling him over his shoulder onto the ground, driving his elbow into Jack’s stomach. Jack rolled away as Cristos grabbed the left sleeve of his shirt, tearing it away.
Like a desperate animal, Jack grabbed a handful of mud and hurled it in Cristos’s face. He followed up with three hooks to Cristos’s broken jaw, sending him tumbling backward. Jack leaped onto him, driving his fist into Cristos’s exposed neck, his nose, every vulnerable part of his body. Despite all of Cristos power and skills, they were failing against the raging man on top of him.
But then Cristos’s hand fell upon the prayer books he had tossed to the ground. He pushed them aside, finding the prayer beads, continuing to search… until his hand fell on his goal. With blinding speed, he stabbed Jack in the chest with the jeweled dagger, the blade plunging into the wound just below his shoulder. A fire ignited in Jack’s body as Cristos dug the blade in, twisting it. Jack fell to his back as Cristos leaned over him, leering down on him.
Seeing Cristos’s dark eyes, seeing the face of the man who killed his wife, Jack refused to succumb. The knife and the face above him only managed to anger him further.
Jack clawed the ground for a weapon, a rock, anything to attack Cristos with, for Jack knew that despite the hate that flowed through his veins, he was on the edge of death.
Cristos’s leer curled into a smile. “How does death taste?”
Jack grabbed the hilt of the dagger and wrenched it out of his chest. He quickly turned it and plunged it into Cristos’s heart.
“You tell me,” Jack said through gritted teeth.
And as Jack dug the blade into Cristos’s beating heart, feeling its dying pulse through the hilt, Cristos finally saw the front of Jack’s tattoo, the fateful words written there. And he knew they were written by his father. They were the words from the torn section of his father’s book, the prediction that Cristos had sought in vain, the clue to his future, the prophecy that he had tried so desperately to eradicate so that he could choose his own path, not the one prescribed by his father’s prophecies.
But as he read them, he understood that his quest, his search, had only proven to fulfill what he tried so hard to avoid. For the phrase in the middle of the prayer of death was written to him by his father.
You shall die at dawn, on the first day of the seventh month, killed by an enraged man who has lost everything he loves.
