1
MATTIE
The paperback was a lucky find.
Mattie had discovered it in the back of the salvaged nightstand's top drawer, wedged behind a crumbling cork coaster and a pen that no longer worked. The cover was faded and water stained, the spine was cracked, and the title implied historical fiction, which wasn't the kind of thing she would have picked up in a bookstore. She preferred thrillers and crime fiction, stories where clever people solved puzzles and justice prevailed.
But beggars couldn't be choosers, and she needed something to keep her mind occupied while Dimitri was out with the Eight who called themselves Dave, strolling in the dark through the compound or sitting somewhere that was free of surveillance.
Darkness wasn't a problem for any of them. They were all immortals who saw perfectly well in the dark, even when the sky was overcast and clouds covered the moon and the stars. But the patrolling guards could see just as well, and that was a source of worry.
Trying to find a pose that would allow her to read, given her injury, Mattie propped up her bandaged hand on a pillow and balanced the paperback awkwardly in her left hand, but as she'd expected, reading one-handed was an exercise in frustration. Every time she needed to turn a page, she had to set the book down on her stomach, use her left hand to flip the page, then pick the book up again and find her place. It was annoying and made it difficult to concentrate on the story, which was surprisingly good.
The duke was trapped in a castle during a medieval siege, bartering with an enemy commander who wanted his lands and his young daughter's hand in marriage. The fight scenes were gory, the dialogue was sharp, and the tension was real.
Still, despite the engaging prose and fascinating plot, Mattie caught herself reading the same paragraph three times without absorbing a word because her mind kept drifting to the harbor and the real-life fight to the death she'd witnessed.
Somehow, fictional scenarios lost their luster when reality presented itself in all of its ugliness and futility.
She and Dimitri would have been murdered savagely if not for Dave.
As hard as she tried, she couldn't unsee the four warriors who had surrounded them, accusing Dimitri of murdering their friend Tarik, their faces twisted with rage. The bald one in particular was etched into her memory. The brutality of his attack, the way he'd grabbed her wrist and forced her to her knees, his boot coming down on her fingers with the full power of an immortal body behind it. Worst was the sound that she had no doubt would haunt her for years to come. She heard that wet, crunching sound every time she closed her eyes.
Her sweet, brave Dimitri had fought all four of them, his immortal body fueled by adrenaline and desperation. He'd been magnificent and terrifying in equal measure, moving with a speed and ferocity that shouldn't have been possible for a man who'd never been trained as a warrior.
Thankfully, his bruises had healed in minutes rather than days, and less than an hour after the life-or-death fight, he'd looked like nothing had happened, and the only remaining proof of his injuries had been his blood-soiled clothing.
She, on the other hand, was a cluster of aches and pains, starting with her ruined hand, continuing to her banged-up knees, and culminating in the raw scrapes on both her elbows from when she had dove after the phone Dave had given her.
Naturally, Mattie was glad that Dimitri wasn't suffering the way she was, but his rapid healing only served to reinforce the inescapable realization that the gap between them was growing.
She didn't envy his immortality. It came with a price she wasn't sure she'd be willing to pay. Watching that fight, being part of it, had amplified her conviction that the immortals on this island had very little humanity left in them. They killed casually, fought viciously, and treated human and immortal lives as if they were disposable.
Mattie just hoped Dimitri wouldn't lose his humanity as time went by.
Stop it.He is still the same person, and he always will be.
Dave, though, was unlike the others, in some ways worse, and in some ways better. She couldn't stop thinking about the eight of him arriving at the harbor and tearing through those four trained warriors like they were made of paper. Eight differentfaces wearing the same lethal expression, like violence was just another function their shared consciousness performed without effort or emotion, and as if hearts ripped out and left on the ground as a warning was just all in a day's work. And then those same eight faces had smiled at her and asked her how she felt.
The contrast had been jarring. Still was.
What could the Eight possibly want from Dimitri, though?
She set the book down on her stomach and stared at the ceiling, turning the question over in her head. She'd been doing it since he had left for the meeting, and she didn't like the conclusion she was arriving at. Dave needed the enhancement drugs to survive, and Dimitri was one of only two people who could produce them. That gave Dave a powerful incentive to keep Dimitri alive and cooperative, but after yesterday's deadly demonstration, she had a feeling that whatever Dave wanted from Dimitri would come with an implied threat.
Give me what I want, or I'll stop protecting you.
Maybe it was about changing the drugs?
Maybe Dave wanted modifications to the formula, something that would make the Eight even more powerful?
Or maybe it was about Losham and what he wanted Dimitri to do?
Perhaps Dave wasn't happy about Losham's idea to create enhanced humans.
Or maybe?—
The lock on the lab's main door clicked open downstairs, and Mattie's pulse quickened.
