It all seemed simple in its inception. Go to London, make the deal, go home. Easy peasy. Wow, had she been wrong. Not only was her heart involved in ways she'd never imagined but Kat was an honest to goodness kidnap victim. The only bright side was her captor hadn't taken one of those awful Polaroids with her holding a newspaper in front of her tear-stained face as proof of life.
Blurting out a random thought as it floated through her mind, Kat asked, "What time is it?"
"Almost six a.m. The sun will be coming up shortly." He looked out the window while sipping his tea, as if they were we old friends having a nosh.
Bells and whistles sounded in her head. Her intuition was screaming for her to pay attention. She'd been in this situation with this man sometime before...sort of. Trying with all her might to figure out where she knew her captor from, Kat just stared.
Turning to face her, the bastard set down his mug and returned her stare. Raising a single eyebrow, he asked, "Figure it out yet?"
His voice was mocking. He knew something she didn't and was holding it over her and that pissed Kat off more than being a prisoner. Doing her level best to hide her frustration, Kat answered, "No."
If possible, his gaze intensified. The contained aggression Kat had sensed earlier returned and this time it was coupled with rage. There was something her captor wanted very badly for her to figure out. He wasn't going to tell her. She had to do it herself. It was just a damn shame Kat had no clue what it was.
When he spoke, it was little more than a whisper, which added to the menace. "Let's see if I can refresh your memory."
Pulling a leather cord through the collar of his crew neck sweater, a pendant in the shape of a golden apple appeared. He let it dangle at the end of the rope like that was going to help her glean some vital information from a fruit-shaped charm.
Speaking with an eerie reverence while gazing lovingly at the apple, he asked, "Do you know what this is, Katarina? How important it is to the future of my people? To your future in a roundabout way?"
All she could do was shake her head. The air was rife with tension. Something big was about to happen. She could feel it in her bones. Big...and horrible...
"This is the Golden Apple of Discord given to me by the Goddess Eris – ruler of chaos, strife, and discord. I was honored above all others of her followers. Given the power to wield her magic here on earth. The same magic that allows me to do this."
From one breath to the next, her tall, dark kidnapper turned into Bjorn Makris, the blonde-haired Nordic looking supermodel she'd had breakfast with before her meeting with Viktor. Closing her eyes, Kat shook her head, praying it was all simply a dream, a very bad dream. There was no way in heaven or hell a man could change his appearance in the blink of an eye. It had to be another side effect of the drugs. Or maybe it was a hallucination caused by the stress of her current situation. Either way, there had to be a rational explanation for what she'd just witnessed.
Forcing her eyes open, Kat wanted to cry, thought about screaming, and was most definitely sure she preferred blissful unconsciousness to what she was now facing.
"There it is. The recognition I was looking for," he said with an heir of superiority that made Kat bite her tongue to keep from lashing out. Maintaining eye contact, the bastard changed back to the man of Mediterranean descent she knew as her kidnapper.
"This is my true form."
He didn't wait for her to comment. Her jailer let the pendant fall to his chest, picked up his mug, took a sip of his tea, and started talking as if they were old friends. The only difference was the malevolent vibes filling the air around them. It made it hard to breath. This man was dangerous, more dangerous than Kat originally thought.
"This," he motioned back and forth between them with his free hand, "had its start in Ancient Greece almost three thousand years ago."
He paused and Kat knew it was for dramatic effect but she was still stuck back on the ‘three thousand years ago' part.
Add delusional to the list of adjectives when describing this man to the police if you make it out alive...check.
"Instead of making you listen to me drone on, I have a way for you to see the events of the past that led up to this moment. Look right here." He pointed to his golden apple again.
The air around his pendant grew cloudy, somewhat fuzzy and then, as if he'd flipped a switch, images started to flow from it. The images stretched and grew until the people in them were almost life-sized.
Kat was thrown into the middle of a battlefield. Bodies, bloodied and broken from the skirmish, covered the ground. It was just as Bjorn had said; it looked to be taking place in Ancient Greece. The soldiers protected themselves with circular shields made of wood with bronze inlays that glittered and shone in the setting sun, while thrusting long wooden spears at their advancing adversaries.
The spears had to be at least seven feet long with incredibly imposing ten-inch metal tips that Kat witnessed ripping through the skin and bone of more Grecians than she could count. The greaves and breast plates of their uniforms were also bronze and fit over stiff leather that matched the shin and forearm guards each man wore. The crack and clash of their bronze helmets broke through the roar of the fighting as the different colored plumage signifying their allegiance floated to the blood-soaked ground.
In the distance, she saw a squadron of men marching side-to-side, their shields locked together. Spears strategically jutted through the infantry line as they protected their supreme commander and his generals while they issued battle plans.
For a split second, the advancing battalion disappeared behind a ridge in the landscape. As they reappeared, the man on horseback leading the charge came into view. There was no mistaking those chiseled features, the strong line of his jaw, or the laser sharp focus of his obsidian eyes.
Even as her mind balked at the irrefutable image, Kat's heart knew it was him. It was Viktor. She tried to reason that the officer was his ancestor. That her thoughts of him were somehow clouding her vision. But those were feeble attempts to reconcile what was right before her versus the impossibility of the same exact face being on two people.
"Halt!"
The barked command was the last piece of the puzzle. It was impossible for Kat not to believe, no matter how fantastic it might seem, that she was indeed looking at the man who made her body burn.
The scene changed. She was in a courtroom. There were men in tunics fastened with pins and brooches at the right shoulder and olive branch wreaths around the back of their heads. She knew they were the Law Givers from long ago. Kat had loved Ancient History in school, specifically that of the Greeks and Athenians. She debated the foreshadowing of that fact while watching a prisoner being led to the raised dais at the front of the room.
His tunic was tattered and torn, his back a mass of long fiery wounds, some still bleeding, while others oozed the unmistakable yellow puss of infection. A single tear rolled down her cheek when the prisoner turned to face the court. Even with bruises marring his impeccable complexion and his long hair greasy and matted with his own blood, Viktor stood tall. There was a glint in his eyes that assured he would not bow to his accusers.
The charges of treason and dereliction of duty were read. The crowd jeered, screaming their disbelief at the travesty before them. By all accounts, Viktor was their hero. No one believed he would do what he was accused of.
Bjorn was there, leading the prosecution. He and his witnesses told the same tale over and again, swearing that Viktor, Viktoras in this case, had taken bribes from their enemies and left his men to die horrible deaths on the battlefield. Thankfully, but not before the damage had been done, Viktor's supporters took the stand.
She recognized some of the men she'd met at Sanguinem. It was all starting to fall into place. These men had known each other for ages...literally. Kat knew without a shadow of a doubt what she was watching had really occurred. It was inconceivable, totally something out of a Twilight Zone episode, but in her heart of hearts, there was no doubt it was real.
Lastly, Bain took the stand. Interestingly enough, aside from Roman, he was the only man who'd kept his given name all these years later. Bain gave impassioned testimony about Viktor off the battlefield. More tears wet Kat's face. Viktor was a good man, which made listening to the Law Givers pronounce him guilty all the more heartbreaking.