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.
On the eastern horizon, where the dark of night met the depths of the sea, a golden ribbon crested the waves stretching north to south, as far as the eye could see, a subtle glow that began to wipe the darkness from the night, pushing away the shadows, ushering in a new day.
And in those final moments, no longer able to breathe, his lungs on fire as his heart struggled to burst from his chest, Cristos knew that he wouldn’t escape death for the second time. Jack struggled to his feet, blood pouring from the wound in his chest. He grabbed Cristos, lifted his weakened body, and tossed him over the cliff to be smashed on the rocks below.
• • •
Jack raced down the rock face, slipping, sliding, his hand seeking purchase, the sharp rocks cutting his palm. With dawn’s early light still in the far-off distance, he struggled to see through the last shreds of night that danced along the rocky slope. The precarious path provided no firm footing as he tried not to slip and perish on the rocks below. He glanced at Cristos’s broken body, folded over a rock near the base of the cliff, momentarily lit by the sweep of the passing lighthouse beam. A pool of blood coated the sand beneath him. And Jack slipped. He skidded downward, trying not to tumble over and split his head open. As he grabbed a weathered rock with his left hand, it gave way, the sharp edge cutting into his left forearm, turning the tattoo into a shredded mess.
Jack leaped the final eight feet to the rocky beach, where Mia lay facedown in the shallow water, bent, contorted, motionless. Jack fell to his knees at her side, quickly turning her over to see the spreading wound on her chest.
Finding no pulse, no breath, Jack laid her on the sand, tilting her head back. He began CPR, forcing air into her lungs, life into her soul. He placed his hands just above her sternum and began rhythmically pumping, forcing her blood to pump. And he could see his efforts forcing the blood to accelerate its escape from the wound.
“Please, Mia. Breathe. Breathe, dammit.” Jack locked his lips over hers once again and gave her the breath of his life.
“You can’t die. Let it be me, please, let it be me. Let me trade my life for yours.”
He forced more air into her lungs and quickly set about pumping her chest. He tore open her shirt, laying his hands just below her bra strap, and looked at the wound. It was above her heart, mercifully missing the vital organ. Maybe, just maybe…
With a heaving gasp, Mia exploded with life, hacking, coughing, an eruption of water shooting from her lungs. Jack lifted her, taking her into his arms, holding her in his lap.
“Jack…” she whispered.
“Shhhh…”
Mia looked up, her eyes drifting up the rock face to the cliff so far above. “How could I have survived?”
“The water must have broken your fall.”
She reached her hand up to the bullet wound, wincing at the contact. Jack pressed his hand over it, trying to stop the flow of blood.
“How did you…?”
“Frank’s dead.”
Mia looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“He was shot.”
“I know he was shot. Everyone knows he was shot. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know,” Jack said, his head tilted to the side, confused.
“You do? After all these years, to finally release all of that guilt…”
“I don’t understand. What you mean?”
“Jack, Frank died fifteen years ago. Are you OK?”
And as if caught in a whirlpool, Jack’s mind began to fracture and reconstitute. Frank “Apollo” Archer, shot by those two kids, dying in Jack’s arms… Yet Jack saw Frank that very day, was with him all day until he died minutes ago up in the mansion, the same scenario… shot by two… pinned down… a bullet through his heart.
“Oh, my God,” he whispered. “That can’t be…”
And he thought about his father, his regrets for never speaking to him, never telling him how he felt, how he loved the man in spite of everything. He never got to tell him all of those things before he passed away six months earlier.
And the letter he couldn’t remember writing to Cristos, the one he kept in his pocket, the one where his handwriting disappeared.
His dog in his kitchen this morning, killed in front of him more than twenty years ago when he was seventeen, run over before his eyes in the driveway. If only he was there a moment sooner to save him…