Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
“Fleet Admiral, Nikolett’s missing.”
Eric jumped out of bed, and what felt like only a moment later, he was on the plane. The flight too passed in a blink, his panic and fear making his vision fade in and out.
Then they were touching down in Stockholm.
Why was she in Stockholm?
That didn’t matter.
He raced through the city, the streets familiar yet foreign. He hadn’t lived here since his second wife died.
He found the first drops of blood on the steps of the austere central bank. He didn’t pause to check. He didn’t have to. He knew it was Nikolett’s blood.
He burst through the doors, stopping when he found himself in a massive round room nearly five stories high. Elevated walkways circled the walls which were lined with three levels of books. Above that was a band of arched windows on what would be the fourth floor.
Not the bank then, the Stockholm Public Library.
There was no circulation desk or computer stations, only a single round table directly under the massive, curved chandelier.
A woman lay on the table, naked, arms and legs spread like the Vitruvian man.
Eric ran for her, desperately sure that he could still save her.
Even as he saw the blood. The exposed bone and muscle.
Nikolett lay face-up on the table, dead.
Her right arm was severed at the elbow, though the detached limb lay in place, the gap between the pieces just wide enough he could see the exposed ends of her arm bones peeking out from below the neatly severed skin and muscle.
Her lower leg was also detached mid-shin, but here it looked like it had been torn away.
Ragged flaps of skin dangled over mutilated muscle.
A few bone shards dotted the blood pooled in the gap between the pieces of her.
She was thin, her ribs, collarbones, and hipbones starkly visible under her pale, blood-marked and tightly drawn skin. She’d starved before she died.
The skin of her thighs and abdomen was destroyed—cuts and burns partially hidden by blood that had dried black.
The tri-spiral symbol of the Masters’ Admiralty had been branded into her breast.
He’d known it would end like this. He loved her and that would be the reason she died. There was an odd comfort in that—the terrible thing he knew would happen had finally happened, and now he didn’t have to live with that dread anymore.
Eric followed the curve of the table to her head. Nikolett’s pale hair was spread out like a halo around her.
He felt nothing except cold acceptance until he saw her face.
She looked terrified.
Nikolett’s eyes were open, one staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. The other was a messy, bloody hole. Her mouth too was open in a scream, her tongue missing. Her face had frozen in the moment of her death, perfectly preserving the terror that wrinkled her forehead and widened her eyes.
That blessed, numbing cold fractured as Eric bent over her broken body.
Eric sat bolt upright, heart racing.
The roar of rage and grief he’d been about to release in the nightmare tightened his throat muscles, and he swallowed down the sound.
It took several minutes for him to orient himself—he was in his apartment, apparently having fallen asleep on the couch despite the fact it was midday.
That wasn’t surprising since last night, he’d woken up three times due to the nightmares, though those had been fragments with vague shadows compared to the graphic detail of this one.
He could still see her in his mind’s eye, the dream refusing to fade the way it should.
“Fuck you,” he muttered at his subconscious.
Eric rested his elbows on his knees, head bowed. He shivered a little as the heat that had gripped his body during the nightmare faded, leaving behind a layer of cold sweat on his skin.
His phone chirped and a second later, the panel mounted on the wall by the door echoed the sound. Someone was paging him using the intercom that was built into their security system.
He wanted to ignore it. Fuck, he wanted to ignore it.
But maybe someone else’s crisis or problem was exactly what he needed.
Nikolett had left two days ago, and aside from a notice that she was back in Budapest, he hadn’t heard from her. The first night she was gone, he’d woken only once from a dream he couldn’t really remember, but which he knew involved her.
Colum, Xavier, and Annie left yesterday.
They were continuing their honeymoon in New York where they’d start packing up Annie’s life in preparation for her move to Dublin.
That was both a practical choice and a security decision.
The Spaniard had attacked the archive, and as of this moment, they were no closer to finding their latest enemy than they had been a week ago.
He didn’t want Colum and his new spouses anywhere near the archive until the Spaniard was found.
Unlike Nikolett, Colum was reasonable and agreed there was a safety concern. He happily jetted off to New York.
Nikolett had insisted on going home. A home where she’d been attacked multiple times. True that the Spaniard was a separate issue from the ongoing attacks she’d faced over the last half a year, but the Spaniard was their current problem, and he knew where she lived.
His stomach twisted with fear and anxiety, layering atop the remaining tension from his dream. Eric was seriously considering doing drugs to stay awake rather than living through one of those too-real nightmares again, when the intercom chimed for a second time.
He snatched up the phone, realizing the lack of sleep was getting to him. Amphetamines probably weren’t the answer, though they were an option.
“What?” he demanded, not caring if he sounded like an ass.
“You have a visitor,” Regina said smoothly.
“A what?”
“A visitor is a person who comes to your house to visit you.”
Eric pantomimed strangling Regina to keep from snapping at her. “I know what a visitor is. Who is it?” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Actually, I don’t care. Tell them to go away.”
“This particular visitor is wearing a triquetra ring.”
Eric perked up. Someone from the Trinity Masters? He would desperately love to deal with some of their bullshit rather than his own society’s bullshit. That way, the worst of it was Juliette’s problem and he could just enjoy the drama.
Eric jumped up, heading for his closet to find clothes that weren’t soaked in sweat. “Did the visitor say why they’re here?”
“To ‘help.’”
“I assume you’ve checked them?”
“No explosives, no weapons. He refused to give blood though.”
Eric stopped. “You take people’s blood as part of the security screening?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, that’s…” They were going to come back to that.
Eric ripped off his clothes, debated if he had time for a shower, then yanked on fresh ones, no shower.
“Did they say anything else?”
“He said, ‘Franco said this helps, and your brother says do it.’”
Eric stared at the phone. “You probably should have led with that.”
Regina humphed.
“Let him up.”
Eric bounded out of his apartment, which was built into the top floor of the castle, down first the narrow winding stone staircase that led to his apartment and then the broad stone staircase to the ground floor.
The door to one of the small reception rooms off the grand foyer was open, Regina standing guard outside it.
When she saw him, Regina strode over to whisper in his ear.
“His name is Elijah Mata. He has no social media we can find and no Interpol file. We’ll find out more, but that will take time. At least a couple hours. His declared occupation on his Global Entry file is doctor.”
“What kind of doctor?”
“We don’t know that.” She looked over her shoulder, eyeing the door. “We should lock him in the dungeon.”
She meant that literally, since there was, in fact, a dungeon.
“As much fun as it would be to set back whatever progress we’ve made with the Americans, since they clearly sent him, let’s talk to him.”
“We can always put him in the dungeon later,” Regina muttered darkly.
Eric shook his head at her and headed for the door.
Dr. Elijah Mata looked to be mid-fifties with dark hair and lines around his eyes. He wore a simple suit, no tie. His clothes were slightly rumpled in a way that made Eric think he’d probably come straight here without stopping at a hotel either in Dublin or London after the transatlantic flight.
He rose when Eric entered, offering his hand. “Mr. Ericsson?”
“Dr. Mata.” They shook, then stood awkwardly for a moment.
Dr. Mata raised one brow, but smiled softly before sitting in one of the two armchairs angled toward the fireplace. Eric sat too, the chair slightly too small for him. It creaked ominously.
“We have a mutual friend,” Eric said slowly, feeling out the situation.
“Juliette isn’t my friend. She is, however, my patient.”
He’d thought Franco, Juliette’s husband, was behind this, but it appeared it was the Grand Master herself. Eric studied the other man, trying to guess where this was going. “Should you be telling me that?”
“I have her express written permission to discuss her personal health information with you.”
“Is she dying?” Shit. He really hoped not. He liked Juliette. It had taken a while, but she was his…friend.
And if she was dying, she was definitely going to try to leverage that to make him do something. Damn it.
“Imminently? No. But we’re all dying, Mr. Ericsson. Death is as much a part of life as birth.”
He nodded slowly. “I see. You’re here to say cryptic things that either piss me off or drive me insane. Juliette’s trying to see what it will take to push me over the edge.”
Dr. Mata laughed. “No, I’m here to offer my services.”
“And what services would those be?”
Dr. Mata sat forward, mirroring Eric’s elbows-on-knees posture. “To help you process.”
“Process what?”
“Your past.”
Eric blinked. “Juliette sent me a therapist?”
“I have a doctorate of psychology—not a PhD in psychology but a PsyD. My specialty is clinical practice for those who’ve experienced trauma as adults.”
“PTSD.”