The Phoenix

He let his mind roam ahead, picturing himself greeting her, touching her, seducing her and then, once he’d taken everything he wanted, everything she owed him, killing her, as slowly and painfully as he could. Lying bitch.

The Argonaut II was drawing nearer now. Mak could clearly see Ioannis and Evangelos, his crew members, at the helm. All he could make out of Persephone was a slumped figure at the back of the boat, wrapped in blankets against the cold. Soon she would be warm and naked in his bed. For the first and last time.

After what felt like an age they pulled up alongside the yacht.

‘Finally,’ Makis beamed, walking down the steps to the deck to greet them.

Ioannis tethered the tender while Evangelos walked to the stern to help Ms Hamlin up. When he turned around, he looked like a ghost, his face drained of color.

‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ Makis demanded. Every sinew in his body had tightened like an overstrung violin. Jumping down into the boat himself, he pushed past both men.

Persephone’s suitcase was propped against the bench. Next to it, a pile of cushions lay covered with Makis’s monogrammed blankets.

‘Where is she?’ Mak growled menacingly.

‘She … We picked her up at the harbor …’ Evangelos stammered. ‘She was sitting right there.’

‘So?’ Mak bellowed, the unsated monster roaring out in fury from within. ‘WHERE … IS … SHE?’

At first the water felt like her enemy.

Slipping silently off the back of the boat into its dark embrace, the paralyzi

ng cold knocked the breath from Ella’s body. Her clothes coiled themselves around her like deadly snakes, encasing her, gluing her limbs to her sides, dragging her down. Waves that had seemed so shallow, so gentle from the safety of the boat, now loomed like monsters over her, crashing painfully over her head and robbing her of what little sense of orientation remained. She no longer knew up from down, still less which direction led back to shore and which to open water. While her heart raced in panic, the rest of her body and mind slowed, first to a crawl, and then to a total stop.

The speedboat had gone. Ella was alone in the world. Everything was darkness and cold.

And then, just as suddenly as it began, the panic left her. The painful aching of her frozen limbs switched off like a light – gone. Her body was numb, her mind and spirit calm, and her heart barely beating, its rhythm slowed to a barely discernible boom, boom, boom, as much of an echo or a memory as an actual sound.

I’m drowning, thought Ella. And it’s OK. It’s peaceful.

All I have to do is let go.

Images stole into her brain, freeze-frames from a slow-playing home movie.

Her mother, holding her, gazing into her eyes. Ella was a baby, an infant. She felt safe and cocooned in her sea-swaddled limbs. The water and darkness surrounding her became a womb, and the soft swoosh of the tide her mother’s heartbeat. For a moment, it was lovely. All Ella had to do was let go and she could live in that state forever. Returned to her mother. To Rachel. The idea was intoxicating. Wonderful.

Ella’s lungs emptied. She began to sink, deeper and deeper into nothing, the beckoning abyss.

But then, unbidden, new images came.

Her mother again, but this time fighting for breath, for her life, struggling vainly against the strong, male arms that held her down.

Athena Petridis, standing on the shore, watching.

Gabriel, standing in her apartment in San Francisco, his handsome features turned witheringly towards Ella as he mocked her attempts to resist joining The Group. She could hear his voice now: ‘That’s not what I would call a life. But perhaps we have different standards?’

After that, other voices and faces forced their way into her consciousness.

Nikkos, screaming as the hot metal burned into his flesh, pleading for his life.

The little boy washed up on the shore, sightless eyes staring upwards at the blue sky, pleading for justice. For vengeance.

They all want vengeance. And I’m their weapon. I’m their avenging angel. If not me, then who?

Ella’s eyes snapped open.

I can’t let go. Not yet!