Before Nathan can think of anything to say to the woman holding them at gunpoint, Jamie speaks. "Not gonna lie, bestie, I'm a little disappointed right now. Thought we were really bonding over poker for a few hours there."
Eva's eye twitches. "It's not like I enjoy doing this, but it's what I get paid to do. Derek's my boss and I do what he says." She turns to Nathan. "Maybe you should've done the same. It would've been better for you."
"Absolutely not," Nathan replies, tone clipped. "You don't know what's good for me. I don't even know what's good for me. But I'm done being a tool for Derek to use as he pleases. Only right thing to do with a bastard like him is give him up." He pauses, remembering something that may help their case. "And for the record, I'm sorry about hitting you in the face with my bag. What happened on the subway wasn't personal."
He and Eva were like friends, once. It may still mean something here and now. Nathan hopes it does.
Jamie blinks. "Sounds like a fascinating story. Tell me about it sometime."
"Shut up, both of you," Eva barks. "You're going to come with me and we'll wait for Derek to–"
"No, Eva," Nathan snaps, sending a scalding glare in her direction. "We're not waiting for Derek and you have to let us go. This ship will sink soon and unless you want to go down with it, let us leave. If you want to die for Derek, that's for you to decide, but please don't drag everyone here along with you."
Eva's eyes widen. "You're bluffing. How... Why would the ship sink?"
"Magic." Nathan holds her gaze and takes a bold step forward. "Powerful magic Derek wants to have. Do you think that's a good thing, Derek with so much power? Is that what you want?"
"What my opinion is doesn't matter. What I want doesn't matter. I do what Derek says–"
"It does matter," Nathan interrupts, "it matters more than anything else ever will. This is your life, it's your fucking life, and is this really what you want for the rest of it? Doing a deranged criminal's dirty work, always fearing what he might do if you step out of line? Do you want to live in whatever world Derek's envisioning? Is that how you're going to live and die?"
Eva grits her teeth, shakes her head. "You don't understand, Nathan. Derek was good to us, did you forget that? He was good to you, to me, to Patch. We could get ahead in life because he gave us a fighting chance."
And Nathan remembers now that he asked Eva once how she and Patch ended up working with Derek McLaren. He'd always thought she could've done better, so much better, than running drugs for their supplier. He hadn't expected an honest answer from her then, but Eva had stiffened and stared at the pills in her hands uncomfortably, and told him her story in a few short sentences.
The foster system is broken, she'd said. I never could count on anyone but Patch, and he got involved with Derek, said we'd be rich and safe and everything we wanted to be. I wasn't that optimistic about it at the time, but he's my brother and he wouldn't have lasted a day without me. Someone had to look out for him.
She'd told him that, and Nathan had understood, because there'd been a time when Derek was less of a man and more of a promise, a gateway to wealth and opportunities and a future that didn't look so bleak. What he hadn't comprehended was Eva's devotion to the likes of Patch Booker, why someone would enter a life of crime and danger out of love for someone like him, but he thinks he gets it now. Maybe it's just the cruelty of caring about other people. It's inevitably going to ruin you, in a good way or a bad one, and you don't know which it will be until you try.
"A chance," Nathan repeats, speaking softly now, because there's something achingly heartbreaking about this conversation, something delicate he doesn't want to destroy, something painful twisting in his soul. "Except it was never a chance, Eva. We're nothing to Derek. He doesn't give a shit about us unless he can exploit us. He doesn't care about us as individuals, and it hurts to realise it, but I doubt he ever truly did. He would've let me kill Patch without batting an eyelash."
He takes another step forward, lowers his voice so only Eva can hear. "You're not rich and you're not safe and I don't think you're even close to everything you wanted to be. So it's only fear, isn't it? Only fear keeping you tied to him?"
Fear for Derek, fear for death, fear for a future to face alone. Fear for a new direction, uncharted territory so far out of the comfort zone it hurts like fucking hell. Nathan understands that better than anyone.
He feels a rumble beneath his feet, steel groaning; a shudder passes through the yacht, unnatural and pulsing with dark energy. He knows what this means. Veronika used the spell.
This ship is going to sink.
"You know," Eva says slowly, "that we can't live while he does."
Nathan understands that better than anyone, too.
"I know. And that's why I need you to let us go."
Relief washes over him when Eva lowers her gun. She steps back, watching Jamie and Nathan with lingering suspicion and reluctant trust both. "Do what you have to do."
"Fetch your brother fast," Nathan tells her. "Have him bring you and Jamie to his motorboat and wait there. Now." He moves past the girls, because there's not much time, because Veronika said they'd have twenty minutes at most and the longer he waits, the more danger she's in. "I'll find Veronika and deal with Derek."
With those words, phase two begins.
Nathan finds himself racing through corridors again, the ship protesting against its own imminent demise; he trusts Jamie will make it to the motorboat and hopes she'll keep Eva on the right track. Crew members and mobsters pass him, frightened and confused, panic etched into their features, for there's something wrong with the yacht, it's going down and they don't understand why. Nathan doesn't pay attention to them, rushes right past the clamour and the hysteria and everyone in his way. He needs to find Veronika. He needs to find Derek.
This chaos, it's orchestrated, necessary; if everyone on the yacht is busy saving their asses, few will watch Nathan and none will notice Derek McLaren's disappearance in the whirlpool of madness. Breathing heavily, Nathan forces himself to ascend the main staircase. He and Veronika decided she'd take the grimoire upwards to the higher decks, baiting Derek, buying time and getting him alone in a secluded space.
He just hopes Veronika managed to stay out of Derek's hands.
Nathan's lungs and muscles burn, his sides hurt, beads of sweat pool on his forehead. His body feels scorching hot and he wonders, briefly, if he already felt like this when he uttered the fire spell, like his limbs and all his organs are ablaze. Adrenaline may have lessened the sting before, but god, does he feel it now.
He hears Derek's raised voice in the distance and follows the noise. It gets louder and more aggressive as he approaches, refusing to be drowned out by the sound of waves smashing against a sinking ship on an otherwise tranquil night. When Nathan sees Derek and Veronika, he immediately pulls out his gun in a fit of rage.
He should've come earlier. He should've come earlier.
"How dare you," Derek snarls at Veronika, "keep my fucking property from me?"
There's blood on the golden rings around his fingers, a grimoire in his hands, mania in his eyes. Veronika sits slumped against a sun lounger like a pile of so much shattered broken glass, wheezing, face bruised and bloodied. She didn't back down without a fight and lost. The air smells like salt and rust and Nathan thinks he's going to lose his entire goddamn mind.
"Derek," he growls, "Derek, fucking bastard, look at me!"
Derek turns to face Nathan and his weapon, but the sight doesn't wipe his ecstatic smile off his face. He just stands, relaxed, holding the treasure he's desired since the moment he learnt of its existence. "I have it now, Nathan," he announces triumphantly. "I have it now."
Nathan doesn't fear Derek. The man is unarmed, and though he has the grimoire, he knows as little Icelandic as Nathan does. Nathan could shoot him before he even opens the book, could've already shot him seconds ago. So why hasn't he? Derek must die.
Nathan's gun shakes in his hands.
"I'll shoot you," he tells Derek, slow but sure, as if saying it out loud might motivate him to just do it already. "I swear to God, I'll shoot you."
But it won't be easy, huh? It isn't supposed to be easy. Nathan's seen his fair share of violence, has been in fights and skirmishes before, but this isn't a fight. It technically isn't even self-defense. It's premeditated murder and no lie he tells himself will change that.
Derek listens to Nathan's promise to shoot him and stares, holding the book tightly. And then he laughs. He laughs really fucking hard, cackles like a madman, as if he thinks Nathan isn't serious and this is all just a big joke.
It takes Nathan a few seconds to comprehend that that's exactly what Derek thinks.
"You can't shoot me," Derek says inbetween cackles. "No, no, you can't, you won't. You wouldn't do that. I know you."
I know you.
Something snaps in Nathan's brain. I know you. You can't shoot me. Maybe he can't, maybe it isn't right, but how can it not be right? He hears Derek's mocking laughter and he thinks, thinks about Veronika's beaten body and Jamie's captivity, Pastor Bridgeman's mind-controlled state and a grimoire in Derek's hands. He feels Patch's wince again, shoot him, be my guest. And then there's his mother, a body on the kitchen floor, and he remembers he has nothing but candles for comfort and that's what his whole life will be forever if he doesn't do this now, nothing but candles every fucking day.
I know you.
We can't live while he does.
Hands steadying, Nathan feels himself pull the trigger, the sound of a gunshot filling his ears.
It occurs to him that maybe Derek never knew him very well after all.
Veronika gasps and Nathan stumbles back, dropping the gun in a shocked daze, because it's such a goddamn mess. There's so much blood, it got on his face and his clothes and in his fucking mouth and the sundeck is painted red. Derek's body hits the floor with a sickening thud and Nathan would vomit if he had anything of substance in his stomach, but that isn't the case, so he just gags. The grimoire falls, too, bits of flesh on its blood-stained cover.
This wasn't grand or poetic or glorious. This went fast, too fast. No fight, no struggle, nothing. Derek always did think he knew everything. In the end, he was as fallible as everyone else.
Even the sky is red, painted so by a flare sailing past impossibly bright stars. The coast guard will be here soon. Nathan remembers the ship is sinking and they need to run, but his body won't move. Veronika's the one who stumbles to her feet first, grabbing the grimoire like it's something dirty and shoving it into his hands, swaying where she stands. "Come to your senses," she hisses, pained, "and finish this. We have to go. We can't leave a trace."
They have to use the fire spell one last time. Nathan tries to say it like he did before, but stumbles over the spell once, twice, four times—he can't gather his thoughts. Only when Veronika tells him the words does he manage to repeat them. Then there are flames, bright and orange and blazing hot, and the air smells like salt and metal and charred flesh, a scent that will haunt Nathan forever.
There won't be a body or a weapon to find. Just ashes, sinking to the bottom of the sea.
He feels the fire spell inside of him again, intense, destructive, vicious. Maybe he used the spell too much or in a way the book finds fit to punish; he's given up on trying to unravel this evil thing's secrets. It hurts like a bitch, though, a pain Nathan feels on his skin; heat lashes against his abdomen like the crack of a whip and it almost has him doubling over. It burns his flesh, leaves a wound—a scar for a reminder.
Freedom and magic, he supposes, both come at a high price. A price that tastes like blood.