“Wait for Cyrus. They may have sponsors.”
The words spared our lives for the moment. The shorter one called Thomas jerked me to my feet and shoved me away from Ryder. The muzzle of his rifle jammed hard against my spine as he marched us forward. They grabbed our packs, but left the rest of our gear. It wouldn't be hard for them to go back for what they'd neglected. I looked back once to find Ryder and only caught a glimpse of him, still disoriented from his injury. I stumbled as Thomas shoved me. I slammed into the guard in front of me.
“Don't touch me, female!”
Pain lit up my left side as his slap whipped my head back. I tasted blood. Ryder's cry of alarm pierced me. Violence descended on him before I could react. My stomach churned as I listened to every cry of anguish that burst from his lungs. The rifle jammed against my temple halted my retaliation. I kept my head down, averting my eyes and praying they’d stop hurting him.
The scenery was the same as it had been as we hiked in the cascade wilderness, but different now, darker, colder. As we marched, the telltale signs of decomposition, coagulated blood, and death attacked my senses.
Thomas noticed my discomfort. His laughter released acid into my gut. “It's the pit. You're smelling the pit, little pig.” The stench of his breath assaulted me as he pushed closer and whispered, “You’d probably like it. It’s filthy like you.”
There’d been a time in my life where his words might have caught beneath my skin and taken root there, but for as much as I detested Amos for what had happened between us, I owed him for the lessons he’d taught me. His words echoed in my memory, “Give them what they want. Be the person they think you are and the path will pave right in front of you.”
I’d done it at the Rockin’ B, but I’d done it too well. Cassidy Billings had been a relatively easy role to step into. She was everything I’d been before my diagnosis. But I’d lost myself to my cover, and it had compromised my actions. I couldn’t afford to do it again. As Thomas continued to taunt me, I tried to focus on the profile he was selling. Women weren’t trustworthy. They were dirty, wicked, and unintelligent. They ranked below the men. It was one guard’s opinion, but no one else told him to stop.
The first outcroppings of buildings began to dot the landscape. Mostly small sheds, some tilted with bad construction. Then gardens surrounded by fences built from tree branches and twine. The path we followed wasn’t graveled or marked, just a worn out sliver of dirt amongst the taller grasses. It was likely a patrol path used only by the guards.
From what I could see, the camp was clean and organized and, for whatever reason, that caused a shred of hope inside of me. A place this thought out couldn’t be run by a psychopath. Granted, as I thought back on the major cults of American history, my hope disappeared. Jonestown and Wacko had been led by strong, intelligent leaders, and neither had ended well.
Voices caught on the breeze, children laughing and squealing, but we weren’t permitted to see any of them. The path ended beside an old shed, more dilapidated than the rest, weathered boards hammered together in cheap construction with a rusted roof. Buildings like this dotted the fields of Northern Washington. Like titans of a past life, they rested and waited for a time when they might spring back to their former glory.
In my opinion, all they needed was a lit match and a fan.
Yet, as Thomas shoved me through the swinging door with one hinge, and my face scraped against the damp earth, I realized it wasn’t necessarily the shed that kept me captive, but those who owned the shed and, in that sense, the holes in the walls didn’t matter.
Ryder hit the ground beside me. A burst of pain broke free as he caught himself and the haphazard door swung shut again. Our captors’ voices filtered through the slats on the walls.
“Stand guard.”
“Bring Cyrus.”
“He’s busy, get Raife.”
“They look rich. I’ll get Cyrus.”
Ryder hovered on his hands and knees. Blood dripped from a cut above his eye. His ribcage expanded and contracted slowly, but deep. I knew the feeling too well. I’d thought the same thing as I was trapped in that cabin. If I don’t move too much, the pain is bearable.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he whispered. I wondered if he was even talking to me. “They’re going to kill us.”
With soft hands, I helped him maneuver to a sitting position. From the way he winced at my touch, I knew they’d inflicted quite a bit of abuse for his outcry. It broke my heart as I added another piece to my profile. The women had no rights and abuse was accepted as commonplace.
“If we try to escape, they’ll kill us for sure. We want to be here, remember? We need to convince them of that.”
Pain etched his face, more than I expected. Ryder wrapped his arms over his knees and dropped his head to rest there. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m starting to think you were right. I shouldn’t have come.”
Ryder had always afforded me some sense of safety and security, a deep well of strength to draw on when I grew weak. I knew I had to find it within myself to offer that same gift back to him.
“The key is to give them what they want. Become whoever they need you to be so you’ll stay alive.” The shed smelled of mildew and past winter rain as I tried to explain what Amos had taught me years before. “Even when it’s against your nature, do it. This is survival, and it’s only for this moment in time. In the end, you’ll have the upper hand.”
Sunshine snuck in through the spaces between the slats in the wall, blinding light caged in the complete contrast of the dark structure of the building. I barely heard Ryder as he spoke.
“How do I know what they want?”
“Follow your instincts. The challenge isn’t always knowing what they want. Becoming what they want is sometimes impossible.” I thought about my time at Rockin’ B. “And then not getting lost once you do.”
He understood what I wasn’t saying. The blood from his head wound smeared over his skin as he lifted his head. “Is that what happened?” His intense stare locked just beyond his arms and a thousand miles away at the same time. “Is that why you were with him?”
I watched the guard through the slats, his shadow obscured the light where he stood, springing to life in one place and extinguishing to darkness as he shifted from foot to foot. The truth tangled up in the net. I couldn’t pull it loose without dragging everything else with it.
“I had nothing left of my life to hang on to.” I knew he wouldn’t allow the answer to stand alone, so I added, “It was easy to be Cassidy. She was everything I used to be, and, yes, I got lost.”
The words weren’t enough. They hadn’t filled the gaps my absence had left.
“But was it why you fell for him?”
The phrase grated on me. I shifted in my discomfort. “I never said I fell for him.”
“You pulled away from me.” His jaw opened and shut, then hung open with the words that hurt too much to say. “I triggered that. When I told you I loved you, you pulled away. What else am I supposed to think?”
A second shape darted across the slats, sending the sunbeams flying in panic, as if someone had slipped their finger across the keys of a piano. I wanted to give Ryder the peace he was looking for, but the net I was trapped in was nothing but pain. I didn’t owe him any of it.
“I never said I loved him.” For good measure I added, “I’ve never said that to anyone.”
The shape paused. I waited to see if the guard had seen. There was no indication that he had. The spritely figure pushed up on tiptoe. A blue eye watched me from a hole in the wood.
“Is that supposed to make me feel better, Lindy? You should have seen your face. You looked at me like—”
My frustrations spilled over. “I get it Ryder, I’m broken. I told you that. I’m broken and hideous. I’ll never be the same. That’s why I told you I don’t want a relationship, because you deserve better than—”
“Are you kidding me?” He finally released his stare and
turned it on me. Shock, dismay, and anger all mixed into a muddy mess on his perfect face. “I poured my heart out to you and you still doubt me?”
“People say things they don’t mean. People lie even when they don’t want to.”
I’d learned it too well. I’d watched Dallas melt in front of my eyes from what I thought he was into the monster he’d been all along. I’d kissed the lips of someone who had murdered, mutilated, and tortured people. There had been laughter and confessions built on breathy whispers and golden sunsets, but it was all lies, all a screen that I hadn’t sensed until it was over.
The heat from his stare turned away from me again. “But he loved you, didn’t he?”
“He said he did.” The distinction was clear in my mind, but I wasn’t sure Ryder felt the difference.
“Move aside, Fern. Stop gawking.”
It was a new voice, still a ways off, but the authority of the tone chilled me. I’d spent all my time talking with Ryder when I should’ve been formulating a persona. One look at Ryder told me he had the same regrets.
The door pulled open, limping horribly as if it might finally give up the ghost. Taller than average, but not hulking, the new man was still bulky enough to block the majority of the light before it could break through. What little sunlight did pierce around his body caught the outline of a scruffy beard; worn in a style I thought had died out with the pioneers I’d studied in fifth grade. Grey eyes stared from behind untrimmed eyebrows, framed by wrinkled and leathered skin. He assessed us, and I knew we’d been found wanting.
“This is all? This is what you insisted I come for?” With one wave of his hand, he ordered our deaths. “Throw them in the pit with the rest of the garbage.”
Guards swarmed around us with greedy hands and eager weapons. My mind spun in the chaos searching for a word, any phrase that might secure our freedoms and lives.
“Sponsor!” I shouted without much forethought. “We have a sponsor here in the camp!”
Movement ceased. I’d found the one key word that was synonymous with safety, but that was where my luck ended.
The leader turned slowly on his heel, as if he were set on a Lazy Susan, deliberate, dangerous, and daring me to prove it wasn’t a bluff.
“Oh? And who is this mystery sponsor?”
I had no name to give, but perhaps I could fake it, or stall until I thought of a better plan.
“A friend of mine, she lives here with you. She told me a long time ago to seek her out when I was able to. We have the same ideals, clean, eco-friendly living with a low impact—”
His patience ran out. “The name, or the pit!”
I felt the familiar jab of Thomas’ rifle in my ribcage. Did I dare give Tasha Saunders’ name? I had no way of knowing if she might vouch for us, or if she was even alive.
“Fern,” I said before I could stop myself. “Her name is Fern.” I’d overheard the name just seconds before, but it was my only shot.
A low chuckle rolled in his lungs. The sound spread like thunder echoing over a mountain range as the rest of the men joined in the laughter.
“Fern? You expect us to believe—”
“Me,” a small voice answered from behind them. “I’m Fern.”
The mouse of a woman who’d spied us through the slats darted into the shed beyond their reach.
“Fern,” I said. As the plan formed, I said it with a deeper conviction. “It’s good to see you, Fern.”
Pulling the name out of the air looked far too convenient for their leader. “If they’re your friends Fern, then please, introduce them.”
Panic exploded in my chest as I prayed she could somehow guess our names. But who was I kidding? Luck wasn’t on our side. Thomas’ trigger finger tested the tension.
“Ryder and Lindy. We met in college.”
She said it with such commitment that I began to wonder myself if it was true. She must have heard us talking. She’d slipped close to the building and had listened to hear our names. But why? What did she have to gain from our presence?
“You can speak for them, Fern?” There was a weight there, a contract I didn’t understand, and it left me uneasy.
“Yes, Cyrus.”
The leader, Cyrus, took a step toward her and fear clouded her eyes. She knew pain, and she’d learned her place. Her face tilted toward the ground, too afraid to look up at him as he spoke.
“And her? You’ll train her?”
Train? I felt like a misbehaved puppy, but honestly, I was willing to do almost anything to get the rifle muzzle from between my fourth and fifth ribs.
“Yes, Cyrus.”
Turning, Cyrus spoke to us for the first time, or rather to Ryder. “Is she yours?”
My companion’s eyes widened. It was a loaded question considering the conversations we’d shared over the past twenty-four hours. I was pretty sure Ryder wanted to answer, “Well, I’ve been trying to establish that, but she’s pretty stubborn.”
Thankfully he didn’t.
“Mine? We’re friends,” Ryder said.
“Does she belong to you?”
Our cover was meant to be siblings, but after the patrol party had caught us in a passionate moment, I knew that wasn’t an option.
“He’s my boyfriend,” I answered quickly.
I didn’t have time to register the hand, or the speed with which it crashed against my temple, but I did taste the dirt as my face grated once more against the open soil floor. I stayed down for a moment, waiting for my vision to correct and my thoughts to fall back into a linear fashion. A dull pulsating pain spread in the front of my head. Acid churned in my stomach as if I might lose anything I’d ever eaten. Sure that such an action would also end in a beating, I scraped up my courage and kept my head down.
“How dare you answer for a man,” Thomas seethed behind me. He spat, and the saliva slid from my cheek down to the soil near my hand.
“There’s a discrepancy here,” Cyrus said with no regard for any of the abuse I’d endured. “He says friends, she says relationship. Perhaps there’s an opportunity for training.”
The word released a new fit of fear in my heart. There was something ominous about the way he said it, about the way the men sneered, and the speed with which Fern turned away from me. A cry released from my throat as Thomas gripped my hair and yanked me to my feet. He threw me forward. I slammed against the crooked door.
“Into the courtyard. Let’s let everyone learn something today.” Cyrus spoke gleefully as if announcing a guest speaker from a local university.
I was shoved, dragged, and jerked from one set of rough arms to the next until the last man let me fall into an open square of heavily pebbled gravel. Air seeped in and out of me at an accelerated pace, wheezing and gasping for a moment. My hands screamed for attention as the cuts on my palms awakened too many bad memories.
Pain.
I was far too familiar with pain.
“Our newest initiate doesn’t understand how family works.” Cyrus’ voice boomed over the group as they circled about. Women, even a few children, joined the crowd, but the men stayed to the front, fists clenched and eager. “I believe it is our obligation to help her learn her place if at all possible.”
There were whispers as I was judged by the crowd. Most voices faded into mumbles, added noise to the chaos I felt, but others broke through and reopened the wounds I already knew.
“Why is she scarred like that?”
“She’s as thin as a skeleton.”
“I think she looks like roadkill.”
“Picked over three-day-old roadkill,” a different voice amended.
I pushed myself to my feet and squared my shoulders. Wiping the wetness from my face, blood, saliva, or snot I couldn’t be sure, I steeled myself for their test. Ryder’s eyes found me in a second, pleading with me to escape this before anything happened, but we had a job to do, and I hadn’t found Tasha.
“We should like to test your strength,” Cyrus spoke directly to me. “Please
, act accordingly.”
The attack came from behind, a large man with hands like a catcher’s mitt. Pinning my arms back, he held me in place for his partner. Anticipating the swing, I dodged the blow and slammed my foot into my attacker’s stomach. The man who held me lost his grip. I whipped my elbow back across his face, dropping him to the ground. The second attacker swung, but I ducked low again, tripping him into his own momentum and flipping him on top of the first as he tried to stand up. A few snickers released from the crowd, and I fed off of it. Even as a third man came at me, I wondered if I might be the first woman to pass such a test. I cracked his face against my knee and shoved him back with a strong front kick. Years of kickboxing had prepared me in ways they’d never anticipated. If I were able to prove I was as strong as a man, perhaps the road might pave ahead of me.
A solid punch spun me backward. A boot dig into my stomach as I collided with the ground again. I kicked blindly and connected, the sound of air expelled from lungs, and I pushed myself to my feet. Blood tinged my tongue. Two men came at me, I stayed below the first jab, but the second caught me square on my jaw. I fell to the earth again.
Knowing I was finished if I stayed down, I propelled myself up once more. Men spoke to Ryder, his eyes wide with the horror of the violence, but he nodded as if he understood what they wanted.
Arms gripped me from behind and hurled me to the ground. Shouting and taunting swirled around me, spinning like my thoughts and my balance. Still, I pushed myself to my feet, blood streaming from my nose and mixing with the dirt that caked my face. Ryder’s face skewed in absolute dread, but I searched the crowd for the next threat. It wasn’t until they pushed him forward that I realized the source of his fear.
He was meant as my next attacker.
I had to fight him.
He had to fight me.
I took the first swing, but my reluctant aim left me unwilling. His arms caught me and slammed me against the ground with force I never expected. My head whiplashed back and my cries tore through the air. Using my legs, I shoved him from my body and tackled him. Ryder flipped me before I could take a breath. I fell hard against the ground. Pinning me there, he bent low. His voice hissed against my ear. “I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to be this person.”
Sparrows & Sacrifice Page 11