I fought to make sense of this, couldn't. Finally, I motioned with my head, indicating towards the guy with the writing and burns all over his chest and arms.
“What’s wrong with him?” I said.
“Ezekial?” The blond man smiled, glancing at the half-naked man. “There is nothing whatsoever wrong with him. He volunteered, Ms. Taylor.”
But I was still looking around, trying to figure out where we were. Had they driven us somewhere outside the city? If so, why could I see so much light wherever I glimpsed pieces of the horizon? Looking back at that stone basin surrounded by fire, it hit me.
“The Cloisters,” I said, disbelieving. “You're burning me at an art museum?"
My mind whirled around this, remembeirng the oddly out-of-place reconstructed medieval church, or pieces of a church, on a hill in Washington Heights. It housed the Met's medieval art collection; Rockefeller had it built and filled it with privately-owned works, then donated the whole thing as a cultural landmark. I'd only been there once, with Jaden a few years back, but I remembered it was in Fort Tyron Park, and as close to the boondocks as existed in Manhattan. Other than junkies, I had no idea if anyone would be in visual distance of the park.
Maybe someone would see the fire? Or the smoke at least?
Looking around, I realized we were half-surrounded by stone walls, the outer walls around the museum itself.
My eyes returned to the bonfire, seemingly on their own. Flames had already climbed halfway down the row of logs and broken crates forming the spoke leading to me.
The reality of the increasing heat on my skin suddenly brought my brain into sharper focus. I was wasting time... I had to do something. I couldn't just lie here and wait for my skin to start to blacken. So I did the only thing really open to me at that point. I began lunging against the chains holding my wrists to the wood... and screaming at the top of my lungs.
I could only hope someone would hear it, somewhere.
“Ms. Taylor!” the man said loudly, to be heard over my yells. “Do you want me to gag you?”
“HELP! HELP! PLEASE HELP ME! HELP US! THEY'RE KILLING US!”
“No one can hear you, Ms. Taylor,” he said calmly.
“...POLICE!" I screamed. "POLICE! HELP! 911!"
“...And it is too late to stop," the man added. "The ritual is already underway. To stop it now would be blasphemy... a crime against God...”
“...FIRE!" I screamed, louder. "FIRE! FIRE! I'LL PAY YOU TO HELP US! PLEASE!"
"Ms. Taylor," he said. "This is pointless. And very childish...”
"HELP!" I screamed again. "FIRE! FIRE!"
"God is the only one who can save you, Ms. Taylor," the man said, clasping his hands at the base of his spine. "I suggest you direct your appeals to him...”
When I continued to yell and scream as loud as I could, the man sighed a little, motioning towards the younger guy with the mean eyes, the Russian who'd been driving the car. The latter walked towards me holding a thick piece of cloth. I struggled harder, sliding the rest of the way down the side of the log, but I couldn't move my head much. He easily tied the gag around my mouth, knotting it tightly, so that I couldn't close my mouth.
He smirked at me again, flicking my forehead sharply with his fingers.
I tried screaming against the cloth, but I could barely hear it over the crackling fire.
“You don’t understand what an honor this is,” ponytail man said again, as the Russian moved away. “You seem like a compassionate person, Ms. Taylor. That is why you objected to our hurting the ice-blood, is it not? Well, if you understood why we are doing what we are doing, you would likely want to help us, too...”
Through the gag, I let him know in no uncertain terms that he was definitely wrong about that. He smiled, but I saw the patient look return to his eyes.
"Most people's lives are inconsequential, Ms. Taylor. You will never have to suffer through that lack of meaning. Your life has purpose. A glorious purpose. You will appreciate that, I am sure of it, once you are on the other side...”
Again, I tried to let him know through the gag exactly how I felt about that.
He smiled down at me once more, his eyes reflecting firelight.
“Yours is the blood that will aid us the most," he added. "Unfortunately, we have been unable to identify you precisely... but we have it narrowed to a number of second-tier deities...” He smiled wider, leaning over me once more. "We found more of your people incarnated down here than we expected. We had been told the number would be approximately five first-tier souls prior to the arrival of the Bridge. But the texts we'd been referencing were wrong. We found exactly nine intermediaries with identifiable physiological traits...”
Once more, the smile grew almost affectionate, condescendingly benign.
“...We chose you, Alyson, because you were one of the few we could identify, almost without doubt, as not being one of the Four. In fact, your absence seemed the least likely to cause problems in general. You were isolated from others of your kind. Young. Relatively unattached. Doing nothing of real significance with your life...”
His smile grew a touch colder.
“...And, quite frankly," he added. "You were convenient. We identified only one other intermediary in North America from medical files, and that individual proved to be extremely difficult to track. Most of your kind were living in Asia... understandably, I suppose... and in places we couldn't easily travel. You were in a stationary location, tied into the official network, so easy to monitor and observe. You appeared to be entirely untrained as a seer. Your visit to New York presented as the perfect opportunity...”
Again, I could only stare at him, trying to blink my way past the residuals of the drug he’d pumped into my neck, watching the fire as I tried to make sense of his words, trying to find something in them that might help me.
But I couldn't even talk to him anymore, so all I did was shake my head.
“I’m not a seer!” I said through the gag.
I shook my head harder, maybe because ‘no’ was the only thing that made sense to me right then, and I doubted he could understand me through the gag.
“For the thousandth, millionth, billionth time," I said. “...I’m not a seer... !”
The man must have understood at least part of this, because he smiled at me benignly again. Something in the joyful spark I saw in his eyes made me flinch. He looked at me like the two of us were sharing some fantastic secret together.
The expression made me want to hurt him. Physically, I mean.
And not only because I was watching tongues of flame work their way slowly down the lighter-fluid soaked logs that led to my skin.
“You are not a Sarhacienne, it is true,” the man conceded, still smiling condescendingly. “...You are not of the Second Race, Ms. Taylor. You are of the First Race.”
He paused, as if for dramatic effect. I only stared at him blankly.
Eventually, he waved a hand at me again, frowning as if in disappointment. He went on in that same magnanimous voice.
“...It is a pity you have not been educated on the beauty of the scriptures of your own people," he said disapprovingly. "This would mean much more to you if you were not so dismally ignorant. Take my word for it, Ms. Taylor... to meet the incarnation of a First Race being is an honor indeed. We all feel so honored."
Bowing to me formally, he smiled again.
"As I said, we were unable to identify with exactness which being your soul represents, but Davis over here...”
He pointed at one of the other men wearing all black, who smiled at me shyly, almost like he was a fan at an art opening. I could only stare at him, unable to believe he could look at me like that, when he was about to barbecue me.
“...He’s our resident expert on the texts," Ponytail added. "After consulting with his books, he is reasonably sure you are either ‘Trickster’ or 'Serpent.’”
The man bowed to me again, still smiling like a boy with a crush.
&n
bsp; “I think ‘S-Serpent,’ Miss,” he said, his words carrying just the faintest trace of a stutter.
Blond ponytail man continued in the same, nearly happy voice.
“...We searched for a very, very long time to find you,” he said brightly. “Years, in fact. But we stumbled on a lucky break a few months ago. By divine providence, we were given the biological markers with which to look for one of your kind. Our sympathetic patron most generously supplied us also with access to the international databases... and aided us with identification of the markers for the Four. Once we received those three things, it was inevitable that we would find a match... for our Ancesters are always among us, even when they choose to travel in disguise...”
All I could do was stare up at him.
I had no idea what any of them were talking about.
I knew there was all this symbolism around the number three in the seer religion. They showed some of that stuff on the news. But I had no idea what the whole thing with races was, or what any of it had to do with me.
Either way, clearly, the dude was insane. So were his pals.
And they intended to burn three people alive... two of us, at least, very much completely not being okay with that fact.
I looked over at the female seer once more.
She seemed like she might be my only ally in this coven of freaks. I couldn't help but wonder how she felt about what humanity had done with her people's religion over the last half-century. It was harder to see her now, because of the smoke and how low I'd fallen on the log, but I made out her face across the fire around the stone basin. She'd fallen more, too, so must have been struggling like I was. The fire was closer to her than me, so her spoke on the crazy wheel must be burning faster.
She was staring at the flames, her violet-colored eyes wide with terror. They’d gagged her, too, and she wore a collar around her neck, different from the one I’d seen on her that morning. It was a lot heavier for one thing, and made of a darker, more vibrant green.
So whatever else she might be able to do, she probably wouldn’t be able to help me in terms of her seer super-powers.
As if feeling my eyes, she looked up at me, too.
I saw a kind of pleading in her gaze, as if she believed her only shred of help lay in me, rather than the reverse, as I’d been kind of hoping.
The fire had nearly reached the crates piled under her log.
Another wave of panic hit me as I stared at the climbing flames.
Heat flushed my skin, almost painfully now, and I saw the terror in the seer's eyes who was tied down across from me. A rush of feeling, images, even understandings hit me that clicked my brain into razor-sharp focus. No one was coming. No one would help us. No one had heard me shouting. That female seer couldn't help me. The other guy they were sacrificing was as crazy as the rest of them. I was going to die.
My brother would be devastated. My mother would probably drink herself to death.
Jaden would only remember me kissing that cop. He'd probably end up dating that skank, who'd be thrilled to have a reason to comfort him once I was gone.
More than that, I'd be dead. Really, really dead.
I wasn't ready to be dead.
Pain slid through me, different than physical pain, but almost more intense. Whatever it was, whatever caused it... it woke me up.
As the pain ebbed, a part of me seemed to reach out on its own. It wasn't like a cry for help that time... more like an exhale of breath, or an expulsion of effort that was more relief than exertion. I couldn't explain it, and didn't even try to understand what I was doing. I didn't want to think about how pointless it was, or how helpless I felt, tied to that log and waiting for death.
For a brief, silent moment, I felt like a part of the world again. I felt connected to everything around me, in a way I often forgot in my day-to-day life.
I didn't just believe it. I felt my connectedness to it...
I remembered I wasn't really alone.
That pain hit me again, harder. With it came a strangely cathartic feeling, a folding sensation, like an eyeglass collapsing somewhere inside my mind. I went away somewhere in that. The golden light I'd felt, that still managed to make me feel like I was part of that tapestry of sky and light... and yes, even fire... grew brighter still.
Briefly, I was floating.
An ocean surrounded me, covered in diamonds.
The fire, everything seemed to both dim and grow really, really bright...
... and then there was yelling.
A lot of yelling.
It took another few seconds for me to understand that the yelling was because of me.
I WAS GASPING, light-headed.
I managed to open my eyes. I was sweating, and I could barely see, even with my eyes open. Light filled my eyes, like the blinding white after a camera flash in the dark, only this one was tinged with green. It also didn't seem to be fading.
I could see movement around me, but I could barely make it out, or what it meant. The people who'd been standing over me seemed to be dancing around, yelling, but I had no idea why. I blinked, trying to see them... couldn't. I thought maybe I was burning, but I wasn't in pain; I just felt drugged again, like some part of me was elsewhere, leaving the rest of me behind. I felt like I did after I gave blood actually, like part of me was missing.
I blinked my eyes, trying again to clear my vision. That time, slowly, the light that filled them began to dim, enough that I could make out shapes.
It took me a moment more to focus on the men around me. Most of them were still yelling, and it was disorienting, but they didn't seem to be focused on me.
Then I realized at least half of them were on fire.
My eyes cleared a bit more. Fear seemed to help with the light, bringing my vision back into sharper focus. Ponytail guy and the man who'd called me a snake, who'd been standing beside one of the spokes of fire, were burning. They were closest to me, but I could see at least two other dark-clad figures on fire across from them, on the other side of the basin.
The other three forms I could see seemed to be trying to put them out. They beat frantically at their clothes, using jackets and even their hands, rolling them on the grass.
I looked down at the spoke of firewood that had led to my log.
It was gone. I mean, it no longer burned from the center bonfire to me.
Instead, the wood seemed to have been scattered all over the dais around me. The fire around the stone basin had been broken into several pieces, too. I could see bushes burning in addition to the men's clothes, along with patches of dried grass and solitary logs on the stone steps, some as much as ten yards away. The branches of one overhanging tree had also caught fire. The slender fronds waved in the breeze as I watched, looking like they might spread the fire to the tree on the other side, which had the same thin leaves and willowy branches.
The seer on the log across from me was staring at me in shock, her violet eyes wide, shining in the dim space where her face hung. Her smoke-smudged skin made her eyes stand out more, especially their whites. I couldn't see her expression exactly, but the emotion I saw there was almost wonder... maybe even relief mixed with something closer to reverence.
It occurred to me only then that the spoke of wood leading to her log had been blown all over the place, too. Individual logs and pieces of crate were burning in clumps in other areas of the cement dais, but none of it close enough to put her in danger. One of the bigger logs had lit the dry grass on the opposite stretch of lawn, a good twenty feet away, and it was spreading fast to the clumps of rose bushes and bulb flowers in that stretch of garden.
The crates and branches leading to the third guy were somewhat more intact, but they'd been blown into a diagonal line away from his log, too. The man with the symbols cut and drawn and burned into his skin was staring at me, too.
Instead of the relief I felt from the seer, though, the man stared at me as if frozen. I could see his expression better though, as the fire nearer to
him still illuminated his face.
His eyes held abject terror. He looked terrified of me.
The men around the three of us continued to scream, beating at flames that in some cases were starting to eat through clothes to skin. One man I saw was holding his face, screaming where his hair was on fire while another dark form was trying to get him down in the grass, where he could beat out the fire. No one seemed to remember the three of us tied to logs.
It seemed like hours passed with nothing but those screams punctuating the silence, along with the shouts of the others trying to beat down the flames.
I don't know how long it really went on, but slowly, the sounds began to die out.
I heard sobs from the guy whose hair had burned. Another man was cursing loudly in English, stomping out flames before they could reach the main garden by the medieval arches and the museum itself.
Overall though, it was quieter now.
I was getting afraid again, as I still couldn't loosen my arms. Whatever had happened, the other two captives seemed to think it was my fault, which meant the crazy religious fanatics would probably think so, too. I didn't know what they'd do to me when they pulled their shit together again. I really didn't want to stick around to find out.
In desperation, I tried to inch my way down the length of the log itself, pulling the chains with me. I was hoping I could just fall off the end of it, but when I craned my head, I was pretty sure I could see the log resting on some kind of stone support. When I looked at the female seer, my fears were confirmed. Her log was resting on two stone blocks, curved at the top to hold the log firmly in place. Still, I kept trying to inch my way forward. I knew the log had to be insanely heavy, especially with me hanging from it, but I still harbored some hope I could roll it off the cement blocks... hopefully without crushing myself under it.
The light in my eyes seemed to be coming back, maybe from the fear. Maybe my vision decided to go on hiatus when I hit my stress limit... a thought that didn't strike me as all that comforting, given that if I went blind every time I was in danger I was seriously not a good person to have around in crisis situations.
Allie's War Early Years Page 7