by Anni Taylor
A blur of movement in my peripheral vision made me jerk my head up. Hooded figures separated themselves from the darkness on the other side of the room.
“Jennifer!” I called in desperate warning and raced back to the stairs.
In alarm, she dropped what she’d been looking at.
By the time we’d reached for our guns, more figures moved out behind us.
They’d been there the whole time. Waiting.
68. EVIE
BILE BURNED MY THROAT.
Beside me, Yolanda stopped her broken song and began screaming.
The thing before us was a nightmare vision.
A wide, carved pillar of rock ran from the floor and up through to the underside of the rock ceiling. Huge glass panels were set into the pillar, all the way around—some kind of massive, upright, cylindrical tank filled with water. A rusting metal cage that seemed to me as large and tall as a mansion filled the tank. What was inside the cage squeezed the air from my lungs. Layers and layers and layers of bodies. Skeletal and crumbling at the bottom and in all stages of decomposition to the top layer, where the bodies were fresh.
The macabre scene was medieval and like the mass-extermination graves of modern war all at once.
I could see some faces that were turned my way in the top layer.
Greta. She was never taken to the mainland.
Andre. He’d lost after the very first challenge and would have been among the first to discover the horror of our fate.
Saul. The police hadn’t returned him to his family. Whoever had come to the monastery that day were part of this—they were Saviours.
My body shivered relentlessly. I was suddenly deathly cold.
Kara had mentioned the missing participants floating.
Now I knew.
I was in the final six. I was going to be sitting here watching the others get tortured by the Saviours and then see their discarded bodies float down through the water.
Knowing I will be joining them.
69. CONSTANCE
THE SAVIOURS MOVED IN AROUND JENNIFER and me. Terror washed through me, making me lose control of my bladder. Men on either side of me kept a grip on my arms so tight it dug into my bones. They searched our bodies, taking away our guns and knives.
Jennifer and I were forced down the stairs and then into a hidden passage. We were being taken to the level immediately below the floor with the cameras and two-way mirrors, into the dead centre of the monastery.
A door stood in front of us. A door with a keypad and a screen with the image of a handprint. Whatever was behind this door, I understood immediately that it was something terrible.
My heart pounded so hard it hurt.
One of the man tapped in a code and then pressed his hand to the screen.
The door opened.
Ahead, two hundred or more of the Saviours stood on the rock floor of a cavern in a wide semi-circle.
I trembled and stalled at the sight of so many of them at once. A collection of monsters. One of the men pressed the point of a knife into the back of my neck, forcing me to move again.
I saw now that the Saviours were gathered around an enormous, gaping hole in the rock floor.
High, man-made walls surrounded the cavern in a hexagonal shape—the walls of the strange rooms that I looked down into from the floor above. One of the walls was made of glass—an aquarium with fish swimming in it.
Faces turned to us in shock and confusion.
Pale blue light rippled on their faces. There had to be water in that hole in the ground. Their eyes quickly turned hard and glittering, devoid of human emotion.
My bottom lip quivered as I caught Jennifer’s eye.
Her eyes seemed to say, sorry, I told you what you were up against, but you didn’t listen. She looked so much calmer than I felt. I knew she’d been preparing for this for a long time.
My life was about to end. Here and now. As was Kara’s, and I hadn’t even gotten the chance to see her. Neither of us would leave this island. Nothing of us would be left in this world—a cold, tight thought.
Last-minute regrets churned inside me. All the things I’d done or hadn’t done. Thoughts whipped through my mind.
I hadn’t spoken to my parents and sisters in a long time. Years might go by before they’d even notice Kara and I had vanished. I should have made more of an effort when Kara was small. I shouldn’t have isolated her and myself from them. Then I saw Otto’s face. Why didn’t I do more to help him get better? Instead, I’d been part and parcel of the maelstrom. I pictured James and the house I’d left behind. Would my husband finally show his feelings for me when he realised I was missing, too? I’d never know.
“Brother Sage!” one of our captors called. “We found these two in the viewing room.”
Four people in dark robes stared at us from beneath their hoods. Two women and two men.
One of the four—a man—gestured for us to be brought over to him.
Roughly, we were taken across to stand before them, our balaclavas snatched away.
I watched the mouths of the four gape open at our revealed faces, but that was all I could see, their own faces shrouded by their hoods and the dark light.
A woman spoke first. “Jennifer Bloom. You finally found us.”
Jennifer didn’t answer.
“I’m Sister Rose,” the woman told her then fired sharp questions at her. “You’ve been searching a long time, haven’t you? How did you find us? And how did you get inside the building? Who did you come here with?”
“We came alone,” said Jennifer, her voice firm. “And we got inside because your security isn’t as good as you think it is.”
“And you expect us to believe you came here without any supplies?” Sister Rose threaded her fingers together tightly, like a schoolteacher admonishing a student. Her voice was so ordinary, American like my own.
“We had all we thought we needed,” replied Jennifer. “We didn’t realise there were so many of you. In any case, when the police arrive, they’ll have better weapons than anything we could have brought.”
Hope jumped inside me but was immediately quashed. Jennifer was just buying time and trying a last-ditch attempt to save us.
The woman tilted her head but didn’t show any alarm or anger at Jennifer’s words. “Nonsense. You wouldn’t arrive by yourselves ahead of the police. We have extremely high-level police and politicians who are members here. I know for a fact you couldn’t get a search warrant for this island, but if such a thing did occur, then our contacts would have informed us well ahead of time. We’ll be thoroughly searching the monastery and grounds to see who and what you did bring with you.” She gestured towards the Saviours. Immediately, groups of them moved off towards the exit.
Jennifer gazed at her defiantly. “I would, if I were you.”
The woman’s mouth drew into a hard line. “We already know who you both are. Jennifer and Constance. Of course, the question is, what brought the two of you together?”
They knew me?
Of course they did. I was Kara’s mother, and I’d been searching for her.
“All we want are the people we came for. And then we’ll leave.” My voice shook.
“No one may leave here,” said Sister Rose in a harsh tone that belied her round, pleasant face.
“What is this place?” I pressed. “This room and the water—what does it all mean?”
Sister Rose pursed her small pink lips. “This is our remembrance hall. Where we remember the past and all who came before us. The pool is a cenote.”
“Sen-oh-teh?” I queried.
“Yes,” she replied. “It’s a natural formation that has been here thousands of years, caused by rain seeping into the limestone. They go deep and narrow. Of course, in a normal life cycle, sediment ends up filling them in again. There are others like this on the grounds, and they filled in long ago. But this cenote was special and was kept enclosed when the monastery was built around it. In the past couple o
f hundred years, systems have been added to flush any built-up sediment out to the ocean—the cenote has arms that stretch out that way.”
She spoke as though this was all so normal, these strange and brutal people guarding this deep pool, as if they were simply history enthusiasts.
“Did you know my brother?” Jennifer’s voice was finally thinning and showing cracks. “His name was Noah.”
I let my eyes close for a moment, sad and terrified for her at what she might hear.
“I knew Noah,” came the sharp voice of the other woman. “You can call me Sister Dawn. I remember Noah Bloom. Oh yes, an angry young man with a talent for mathematics. A very smart boy. He found out about us and staged an escape in the middle of the night. Fortunately, we found him and brought him back. Don’t worry, Jennifer, we remember your brother. We remember every single one who enters the island. They aren’t forgotten.”
The muscles in Jennifer’s face drew taut. “Did he suffer?”
Sister Dawn sighed. “We all suffer.” She had a more angular face than Sister Rose, of Indian heritage. Her voice was a mix of Indian and English and very authoritative.
“Who killed him?” Jennifer’s eyes opened large and focused. “Which one of you murdered my brother?”
A slight smile indented Sister Dawn’s face before she straightened and made her expression go blank. “That pleasure was mine. You see, you don’t get closer to a person than the moment you take their life. I already feel close to you because you are of Noah’s blood. And I’ll be the one to take your life.”
Jennifer stared at her unflinchingly. “You will pay. For my brother and my parents.”
“The murder of your parents gave us no pleasure,” said Sister Dawn, dropping her smile. “Unfortunately, when Noah set off on the boat, he’d managed to steal one of our phones, and he had it with him. While at sea, he texted your father. If he’d contacted the police instead, it might have been all over for us. But he didn’t. That was his mistake and our fortune. We located your parents by their phone signal and sent one of our own who lived the closest to that location to take care of it.”
I heard a gasp under Jennifer’s breath. It must be hard for her to hear that small detail and know that Noah had come so close not only to escaping but to destroying the Yeqon’s Saviours.
Sister Dawn nodded to indicate the conversation was at an end, and she turned to the tall man beside her. “I’ll leave the proceedings to you now, Brother Sage.”
Brother Sage bowed his head and slipped the hood back from his face.
All breath left my lungs.
His features.
Features I knew so well.
Steel-blue eyes. A firmly set mouth and chin. The expression that was fixed and vague at the same time. As though he saw right through you, but his mind was operating on another plane.
My husband.
James.
Mentally, I tried to push the image of him away. This wasn’t real. It wasn’t—
It was real.
No hallucination. My life of the past ten years instantly rearranged itself and turned into something completely other. A lie.
He waited with that veneer of patience I’d seen so many times before.
“Constance,” he said. “You weren’t meant to see . . . any of this. How is it that you made your way here?”
“I don’t—” I gulped breaths of air that caused my lungs to burn.
“Of course you don’t,” he said. “You can’t understand it. You can’t process any of this or the reality of who I am. But I’m afraid it doesn’t matter. I think you realise what’s going to happen here next. I see it in your eyes. In any case, it wouldn’t have gone well for you had you done what I requested and come home. Your daughter would have remained missing. And then I would have divorced you. Without Kara, I have had no reason to stay with you.”
Horror and confusion raged inside me, and my voice rose to a scream. “What do you want with my daughter? Why did you bring her here? Why?”
He stared at me coldly. “She’s been coming here since she was seven.”
Gasping, I shook my head wildly. “That’s not true. It’s not—”
“It is true,” he insisted coldly. “You were only too grateful for me to take her away on my overseas business trips. You got your time alone without her. She was too much for you to handle. Too strange. You never understood her. Well, I understood her. And I showed her the ways of the Saviours.”
His words cut into my skin like razor blades.
All this time. He was bringing my little girl here.
I wanted to tear him limb from limb. “My God, why would you do that to a child? You’re evil. A monster.”
“Stop pretending, Constance. Kara was never the perfect little girl. And you were far from the perfect mother. The best thing that happened to both of you is when I married you and adopted Kara. You were living in the poor end of town—you and your useless boyfriend. What was his name—Otto? Yes, it was Otto. A scum-of-the-earth drug addict. You two spent all your time at your drug-fuelled parties, barely taking care of your own daughter. She was alone and frightened so many times that she kept knives hidden under her bed. And invented an imaginary brother for herself—Santiago.”
“That’s not true,” I breathed. “I didn’t—”
But I couldn’t finish my words. Because it was all true. I had found knives under her bed more than once. She did invent a naughty little brother that she called Santiago. Otto and I had partied too much.
But I hadn’t used drugs since I’d found out I was pregnant. I’d been devastated by the discovery of the pregnancy. But then, something changed everything. I’d started bleeding and felt a sudden, unexpected terror at losing the baby. Like a miracle, the bleeding stopped and the pregnancy continued.
And I’d never left Kara alone. Except for one night. Just one night. Otto was the one who couldn’t manage to stay off the drugs. He’d been growing increasingly erratic, to the point where he was threatening to kill himself. He sped off in his car, leaving me terrified. I’d jumped in my car and followed him, leaving Kara asleep upstairs. Otto did die that night, but not through suicide. A man driving his elderly mother home from the hospital somehow misjudged a turn and plunged his car straight into Otto’s.
“That’s exactly how it was,” James told me in a cruel voice. “It’s what the newspapers all reported. Kara’s terrible, neglectful parents. You and Otto left her all alone one Tuesday night, and a strange man entered the house—a thief who knew you kept drugs there. Kara ventured downstairs and killed him. Stabbed him twenty-eight times, the coroner’s report said. The moment I read about her, I knew she was one of us.”
“One of us . . .?” I shook my head, my mind numbing.
“She’s psychopathic,” he told me flatly. “She wasn’t like other children. You knew she was different, but you told yourself that it was a phase she’d grow out of. You’re an emotional, weak, chaotic kind of person, and that was the only reasoning that made sense to you. If a stranger had broken into your house when you were a child, you would have run and hidden away in a cupboard. Like most children. And if he’d found you, you would have sobbed your heart out. But not Kara. She’s special. Brave. She took out two knives—one for herself and one for Santiago—and she went downstairs and stabbed the intruder to death. Like a tiny assassin.”
Tears wet my cheeks.
“You would have lost her back then if not for me,” he continued. “I arranged for one of the Saviours—Judge Reynolds—to go easy on you, and he ordered you into rehab instead. After two months, you got Kara returned to you.”
I’d long tried to put that terrible episode behind me. I lost sight of Otto on the roads that night and returned home, not knowing that he was already dead. Police had been swarming everywhere out the front of our house, and I imagined it was a drug bust. But instead, my seven-year-old daughter had killed an intruder. With blood on her hands, she’d calmly picked up the phone and called the police,
telling them what she’d done. Because Kara had been a minor, the newspapers hadn’t been allowed to report her name—or, by proxy, my name. No one found out about Kara except the police. I met the charming Englishman, James Lundquist, soon after. He’d given a sizable donation to the rehabilitation centre where I was receiving treatment, and then he’d visited it. We bumped into each other in the rehab garden. He’d seemed enamoured by me. He swept me off my feet, promising a beautiful new life for Kara and me. At the time, I’d been desperate. I had no money, nothing to offer my poor, traumatised little daughter. But together with James, I’d been able to collect her from the foster family she’d been put with and give her a real home. He moved from his home in England to America to be with us, and then we married.
Everything ran through my head. All the charity dinners and walks in the park and family things and sex with James. All of it was a charade. All the times he’d taken Kara away with him on business trips to other countries, telling me it was enriching her education. I’d allowed it all to happen, and I’d allowed myself to believe we were a real family.
I’d taken my daughter from the frying pan into a burning, raging pit of hell. I’d delivered her into the hands of Yeqon’s Saviours.
70. I, INSIDE THE WALLS
I HAVE ALWAYS LIVED INSIDE THE walls.
I never felt like I truly belonged at the monastery, but I didn’t belong in the outside world either. I was stuck somewhere inside the walls, neither in nor out.
Daddy James told me I belonged here when I was a little girl. He told me that I was special, that people like me can do extraordinary things because we’re one of the elite and we don’t have to abide by the rules of ordinary people. He said we were angels who’d become gods on earth, symbolic descendants of Yeqon, with our own religion and our own history. We were saviours of Yeqon’s legacy.
He shielded me from the terrible things that happened here until I was about ten. Little by little, he drew me in and made it all seem normal. I grew numb to the murders. The Saviours called them sacrifices for the greater good.