by Celia Aaron
Chapter 10
Adam
Silence. The cloying kind that seems to invade every cell. I blink my eyes open and stare at nothing. Pitch black. A series of dull aches tear through me, the pain pulsing along with the beat of my heart. They come from everywhere, and my hands and feet feel as if they’re tearing away, the skin gone, bones exposed, biting ants chewing through what flesh is left.
I try to sit up. My forehead knocks against wood. What the fuck? Spreading my arms, my elbows bump against more wood. I’m in a coffin. I shake my head, willing away the rising panic, but my breathing speeds up, my pain increasing with each tortured beat of my frantic heart.
Pressing my hand against the wood is a mistake. Agony snakes up my arm, and I have to gulp in a breath as sparks burst in the dark. Instead, I use my knee, lifting my right leg and bumping the top of the coffin. It’s sturdy, barely moving despite my efforts. A bead of sweat rolls down my forehead to my temple, and I force myself to relax. Or at least I try to. Think. There has to be a way out of this—whatever this is.
How did I get here? I cast my thoughts back to the cross, to Jez. I put my hands together in the narrow space over my chest. Feeling around, I can tell they’re both well-bandaged. Why go to the effort of fixing me up just to bury me alive? Maybe they were just playing some sick game. Maybe my father put them up to it.
More sweat beads along my skin, and I could swear the box closes in tighter around me. Breathe. Breathe. I press my bare feet down toward the bottom, feeling out the space. My left foot feels tight and hot, and I groan at the ripping pain that emanates from my toes. I use my right foot instead, stretching down until I feel the wood. A perfect enclosure, no way out.
Taking in a deep breath, I yell, my hoarse voice loud in my ears though I can tell it doesn’t go much farther than the timber around me. Someone would have to be standing right next to me to even hear it. And if I’m underground … I swallow hard, my mouth dry, my guts twisting in primal horror.
I yell again until my voice gives out and the stillness returns. Trapped. I clamp my eyes shut even though the darkness is absolute either way. She’s there, Emily, her white dress fluttering as she watches me with intense gray eyes. I want to call out to her, but nothing passes my lips.
She moves closer, a slight smile tipping up the corners of her lips. “You’re in quite the predicament.”
God, is she teasing me while I’m buried alive? Naughty little lamb. “I’ll get out of it.”
“You sure?” She lies down next to me and turns her head.
We’re so close, our noses almost touching.
“Piece of cake.” I swear I can smell the scent of her hair.
“I hope you’re right.” She reaches up and raps on the wood with her knuckles. “Dying in here seems even worse than on the cross.”
“Are you safe?” I try to scoot my hand over to touch her, but my fingers meet timber and my vision fades, returning me to the utter darkness. “Emily?”
Something thumps just outside, and then I can sense movement. The coffin is sliding sideways, first the bottom half, then the upper half. I’m jostled, and dust falls onto my face, sticking to my sweaty skin as I breathe out hard through my nose to clear it.
With a wrenching noise, the lid is pulled away. I blink against the light as hands grip my arms and help me to a sitting position.
“Jesus, you almost got us busted.” Jez comes into focus, her anxiety drawing crow’s feet next to her eyes. “You have any idea how close that was?”
I peer over her shoulder. We’re in a narrow space under the baptistry. Bird shit coats a thin ledge behind her, and plants soar above us. One of her birds peers down, its head cocked to the side. I’ve never heard them sing, not in any of the years they’ve been here.
“Why did you put me in a coffin?” I try to swing my legs over the edge, but I can’t do it.
Another woman I don’t recognize grabs my legs and helps me up, Jez digging her shoulder under my arm and supporting my weight as they lower me to stand. I groan as the blood rushes to my feet.
“Maggie, put it all back and close it up.” Jez jerks her chin at the wooden box I’ve just exited.
Maggie grabs some magazines, CDs, and other contraband from a pile in the floor and shoves it all into the box.
“It’s our stash. Lucky for you, the space was just big enough to hide you.” She pulls me up and out via the small staircase. Maggie follows and pulls a huge planter back into place, the fronds of an exotic tree hiding the narrow passage behind the garden. From any angle, it looks as if there is nothing but dirt and plants back here.
“Dad come looking?” I let Jez lead me to one of the chairs around the front of the garden.
“Yes. His asshole brigade trashed the place and would have found your noisy ass if some of my girls hadn’t distracted them. But we still have to be careful. Eyes everywhere.” She points up at the camera in the corner of the ceiling. “We’ve changed the angle on the cameras slowly—ridiculously slowly, a centimeter a day over the course of weeks—and they haven’t noticed. My area back here is clear, but you can’t leave this room or they’ll see.”
The room has been tossed, clothes strewn everywhere and the door to her private bedroom wide open, the mattress standing on one end.
I stretch my left leg out and stare at the fat wrapping that obscures the bottom half of my foot. “My toes?”
“You lost two of them, the little one and the one next to it.” She shrugs and sits in another of the gaudy church chairs with gold cushions. “I talked Abigail out of taking the third. It’s not the right color, but I think it’ll survive. The tips of all your toes may come off eventually, but they’ll grow back. At least, that’s what Abigail says.”
I’ve already lost so much of myself to this place, to my father, that a few toes should seem inconsequential. But they don’t. I know he left me there to die. He didn’t get his wish, but the fact that I’ve lost parts of my body tells me that I was right in my line of thinking—I have to take him out along with all his Protectors. He’ll stop at nothing, and neither will I.
I rest my foot on the worn carpet. “Abigail from the Cloister? How did she even get in here?”
Jez smirks. “Oh, we have our ways.” She points at my left foot. “You probably still have some of the numbing stuff working for you, but once that wears off, I imagine you’ll be in a world of hurt.”
Holding up my bandaged hands, I say, “I’m already there.”
“Fair enough.”
Even though I believe her when she says my toes are gone, I can still feel them, as if they’re pressing up against the thick white gauze. Will I still be able to walk? I hobbled over to the chair fine—though, admittedly, I had help. But I’ll need to be as close to one-hundred percent as I can get when the fight starts. And I have zero doubts that a fight is coming, and soon. “Is Emily okay?”
“This again? She’s fine. Back at the Cloister.” She glances through the stained glass behind me, as if she can see the Cloister from here. “Good news and bad news on that front.”
“What do you mean?”
She shrugs. “It’s good that she didn’t have to go to the senator yet. Bad news that she got a new Protector.”
I tense. “Who?”
“Noah.”
My shoulders relax. Noah isn’t a threat. She’ll be safe. Jealousy, though, that roars through me like a freight train. If he touches her. If he … does anything to her. My hands start to curl into fists, but the wretched burning pain has me stretching them out again. Noah wouldn’t touch her. Right? I shake the thought away. He wouldn’t. Especially now that he knows I’m still kicking. Word has to be all over the compound and even farther. The Prophet will stop at nothing to get me back up on that cross.
“I figured you’d react like that.” Jez gives me a lopsided grin, her green eyes sparkling.
“So, I’m here.” I look around. “What’s the plan?”
“Plan?” She crosses her bare legs
at the knee, her tiny black shorts barely covering the goods.
“You brought me here. I have to assume that was for a reason. What are we doing? Who’s with you besides Abigail? What’s the plan?” What I want to know is whether she’s with my mother. But I don’t want to play that card just yet. I’d rather have her tell me than reveal the extent of what I know.
“All you need to do is recover.”
“That’s not good enough.”
She sighs, blowing out a big breath that lifts the stray strands of dark hair along her cheek. “Do me a favor and take a look at yourself. Your hands are fucked, your foot is fucked, you look like you just went twelve rounds with a meat grinder. Even if I have a plan, your part comes in later. A lot later.”
I’ve known Jez for years, all the way back to when she was one of the first Maidens. She’s always been stubborn and rough, and not even her time in the Cloister changed her. That’s why she wound up here in the Chapel, an unwilling Madam to even more unwilling girls. When she tried to escape with Chastity, I was one of the men who found them. They didn’t make it out of the compound. I had to sit through her punishment—the scars down her spine inflicted by my father one by one. She didn’t shed a tear. It doesn’t surprise me that she’s taken the lead on whatever rebellion is brewing. All the same, she’s going to need me to make it work. She just doesn’t know it yet.
I lean my head back on the cushion. “Tell me what you’ve got cooking, and I’ll tell you if you’ll die fast at the start or slowly on the cross.”
Her back stiffens. “I don’t need the son of the Prophet mansplaining shit to me, got it?”
“You need someone who knows the ins and outs of the Prophet, what it’s like at the highest level, the best way to get to him, and the way to bring it all down without collateral damage.”
“Collateral damage?” She leans forward, her elbows on her thighs. “What would you consider that to be?”
I cock my head at her. “The Heavenly idiots. The sheep who believe the Prophet.”
“Why would I save them?” Her eyes are granite now, her mouth a hard line. “What have they ever done for me, for the girls here, for the ones in the Cloister?”
I don’t like the coldness in her voice, the way she dismisses all those lives—even children. They are stupid, sure. But that’s not a capital offense. Unease crackles down my spine. “Jez, they haven’t done anything to—”
“No.” She stands. “They choose not to look, not to see. All they have to do is pull back the curtain, but they won’t. They want to live in this fantasy where the Prophet is chosen by the invisible man in the sky. Innocent?” She tosses her hair over her shoulder. “You’ve got to be kidding me. They are at the root of all this, at its very core.” She holds her palm up, as if the church sits there. Perusing it from all angles, she smirks. “This entire shit-show is built on them. Their money. Their belief. Their entitlement. Their selfish need to feel like they are chosen. That’s what it’s all about in the end. Every one of them that crosses the threshold, that follows the Prophet—they do it because they can’t see past their own noses. They want to feel special. They fill that hole inside themselves with our misery.” She crushes the imaginary church in her palm, her eyes blazing. “And now I intend to show them just what their devotion to a false idol is worth.”
Chapter 11
Delilah
Grace walks down the long hallway, her footsteps sure as I follow her past the training room where the other Maidens are. She fetched me from my room this morning, her manner somehow even more severe than usual. I’d spent the night drifting in and out of sleep, my thoughts returning to Adam over and over again. Is he safe? Who took him?
“Eyes down.” Grace doesn’t even turn around, but she somehow knows I’m staring at her thin back.
I drop my chin and watch my feet as we move farther down the corridor, then turn toward the Spinner’s dorms. We keep going until we reach her office—the room where she’d broken my finger.
“Sit.” She points to the same chair as she walks around her desk.
I choose the other one. The aching skin on my backside protests, but I don’t let it show.
She raises a brow but doesn’t say anything as I take my seat. The monitors are lit behind her, my room still visible on the center screen.
Sitting in her chair, she settles back and stares at me, her unblinking hatred like a laser beam.
I meet her gaze and hold it. She intimidated me from the moment I set foot on Cloister ground. But not anymore. She can still hurt me in any number of ways, but I’m not backing down.
After what has to be a minute of intense silence that feels like an hour, she says, “You know, when you first came here, I figured no one would want you, given your freakish looks.”
I smile. It’s the response that I know will irk her the most.
Her eyes glint. “But I was wrong. Being a freak made you more desirable. Being different is what these idiot men like about you. Even Adam. He was drawn to you because of your appearance. Nothing more.”
“Keep telling yourself that.” My smile stays in place.
A muscle next to her eye twitches, but she continues, “Maybe you think that just because you’re a genetic disaster that you’re truly special. That you have something more to offer than a sideshow act.” She shakes her head. “You’re just like the others. Ass in the air for the enemas, eating the poisoned fruit whenever it’s offered, sucking your Protector’s cock the second you get a chance. You’re no different than any other Maiden, no matter what you may think.”
I study her, trying to discern the basis for her continued attacks. It has to be Adam. Her jealousy is the one emotion she ever lets show. For someone so skilled at playing mind games, she doesn’t do a good job of guarding her defenses. I know just where to turn the screw. “I suppose you think you were the different one. The special Maiden set apart from the others. But then Adam tossed you aside, didn’t he? Just like all the other Maidens.”
She leans forward, her shoulders bunched with tension. “I was special. I still am. Adam is mine.”
“Is he?” I reach between my legs and fake a wince. “Because I can still feel him inside me, even now.”
“You fucking bitch!” She lurches across the desk and grabs for me, but I scoot back, her grasping hand barely missing me.
I stand and back away.
She straightens and reaches for her baton. I bring my hands up, ready for the fight.
Closing her eyes, she takes in a deep breath through her nose and blows it out her mouth.
I’m wary, back against the wall, just watching her.
Leaving her baton in its holster, she lowers herself into her chair. “Sit.” She points at my seat.
“So you can jump me?” I’ve never seen her control herself like this. It’s like she has a leash and she just pulled a hair too far. Now she’s been jerked back to her owner, scolded, and made to fall in line.
“No, you little fool. So we can talk.” She leans back, the picture of ease.
I edge up and pull my chair a few more feet from the desk, then sit. “About what?”
“Sadly, our darling First Lady—” I don’t miss the venom in the words “—is busy in Montgomery and can’t spend any more time on your training. Instead, I’m in charge of readying you for your marriage to Senator Roberts.”
“I’ll kill him.” I keep my tone even, stark.
She tsks. “I’m afraid you don’t understand how important this assignment is to the Prophet and to Heavenly. It’s come to our attention that, after pulling a few strings, he’s up for a seat on the Ways and Means Committee, which—”
“I don’t care if he’s running for president, if I get the chance, I’ll kill him before I let him hurt me or anyone else ever again.” I mean every word, and I think she knows it.
She keeps her tone even, continuing doggedly. “As I was saying, that seat would give him a broad amount of control over state funding. Projects that Heav
enly would like a piece of, ways to funnel money into our godly coffers instead of to the heathens. All this is a high priority for the Prophet. Now, despite my efforts to talk Evan into a more appropriate bride, he’s focused on you despite your diseased mind and body. So I have to do what I can with you. First, we’re going to have to re-tread ground on obedience. You’re sorely lacking in that area.”
“You aren’t listening to me.” I lean forward, returning her stone glare with my own. “I will never marry him. I will fight and scratch and claw and do everything I have to do to end him.”
“Oh, I’ve been listening. So has the Prophet. When I showed him your little tirade in the bathroom at the Cathedral, he was most displeased. But he’s also a problem solver.”
“I think you meant to say ‘also a psychopath.’”
“Funny you mention that.” She smiles, then reaches for the remote.
With the click of a button, the center screen goes dark, then flickers back to life. It’s set on night vision, the scene in odd greens and shiny silver. But I don’t miss the details. The woman strapped to the table, the shiny drop of water on her forehead. My stomach drops, my hands go clammy, and I think I might vomit.
Grace sets the remote down with a hard thunk. “I think you’ll cooperate. Won’t you?”
I can’t look at her, can’t tear my eyes away from the pitch black room in the Rectory where my mother is bound and suffering. “You can’t do this.”
“It’s already done,” she simpers.
“Someone will find out. They’ll look for her. They’ll know you took—”
“An addict?” She smiles, smug and full. “Who would miss a junkie? Maybe her dealer. Maybe the guys she blows for cash. But no one that matters. No one who would report her as missing. She’s trash. Like mother, like daughter. I bet they won’t even notice she’s gone for weeks. Why would they?” She stands and moves around behind me. “If she wound up in the landfill or dead in the gutter, people would think ‘she had it coming.’ Even her own daughter abandoned her.” Her words slither in my ear. “If you don’t bother to tell her the truth or even keep up with where she’s living or what’s she’s doing, why would anyone else?”