The Sect

by Lane, Courtney

  Noah turned to the table fingering the cases. He opened the first one, containing various sex toys and a blindfold. On top of the blindfold was the small leather-bound book, the Rebirth Doctrine.

  “Did you read it, Keaton?” he asked, without turning around.

  “Yes,” I croaked.

  “Did you see the last line?”

  “I don’t remember it,” I said, my voice quivering with my sadness.

  He touched the book, looking at it with for a moment as he fingered the binding. “That’s too bad.” He swiftly grabbed the blindfold and brought it over my eyes, knotting it in the back. His hand on my jaw made me jerk and jolt. He held me steady and the warmth of his lips flittered around my nose. His breaths quickened as his lips touched my Cupid’s bow. His hands clung to my hips as they did before he took me on the bed or the floor. I wished he would stop touching me, but I couldn’t tell him to—even if I knew that denying him would make him recede. It would probably be the last gentle touch I would ever feel. The gentle touch that made me feel his emotions through his hands. The lack of visual stimulation reminded me of the last and probably only good moment here I would remember. Sometimes we have to close our eyes to see the truth.

  The cognition made me gasp. “Noah?” I whispered hoarsely.

  His heavy sigh made me believe he knew the question I was going to ask. “Yes, Keaton?”

  “Was it you that night?” I asked, my voice fading and cracking.

  “I directed Nadine to distract Reven that night. It wasn’t Reven who took you that night, Keaton, it was me. My reason?” He kissed my lips gently and briefly. Shock and too many sentiments to name prevented me from commenting or reciprocating. “Love is the pain of pleasure. Pain is the pleasure of love. It’s not the last line in the book, but it is the last thing you need to know.”

  Tears tickled my cheeks as a strained sob became hitched in my throat.

  The heat of his form and the pressure of his presence disappeared. The door closed, indicating I was alone. I could hear hurried footsteps at the door, but they never arrived, only passed by, fading into the foreground.

  I’d known all along—feeling it in my gut—though fighting with the idea that he was with me.

  His last words didn’t make sense. A man who loved me would’ve never allowed me to die.

  Something told me the last line in The Doctrine would be the key to deciphering everything that confused me about Noah.

  I’d never see the last line in The Doctrine to know what he or any of it meant.

  My wrists began to protest against the tight grip of the leather as it began to bite into my skin. The door opened, sending a steady stream of frigid air into the room. My body tensed, the invisible pressure on my spine became stifling. I knew in that moment, the person who held my fate in their hands had arrived.

  The door latched closed as his heavy steps advanced on my position; they stopped for a moment. The clicking of the case and the creaking of it opening filled my ears. More metal clicking and grinding was heard. His steps lay closer to me, slowly, purposefully. I felt the cold, heavy metal piece press against the side of my neck and slide down my body.

  The man before me sighed heavily as though he held on to a burden and was finally able to rid himself of it. “Fuck, did I miss you, angel. I’m going to enjoy every moment of this. You and me, like it should’ve been. To the end.”

  My heart froze, and I couldn’t breathe. I knew the voice. The voice of the monster who ruined my life. “G-Gregory?”

  The blindfold was removed and the glint of his smiling brown eyes made me scream. He immediately covered my mouth and shook his head. “You know how I hate it when you do that.” He waved the metal piece that touched me before around, a gun.

  I screamed louder, angering him. He clutched the barrel tightly and swung. The blunt force hit the side of my head, forcing my body to sway. Warm liquid trickled down the side of my head and I was rendered too woozy to scream.

  “This has been a long time planning, angel. Don’t fuck this up for me. I paid a lot of money to get to this point. My life savings actually. I have nothing left.” He shrugged with a smile. “I had nothing left without you in my life anyway. I got ready for you. I killed so many women before you. More than I wanted to. I kept telling them I was ready for you, but they kept telling me to wait for some reason. Finally, we’re here…” He sighed and grabbed my head while holding the gun. “Shit, I thought this would be easier.” He lifted my chin, his eyes frantically searching my face. “Say something, angel. I’ve missed you so much. Waiting for you to get to this point was so damn hard. I was going out of my mind. So out of my fucking my mind I had to borrow from my dad to get more money to kill a few bitches while I was here. I thought it would make me feel better.” He dropped his hand from me, placing the barrel of the gun at my heart. “You were supposed to die that night. We were all supposed to die that night together, but you ran. I didn’t plan for that. Fuck, you screwed it up for me. It’s lucky my father was a member here so we could get a second chance, right?”

  “Y-you’re the reason I’m here?”

  He nodded with a smile. “I gave them your name. They took too long before they approved my request. Ten fucking months, Keaton. That’s how long I waited for you. I guess they don’t normally take that long or take requests. Back in October, they told me they had you. I guess…we just kept missing each other here.

  “You should thank me, don’t you think?” he sneered. “I saved you, angel. Now look at us. Me in my tux and you in your wedding dress. So what if we don’t have the paper or the ceremony?” He rolled his shoulders, cocking his head to the side. “This is good enough. I bet we’ll look beautiful lying together…dead.” He looked over his shoulder and pointed to a spot by the window. “I’m going to lay you right there after I kill you and fuck you until I can’t come anymore, and then I will die right alongside you. I’ve asked them to bury us together, but…I don’t believe them when they said they would. They better.”

  I tried to struggle as my hazy, weakened state began to clear the way for pure adrenaline.

  “Why are you in such a rush to die? Can’t I enjoy you first?” He took a step back, ogling my breasts. “I remember the night of your graduation. Shit, I relive it every day. Do you remember?” He continued without waiting for an answer, “I picked you up in my brand new Tesla Roadster. It was fire engine red with a black racing stripe. I know you remember, you loved that car, and I promised I would get you one once we both graduated college. Then”—he clutched the gun tightly, pressing it firmly against my chest—“I remember you pissing me off. I wanted you to be close to me, but you wanted to go to Georgetown and whore around with your friends. We made love that night, and so I thought it was enough, but it wasn’t.” He dropped his hand. “Why didn’t you just do what I wanted you to?”

  “Made love to me? You raped me on the hood of your car and wiped the cum from your cock on my dress. Don’t you recall me running out of your car when you dropped me off? Don’t you recall banging on my front door and me threatening to call the cops if you didn’t leave? I wanted away from you. I wanted away from you before you raped me because I knew something wasn’t right with you. I didn’t want to be with you, Gregory. You’ve been chasing me all these years, thinking I would be with you. You had to pay some cult lunatics to take me and bring me here in order to get your attention. Why can’t you see that there is something wrong with you, and nothing wrong with me?”

  He growled and spun like a madman, running his hands through his hair as he called me every derogatory name he could think of. He took several shaky breaths as he stared at the floor and placed the gun back over my ribcage. “I think I’m ready for you to die now.”

  “If it means I never have to see you again—” I coughed, my throat was suddenly irritated. The more I tried to clear it, the more I choked on something dense. It wasn’t emotion….it was something else. I glanced at the door noticing a plume of smoke seeping thr
ough the cracks of the door. “Please. Kill me.” I began to choke again, calling his attention.

  He looked over his shoulder at the door, muttering, “What the fuck is going on out there?”

  Alarms resounded, alerting to a fire with an irritating beep. The both of us looked up to the ceiling at the white circular cover hiding the sprinkler system. A sprinkler system that for some reason was malfunctioning. Banging on the door pounded at a fast and violent rhythm.

  The door fell down from the hinges, bringing plumes of smoke into the room. The dense cloud cleared just enough to show Noah standing there with a gun raised. Gregory was barely able to say one word before Noah hooked his arm around his neck and forced Gregory to face me while he held him in a chokehold. Gregory dropped his gun and it slipped down to the ground.

  “Apologize to her for everything you put her through,” Noah demanded. “You tried to sully an angel and failed. Apologize.”

  “Fuck you,” Gregory spat, straining to breathe.

  The gun slipped down, pointing to Gregory’s groin. The sound of one shot going off rifled through the air. The bullet hit him right in his crotch. His body jerked as a fast spreading red spot began to soak his tan colored pants. He screamed out in agony, cursing and screaming his apology over and over again.

  “You’re not forgiven,” Noah growled with a skewed smirk. “You don’t deserve atonement, nor do you deserve forgiveness. You deserve to burn in fucking hell.” Holding the gun to his head, he pulled the trigger. Gregory jerked to the left, blood and other matter expelling from the side of his head.

  I choked on bile and fear as I watched Gregory slip out of Noah’s hold and fall to the ground.

  Noah spat on his corpse and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  I stared down at the monster who destroyed me, now dead in a heap on the ground. I looked up at Noah with tears streaming down my cheeks while stuck in complete and utter befuddlement.

  “Are you all right? Did he touch you?” Noah asked, touching my face tenderly, his eyes holding to concern as he stared at my head wound.

  “N-no,” I stuttered, almost squeaking my reply. “I mean, he didn’t really touch me. I…I don’t know if I’ll be okay.”

  “You did better than I thought you would. You will be okay, princess,” he said with a wistful smile. “That’s a promise.”

  Nadine rushed into the room, appearing frazzled and scared. Black soot covered her hands and decorated her face. “It’s spreading fast we have to go—”

  “Thank you for stating the fucking obvious, Nadine.” Noah reached up and unbound my wrists. I fell against him, staring at him while still in shock. “Go with her,” he ordered me, steadying me by grabbing my hips. “Get out of here now.”

  “W-what’s going on?” I asked, bewildered.

  “Does this look like the best of times to seek clarity, Keaton?” He pushed me toward Nadine and brushed past us, disappearing down the hall. “Go. Now!” he shouted from over his shoulder and disappeared into the grey cloud in the hall.

  “He can take care of himself,” Nadine promised me while shaking my shoulders and trying to pull me out of my near catatonic state. “Keaton, now is not the time to go postal. Trust me. Come on. We don’t have much time before the Feds arrive and are climbing all over this place with guns and tear gas. We have to get to the horses now.” She dragged me down the hall and I yanked back.

  I tried to grasp my clarity and sanity and think about the one person I wanted to save. “N-not w-without, Jayme. Where is she?”

  “Where else?” she snapped. “With Reven in his room. You can’t help her now. So let’s go.”

  Shaking, my head, I turned on my heels, covering my mouth with my hand to prevent inhaling the dense cloud of smoke as I navigated my way to the room I wasn’t supposed to go in. The smoke became thicker, turning me to places I didn’t intend to go. If it hadn’t been for Jayme’s screams and cries, as though she were in agony, I never would’ve found her.

  She was on Reven’s bed, he was in her arms, laying across her lap, straining for breath. As I neared them, I saw the slow forming red spot in his white dress shirt. Fear was evident in his eyes as he struggled for life. His eyes flickered at me and he began to mutter something over and over again. “It was never me. It was never…me.” A portion of his button-up was open, showing glimpses of bruises—maybe a couple days old.

  “Jayme,” I coughed at the smoke, “we have to get out of here.”

  She held him tighter, tears streaming down her cheeks. “I’m not leaving him here. You wouldn’t understand. He was never a monster. He was never responsible. I’m not leaving him.”

  Grabbing her arm, I tried to force her, but she drew back, shaking her head.

  “I know he doesn’t love me, Keaton. I know he never will. He only loves one person and that’s his family. But they…betrayed each other like they hated one another.” She touched the bloody spot on Reven’s shirt.

  “Did you do this to him?”

  “No!” she shrilled. “I would never do this to him. I love him. You don’t understand. Even though he doesn’t feel the same, if I go out there I’ll never be able to live with myself. I’d rather be here with him until the end than to be out there without him. You’ll never understand what it’s like to love someone so much and know they don’t feel the same. It kills you. I’m already dead. I know what you thought about this place. What most of you thought, but this was home to me. I finally fit in. I had a purpose.” She shook her head, holding tight to Reven’s body. “You have somewhere better to be, and I don’t. Just…go.”

  I walked backward, I was having trouble leaving. She grabbed her well-worn copy of The Doctrine from next to the body of her listless lover and shoved it at me. “Go, Keaton. Maybe someday you’ll understand.”

  Walking backward, we said out goodbyes in silence. Guilt took hold because as I walked down the hall and left her, I didn’t think I’d ever understand any of it.

  I nearly crawled down the hall, keeping low to avoid the denser clouds of smoke, and finding Nadine on the landing of the stairs.

  We had traveled for miles bareback on one of the horses through the backwoods. The morning sun began to rise, casting a glow over the horizon. I looked over Nadine’s shoulder as I sat behind her. A few yards from the ravine, I saw what looked to be a rundown hotel over-pouring with black cars and men and women in FBI jackets.

  She halted the horse and dismounted, helping me down.

  “Are you ready for this?” She grabbed my shoulders, shaking me a little. “Keaton, focus here. We need to get our stories straight. Tell them everything you know and everything that happened to you, but leave Noah out of it. If you have to say anything, give him a new name, or say one of the harbingers did those things to you. Are we good to go down?”

  In a daze, I clutched the book Jayme gave me, wanting to read the last line. Concerned that if I did, it would it throw me even deeper into the chaos that became my brain.

  Nadine snapped her fingers and tapped my shoulder. “It’s over, Keaton. You’re going to be reunited with your parents and go back to your life.” She took my hand showing a warmth toward me that she never had before. “It’s over.” She eyed the book. “Let it go.”

  I clutched the book tighter. “Why do I have to lie about Noah?”

  “You think he deserves to be punished, that’s fine. They will never find him and the case will stay open. Don’t speak about him because Noah Oliver is a savior. He saved many people’s lives today, including yours. Show him what many can’t because they are dead.”

  I clutched the book tighter. The scene behind us replayed as though I didn’t see it the first time. The houses engulfed in flames. The large plume of black smoke peeking out of the tops of the trees indicating the theater was on fire. And the explosion…the disaster was a well-planned way to erase Rebirth.

  She grabbed the book, trying to pry it from my hands. “Please, Keaton. A lot of people died tonight so that ma
ny more could live. Let it go.” She pulled the book from my reluctant hands. Ducking down, she clawed at the ground, burying the book underneath a shallow layer of dirt.

  I had questions. I needed answers, but freedom was only a short walk away. It was over. It was all over, and while I’d never know the why and the how, I just knew I’d finally gotten what I wanted, freedom.

  THE INTERROGATION room smelled of musk and looked a little differently than I expected. The light was almost too bright and the room was crowded with agents waiting to hear my story. I couldn’t speak, because I could barely work through it all.

  Disgruntled voices were heard as someone burst in. I recognized the man. He was a friend of my father’s who was once the D.A., but I’d heard through the grapevine while I lived on the street that he had returned to general practice when Gregory was acquitted of murdering Phoebe and Reese.

  “This interview is over”—Richard pushed his way through—“ladies and gentleman. My client has gone through a harrowing ordeal and needs to be reunited with her family and rest.”

  “Keaton?”

  The voice I never thought I’d hear again became a song in my head that pulled me out of the dark hole my mind had found comfort in. I stood, searching the room. “Mom?”

  The small crowd separated, revealing my mother and father with tears in their eyes. They looked weary and broken, but upon sight of me, their entire faces lit up. I ran to her, hugging her as we cried in each other’s arms.

  “Oh, baby girl. I’m so sorry,” she chanted over and over again, while smoothing my hair.

  The things I never thought I’d miss became sense memories, serving to bring back their daughter. My father held us both, clinging to us like he’d never let us go, and cried with us.