She circled the chapel to a point where we could no longer see her. Within a minute, she re-emerged, waving us forward.
We made our way up to the chapel.
The interior of the chapel was a simple affair: stone floor and walls, a small altar and a rope hanging down from a large bell.
It didn’t take us long to find the trapdoor. It wasn’t in the floor. A set of four wide stone steps led to the altar—the entire stairway lifting up as a door to reveal a hidden tunnel.
Inside, stairs led down.
Crouching, we stepped in and onto the stairs. Sethi closed the door behind us.
The passage walls were close enough to reach out and touch on either side. My shoes stuck to the damp floor. The same rain that had poured down the day that Constance and I had first tramped up the hill to Jennifer’s house had trickled in here, the smell of wet mud rising from the ground. Our shoe prints wouldn’t be noticed—lots of shoes had just tramped this ground.
A light shone on the wall around the next bend. If we walked on, we’d be exposed.
Jennifer stopped, turning back to Sethi.
Wordlessly, he stepped around her, drawing out a gun from his pocket. Pressing his back against the wall, he angled his face to try to see around the bend. He inched along the wall.
Suddenly, he charged ahead.
Had he been seen by the Saviours?
Pulling out our guns, we followed him around the bend.
Sethi bent over the crumpled figure of a woman. She was blonde, middle-aged and thin. There was no one else. A dim lamp was fixed to the wall overhead.
The woman turned to view us with dulled, dazed eyes. A bullet hole and blood darkened the side of her face, just above her ear.
Constance inhaled sharply.
Jennifer knelt down to the woman. “What’s your name?”
“Louelle May Gibson,” she answered in a laboured but automatic tone. “I’m a librarian from Grand Rapids, Michigan. I have a husband and three children. Two cats. I’m addicted to prescription drugs.”
Jennifer cast a confused glance at Sethi then brushed the woman’s bloodied hair away from her temple. “Where were those men taking you?”
“The cellar . . .” A thin line of foamy blood trailed from the corner of Louelle’s mouth. “I’m no good to them anymore. They left me here . . .” At that point, Louelle May Gibson went beyond the point of being able to talk to us.
My chest squeezed inward. The horror of the Saviours had just become real.
“We have to go.” Jennifer motioned to us.
We continued on down the passage.
The stench grew thicker. Foul.
Shots of electricity crisscrossed my body, surging into my brain, warning me to get the hell off this island.
64. Evie
BROTHER VITO TOOK ME DOWN TO the cellar.
Other members of Yeqon’s Saviours took the rest of us.
Why didn’t I go with Louelle and the others?
Vito fixed the chains to my arms and ankles in the same gentle way that he’d fixed the wristband to me, as though the two were no different in his eyes.
“I have children,” I pleaded. “You can’t—”
“I have two young ones myself. I adore them.”
“Yet you can rip parents away from their own children?”
“It’s the way the world operates. Some win. Some lose. We are what we are—Evie—all of us,” he said, his voice in that same soothing register he always used, only it was chilling now. “Each person must remain true to themselves. I wouldn’t have chosen for you to see the cellar at all. The final six contestants are always given the quickest death. The six have their final meal, and then we hold our ceremony. And then we prepare the challenge rooms again. Six new challenges, all held later tonight. Each of the new challenges is deadly, and when you die, death is fairly instant. But seeing as the remaining six are the best, you have a slight chance of lasting until the sixth challenge. If that happens, your death will occur by drowning in the cenote.” He eyed me indulgently. “I hope that will be you, Evie. You can make it to the end. And when you die, your body will be whole and unmarked. A beautiful death.”
A guttural moan rose from my throat. “Where are the others? Did they leave the island?”
“Don’t you understand? None of them left the island. They either died here in the cellar or they died out on the hills. Each night of the six challenges—just before dawn—we release half of the losing contestants outside to the hills, where we hunt them. You see, some of our Saviours prefer to hunt than to get up close with their quarry. We cater for all tastes here.”