Staring at him in revulsion, I recalled the raucous noise of the peacocks before dawn each morning and the distant screams I’d dismissed as being bird calls. Each morning when I’d woken in my bed, sleepy, excited and wondering about the next challenge, people were being hunted to their deaths out there on the island.
“Shhh,” he crooned. “Sweet Evie, you’ll only upset yourself. I apologise for this change to our schedule. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. But within a few hours, you won’t be here anymore to feel the pain and sorrow that brought you to the monastery in the first place.”
My arms sank with the weight of the chains. “Is that why we’re here? Because we’re addicts? You want to put us out of our pain? Or because we disgust you?”
He took a deep breath, his dark eyes on mine. “No. I know that you’re smart enough to figure that one out. Perhaps your fear is blinding your senses.”
“Tell me,” I said, all colour drained from my voice. “I need to know why.”
“Very well. You’ll find the reasons why we choose addicts quite clever, I think. Your addictions do not interest us, but your addictions are helpful to use in a number of ways. They provide us with a compelling reason to get you to come to the island. And of course, your reasoning is blunted by your desperation. You’ll agree to anything to relieve yourselves of the painful situations in which you’ve found yourselves. The money and the treatment program are impossible to refuse. And your addictions provide a very good cover for the fact you’ve gone missing. People with addictions are the ones who are most likely to vanish. The drug addicts and drug-addicted prostitutes. The gamblers with massive debts to their names.”
My teeth set firmly together, my jaw trembling. “You prey on the desperate. Why even bother with the challenges? Why not just kill us as soon as we step foot on the island?”
“The challenges are not for you. They are for us,” he said, fixing a chain to my left ankle. “It’s a commemoration of our history. We chose all of you because you have talents.” He smiled briefly. “You are addicts, yes, but each of you are talented in some way. Each year, the four mentors choose their teams. Six people each, cherry picked from the world. The mentor who ends up with the most people out of the final six who have the most points to their names wins.”
“It’s all just a contest?”
He shrugged. “Yes. As I said, each one of the people we choose is very adept at something. Good at figuring things out. Quick minds. Mathematical ability or intuition or the ability to stay calm under pressure.” He caressed me beneath the chin. “You’re my prize, Evie. You won the most points of all the participants. And you, of course, were chosen by me to be on my team. You were a whiz at the poker table. When you moved past that to an addiction, Brother Wilson took a keen interest. He told me about you.”
Unable to brush his fingers away, I turned my face. “Everything was a lie.”
He touched my hair fondly before he dropped his hand. “Rest now, Evie. Think of your children and kiss them goodnight one last time.”
Brother Vito left.
A blinding terror coursed through every nerve in my body, searing me.
I could trust no one here.
Who else was pretending to be what they were not?
I hadn’t even sensed the cold emptiness behind Brother Vito’s words and charm. I hadn’t figured out why Kara had turned so cold when I first spoke to her here. And God, Poppy . . . why hadn’t I guessed what she really was? When Richard and I had witnessed Brother Vito pushing Poppy’s advances away, he must have been worried they’d be seen.
A door slammed open somewhere behind me, on the other side of the half wall where I couldn’t see. I guessed it was the door that we’d been unable to open.
My heart fell through my chest as I watched a group of Saviours bring in Hop, Yolanda, Thomas and all the others who had escaped from the cellar.
Yolanda’s dark eyes raged as she held up her arm to me. “The wristbands. They’ve got trackers in them. We should have cut them off.”
A Saviour roughly chained Yolanda to the left of me, one space over. He looked over at me and grinned. Harrington. Harrington was one of them, too.
“Why?” she asked him weakly. “Why did you pretend to be one of us?”
“It’s a privilege,” Harrington told her. “Each year, four of us are chosen to be part of the challenges. We get to be up close and personal with our victims, right up to challenge five. What could be better?” He kissed her loudly on the forehead.