She spat at him.
“Knew it,” slurred Richard. “There were four too many, right from the start. Twenty-eight made no sense. There were really only twenty-four of us. So, Harrington, Kara and sweet, treacherous little Poppy . . . Who else? I know there’s another one of you.”
Harrington stood, slinging his rifle over his back. “Eugene Bublik. Stupid jerk got himself killed out in the hills by that one over there--Ruth. Smashed his head in with a rock. She should be one of us.”
“Good. One down. The rest of you to go.” Richard moaned as he leaned his head back. The Saviours had retaliated brutally when he’d tried to stab Brother Sage, throwing him to the ground and kicking him in the head and chest.
Stepping away, Harrington smirked. “Your odds are a million to one, Mister Vegas High Roller.”
Richard had guessed right. There had been four pretenders. I didn’t know Eugene at all and hadn’t been in a challenge with him, but I was glad he was dead.
Louelle hadn’t been brought back. Louelle, with her distant expression, who’d known things were wrong here in the monastery. I clung to the hope that she’d escaped—that she’d gotten away on a boat and could bring help. Mei and Thomas hadn’t returned either. Please, please, if you’ve all escaped on boats, keep going and bring help.
My rational mind knew that they had no chance. Anyone trying to escape in a rowboat was no match for a Saviour in a fast speed boat.
I turned to ask Yolanda about Louelle, but her eyes had glazed over. She began singing something in a faltering, trembling voice. A song a parent would sing to a small child.
Next to Yolanda, Ruth woke, groaning. She rattled out a flurry of slurred, half-incomprehensible swear words at the Saviours.
On a nearby wall, machetes, chains, knives and other instruments of torture were hanging on hooks.
I forced my eyes to close. Forced myself to stop looking at the horror and stopped allowing myself thoughts of what was coming next.
I’d keep my eyes firmly shut until the end.
65. Gray
THE TUNNEL THROUGH THE HILL BROKE into two.
Straight ahead, a door with a keypad lock had been left propped open.
Sethi indicated towards the open door. Jennifer nodded. We stepped through and kept walking, not speaking, listening hard for any noise in the tunnels.
Another door stood in the distance. A small patch of light glowed from a pane of glass about three-quarters of the way up.
Instinctively, the four of us moved alongside the left wall, walking in single file. If someone burst through that door, we’d be seen, but at least if someone looked out through the pane, they might miss seeing us.
Keeping low and in the shadows, we ran up alongside the door.
Jennifer pointed at a small red light beneath a keypad. “Alarm,” she whispered.
Pulling her hood low over her forehead, she inched towards the pane, just enough to see through it and back away again. She clapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes grown huge.
Whatever she’d seen was horrific.
With my breath caught fast in my chest, I waited for Sethi to look, and then I took a quick glance.
I’d been warned. But seeing it for myself sent my mind scattering.
Bloodied, dirty men and women—sitting or lying against a half wall of stone, facing me. Chained like animals.
Some of them seemed dead.
Bile shot up into my throat.
My heart stopped cold.
In desperation I scanned the rest of the room. I needed to see the other side of the cells, but I couldn’t view that from here.
None of the people in my range of sight were Evie or Kara.
I could see the bottom end of a spiral staircase.
Beyond the half wall, people in dark robes were busy with some kind of preparations. They were the ones who’d done all this.
Bright lights snapped on in the dark recesses of the cavernous space. Wooden scaffolding surrounded an enormous natural pillar of stone—the pillar as wide as a house and shooting upwards farther than I could see.
Mother of all hell.
What was that thing?
66. Evie
LIGHTS WERE FLASHING ON IN FRONT of me. My eyes remained shut—the only barrier I had between the Saviours and me.
But the bright glow disturbed me and wouldn’t let me escape, not even inside my own mind. The Saviours wouldn’t even grant us some quiet moments before our deaths. The choking gasps of Richard and Yolanda on either side of me made me open my eyes to see what they were seeing.
A silent scream ripped through me, the scene before me too shocking to grasp.
Yolanda began singing again, her words dissolving into a series of unintelligible gasps and stutters.