“That’s exactly how it was,” James told me in a cruel voice. “It’s what the newspapers all reported. Kara’s terrible, neglectful parents. You and Otto left her all alone one Tuesday night, and a strange man entered the house—a thief who knew you kept drugs there. Kara ventured downstairs and killed him. Stabbed him twenty-eight times, the coroner’s report said. The moment I read about her, I knew she was one of us.”
“One of us . . .?” I shook my head, my mind numbing.
“She’s psychopathic,” he told me flatly. “She wasn’t like other children. You knew she was different, but you told yourself that it was a phase she’d grow out of. You’re an emotional, weak, chaotic kind of person, and that was the only reasoning that made sense to you. If a stranger had broken into your house when you were a child, you would have run and hidden away in a cupboard. Like most children. And if he’d found you, you would have sobbed your heart out. But not Kara. She’s special. Brave. She took out two knives—one for herself and one for Santiago—and she went downstairs and stabbed the intruder to death. Like a tiny assassin.”
Tears wet my cheeks.
“You would have lost her back then if not for me,” he continued. “I arranged for one of the Saviours—Judge Reynolds—to go easy on you, and he ordered you into rehab instead. After two months, you got Kara returned to you.”
I’d long tried to put that terrible episode behind me. I lost sight of Otto on the roads that night and returned home, not knowing that he was already dead. Police had been swarming everywhere out the front of our house, and I imagined it was a drug bust. But instead, my seven-year-old daughter had killed an intruder. With blood on her hands, she’d calmly picked up the phone and called the police, telling them what she’d done. Because Kara had been a minor, the newspapers hadn’t been allowed to report her name—or, by proxy, my name. No one found out about Kara except the police. I met the charming Englishman, James Lundquist, soon after. He’d given a sizable donation to the rehabilitation centre where I was receiving treatment, and then he’d visited it. We bumped into each other in the rehab garden. He’d seemed enamoured by me. He swept me off my feet, promising a beautiful new life for Kara and me. At the time, I’d been desperate. I had no money, nothing to offer my poor, traumatised little daughter. But together with James, I’d been able to collect her from the foster family she’d been put with and give her a real home. He moved from his home in England to America to be with us, and then we married.
Everything ran through my head. All the charity dinners and walks in the park and family things and sex with James. All of it was a charade. All the times he’d taken Kara away with him on business trips to other countries, telling me it was enriching her education. I’d allowed it all to happen, and I’d allowed myself to believe we were a real family.
I’d taken my daughter from the frying pan into a burning, raging pit of hell. I’d delivered her into the hands of Yeqon’s Saviours.
70. I, Inside The Walls
I HAVE ALWAYS LIVED INSIDE THE walls.
I never felt like I truly belonged at the monastery, but I didn’t belong in the outside world either. I was stuck somewhere inside the walls, neither in nor out.
Daddy James told me I belonged here when I was a little girl. He told me that I was special, that people like me can do extraordinary things because we’re one of the elite and we don’t have to abide by the rules of ordinary people. He said we were angels who’d become gods on earth, symbolic descendants of Yeqon, with our own religion and our own history. We were saviours of Yeqon’s legacy.
He shielded me from the terrible things that happened here until I was about ten. Little by little, he drew me in and made it all seem normal. I grew numb to the murders. The Saviours called them sacrifices for the greater good.
The concept of normal is a strange thing. If a person is persuasive enough, they can tip you on your head and make you believe that your new view of the world is normal. James was that kind of person.
Real Daddy died when I was seven, and my mother was taken away, after I killed a man. Daddy James came to visit me at my foster home, saying he was a good friend of my mother’s. He became my lifeline, my only friend and my only way back to my mother.
Santiago, how did this happen? How did Mom find the monastery?
I see terror in your eyes. Please don’t be scared. I’ll always protect you. Remember when I first found you? I was five and it was my birthday. Mommy and Daddy were having a party, but it wasn’t for my birthday. They’d forgotten all about it. They forgot stuff all the time. They didn’t mean to, but they did. That was when you walked in and wished me happy birthday. You were the brother that I wished my Mom and real daddy had. Then Real Daddy died and Daddy James came to live with Mom and me. Mom turned into a different person and wanted me to forget Real Daddy. But you stayed the same. You were always the same, Santiago. You came to the monastery with me and we played hopscotch in the halls. You helped me kill the Saviours that came after me with lust in their eyes when Daddy James wasn’t watching.