I gasped and shivered at the sight of bones in the water. Body parts. All the dead from the cenote in the cellar. And others—Saviours, their bodies fresh. I searched among them, looking for my daughter.
Then, a girl, white and unconscious, floating.
Kara.
Jennifer, a deep gash across her nose and cheek, stroked towards me, Gray following. We hauled my daughter onto a stone block at the side of the pit. Jennifer took charge, checking her breathing and then immediately starting to pump her chest.
Kara’s body jerked within ten pumps, her head turning as she vomited.
“Thank God,” I breathed, putting my cheek next to hers.
Gray gestured towards a set of staggered stone blocks. “We have to find a way out. Now.”
Jennifer nodded. “You first, Gray. Constance and I’ll help Kara up from this end, and you grab her from up there.”
I didn’t know how we were going to do that. The sides were so steep. All I knew was that we had to.
Two figures in black hoods peered down at us from the top of the pit. The weak light of dawn showed surprised sneers on their faces.
Saviours. A woman and a man.
The woman, red wisps of hair lifting in the breeze, took out a gun as she stared from us to Kara. “Fish in a barrel.”
Kara stared back at the woman, unflinching. “They’re all gone, Poppy. It’s over.”
“No, it isn’t over, Sister Kara,” said the woman, stressing each word in a cold, terrifying voice. “You destroyed everything. The only real home I ever had. And you killed Vito. You and your mother and whoever these people are killed the man I loved. Sage made a big mistake when he brought you here to the monastery.”
“Then take care of Sage’s mistake. But leave the others,” Kara told her.
“No!” I cried when I realised what Kara meant. “Leave my child alone. You people have done enough.”
The redhead gazed in the direction of the ruined monastery, tilting her head. “The monastery has to be built again. Somehow. None of you can stay alive. You’ll only get in the way. Isn’t that right, Harrington?”
The tall, lanky man beside her bit into his lip as he grinned. Taking out his gun, he took aim and shot at the water, laughing at us.
The Saviours turned sharply as a woman approached, her face and body silhouetted in the warm light of the sun.
The redhead gaped at her in shock. “Evie . . . ?”
I didn’t even see the gun that Evie fired. The redhead fell to her knees.
“Evie!” Gray screamed as Harrington raised his gun.
Harrington screamed as a bullet hit his arm, his gun tumbling into the pit. Wheeling about, he ran off into the piles of rubble.
Two men emerged from the rubble, the smaller of them with a rifle over his shoulder.
81. Evie
A FLOCK OF STARTLED PEACOCKS RAN across the distant hills, lifting into the air.
Richard and Cormack stood together, Richard lowering the rifle he’d just fired. “You didn’t think we’d let you go back there alone, did you?”
I gave them a nod, jamming my eyes shut for a moment, my throat too tight to reply.
Stalking up to Poppy, Richard bent to snatch up her gun. “You won’t be needing this, sweetheart.”
Poppy raised her eyes to him, her sneering face turned ugly in defeat.
I ran to the pit, terrified at what I would find below.
The rocks and rubble beneath my feet lurched as I made my way to the edge.
Gray. He was there. Covered in cuts and bruises.
Kara and the two women I’d seen on the cellar monitor were with him—all of them in the same condition as Gray. But alive.
Alive.
Blocks of sandstone shifted, and I crouched to the ground, balancing.
Any second now, this pit and everything surrounding it could collapse inward. Everything was hanging on a thin wire.
“Evie, you were supposed to get off this island,” Gray yelled at me, his voice hoarse and broken.
Tears wet my cheeks. “Hold on . . .”
“Kara, we’ll get you out. We’ll get you all out,” Cormack called down to her.
In desperation, I eyed the slopes of the pit. They were steep, dangerous and threatening to collapse.
The curve of something smooth and large caught my attention, its surface brass and partly covered in a greenish patina.
The church bell.
It must have come loose in the pummelling from the explosion, as it was now lodged tightly between the rocks near the top of the pit. I remembered a rope that had hung from that bell. My eyes followed the line downward. The rope was still there, attached but covered in a number of stone blocks.