by Lincoln Cole
“No,” he said. “I’m not cold.”
“Why do you wear that, then?”
“To protect my neck from the sun,” Haatim said, and then winced at the unsophisticated lie. It seemed like a plausible excuse, but Savin looked unconvinced. He didn’t follow up with his questions, however, and instead, moved on to the next subject.
“You are Christian?” Savin asked.
The query caught Haatim off guard, but he realized it shouldn’t have. Father Paladina had organized this, and so it made sense that he would live a Christian life.
“No,” he said. “Not really.”
“Hindu?”
Haatim shook his head. “I don’t attribute myself to any particular religion. I study philosophy, so I like to try and understand all religions.”
Savin glanced at him, a curious and confused look on his face. “Not religious?”
“I consider myself spiritual but not religious.”
“Oh,” Savin said, but clearly, he didn’t understand.
“What about you?” Haatim asked, trying for politeness.
“I am Buddhist.”
“Ah,” Haatim said. “Theravada, correct?”
Savin nodded, surprised that Haatim knew. Theravada seemed a much more hardline form of Buddhism than Mahayana or Vajrayana. The country had temples all around, and many monks would live in them, on the path to escaping the cycle of life and death and achieving Nirvana.
Not necessarily a declining form of Buddhism around the world, it didn’t grow as fast as other forms friendlier to newcomers and outsiders and less restrictive. That, in Haatim’s estimation, echoed the way of the world: people expected for things to be streamlined and have easier access to keep up with the frantic pace of modernity.
“It’s so hot here,” Haatim said after another couple of minutes on the road. “Hotter than where I grew up, for sure.”
Savin looked at him sideways. “This is the cold season. Today isn’t hot.”
“It’s hot to me,” Haatim said with a laugh. “I’m not used to this.”
Savin nodded, incredibly formal, and rolled down his window. The smell of the city seemed worse here, and it made Haatim gag when the wind pushed it into the car. Almost like a sewage smell, though faint. He opened his mouth to ask what it came from but decided that would appear impolite and changed his mind.
A moment later, he had his answer. They drove alongside a deep-cut body of water flowing in a ravine about thirty meters down. At first, he thought it only a river, and then recognized it as a sewer.
An open sewer that flowed through the middle of town. Savin didn’t even seem to notice, and Haatim assumed most people simply grew used to it over time.
“Where does that go?”
“It flows into the Mekong River and out of the city.”
“Ah.”
He didn’t particularly want to get used to the smell. After a moment, their path led away, farther from the sewage, and the smell dissipated a little.
“You are from America?” Savin sounded a tad surprised.
Haatim nodded. “For the last several years. I grew up in India. My father was a religious figure where I’m from, which is probably why I decided to study religion. He was important.”
Savin nodded. “Sounds like a great man.”
“He was. Or, at least, I thought so. Now, I don’t feel so sure.”
Savin looked at him, expecting for him to elaborate. Haatim didn’t, having no desire to talk about his father. Instead, he turned and looked out through his window at the passing buildings. The city had an old feel to it, but a lot of newer structures stood mixed in with a more modern appearance. They drove past countless restaurants, and all of the signs showed both Khmer and English.
They even passed a handful of fast-food restaurants, though none of them had names he could recognize or a brand that existed outside Southeast Asia. How closely would they match up to American fast-food establishments? That seemed something they tried to emulate.
As they drove, the one thing he noticed, in particular, was how young the entire population appeared. While people walked down the streets, he barely spotted anyone over the age of forty.
Father Paladina had explained the Khmer Rouge to him prior to this trip and the bloody way in which the country had fallen into civil war. So many people had died, the country had starved, and a huge proportion of elderly people hadn’t survived.
As such, the entire nation remained young, rebuilding from scratch to regain what they had lost in their civil war. The scars of that conflict lay everywhere, a testament to the brutality of humanity, much the same as the French Revolution, though much more recent.
Haatim couldn’t even begin to imagine why Abigail had come out here. For what did she search? Did she simply want to hide away from everything?
The Church assassins hunted for her and had done so for a few days. So far, they hadn’t managed to locate her, but Father Paladina insisted it would only take a matter of time.
Abigail played everything close to the chest, but that didn’t make the hurt go away. The knowledge that she hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him she still lived stung him to the core.
The fact that she didn’t care enough hurt even more.
“We’re here.”
Haatim glanced up, dazed, and realized they’d reached another section of Phnom Penh. This part seemed a bit classier, more upscale, and they’d parked in front of an expensive-looking four-story hotel.
“Ah,” Haatim said, stepping out of the car.
Savin hopped out as well, but let the engine run. He popped open the trunk.
“Here, let me carry them in for you.”
Haatim intercepted him and picked up his bags. “No, I’ve got it.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
Savin shrugged. “Okay. When do you want me to pick you up?”
“A few hours,” Haatim said. “I just want to rest some, and then we can go. Have you found any sign of her?”
“No. But I’ll ask my friends. Tourists are usually fairly easy to find.”
Haatim nodded. A number of tourists occupied the city from what he had seen, but they tended to stick out.
Still, it seemed a big enough city, so he had no idea how long it might take to track down Abigail. His job—as far as Savin knew—was identifying her if they did locate her.
He thanked Savin, grabbed his luggage, and headed into the hotel. Savin climbed back into his car and jerked back out into the street, heralded by another wave of honks and shouts.
A cool wave of cold air hit Haatim when he stepped inside the lobby, and he took a moment to bask in it and breathe, eyes closed.
“Can I help you?”
A young woman stood behind the counter, watching him suspiciously.
“Yes,” he said. “Sorry. I have a reservation.”
She nodded, and after a short back and forth, presented him with a keycard to his room. It lay on the second floor, and they didn’t have any elevators.
At one time, that might have bothered him, but now it just reminded him of his time with Dominick at the Council building. He still dreaded stairs, but now, they’d become the sort of evil he could understand.
He made it into his room, dropped his luggage on the floor, cranked up the AC to max, and then collapsed onto his bed.
Though not comfortable, right now, it felt like heaven. Exhausted, he fell fast asleep after only a few moments.
Chapter 16
The drive back to the Reinfer estate felt as if it took no time at all. Dominick, absorbed in his thoughts, tried to come to terms with what Mitchell had told him, and so barely even noticed the scenery flitting past. Each time he thought he had come to terms with the new information, the sheer insanity of it would overwhelm him.
The idea that their legacy was that of a cult …
It seemed impossible to fathom and went against everything he’d been taught. They didn’t come from the cult; they were t
he ones hunting the cult. The good guys, right?
Right?
He could fully understand Frieda keeping such a huge secret from them. What a horrible thing to learn about their history, and it went completely against everything for which they stood. Technically, he knew, it didn’t change anything because he remained the same person. Yet, that logic proved hard to cling to: it didn’t change the fact that everything he’d thought true had become a lie. Nothing was how it appeared.
Dominick pulled into the driveway of the Reinfer estate and waited for the gate to open. He felt so distracted, it took him a few minutes to realize that nothing had happened and that the screen looked dead. Trent had given him a badge for situations like this, but when he waved it over the reader, again nothing happened.
The power must be off.
Something had gone wrong.
Instantly, Dominick’s mind shifted into high gear, and all worries about the Council or Frieda vanished. He came back to the present and assessed the situation.
The front gate appeared untouched, but without power, it might as well have been a brick wall keeping him out. He could see the driveway leading up to the estate through shrubbery and trees, but no patrolling guards on the roadway or in his line of sight from the parked car.
He climbed out of his vehicle and flipped on his phone. He called Trent, but it rang through to voicemail without an answer.
Had someone attacked in his absence? Certainly not at the front gate, but maybe Nida and her team had breached from somewhere else on the estate.
Maybe it came down to something more mundane, but not likely. The fact that the power went out meant that multiple points of failure had become compromised and all the backup generators had gone offline. Either they had run out of power—they should have been able to last a day, so not likely—or someone had destroyed them.
Either way, he would know soon enough.
He walked up to the gate and climbed his way to the corner. Two cameras watched him do it, but he doubted they had power either. He reached the top and dropped onto the roadway on the other side. By now, alarms should have sounded throughout the property, and a security team should have converged on his position.
Instead, only silence.
He drew his pistol and moved up the driveway. It meant about a half-kilometer hike to reach the actual estate, and as he got closer, his sense of wrongness intensified. No patrols, no warnings, nothing. Just empty lawns and complete stillness throughout the entire place.
Not until he reached the front of the manor and the circular turnaround did he see signs that something had most definitely gone wrong. The double entry doors looked broken and hung open, and next to them pooled a puddle of blood on the front steps. It had begun to dry but remained a little wet, so whatever had happened, must have done so in the last few hours.
Dominick walked into the antechamber of the estate, raising his pistol and keeping his eyes peeled for any signs of movement. Inside the main entryway, more bloodstains and signs of violence met him: a broken chair, bullet holes, and tears in the carpeting.
But, aside from that, he identified nothing in the main place. No bodies of guards, butlers, or enemies. He took a few more steps into the estate, and then froze.
From off to his left, in the dining hall, came a chewing and slurping sound, like someone eating noisily. He moved through the foyer toward the slurping sounds, padding quietly across the floor and with his gun held ready.
Slowly, he rounded the corner, gun leading the way, and stared into the dining hall. A man sat at the center of a long table, hunched over. Though dressed in a guard’s outfit, it looked like blood covered it. The noises came from him, and it appeared as if he sat gnawing on a turkey leg.
The room seemed relatively untouched, otherwise. Dominick took a step further into the room and saw that a body lay on the ground behind him. It looked like one of the butlers, and he lay there, definitely dead. He had a missing …
Dominick looked back at the seated guard: no, not a turkey leg but the upper arm of the butler lying on the floor. It dripped blood while the man shoved his face into it, ripping off huge mouthfuls of flesh and eating as fast as he could.
Dominick had seen some disgusting stuff in his life, but this made for one of the worst. Dominick fought down his gag reflex and backed slowly out of the dining hall and back into the antechamber. The man remained too invested in his meal even to notice.
He crept back to the double staircase, leading to the second floor, and headed up. Part of him wanted just to leave, knowing that searching the building wouldn’t net anything positive. The odds of Jill Reinfer remaining alive seemed incredibly small, but he needed to find out, nonetheless.
The head of security, Trent Dopper, hadn’t sent any texts after that first, which meant that whatever had happened, it must have happened fast. It only took a two-hour drive to get here from Mitchell’s shop, which meant the attack had occurred within that timeframe.
Dominick felt so frustrated with himself for leaving. He’d promised Frieda he would stay here to protect Jill and keep her safe, and he’d failed at that. Still, right now, he had bigger concerns.
Like, did the attacker remain here? With such a short timeframe, the possibility existed that whoever had invaded the estate still hid in the building. If that were Nida, then he would need to prepare.
It caught him a little off-guard at just how still the building felt. After the last few weeks of near constant activity and sound, the house seemed a lot less inviting this empty.
He found most of the guards and an explanation of what had gone on a few moments later when he reached Jill Reinfer’s personal quarters. The guards, he found in the entry room, laid around in various positions in the room and clearly dead. A layer of blood and dismembered body parts covered the flooring.
The blood looked fresher than what he’d seen outside, and the air still smelled of gunpowder, which meant the fight had only ended in the last half-hour or so.
Many of the guards had been dismembered and sliced apart with sharp blades, though he couldn’t tell if they’d received their wounds pre or post-mortem. Whatever weapon the attacker had used, it had a jagged and curved blade, and when Dominick inspected the cuts, he found them ripped as much by force as by cut.
Which meant the blades must be dull, and if the slices proved pre-mortem, they would also have proven incredibly painful. The entire floor felt slippery, making it difficult to move through without sliding on the slick ground.
Every fiber in his being told him to turn back now. In this room, he found more than eight dead people, and all of them trained and skilled combatants. He felt certain of what he would find in the next room: no way had Jill Reinfer survived.
But, he couldn’t turn back. He had to know for sure.
With a steadying breath, Dominick peeked around the corner into Jill Reinfer’s bedroom. She lay on the sheets, and at first glance, he took them as red sheets. Then he realized that they had once glowed brilliant white, and only showed red because her blood stained the fabric.
An odd and grotesque statue stood beside her bed, some sort of alien creature. She had weird tastes in culture, but that took it to a new extreme.
He let out a breath of air and lowered his gun, allowing a moment of pity for the lady of the estate. He hadn’t much liked her, but no person deserved what had happened to her. It appeared as though Jill had gotten ripped apart on her bed, with bloody limbs scattered around and tossed against the walls. Her face showed a mask of horror and pain.
Bits of her dress, the same one she’d worn at his fight on the lawn a few nights ago, lay strewn about on the floor and—
Dominick hesitated, turning his gaze back to beside her bed and the alien statue standing there.
That was no statue.
It looked almost insect-like as it stood perfectly still. The skin on it looked gray and rough, almost like an outer shell of concrete, and it had four arms that ended in long and jagged talons. So
mething had caught his eye, but he couldn’t tell for sure what. It didn’t move and looked locked in place. What had he noticed?
Suddenly, it hit him.
The talons dripped blood.
“What the hell …?” he muttered, raising his gun.
The statue turned to face him and opened its eyes. Blood-red eyes, filled with hunger and desperation.
Dominick raised his pistol and fired. He shot off three rounds at the thing, the first two thudding into its chest and the third clipping its head.
If the shots even hurt it, though, he couldn’t tell. For certain, they didn’t stop it. Slowly, the creature raised itself to its full three-meter height and turned to face Dominick.
“Uh-oh,” he muttered.
A high-pitched shriek filled the room and forced Dominick to cover his ears with his hands. Then he looked up.
The creature charged at him.
Time to run.
***
He stumbled back, nearly losing his balance and slipping on the puddles of blood in the room behind him. He caught himself on an armchair and pushed himself back across the floor, heading for the second-floor hallway.
As he ran, he saw that one of the dead soldiers had dropped his assault rifle. He reached down while he ran, picked it up, and ducked into the hallway just as the creature entered the room.
It had to bend to get through the doorway, and as it came into the entry area, it swung its bladed talons in wide arcs and let out another horrible screeching sound.
Dominick turned, raised the rifle, and then pulled the trigger. He hoped it didn’t prove empty, and grinned savagely a second later when the reassuring roar of rounds firing reached his ears.
They hit the monster in the chest—or carapace; he couldn’t be sure—and the creature staggered back. However, it didn’t stop coming. It let out another screech and rushed forward, swiping the blades at him.
Dominick ducked just in time to keep his head, and the talons sunk deep into the doorframe beside him. The creature seemed strong, and a single hit from one of those blades would mean lights out for him just like it had for the soldiers.
