by Anni Taylor
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.
Daddy James told me that the universe crunched the numbers and made me what I am. It knew what I was long before I did.
I was fifteen when I started to question everything Daddy James told me about myself and my mother. I didn’t believe in his speeches about the right and might of the Saviours anymore. I tried to get away from him. The second that I could, I went to the other side of the world. But Daddy James wouldn’t let go. He stopped the money that Mom was sending and had Brother Wilson watch over me. Brother Wilson forced drugs on me, forced me to sign up for escort websites. It was punishment from Daddy James for leaving home and trying to strike out on my own. And if I kept doing the wrong thing and the monastery had to kill me, then there would be a trail of things that would make the police and public less sympathetic about the task of finding me. People tended to shrug when drug-addicted sex workers went missing.
If I didn’t do as I was told, then something bad might happen to Mom. He never said what. But he didn’t need to. I already knew too well about the bad things that the Saviours did.
And then I was forced to make contact with Evie Harlow. I knew from that second what their plans for her were. But I didn’t know how to stop it. I didn’t know how to make it end. But it was Evie who changed everything for me. When I saw her here on her first morning, I finally understood how wrong everything about the monastery was.
Daddy James already knew I was in mental turmoil. He forced me to take part in the challenges just so that the Saviours could keep an eye on me. I had a knife with me in the bed the night that Evie was first brought to the dormitory. I wanted to cut everyone’s throats while they slept so that they’d never know the truth about the monastery. They’d die happy. But Saviours were keeping watch behind the walls.
I ran now through the hidden passages, away from the remembrance hall. Would Daddy James be explaining to my mother all the secrets we’d been keeping from her? I never wanted her to know. He promised me that if I did all he asked, she would never know.
My eyes burned with tears I couldn’t cry.
I’d followed Mom all the way through the tunnels, scarcely believing that she’d come all the way here, straight into the nest of the Saviours, to find me.
71. GRAY
TWENTY MINUTES EARLIER
A GROUP OF SAVIOURS WAS HEADING our way.
The four of us were about to get caught in the dormitory. Jennifer swiftly pulled Constance back through the doorway. Sethi and I were on the other side of the room, like deer caught in headlights. No time and no room to hide.
I spun on my heel. I’d seen a rack of the gowns that the Saviours wore a few seconds ago. I grabbed two gowns, tossing one to Sethi and throwing the other one on. I pulled the hood down over my forehead and picked up an open bottle of wine from a table. Sethi followed my lead. I sweated bullets as we walked towards the exit of the room, drinking bottles of wine.
They’ll slaughter us without hesitation if they find out we’re not one of them.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” one of them called roughly.
Sethi merely raised a full bottle of wine by way of explanation.
“That’s Brother Harrington’s,” said a thick, red-bearded man. “The ‘92 vintage. Special treat from Sage.”
Sethi shrugged, making a dismissive sound.
The man laughed. “Can’t wait to see his whiny face. He hasn’t stopped whining since he got hurt in the challenges.”
The Saviours brushed past, laughing to themselves but without any more interest in us.
“Lucky,” I said under my breath as Sethi and I continued down the passage. The room had been dim, and we’d managed to conceal our faces.
“Here.” Sethi indicated towards a set of stairs. “We’ll wait here until they go. We need those backpacks.”
At least five minutes passed before the Saviours left, and then we retrieved all four backpacks. Sethi stalled for a moment, and I could guess that he was hoping that Jennifer and Constance would meet us back here. We went back into the passages, searching for them.
Sethi’s voice hoarsened and cracked as we rounded another corner. “I managed this badly, my friend. Wherever they are, we’ve gone the wrong way. I don’t know if we’re going to find them before someone else does.”
I swallowed. “Maybe they couldn’t come back. Or maybe they’ve gone to find the cellar.”
“I think that’s our only way forward now,” he agreed, but a twinge of uncertainty remained in his words.
We ran now, keeping an eye on our location through the peepholes we’d found in the walls. We found hidden doors, too—the exits marked with tiles set into the floor. I missed them until Sethi pointed them out. My mind was raging, set only on getting to Evie.
My lungs almost exploded as we passed two more of the Saviours, attempting to steady my breath and pretend like I hadn’t just been rushing somewhere.
But I’d slowed too late.
“What’s the emergency?” a woman demanded, shining her flashlight over us.
Sethi held up his wine bottle, slurring the words, “Drink with us?” He shot me a warning glance and I immediately understood it. Don’t speak. Your accent will stand out.
“Don’t let Brother Sage catch you drunk. It’s the night of remembrance,” she cautioned.
Sethi nodded contritely.
We continued on, walking but keeping up a quick pace. If the pair suddenly realised there was something wrong about us, we needed to be as far away from them as possible.
Catching sight of another peephole, I stuck my face against the wall, squinting through. “Sethi. Look at the stairs.”
At the end of the hall, a set of spiral stairs led down. The stairs looked the same as the set we’d seen in the cellar, only this would be the top of the stairs and not the bottom.
Sethi peered into the peephole. “Spiral stairs. Same handrail. I think we’ve found it. The stairs are in the right location to lead into the cellar.”
My heart juddered against my chest wall. “We need to get in there.”
“Let’s go,” he replied. “Are you sure you’re ready? If Jenny and Constance have been captured, then the alarm has been raised, and there is no margin left. You might be living your last minutes on this earth.”
“I have to.”
“Okay. There was an exit a minute back. We take it and we go.”
Every nerve in my body fired as we located the door and pulled it back.
The hall was empty. There was no one to stop us. Ditching the wine bottles behind a statue, we strode out and to the cellar then onto the spiral stairs, past cut chains hanging limply from a metal gate.
Dank, overpowering odours rushed up from below. Sweat, blood and mildew.
“Follow my lead,” Sethi told me quietly, angling his face back to me. “Stay away from the prisoners. We need to get to the Saviours.”
We stepped out into the cavern.
The chained prisoners along the half wall were shrouded in darkness beyond the immense structure I’d glimpsed before.
My blood turned cold.
Thousands of bodies were trapped within a watery cage—the cage suspended on long cables that reached upward past where I could see. A nightmare of insane human depravity. All lit up and on display with strong lights. Crumbling messes at the bottom of the cage that had once been human. Bodies resting at the top that had not been long in their grave.
Rage twisting through me, I searched among those bodies on the top layer, searching for Evie—for the familiar curves of her body and cheekbones, her exact shade of hair.
Three Saviours stood on the scaffolding surrounding the pillar, peering in through the glass. Fewer of them than before. I guessed what the scaffolding was for. So that the Saviours had a perfect view of all the layers of bodies, so they could gaze and gloat on their killings. Another Saviour stood inside a tiny room, looking through sets of knives and screwdrivers and other cutting instruments that were displayed on a bench and hung up on hooks on the wall. Half of the instruments were crusted with blood.
None of them had noticed us—yet.
Sethi knocked his shoulder against mine, sending my mind reeling back to what we’d agreed upon. I had to be like one of them.
Sethi walked into the room with the tools. Moving alongside the man, he lifted a knife down from a hook. Before I understood what was happening, Sethi had one hand over the man’s mouth and the knife at his throat. The Saviour slumped in Sethi’s arms.
Wake up, Gray. Forget who you are. Do what needs to be done.
Rushing over, I helped Sethi hide the man under the bench. Blood gushed from the cut in the man’s throat as we shoved supplies and thick ropes over him.
One less Saviour.
“If we go out shooting guns, we’ll get a horde of them down here,” said Sethi. “And we can’t fight them all. Maybe we have to stay here and ambush them.”
I gestured subtly at a camera I’d just noticed high on a wall. What we’d just done had been broadcast somewhere else within the monastery. Maybe no one had seen it. But someone was going to see us here eventually.
Sethi cursed under his breath. “Stay with me.”
The three men on the scaffolding wheeled around as we emerged from the room. Walking beside Sethi, I crossed the floor and stepped onto the scaffolding, ignoring the gazes that were set on us.
“We’re on watch here.” A blonde, slightly built guy lifted his chin. “You’re supposed to be at the ceremony.”
Sethi shrugged. “Sage sent us.”
A tense moment passed before the man standing closest to us cocked his head—an anaemic-looking man in his seventies with hair thinning over his age-spotted scalp. “Checks out. Brother Harrington thought he saw something on the infra-red. Brother Sage might want more security.”
A chill sped through me. This man was probably some kid’s grandfather. A serial killer who looked like any harmless and slightly unwell old guy you’d see in the street.
“No way,” the blond scoffed. “He’s a looney. The knock to the head wouldn’t be helping.”
The third man viewed us coolly, his eyes dead, ice cold, a scar running the length of one side of his face. “I don’t know who these two are. Did we get new Saviours? We never do that just before the challenges.”
The blond guy studied us curiously. “Take off your hoods.”
Sethi acted quickly, pulling the older guy towards him and hooking his arm around his body. With his free arm, Sethi held a knife to the man’s throat. “Do what we say, or we’ll kill him.”
A moment of shock lapsed into a sneer on the face of the man with the scar. “Who the fuck are you, and how did you get onto the island?”
“You’ve got one second,” said Sethi.
In response, the two Saviours took out guns from their pockets.
Sethi sliced his knife across the old man’s throat and let him drop to the floor.
The Saviours barely reacted.
“Your deaths won’t be that quick.” The guy with the scar gestured at us with his gun, telling us to walk back down the ramp.
I turned and walked with Sethi.
They weren’t going to shoot us in the back. Whatever was coming next was worse. They forced us off the scaffolding to a desk against a wall, where they picked up two sets of handcuffs.
A set of three monitoring screens on the desk displayed live scenes, constantly flipping from the island to the halls inside the monastery to the prisoners chained to the wall.
The blonde man picked up a fixed phone.
“What are you doing, Lewis?” the other man hissed.
“Calling Brother Sage,” Lewis answered, nonplussed.
“We’ll have some fun with them first.” The scarred man stepped around us, snatching back our hoods. “I can tell you they’re not undercover police.”
“What if they are?” A nervous energy charged Lewis’s voice. “And if they are, someone needs to deal with this and shut it down.”
One of the monitors swapped to showing an area of the monastery in which a huge number of Saviours were gathered. Hundreds of them. My bowels went ice cold. We’d had no chance from the second we’d stepped foot here. Another monitor swapped to a view of the prisoners. Different prisoners to the ones I’d seen before, on the other side of the half wall.
Then I saw her.
My wife.
Her head down, dark hair in tangles.
I knew it was her before she raised her face, staring ahead in numb confusion.
I lost sight of her just as quickly as the display switched to a view of the hall outside the cellar.
“Evie! Evie!” I roared her name, charging away, ignoring the guns that were suddenly raised and pointed my way.
72. CONSTANCE
JENNIFER DIDN’T ATTEMPT TO HIDE HER shock as she stared from James to me. My husband—the head of an insane cult. I guessed that Jennifer was calculating the same things that I was. If I’d suspected James, I could have had him tracked, had his computers logged and eavesdropped on him.
But I hadn’t done any of those things because I never had an inkling.
Why didn’t I know?
Terror pierced my body with sharp, ice-cold pins.
Kara.
My daughter had been in the hands of a monster. And I’d put her there.
“I need to see her,” I pleaded. “Just let me see her.”
James merely made a tutting sound at my anguished face. “She’s elsewhere in the monastery, and she’s told me she has no interest in ever seeing you again.”
His words socked me in the centre of my chest. “I want her to tell me that in person.”
“I’m sorry, Constance,” came the reply. “But it’s out of the question.”
He was no longer my husband. He was an unknowable stranger. A mass murderer. The hands that had touched me in intimate ways had done terrible things to other human beings. “Who are you people?”
His eyes hardened and grew distant. “Our order began a long time ago. You don’t possess the ability to understand it.”
“I need you to tell me. Give me that much, Brother Sage,” I replied bitterly.
His left eye twitched. “I don’t need to give you anything. I already gave you far more than you deserved over the last decade of your life.”
“You owe me. You people took everything from me,” Jennifer told him. “Everything.”
“Life is filled with sacrifices and consequences, Jennifer,” he said.
“I’m sorry . . . so sorry . . .” I whispered to her. I was empty, humiliated, raw. Turned inside out. How many families had James and the Saviours destroyed?
“You’re apologising for me?” James said to me, sounding annoyed. “I have nothing to
apologise for.”
“You’re insane,” I breathed. “A psychopath.”
“A psychopath, yes,” he replied. “But not insane. Psychopathy is not regarded as a mental illness. We’re not evil, either. The depths of the human psyche may be terrifying to you, but it is what it is.”
“If I’d known what you were, I’d have killed you with my bare hands.” I meant it. I’d do it now, right now, if I had the chance.
“And so you admit you would kill if you had a reason for it.” His tone was as dry and as vast as a desert, terrifying me.
I struggled to control my own voice. “I would not kill for my own pleasure.”
“Are you sure, Constance?” he said. “I see it in your eyes now that it would bring you satisfaction. But you don’t understand the merest thing about me or about those like me. Psychopaths exist because human evolution had a purpose for us. Unburdened by the same emotions and conscience as the rest of you, we do the things you only wish you could. Throughout history, we’ve led corporations and we’ve waged war. And we’ve been calm minded enough to succeed.”
“If not for the monastery,” said Sister Rose, “far more people would die. People like us would be responsible for the murders of hundreds of people each year. But here, we take a relatively small number of people each year, and we share in the kills. We also keep the worst of our kind here, far away from society. They never leave.”
Jennifer stared at her sharply, fire rising in her eyes. “Do you imagine that any of that excuses what you do?” she accused. “And serial killers are rare—how is it that there are so many of you here? And tell me, how do you all even find each other? I don’t understand that. Decade after decade, century after century. How?”
Jennifer broke off, her voice gone. I guessed that all the questions that she’d had to keep inside her all these years had finally exploded out in a ball of fury.
Sister Rose’s lips twisted into a smile. “We have a number of pathways, but the usual route is through our psychiatrists. I myself am a psychiatrist. When people confess to me that they have conducted a series of murders or they express a desire to do so, I begin a rigorous screening to see if they belong with us. We have many members who have never actually killed anyone, but who just like to watch. In medieval times, it was easier. Serial killers among the wealthy didn’t need to hide themselves as much as they do today.”
