He returned with a bottle of lighter fluid and matches. Abu Hussein knew that Robert planned to hunt for the prophet, so any evidence of his involvement in these men's deaths needed to be removed.
Robert dragged the bodies next to each other, surrounded them with dried twigs and brush that he gathered from the sparse vegetation around their campsite and sprayed the lighter fluid over them. He touched a lit match to the pile, and it whooshed up into brilliant flame, lighting the night and contracting his pupils. The acrid smoke and sting of chemicals burned his nose and chased the scent of blood from his senses.
It would not completely destroy the bodies, but the blaze created enough camouflage to hide the expertise with which they were killed.
He climbed back up the hillside, trailing a branch behind him, obscuring his footprints, and occasionally turning back to look at the glowing pyre, the one spot of light in the otherwise unspoiled darkness.
His mind leapt to an earlier fire in this wilderness. Who had torched the lean-to that Shaheer saw Sydney Rye in? Was the woman on the video the person who had saved Sydney? The Prophet?
Was it possible that Sydney had set it up with Zerzan? That she'd orchestrated this whole thing? Or was Sydney Rye an unwitting, or unwilling, participant in someone else's plan? Had she once again fallen into someone else's control as she had under the spell of Datura?
The dusty blue of dawn was staining the sky, when Robert reached the coordinates where the prophet was sighted. A hill rose before him, dotted with boulders and sparse green vegetation. It dipped and swelled, deep shadows hiding crags that could be caves.
A chill ran down Robert's spine, and he turned quickly. A dog's long-legged, thick silhouette stood in the shadow of a boulder to his left, its eyes glowing green in the darkness. Robert began to pull his knife. The creature barked a warning, and Robert stilled.
The shadow stepped closer, a beam of early morning light touching its face.
"Blue," Robert said, relief washing over him. He'd found her. Where Blue was, Sydney would not be far away. His eyes scanned the landscape, his grip on the knife loosening.
Blue and he had always respected each other, but Blue barked again, and Robert's gaze jumped back to the familiar dog. As tall as Robert's waist, broad and muscled, with the rough coat of a wolf and the long snout of a Collie, Blue had one brown eye and one blue.
Blue's lip rose, and he took a step toward Robert.
"Sydney!" Robert yelled. Where was she?
Blue barked again, his hackles raised, as he moved even closer. Leave.
Another dog stepped out from where Blue had appeared. Its white fur shone in the morning light, and its lip quivered with threat. The dog's coat matched the fluff of fur he'd found on the tree near where Philip died. Sydney was definitely here, as was the person who saved her life.
The white dog stepped forward. Almost as tall as Blue, with blue eyes and a mastiff's bold features, its belly was distended with pregnancy. "Blue, you old devil," Robert whispered. "You're going to be a dad."
The female raised her lips, a growl emanating that Blue picked up and amplified. They were protecting their unborn children from him.
Robert held up his hands. "I'm not going to hurt you; I'm not going to hurt either of you. I just want to talk to Sydney."
He was trying to negotiate with dogs, dear God.
"Sydney where are you?"
He scanned the hillside. A female figure sat in dark blue shadow under a scraggly tree. She lifted a herder’s staff and used it to stand. Sunlight glinted off her hair and illuminated her profile.
Robert's breath stopped, and his chest ached. Sydney.
She turned away and moved up the hill, her steps slow and steady.
Blue nipped at his feet, and Robert leapt to the side, almost tripping, his gaze riveted to Sydney's retreating back. The dog was making it very clear that Robert was not wanted here.
"Sydney!" he screamed, his voice echoing loud and clear, but she did not turn, just disappeared into the dark shadows of a boulder. Robert's heart pounded in his chest.
Blue barked and lunged. Robert jumped back as Blue's teeth clicked millimeters from his groin. A sharp pain of a different sort pierced Robert's breast, and he rubbed at the spot, his eyes stuck on the shadows that had enveloped Sydney. She didn't want to see him.
A cold fist closed around the pain in Robert's chest, numbing it. Fine.
Blue barked again, and Robert growled back at him, almost reaching for his gun. If he killed Blue, she'd pay attention to him.
The white dog barked, a sharp warning. Robert pursed his lips, anger swelling inside him so fast and furious that he wasn't sure his body could contain it. He turned away from the dogs, from Sydney. He'd spent too much on her already. His heart thudded in his ears, sweat pooled in his clenched fists, and he forced his feet to walk away.
Robert Maxim didn't need Sydney Rye. He didn't need anyone. Needing people created softness. Left you exposed. Robert focused his attention on each step, freeing his mind from Sydney's grasp. There was plenty to do. Money to be made, wars to be waged.
There was no heaven or hell; only this one life. He refused to waste any more of it on Sydney fucking Rye.
Chapter Twenty-six
Sydney Rye
"Evidence is weak in the face of faith." Her accent played over my senses—lyrical, educated, trustworthy. "This is the only path."
She was convincing me. Controlling me.
Blue's growl drew my attention. His sharp bark brought me out of the haze for just a moment, an instant of clarity.
I'm a prisoner.
The other dogs in the cave stirred, their giant heads coming up, ears perking forward. But her voice continued, the soft, reassuring rumble of a distant, unthreatening storm, lulling me back into peace, settling the beasts around me.
We are all one pack.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Mulberry
Mulberry recognized the handwriting, despite the blackened, singed edges of the paper. Robert Fucking Maxim.
Dammit.
He was buying oil from Daesh.
That bastard.
Zerzan came up next to Mulberry and looked down at the paper in his hand. The building they stood in appeared structurally sound, but the bombing had blown out the windows. A Daesh soldier, his body broken and bloodied, lay crumpled in the corner, his corpse covered in the gray dust that also floated in the air.
This was the fifth oil field they'd taken in the last eight weeks.
They'd seriously hampered Daesh's ability to produce and sell the black gold that had funded their state the past few years. The US and its allies bombed the structures, doing their best not to completely destroy the operations, then Zerzan and the Kurdish forces came in to clean house. They were slowly making their way toward the heart of Daesh territory, Surama.
Meanwhile, with the help of Mulberry’s sister, Charlene, Joyful Justice was taking out slave markets supplied by Daesh…but there was still no sign of Sydney. Unless you counted the rumors of The Miracle Woman.
"We found another container full of women," Zerzan said.
Mulberry gritted his teeth, and his fingers crumpled the paper. "How many?"
"Ten. All Yazidi."
Mulberry shoved the evidence of Robert Maxim's betrayal into the pocket of his cargo pants and turned to her. They sent most of the Yazidi women they'd freed through channels to England, where a Saudi woman, who'd fled to the UK herself, had set up a refuge at a mental hospital.
Mulberry stepped out into the bright day. The women cowered together next to the container they'd been found in, their eyes wide and dry.
"They have no more tears to cry, one of them told me." Zerzan's voice was steely.
"I believe it."
"But that one." Zerzan gestured toward one of the girls, her dark hair shorn down to the scalp and both her eyes blackened. An odd twist to the girl's nose indicated which direction the punch had come from that broke it. "She says that s
he wants to fight with us."
Mulberry's lips pulled up into a smile. "I admire her."
"I will let her join us."
Twisted Nose stood tall among the other girls, her exposed neck straight, her shoulders set. "Does she have any training?"
"None. Except for fighting for her life."
"Untrained personnel can be dangerous."
"I will send her for training, of course. Perhaps she should even go to Costa Rica."
Mulberry pursed his lips. "That's far."
"So maybe you should set up something closer."
Mulberry considered Zerzan's proposal. The region's instability made it the worst place to train, but also the most necessary. He'd seen over eighty Yazidi women pulled from containers since they began their raids. It sickened him. Ending this kind of injustice was exactly why he joined Joyful Justice in the first place.
He reached into his pocket and felt for the paper again; Robert needed to be put in his place. He deserved a warning, but Mulberry doubted he'd heed it. Buying oil from Daesh and helping to fund their despicable state was exactly the kind of thing Joyful Justice stopped.
"I can speak to Dan about it."
"You have brought us weapons, and I appreciate that, but now we need more fighters. More trained fighters. And there will be lots of women willing to fight now."
"What makes you think that?"
Zerzan began to walk across the compound, heading to where the Yazidi women stood, and Mulberry fell into step with her. "Because they are following the prophet who says to fight for yourself. To value yourself."
"This prophet sounds a lot like you."
Zerzan turned on her heel, and Mulberry bumped into her. He backed off quickly, remembering the last time he'd touched her and the blade at his gut. "I am not the prophet."
"I didn't say you were." He narrowed his eyes. She seemed very defensive.
"I think the message is good. Strong."
"I like the message, too. But I'm also nervous about any kind of zealotry."
Zerzan laughed. "What is Joyful Justice, if not a bunch of zealots? What am I, or my followers?"
"Right." Mulberry nodded, raising his eyebrows. "And we are the ones fighting. If none of us believed so strongly in our cause then we wouldn’t fight for it. On either side. Everyone could just live in peace."
Zerzan shook her head. "Live in peace?" A small smile twitched on her lip. "That is not something we have ever had."
"But isn't it what you're fighting for?"
She shook her head. "You Americans have such a strange way of looking at the world. I do not fight for peace. I fight for my life, the lives of my family. For our land and our right to exist."
"I understand that. But don't you want to win?” Mulberry looked up at the recently freed slaves. He wanted to win.
Zerzan sneered. "Win? What is winning to you? Living in peace? Impossible. Every day I breathe I am winning."
"But your goal is to provide peace and safety for your people.” He looked back at Zerzan, hoping to understand her, for them to find some point of agreement to pivot around. They’d spent weeks arguing even though they shared the same goals, the same thirst for justice.
"My goal is to keep my people alive. To kill as many Daesh fighters as I can. I do not hope for peace. I know that I will live. I feel it in my bones, and know it in my mind. I am protected by the religion of others. By my threat to their beliefs. That is why I have lived so long. Because I understand that I frighten them. That to a Daesh soldier, I am impossible. Allah should have killed me. But he has not. Their faith struggles in my presence, and I take advantage of that opening."
Mulberry was hot, he was thirsty, and sick of philosophical arguments with Zerzan. They'd been talking circles around each other as they'd moved closer to Surama, the stronghold of Daesh.
His goal, to find Sydney Rye, still rang in his blood, but the more they heard about the prophet and her miracle, the more places there were to look.
Zerzan approached the freed women and spoke to them in Kurdish. "They have heard of the prophet, and follow her teachings," Zerzan told him. "They say that her symbol is in their hearts."
"What symbol?" Mulberry asked.
"The evidence of her miracle. Of her power."
Zerzan asked Twisted Nose to draw it, handing her a notebook and pen. The girl bent over the paper, her tongue sneaking out as she concentrated.
When she held out the notebook, Mulberry's breath caught: a wolf's profile with a woman's set within it. The image immediately reminded him of Sydney and Blue. "Where is she?" he asked.
"They don't know." Zerzan said. "But they have heard rumors."
"More rumors." Bile tickled his throat. Was it possible that Sydney was masquerading as the beneficiary of a miracle. Was she really alive? Or was this some kind of martyrdom?
Joy Humbolt had faked her own death and become a martyr. Some of the women in Zerzan's fighting force had playing cards with martyrs’ pictures on them…Joy Humbolt graced the two of spades. But this drawing was different. A martyr was human. This drawing represented the divine.
"How did they hear the prophet’s message?" he asked.
Zerzan translated, and Twisted Nose spoke, touching her temple, her words forceful and impassioned. The other girls watched her, their eyes sparkling with admiration.
"She heard the voice in her head," Zerzan said. Another girl spoke up. "She heard it too."
This was some kind of mass hysteria.
Another girl spoke up. "That is why she believes," Zerzan said. "Because it is a miracle that the prophet's message could come to so many. That this image should appear in so many places. Apparently, it is all over villages, even spray-painted on rocks in the middle of the desert."
The girl spoke faster. "It even appeared here." She pointed toward a smoldering building. "In one of the men's containers. That is why Nour was beaten so badly. They thought she did it."
"Didn't she?" Mulberry asked.
Zerzan shook her head. "It just appeared. Burned into the wall. If she'd had the means for doing that, they would have found it. But they didn't. They beat her anyway."
A shout from a nearby building drew their attention. Zerzan said something to the girls and then headed toward the commotion. Mulberry followed, his grip on his Kalashnikov tightening. "What is it?" he asked.
"They found a cache of weapons."
The building they entered remained intact, undamaged by the bombing. Dark and cool, the armory smelled like gun oil. Metal racks filled with crates lined one wall. Zerzan's soldiers had pried a lid off, exposing automatic rifles. "They have so many weapons they don't even use them all," Zerzan said, her voice bitter as she ran her hand over one of the brand new rifles.
Mulberry's gaze traveled over the room. He had a sneaking suspicion that these weapons were from Robert Maxim. Why? What was telling him that? He stepped up to one of the unopened crates and checked it for any kind of marking. There was nothing. Of course. He took out his phone and shot some photos of the room, the crates, and finally the serial numbers on the weapons.
Dan could figure out if these were from Robert. And if they were, he was going to be in serious trouble. Mulberry smiled, picturing Robert's face when he got the package from Joyful Justice telling him he'd been caught and how to correct his ways.
Robert thought he was so powerful. Thought that because he'd given Joyful Justice money, they wouldn't come after him. Well, he was about to learn that no one could escape justice. No one.
Chapter Twenty-eight
April
They painted the wolf's face, with a woman's profile set within it, everywhere they traveled.
April enjoyed the life. A decade of proselytizing with Bill had never brought her this peace. This clear, undeniable purpose. As she and Bill traveled the globe, spreading Jesus's message, a kernel in her soul had always felt a fraud. A sinner.
The dragon, free from its amber cage, rested inside April now, no longer clawing to get o
ut. Its power did not frighten her.
Wearing the long black dress and burka that covered her body, face, and even veiled her eyes, April was indistinguishable from Nadia and the other young women she traveled with. She matched every woman they saw.
They entered villages, totally anonymous. They all stooped forward, taking on the walk and attitude of elderly women—younger females had to be escorted by men to be out in public, but no one cared about a group of old women.
What could they do?
Change the world.
As the weeks passed, the six women grew close. April's purpose when she set out was to find her daughter, and God had brought her these young women, ripped from their families to be joined with April—so that they could spread the word of his prophet.
I am Her.
It was all a part of His plan. April felt His hand in her life; she heard His voice in her ear. Your daughter is growing closer. You will find her.
You are doing my work.
The dragon nodded, agreeing with the Lord. April had finally vanquished the devil. There was no alcohol to tempt her here. A Muslim state did not hold the devil's drink, but even if someone had placed a chilled glass of vodka in front of her, April could have turned away, her soul nourished by her work.
They entered a village, as they did most mornings, looking like a group of elderly women heading to the market together. But under their cloaks they carried guns and paint. Farridah was especially good at drawing the wolf. The boy lost his ability to speak, but gained the ability to draw.
They wove through the streets, in the early shadowed dawn, their cloaks hiding them, as much as men's willingness to ignore them.
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