by Logan Fox
Hunter
As soon as a pair of sandaled feet come into view, I know who’s coming down the stairs and already expecting the boots thumping behind The Father. I hear a mechanical click — Lars sliding the safety off his handgun — but I hold up a hand to him.
It’s as if the girls can sense Father approaching — their chanting ceases in a sullen wave as he walks down the aisle toward us.
“Mass is open to everyone,” Father says, wearing that frustratingly smug smile of his. “All you had to do was ask.”
“What the hell are you doing to them?” I ask before I can stop myself. I see Kane tensing in my periphery, and hear Lars moving the gun in his hand, perhaps even tightening his grip.
“These?” Father waves a casual hand over bowed and bloody backs. “They are serving penance for their sins.”
“Sins? They’re children!” Kane blurts out.
Father cocks his head. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
“Told you you should have brought a fucking gun,” Lars says dryly, I assume directing the comment toward Kane.
A terrible hush falls over the room. In the far corner, a girl begins sobbing. The sound is like nails down my spine, but I force myself to keep staring at Father while I try and calculate our position.
I spot Colby and Sam behind Father, along with three other goons just as mindless and beefy.
We’re outnumbered.
“I could kill him,” Lars murmurs. “Put a bullet right in the middle of those crazy eyes.”
Kane mutters back, “We’d all die.”
“It’ll be worth it,” Lars replies.
Father stops a few feet away from us, and his eyes move to Kane and Lars before returning to mine. “Did you come to visit your fiancé, Dr. Hill?”
My veins no longer pump blood; heat is replaced with ice. I hear Kane beside me, voice tight with shock, asking, “What did you say?” But it sounds as if he’s talking through thick fog from miles away.
“She’s alive,” I whisper.
Father nods at me, and his smile inches up. “They grow stronger every day.”
“They?” Kane snaps as he surges forward. “My baby’s—?”
Lars grabs his arm, yanks him back. “Relax,” Lars whispers urgently.
Father nods again, his eyes never having left mine. “Would you like to see them?”
“It’s a trap,” I murmur.
She can’t possibly be alive. And, if the child had survived childbirth, it would still have been several weeks premature. Any hospital in Mallhaven would have contacted me if either of them had been admitted…and I’ve heard nothing.
“You’re lying,” I say, this time loud enough for Father to hear.
Father ignores this. Colby steps forward and murmurs into Father’s ear, turning his body away from us. Father’s pale eyes rest on Lars.
“What is in the bag, child?”
“Enough C4 to send you all back to Hell,” Lars says.
For the first time ever, I see a flicker of uncertainty in Father’s cold, dead eyes. They dart to me, then Kane, then back to Lars.
Behind Father, all five his men raise their handguns. None of them have to draw back hammers or turn off safety’s — they came down here ready to shoot on command.
Father holds out his hand, palm upraised. “Then perhaps it’s wise for you to hand that over to me.”
“Sure,” Lars drawls. Fabric rustles. “But I bet a pedo like you can’t handle a package this size.”
I hear something in Lars’s voice. I don’t know what it is — I met the man a few days ago — but I turn to Lars.
Kane too.
Our gazes glance off each other as we face him. Lars hoists the duffel bag and tosses it over Father’s head, toward one of his goons.
There’s a remote detonator in his hand.
I fall to the floor a second before the blast goes off. Something hot and wet splatters my hands as I throw them over my head, and brick crumbs patter on my head.
The floor bucks like a wild horse.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Clover
I’m still staring down at my ruined escape plan when the building shakes like an earthquake just hit. My stomach does a somersault, and I almost tip over and out the window before I can grab hold of the sill and push myself back into the room.
I lie on my back, fingernails trying to sink into the hardwood floor as the final tremors subside.
What the fuck was that?
But there’s something else. There’s a soft sound, eerie in the sudden silence following that sullen boom.
Not an earthquake — an explosion.
Hunter?
I push myself up, my head swimming for a moment as I glance this way and that to find the source of the noise I keep hearing.
I see it seconds later.
There’s a crack in the wall.
As I watch, it inches up at a jagged angle, then another.
For a moment, I think it’s my brain being fucked up. Light-headedness, low blood sugar, that kind of shit.
But then I realize the floor is tilting.
Priest’s church is caving in.
Chapter Sixty-Four
Hunter
White noise fills my ears. There’s intense pain in one ear canal, more in my knees from falling to the floor. The air is thick with cement powder. I struggle to my feet and feel something hump up under my palm as I press down. I clutch it instinctively as I squint to search through the haze of debris for something approaching a friendly face.
From what I can make out, all three of the supporting beams in this place have been destroyed. There is enough blood and chunks of flesh around that I assume Father and his guards were decimated by the blast.
A singed braid lies close to my foot. It’s no longer attached to anything.
I suppose several of the girls closest to the blast zone didn’t make it.
I touch my face and wince. The skin is tender, but besides a few scratches and gouges, I seem to be intact. Excruciating pain in one ear suggests my eardrum has ruptured. But that pain, just like the reality of this moment, is taking a very long time to settle in my mind.
I push aside the braid with my foot, and grab out for something, anything.
I find Kane.
As a high-pitched whine slowly replaces the rushing in my ears, the dust settles enough for me to make out Kane’s limp body a few feet away.
I drag myself closer and roll him onto his back. He groans, coughs, and makes a terrible rattling sound in the back of his throat.
But he’s alive, so I leave him. Next is Lars. He’s half on his side, almost right at the door to the storage room. There’s blood and cement dust in his pale hair, and more on his face when I roll him over.
I touch fingertips to his neck, and strain to make out a pulse.
Alive, but barely. My eyes flicker up, and I stare at the gaping hole ahead.
Lars hadn’t been kidding when he’d said he’d blow it open; his C4 took most of the storage room with it. Snow swirls, but can’t enter; it’s too warm inside here. And that doesn’t make sense — we’re underground. Unless…did the blast plow a hole right to the surface? Is that even possible?
Warm. It’s too warm. Why?
The mattresses. Some of them caught on fire.
As if the sight of those sickly flames was a trigger, there’s a sudden deluge of screams in my right ear. Girls are fighting their chains and collars, doing their best to escape the flames licking at their heels like rabid dogs.
And all I can do is stare, my mind at once overwhelmed by just how many figures there are down here. Dancing to some tune I can’t here. Flailing at their burning skin.
So many.
I don’t even know where to begin.
Chapter Sixty-Five
Clover
I run to the bedroom door again, hoping by some twist of fate to find that it’s open.
Nope.
Locked.
/>
I kick it a few times but give that up pretty damn quick. No reason for me to hobble around on bruised feet while escaping a collapsing building. That’s just being masochistic, Clover.
Instead, I run back to the window, inhale a deep lungful of snow-dusted air, and throw my leg over the sill.
Twisting, my eyes fly over Priest’s bedroom one last time — and I freeze.
That spreading crack has turned sideways. It races across the wall and then stops abruptly.
Too abruptly.
I clamber back inside Priest’s room and hurry over to the wall beneath that upside down crucifix. Trembling fingers touch the end of the crack. There’s a ridge there, near invisible. I push, and there’s a little give. So I shove, and the wall falls away.
No, not a wall.
A door.
Because why the hell wouldn’t Priest have a secret entrance to his bedroom?
Chapter Sixty-Six
Hunter
A hand grabs my arm. Lars, face caked with blood and cement dust, pulls me aside and runs down the aisle. At first, I think he’s running away because that’s exactly what I want to do.
Run, and never look back.
Run, and hit up with the first opiate I can get my hands on. Perhaps too much, even, like Clover.
No, not like Clover.
She’s still alive.
Her baby — Kane’s baby — is still alive.
There are so many moving shapes in this dungeon now; girls fighting their bonds, clouds of swirling dust unable to settle as the heat from the burning mattresses buffets them into new whirlwinds.
And a lone figure heading away from the distant stairs. Away from the carnage and chaos this room has been transformed into.
Father.
I grab Kane’s shirt, haul him up. For a moment, he dangles from my hand like a marionette doll in the hands of an amateur puppeteer. Then I slap him, and he comes to with a wild roll of his head.
One of his eyes burst a vessel, and there’s blood leaking from both his nostrils and one ear, but he focuses on me with a stubbornness I would have applauded any other time.
“Find Clover!”
I shake him when he doesn’t acknowledge the command. He gives a grudging nod as if his neck is too stiff for more.
“Find your baby!”
His mouth sets in a line. He jerks away from me and rushes for the stairs. My eyes track him, if only to make sure he does what I need him to do. Then my gaze sticks on Lars. He has his shirt up, cupped by a hand over his mouth as he aims a handgun at the loops where the girl’s chains have been fastened to the floor.
A shot rings out.
A girl is free. She drags her chain behind her as she races for the stairs behind Kane.
Another. Another.
I don’t know how many bullets he has, but as I turn and sprint after Father with my head ringing and rubber legs, I can only hope he has enough.
Not just for those girls he can break free…but enough to end the lives of those who only have more suffering to look forward to before their short lives are snuffed out forever.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Clover
The narrow passage leading from Father’s rooms is pitch black and filling with smoke. It’s particularly acrid — like burning plastic — and makes my eyes stream and my lungs fill with mucus.
I do my best not to inhale, but even the fabric of my dress makes a poor sieve.
The closer I get to the bottom of the stairwell, the warmer the air becomes. The thicker the smoke. The stronger that stench.
And it’s not all plastic anymore. Fried meat, burned hair…
I will away the thought and focus on keeping my feet under me. My palms are scraped raw — I have to keep my hand on the rough brick wall to keep my balance — and too often I’ve caught the side of the step with my inner sole, bruising it.
Yeah, I’m a whiny bitch, but it’s not like I can help it. After being wrapped nice and tight in a warm blanket of fuck-it-all — courtesy of the morphine Priest injected into me — even normal life would have been rubbing me the wrong way.
This?
I can’t even.
Finally, the air clears, steps picked out by a warm ambiance. I thump to the bottom of the stairs, take less than a second to scan the arched doorway in front of me, and grab the handle in a greedy fist.
The smell of scorched skin hits my nose before the agony does. I scream. Fall back. Land hard on my ass. My hand should be on fire for the heat and the pain throbbing through the burned flesh.
It’s not. It’s just a gooey red-black mess.
I scream again, because fuck it, I’ve never felt pain like this in all my life.
I can’t open the door. I can’t jump out the upstairs window.
Will I suffocate? Or will the building collapse on top of me, burying me in a ton of cement and brick?
I’m not a gambler, but—
A thump rattles the door. I clamber to my feet, whimpering when my burned hand accidentally brushes the wall. My face is wet with tears, my mouth so twisted my teeth are drying in the heat.
Another thud.
Another.
Jesus Christ — it’s Priest isn’t it? He’s come back for me.
Guess there’s a third way I could die today — death by Satanist.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Hunter
The door Lars blew open leads to a tunnel. It’s a short tunnel, poorly lit, with irregular cobblestones. And it slopes up.
Up and up and up.
It ends in another doorway, this one open to the frosty night. Snow litters the first few feet of the tunnel, and turns the ground slippery. I claw my way out, barely keeping my balance.
Icy air washes over me. I gasp, and it feels as if that briskness gets trapped in my lungs, freezing them. It’s snowing hard outside, so hard that I can barely make out the tracks leading away from the crooked church and its glowing belly. In fact, I can barely make out the church.
I sprint after Father.
I have no idea if I’ll catch up to him or even find him in this snow, but I have to try.
If he escapes, then evil wins.
I can’t let that happen. Not again.
For MJ’s sake. For Clover’s sake.
For the whole of Mallhaven’s sake.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Clover
The door splinters, cracks, yaws open like a hungry beast too long denied sustenance. I reel back, but I ran out of energy, strength, and survival instincts about an hour ago.
Instead, I watch with a blank expression as a man bursts through what’s left of the door.
“Red!”
I cock my head. Recognize him.
A hand snatches my wrist and tugs hard enough to send me falling forward.
Kane. It’s Kane.
Smoke and fury press against him, eager to include us in its party plans. But Kane throws something over my head and drags me through the billowing mess without a second’s hesitation.
He’s talking to me — shouting, to be honest — but there’s no way I can understand him right now. My mind is too full of questions.
Where did the fire come from?
Where’s Hunter?
What happened to Priest?
What did he do with Mary?
Why didn’t Hunter cure me like he was supposed to?
“I don’t know!” Kane yells. He spins to me, gives me a shake hard enough to rattle my teeth. “I don’t fucking know. We need to get the fuck out of here, got it?”
Shit…had I been speaking out loud again?
“Yes.” Kane scowls at me, sweeps his gaze past me, and hauls me into the church proper. It’s empty, some of the pews off kilter. Thick smoke chokes the tall ceiling, obscuring everything.
Well, almost everything.
Kane drags me behind him as he aims for the open doors. I look over my shoulder, my gaze is inexorably drawn up…and up and up.
Smoke swirls.
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A goat headed beast stares down at me, eyes like fire. There’s a woman at his feet, head in his lap. Her hair is as red as his eyes.
Why didn’t I notice that before?
How could I have missed it?
Harlot.
Whore.
I’m still staring when the canvas catches alight.
The last thing I see before Kane drags me into the snowy night is Lucifer’s body being consumed by fire. It might be my imagination, but I swear his benevolent expression twists into a pained grimace.
Chapter Seventy
Hunter
I dance with the forest. As vast as she is, I’m nimble and quick. When her branches reach for my face, I twist away not a moment too soon. When roots hump up from the moss to trip my feet, I skip over them like we’ve spent weeks choreographing this dance.
In a way, we’ve spent years practicing this routine.
The forest knows me well and I, her. Which is why I don’t understand why she keeps trying to stop me from reaching Father.
I follow his tracks effortlessly — he’s making no effort to hide from me.
That should have been my clue.
That’s what the forest saw that I missed.
Father wasn’t running away from me…he was drawing me deeper into the forest.
I’ve spent more than my fair share of time around mentally unstable people. Drug addicts, PTSD sufferers, psychopaths. It comes with the territory.
But Father is different. His madness is so tightly controlled, so perfectly encapsulated by his faith, it’s officially infectious.
That virility…? It’s a gift only the most influential cult leaders possess.
They’re charismatic, enigmatic.
