Chapter 44
T urning onto the drive up to the place she spent her formative years, tension filled her being.
The entire trip back over the ocean wasn’t like this, it had been more relaxed, snuggling with Carter in the cabin of the plane, she had napped, and they had talked, though it wasn’t anything super important.
Brutus had stayed back at the compound in the Balkans, and Emerson had promised to keep him fed and safe ‘til they returned.
When they had touched down in Ohio, they had climbed into the Range Rover that had been waiting for them, and driven the forty minutes to the little town she grew up in. Little, if anything had changed there, though she knew that she still got the alumni email from the high school there.
“Whatever we find here, I’m going to have to say something to my friends,” she said softly as they winded through the trees toward the large house at least half a mile away still.
"I'm sure they'd understand," Carter said. "Finding that they belong to The Order might feel like belonging to a family after all this time."
“More like they are going to want their own Order boys,” she said with a wry smile. “You think Easton is going to be okay?”
"He'll be fine. He's just really excited about being able to be physically intimate. It's softened the blow of the rest of it a little bit. Although I think if he could raise those fuckers from the dead and skin them all over again, he totally would."
If she was honest, she was extremely excited about any kind of connection with her Snake.
“I would be right there with him,” she said solemnly.
They crested the hill and she saw the large house looming ahead of them.
It had always looked to her like this large imposing facade, a place rife with secrets and history.
Now she knew the secrets were real but they had nothing to do with the building.
It had everything to do with the women therein.
“Still looks the same,” she said as they parked on the far side of the circular drive. The building was black brick, with deep wood accents, two turrets reaching to the sky, the wraparound porch dusted with the snow that had only fell last night. “Though it’s quieter than it used to be.”
"Makes sense if the whole purpose of them being here was to hide your bloodline," Carter pointed out. "Now that you're out in the world they can age out the rest and close up if they want."
“Well, they need to answer for a lot of things,” she said. “Come on.”
They walked up the stairs and opened the door, stepping into the foyer of the large house. It was largely the same, right as well as a bunch of bouquets of flowers all over the place.
“Can I help you?” they heard from their left, and turned to see a woman she didn’t know standing there. She was older, dressed in a green wrap dress, shoes with kitten heels, her salt and pepper hair in a bun, and she wore sparse makeup.
"Yes, hi, we'd like to speak to the matron or whoever is in charge," Carter said politely.
At the word matron she stiffened and then looked to Petra. “Ms. Franklin?” she said and smiled.
“I don’t know you,” Petra said.
“Oh no, I was brought on two years ago,” she said. “I’m Matron Elise.”
“What happened to Matron Verna?”
“I am sorry to say she passed away, a few months after I was brought in to succeed her.”
"Perhaps we could talk somewhere more private?" Carter suggested. "We have questions that might be better suited to a less public discussion."
“No one is here. The matrons took what’s left of our girls to the movies today,” she said and motioned down the hall.
“Coffee? Tea?” she asked as the followed her.
“I didn’t think you would be back here, Ms. Franklin, and in the company of an Order male,” she offered as they made it into the kitchen she remembered so fondly.
“So, you have probably come for answers then? Though I am intrigued... How did you find him...or did he find you, and are you safe?” She looked to Carter. “Is she safe?”
"She's safe. The previous regime has been eliminated and we're in charge now," Carter said. "We'd burn the world down to keep her safe."
The woman smiled at him. “That so? Well then...” She went and started making coffee. “So what are your questions, because if you are here, Mr...” She looked to Carter.
"Just call me Carter," he said respectfully. "And mostly we want to know about how this orphanage came to be and how Petra ended up here. If you know anything about the recent history of The Order, you'll know that our knowledge of the feminine side of it is sorely lacking."
“That’s an understatement.” She snorted.
“Let me get her files,” she said and walked out of the room.
Petra’s stomach was clenching. This entire thing was giving her severe anxiety.
But the scents.... The scents of the house were a comfort.
Camphor and sage, and rose and lavender.
..the happiest times of her childhood were spent in this room, with those scents.
“Here we are,” Elise said as she walked back in with several files in her hand. She set them on the table. “Have a look. I can tell you what I know, but...” Walking over to the coffee maker, she set another pod to brew.
“And what do you know?” Petra said as she opened the top file seeing her photo, a recent one.
“I know that you, like all the other girls that are here, were brought here after He contacted a matron and gave order to leave, to bring the girls here, away from the compounds and away from The Order.”
"Wait, the God contacted a matron directly?" Carter stared at her. "Was this around the time several of the women's compounds went dark?"
“He contacts us all the time,” Elise said.
“How?”
Through dreams, subconscious whispers.” She smiled. “Unlike the masculine, the feminine of his Order has always been directly attached to him...well, some of us. Some can’t hear him at all, though we had ideas about that as well.”
Petra looked at the file, scanning over the information there. “I was originally in...Maine?” she said, looking up. “And she brought me here.”
“On his orders.” Elise said. “If you read her account, she says what he said.”
Petra sifted through the pages and found one written by hand, and began to read.
“On April seventeenth, He visited me. Told me I was to bring three of our girls west, to the black house in the woods, where they would be safe. He said they were special, and they would be needed, to ensure love ruled.”
She looked to Carter. “This is dated four months before the compounds started to go dark. It also says the matron in Maine told her to go when she told her she had dreamed him. She brought me, Clary, and Muriel with her. Left the rest there.” She looked up and then back down.
“Muriel had a sister they left. Why would she do that?”
“Because He willed it,” Elise said. “They knew what was coming. This house was a safehouse only few that were close to Him knew about.”
"What about your other friends?" Carter asked. "Is there any mention of them in the file?"
“All their files are here,” she said and started opening them. “Vic from San Fran, Carlee, Baton Rouge, and Fiona from Montana. All of us brought in the same week, along with several other girls of varying ages.” She looked to Elise. “They did it to keep us safe?”
“On His orders. I was brought in once Verna started getting sick, from the Idaho compound. It’s still there, hasn’t been found by The Order.
Or didn’t get raided. I don’t know why some did and some didn’t.
And I don’t know what happened to the girls that were taken.
They all weren’t, some made their way to Idaho, and some south to Mexico and farther to Peru. ”
"Do you have contact details for them?" Carter asked. "Now that The Order is back on track with input from the Temple, we'd really like to put everything right...back the way it used to be."
“The way it used to be.” She sighed and smiled.
“Before those assholes started fucking with the natural order.” She brought them both coffee.
“You know not one of the matrons alive have been to our original temple because of those assholes? Our girls are largely out in the world, without their counterparts, without Him.” She shook her head.
“They don’t know what it feels like to have the love of one such as He, to feel his influence.
” She looked to Petra. “But you do.” She took her hand.
“Touched, faintly, but it was enough to find him.”
“Find them , my Seven.”
“Seven?” she arched a brow. “Is she a devotion?”
Carter glanced at Petra and gave a small shrug, as though it were up to her whether she wanted to tell the matron if she were a devotion or a priestess.
“Apparently I’m more than that, but yes, I am a devotion,” she said proudly. “For my Seven.”
“There hasn’t been a devotion in a long, long time. Doesn’t surprise me you were tapped. Your bloodline...of course He would want you to help bring things back to normal.”
“What do you know about it?”
She smiled. “All the girls here are special, though some more than others. Your bloodline, it runs in two others.”
“Sisters?”
She shook her head. “In this case no. Estra had seven daughters, and those daughters had daughters. You all stem from the same bloodline, untainted by the masculine...or rather, kept safe for the right masculine.” She looked to Carter. “You and your team.”
“Are you saying there’s males for all of us?”
Elise nodded softly. “Eventually, yes. Not all females will be devotions, some will end up wives, and partners.”
“And the mothers of the boys? Like Carter and my other guys?”
“Special in that they and their families were Order, but they weren’t of the Antrithos bloodline. The girls here?” She smiled. “Most if not all that have passed through these halls are of the blood.”