Chapter 40
Chapter Forty
The hallway shuddered, and dust rained from the ceiling. Eliana stared at her neighbor, the elderly woman she’d been taking care of for weeks now. Preparing meals for her, helping her with chores, and ensuring she took her medication.
This was like an entirely different person, even if she wore the same slacks and sweater Patience did. Same hair. The same nails. It was the expression on her face that didn’t look anything like the woman Eliana knew.
“You just shot Tony.”
Patience pointed the gun at her. “I’ll shoot you as well. Don’t think I won’t.”
Eliana flinched, everything in her wanting to go to Tony. To apply pressure and try to stop the bleeding. A whimper escaped her lips. “What is going on?”
“You wanted to know who the Mother was, didn’t you?”
“You can’t possibly be the—”
Patience cut her off. “Let’s skip past the surprise. I have things to do, and you’re standing in between me and that vault.”
All those wonderful memories resurfaced.
Stirring the stew in the kitchen. Sitting beside Patience in church, singing along to the hymns together.
The way her neighbor had needed her assistance so many times.
All of it had been pretense—Patience acting frail to get Eliana to feel sorry for her and show up all the time to help.
“W-why?” She choked out the word.
“Because I want to control the Board of Governors. No matter how many people have to die, just so long as Lydia Rosenberg goes to hell with them.”
Tears streamed down Eliana’s face. Patience thought this was about sending a bomb and then coming down here? “Carolena came here with a bomb because of you?”
Patience sneered. “Life is easier when people do as they are told.”
Raquel was beside her before she even realized the woman had regained consciousness. The knife was snatched from Eliana’s hands. She tried to grab Raquel as the woman rushed to Tony, but Patience pointed the gun at her.
Eliana gasped.
Tony roared out a cry, then slumped back on the floor. Raquel backed up, holding his finger in her hand. She turned to the vault door, and the system beeped.
“Insert for stage two.”
Patience followed after her. As soon as the older woman passed Eliana, almost dismissing her, that was her chance.
Eliana rushed to Tony, peeling back the shirt over his chest where he’d been shot. Now his finger had been cut off as well. Eliana glanced back over her shoulder at the elevator. “Hang on,” she whispered.
Bracing her weight, she grabbed him under his arms and dragged him back across the floor, leaving a wet streak of blood on the tile. She had to let go of him to hit the button on the elevator, but the doors immediately dinged and slid open.
Eliana hurried back, dragging Tony into the elevator.
“No, no!” Patience rushed to her, moving quicker than Eliana had ever seen her move. Pointing the gun at her. “Step out of that elevator, or the next bullet goes in your brain.” She slammed her hand on the door, holding it open.
Eliana stared at the gun. She let go of Tony, and he slumped to the floor of the elevator.
“Nice and easy.” Patience motioned with the gun. “Step out.”
Eliana stepped over Tony. She wasn’t going to be of any use to them in the vault. She didn’t know what was in there or how to take control of the Board of Governors.
She didn’t even know what that meant.
She stretched her hand left and hit the button for the ground floor before Patience grabbed her and pulled her out of the elevator.
Eliana stumbled, yelping at the strength of the older woman’s grip on her arm.
The elevator doors slid shut behind her, and she prayed that whoever discovered Tony upstairs when the doors opened would realize that she, too, needed help.
Eliana gritted her teeth as Patience held her by the arm, the gun pointed at her abdomen.
Ahead of them, Raquel finished entering the passcode.
“Entry authorized.”
The door mechanism whirred. Behind the metal surface of the door, a series of cogs clicked around, finally settling into place with a louder click.
Raquel twisted the wheel to the vault door and spun it, opening the door.
“I’m not part of this,” Eliana protested. “I have nothing to do with the vault or what’s inside it. Just let me go, and I’ll make sure no one disturbs you.” She tried to pull away from her neighbor.
No, not her neighbor. The Mother of the Reverence Sisters group. The reason why Luci Ryson was currently in the hospital in critical condition.
She twisted to face Patience. “I have no part in this.”
“Weren’t you telling me you were looking for adventure?”
“I wasn’t looking for everyone I love to be in danger.” For all she knew, Maizie was upstairs in the rubble, dead following that explosion. “Whatever the two of you have going on here, I don’t want anything to do with it.” A lump rose in Eliana’s throat, but she swallowed against it.
“I don’t have anything to do with her.” Patience pointed the gun at Raquel, waving it as if she cared more about an aunt than the other woman down here. “She betrayed me a long time ago, and she’ll get what’s coming to her before long.”
Eliana was sick of all the killing. They all just needed to stop.
“Everything to do with this place always ends in death,” she said.
“That’s what people like you want everyone to think.
You want them to believe it’s all because of the Shrine and Dominatus that people are oppressed or manipulated.
But it’s in you. It’s in all of us. It’s just the sin nature we all have. ”
“You’re going to preach to me?”
“You’ve twisted the truth so much, you probably have no idea what’s real and what you just made up in your head.”
Lydia thought she was bringing about the end times. Patience thought that she had the power of life and death over people’s lives, and that everyone she knew should follow her as if she was some kind of messiah.
Patience’s eyes flared. “You have no idea who I am, or how far I’ve come. You have no idea.”
“And now you get a shot to have it all.” Eliana waved her arm at the vault. “But how many people’s lives did you have to destroy to get here?”
Raquel rushed into the vault, grabbing the edge of the door and dragging it shut behind her. As if she was going to succeed by closing herself in the vault. Did it even work that way?
“No!” Patience swung her arm up and fired three shots between the door and the frame, trying to hit Raquel.
Eliana pushed her to the side, shoving at her arm so that she missed. The older woman stumbled to the side, screaming in anger.
Raquel wailed, and something clattered to the floor.
Patience pushed back, causing Eliana to stumble against the wall. She lifted the gun and pointed it at her.
Eliana froze.
Raquel didn’t get the door closed. It was still open, and Eliana couldn’t hear or see anything. Had Patience hit Raquel with that shot?
Patience motioned with the gun. “In the vault with Raquel, please.” When Eliana took too long, she added, “Now!”
Eliana flinched and hurried to the vault. If she could get inside and out of firing range, she could shut the door to the vault the way that Raquel had been planning to do. Close them in. Protect them both from Patience so that someone else could take her down.
A door slammed in the hall, echoing to them.
“Police! Drop the gun!”
Eliana nearly slumped to the floor with relief at hearing Maizie’s voice, no longer wanting to close herself in the vault with Raquel.
She stepped back toward Patience, knowing the situation was about to be over, but Raquel grabbed her arm and dragged her into the vault, closing the door behind them. The detective spun the wheel from the inside, and the door clicked into place.
“What are you doing? My sister is out there!” Eliana wanted to throttle Raquel. “This is over. You’re done! You aren’t going to get what you want, but you are going to let Carlos go.”
Raquel lifted her phone and waved it, blood on her fingers. “With one phone call, I’m going to let Wallace know that Carlos should be dead. It will only take him seconds to slit your boyfriend’s throat. He’ll bleed out long before you get to him.”
Eliana wanted to scream. And not just because somehow this woman had a signal.
“All you have to do is one thing,” Raquel said. “Take control of the Board of Governors, then hand it over to Lydia.”
“Lydia is dead! Didn’t you hear that explosion upstairs? Patience sent someone here with a bomb strapped to them and killed everyone upstairs.” Except her sister had survived.
“Lydia isn’t dead! She can’t die.”
Eliana backed up to the wall. Her gaze drifted, and she spotted the knife on the floor.
Her knife—the one she’d been gifted. But it was behind Raquel, out of reach.
She winced. “So you gave up one Mother for another one, is that it? All your life has been about finding purpose in someone else’s ideology.
I guess that’s better than learning how to think for yourself. ”
“I back the person with the most power.” Raquel sneered. “And sometimes that’s me. So tell me, are you going to do what I say and save your boyfriend’s life—or let him die?”
“I’m not going to do—”
Raquel cut her off. “I’ll just call Wallace right now and tell him to kill Carlos.”
“Okay!”
“Do it.” Raquel lifted her chin. “Activate it before Patience gets in here and does it for you. If that happens, we’re all dead.”
“What are you talking about?!” Eliana screamed.
She needed that security system from before, the one that had killed the young man, to activate again and kill the person who was not supposed to be in here.
But nothing had happened. Raquel was still standing in front of her, perfectly healthy, definitely not in danger of burning from the inside out.
Demanding she save Carlos’s life.
“The Board of Governors! That’s what I’m talking about,” Raquel yelled. “Just do it!”
The lights inside the vault switched off for a second, then turned back on.
Eliana heard a mechanism click into place, and the walls began to retreat back, then split into panels that rotated, opening like cupboard doors. Revealing circuitry, servers, and whirring computer hardware that Eliana couldn’t even begin to understand.
The lights on the displays flickered in different colors.
The walls retreated back between the racks of equipment as if they’d never been there. As if this wasn’t a vault, but some kind of computer room. A server. A mainframe.
Where are you, Maizie, when I need you?
Right, she was dealing with Patience—hopefully.
A computerized voice said, “State your name.”
Raquel waved the phone in her face.
Lord, help me.
She took a breath and said, “Eliana Hope Banbury Jaxton.”
What was the back wall now flickered into an LED display that looked like a giant TV. The screen displayed three figures—just a head and shoulders in office attire. Each of the faces looked airbrushed. Just a little bit too soft to be real. Just a little bit too artificial.
To the left, an older man stared at them. He blinked, pronounced eyebrows giving his forehead a top-heavy feel to his face.
In the center was a woman who looked like a younger version of her grandmother, but not quite the same. She had gray strands in her dark hair and wore a blue dress shirt. A tiny gold chain between the open top button.
On the right, the man had dark skin and dark eyes that looked like two black pools. From his eyes spread lines in his skin. But there was something timeless about him.
These were not real people.
“The Board of Governors,” Raquel breathed. She spun to Eliana. “Now tell them that Lydia Rosenberg will be giving them orders from now on. Tell them she’s in charge.”
Behind Raquel’s back, words showed on the screen, scrolling past beneath the people. A message meant for Eliana.
It’s time to use that knife.