CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Waiting was interminable in solitary. The gray-coated guards tending to them made conversation difficult, but they tried to keep each other’s hopes up when they could manage to talk.
Molly had no idea how long she’d been in her cell.
Time dragged, the constant fear draining her of strength, but she clung to the fierce hope that her aunt was coming.
It was all she had in this dark, grim place.
And then, something changed. There was a shift in the mood.
An excitement. It bubbled up through the ground, through the bone walls.
It drove Molly to her feet in a panic. Nothing that brought joy to the guards of this place could be a good thing.
Murmurs drifted to her from the other cells and she pressed her face against the bars of her own.
Her fellows were doing the same, staring out at each other in trepidation.
“What’s happening?” asked Katy in a trembling voice.
The bars were cold on Molly’s face as she tried to look down the tunnel.
She could hear voices, indistinct but high with excitement.
Foreboding gripped her. The moment she’d been dreading had come.
Why else would there be such excitement animating this terrible place?
They were going to be fed to the pit, drained of their life force until nothing remained.
The flames illuminating the rocks beyond the end of the hallway surged suddenly and silhouetted several shadowy figures.
Not their guards this time, but people in long, dark robes.
They moved with purpose, going to the cell doors one at a time.
She heard the clank of metal against metal, the click of turning keys and squeak of hinges.
A clamor rose among the prisoners. Fear shivered through her at the cries of fear and panic as her fellow captives were pulled from their cells.
“No! NO!”
“Where are you taking me? Let me go!”
“Please, please, let me go…”
The voices blended, overlapped. Screeches drowned out words.
Her heart slamming, Molly watched as her friends were dragged down the hall toward the flames by these new, implacable tormentors as they fought and struggled.
For a moment, she feared they would be tossed into the great pit, but then they disappeared from view, pulled in different directions once they left the tunnel.
The robed figures moved down the line of cells.
Were they going to take everyone? It certainly seemed like it.
She backed away when one of them reached her cell, ready to fight.
Cole’s angry voice reached her, and then the thud of clubs against flesh.
She steeled herself; she couldn’t be less brave than him, though she winced at the sounds of violence.
The cloaked person unlocking her cell was Mrs Hollander.
Molly was not glad to see her; Clementine’s beloved head nurse had put her here, after all.
The woman’s bright eyes peered from beneath her cowl, her lips set in a hard line.
“You weren’t to be included in this sacrifice,” she said bitterly, as if it was all Molly’s fault for being in a cell.
“I feel a… kinship to you, after all. But I know Cassie told you things she shouldn’t have.
So. I just wanted you somewhere out of the way, until that witch was gone. ”
“That witch?” Auntie Hero?
“But you backed me into a corner with your antics,” she continued. “No one could understand why I was protecting you.”
“Protecting me?” Molly dared to exclaim, outraged. “By sending me to Bright Renewal? You may as well have thrown me to a pack of wolves!”
Mrs Hollander made a face. “See? That mouth again. I see her in you, and I don’t like it.
But family is family. I would have spared you.
” She swung open the cell door. “If you’d only submitted like a good girl then this wouldn’t have been necessary.
But you had to resist, you had to fight me, just like Cassie. And now you pay the consequences.”
Cassie had fought her? “You chased her off the tower,” she said faintly.
Mrs Hollander sniffed contemptuously and entered the cell.
Molly stood with her hands locked into fists, feet spread for balance.
Abigail gave her a withering glance. “None of that,” she cautioned.
“Cole Graham learned the hard way, and he’ll be unconscious for most of the ceremony, I can guarantee.
Do you want to be knocked senseless too?
” She kept her distance, lifting a slim hand to gesture for one of the guards down the hall.
Molly gritted her teeth, crouching, ready to fight, but the man who entered her cell was tall and burly with hands big enough to crush her skull. Still, she backed up and lifted her elbows.
“Is this the last sight you wish to see in this world, Miss Franke?” Abigail asked blithely, studying her nails as she leaned against the bars.
“Because you can join the Ascension with open eyes and bear witness to glory, or you can go to the Underworld now without ceremony.” Her eyes were sharp and cold. “Your choice.”
Her words did what weeks of Bright Renewal Academy’s special brand of discipline and brainwashing had failed to do.
Finally, after holding fast for so long, Molly Franke broke.
The surge of strength brought about by fear left her in a rush.
She dropped her fists and let the giant guard take her by the arm and drag her from her cell.
As she was led down the tunnel toward that vast pit of flames and darkness, she lost all hope. If her aunt was coming to save her, then where was she? Molly was all alone.
She submitted to her guard, obeying his instructions to kneel on the hard ground at the rim of the vast pit.
Not far from her, Cole Graham knelt as well, not unconscious as Abigail had claimed, but dazed and swaying.
The others were staked out around the pit’s edge.
Chains made of a strange, translucent material lay coiled on the ground, gleaming eerily.
One end of each coiled chain disappeared over the edge of the pit, the other end attached to a collar made of the same strange material.
Her friends already had collars around their necks, she noticed as the guard snapped one around hers, too.
Immediately, a soft glow erupted from the links and rings and she felt a rush of weakness.
The chains pulsed to match the beating of her heart, rapid and fraught.
Soon, she knew with a terrible certainty, the pulse would grow slower and slower.
And, eventually, cease.
They braved the drowning shadows at Clementine Preparatory to reach the entrance to the catacombs.
Despite the darkness – perhaps visible only to him and Hero – the school was on high alert.
Nuns of the Shield patrolled the grounds in their battle habits – similar to Hero’s ensemble of choice, though their black-linen scapulars were covered by hauberks that fell to their knees.
Leather bandoliers of blessed water hung across their chests and short, curved swords were tucked into golden cinctures. They looked ready for a fight.
Unfortunately, Oleander suspected they were prepared to fight him and his partner, not supernatural foes. Perhaps the human PKs had been fooled by their subterfuge, but Hero’s father appeared to have given them accurate information: Their demonic enemy knew she was still in Havenside.
There were nuns stationed outside the mausoleum armed with staves – one of the Order’s preferred weapons – though Keen was encouraged to see how awkwardly the women held their weapons. The Shield Order here at Clementine Prep didn’t see much action, tucked as they were within peaceful Havenside.
The perfect target for hungry demons , Keen decided as he watched the women stalk like testy housecats through their domain. Who would suspect an entire order of battle nuns to be under the influence of Pandemonium?
“How do we deal with them?” Keen whispered to his partner as they crouched at the gate into the cemetery behind the cloisters, the same gate through which Catarine had passed undetected on the last night she was seen alive.
No one could have guessed that she’d been abducted while on consecrated ground, steps from her own door.
Keen pressed back into the shadows as a pair of nuns strolled past them, thinking that they made terrible guards; he could have tapped one with his saber if he so chose.
It was an unfair thought. Most of the patrolling women were novitiates, barely older than the oldest students at Clem and half trained at best.
“I can’t kill a nun,” he said fiercely, trying to imagine running one of them through and failing.
Hero made a little sound of disagreement.
“They’re bespelled, remember?” he said.
“Some of them.” She grimaced. “Most of them, I suppose. Fine. No killing.” She removed her glasses and tucked them into a pocket. With a firm grip on her cane, she turned to him, smiling tightly. “We might have to knock a few heads, though.”
Keen adjusted his bandolier and sash – thoroughly replenished with every last potion in his possession.
Fortunately, he’d lost very few of them thanks to his mother’s foresight.
He’d changed back into his uniform, still reeking of smoke and stained with ash, but he was a demonhunter and this was official demonhunter business.
His saber was sharp and ready along with his blunderbuss and extra ammunition.
The two weapons would serve well when they reached their main target, but neither would help him right now.
Queasily, he supposed his fists would have to serve in this instance.