43. Chapter 1
Neo
“It’s going to be fine, Nehemiah. The bush will light. I have faith.”
My mother was trying to comfort me, but it was no use. I knew exactly what would happen when we got on that mountain and Messiah performed the sacrifice. The bush wouldn’t spontaneously burst into flames, just like it hadn’t for the last five boys.
My heart ached at the memory of the look on Zion’s face when he was left on that fucking altar while everyone turned their back on him and left.
Zion wasn’t just my friend, he was my brother.
We didn’t call each other brothers because it was only acceptable to consider your mother’s children as siblings, so us sharing a father didn’t count as far as the community was concerned.
A hand on my cheek pulled me out of my head and back to the present.
Mother’s eyes were soft and I knew she was trying to comfort me, but I could see the doubt she was trying to push down.
Admitting that we knew the bush wouldn’t light would be considered a serious offense and show our lack of faith in the Lord and his will.
The thing was, I didn’t have faith. Not anymore.
Z and I had talked about it several times in the months leading up to his sacrifice.
Four other boys had gone before him, and the bush didn’t light a single time.
We were starting to think that this was a ploy by Messiah and the elders to get rid of some of the younger guys.
We would all eventually need wives. Wives that they wanted to keep for themselves.
Hence the prophecy Messiah supposedly had.
He told the congregation one day that God had reminded him of the story of Abraham being sent to the mountain to sacrifice his son.
Then he told us that he’d been instructed that we were required to do this for the oldest boy of each mother.
The only difference was, he wasn’t going to have to stab them and then burn them on an altar.
He would simply perform the ceremony that God had told him to do, and if He thought the boy should be spared, the bush would catch on fire.
This was a test from the Lord and not following his command would mean that the birth rate in the community would continue to decline.
No one raised a single objection.
Two weeks later, Joshua was sacrificed. So far, a total of five boys walked up that mountain and never returned.
No one knew what had happened to them after that. We weren’t allowed to speak of them anymore. If God had found them worthy of Eden Falls, he would have lit the bush on fire.
Today, it was my turn.
Walking up the mountain, I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to the other five boys.
Would I be able to find them when I got out of here?
I sure hoped so. From the stories that we were told, the saintless were scary and living outside of the community was dangerous.
If I was going to have to endure that, I wanted it to be with my friend.
When we reached the top of the mountain, the Messiah spoke. “Nehemiah, please join me.” As soon as I stepped up to the altar, he turned to face the elders, my father included. “Prepare the chosen.”
The men stepped forward and laid me down on the rough stone, hands holding down each of my feet and my hands as well as my shoulders. Fear started to seep in, but I wasn’t going to fight it. Gideon had, and it hadn’t worked out well for him.
Messiah stepped up on his platform so he could be up high enough for everyone to see him, and for him to see everything. “Let the faithful bear witness.”
“We bear witness.”
Hearing them respond to the call brought a chill to my bones. It was actually happening. This wasn’t just a dream, but reality.
I didn’t hear his sermon as the blood pumped through my ears. I’d heard it five times before, so I knew what was coming.
“What binds us together?” His voice was strong, the exact opposite of how I felt.
“Devotion to the Lord and his will.”
I wished the men holding me down weren’t there. I wanted to be able to look over and see my mother, and my little brother, Peter. He was only a year younger than me and I was as close with him as I had been with Zion.
But they didn’t move, and Messiah continued. “What must never falter?”
“Our devotion to the Lord.”
Messiah smiled. “Blessed are the chosen, for they open the way. We offer our devotion, Lord. We open the path for Eden by trusting in your command.”
Now, we waited. It always felt like this part took so damn long. On the altar, it was even longer than normal.
When nothing happened, Messiah cleared his throat as sweat started to coat my skin, panic setting in.
“The Father has passed his judgement and found the sacrifice lacking in the faith required for our community. This is proof that Eden thrives because of our obedience. What does his failure command?”
“A cleansing.”
Messiah sighed and closed his eyes as he raised his hands in the air. Altogether, even the men holding me down, chanted. “We release the unworthy.”
The men standing around me moved and my mother stepped into my line of sight. Her face was void of emotion. “I do not know him.”
No, no, no, no, no.
“I do not know him.”
This couldn’t be happening. It was exactly what had happened for Joshua. Elias. Solomon. Gideon. Zion.
My mother was saying the words that would erase me from the community and everything I knew.
My eyes darted to where my brother stood. His eyes were shining with unshed tears, but he wouldn’t let them fall. Doing so would cause him to be punished.
“I do not know him.”
Three times. She’d said it three times. This was the end.
Messiah gave a nod, then placed a paper into the bowl and lit a match to burn it.
The paper was my birth record. I watched from my place on the altar as the only document that proved I’d been born and ever lived went up in smoke.
“It is finished.”
I was already awake when the alarm on my phone went off, nightmares plaguing my sleep all night.
Sleep didn’t come easy the night before a sacrifice.
Even though it had been fifteen years since that fateful day for myself, the emotional scars were still there, burning, itching, hurting, every time I thought of another young boy going through that.
The warm water of the shower did nothing to soothe the ache inside. Financially, I knew this was not a great time for the club to be taking in another mouth to feed. But what were we supposed to do? Leave this boy in the world on his own like we had been?
When I’d walked off that mountain and finally made it to the town nearby, I thought I was going to die.
Hiking twenty something miles with no food or water, spending over ten hours after taking breaks to rest, was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.
If it wasn’t for the kind woman at the diner that gave me food, water, and a place to crash that night, I might have decided living wasn’t worth it anymore.
A shudder ran through my body as I thought about it. Running into other guys from the community that had been sacrificed before me was what kept me going. I couldn’t imagine what it had been like for Grizz, being the first sacrificed and having to figure out the world on his own.
After a couple of years, the number of guys sacrificed started to dwindle until we didn’t see anyone new from the cult for over a year.
At that point, my brothers and I had decided we should move.
Montana held too many bad memories and we just wanted a chance to start over.
We found a mechanics shop for sale, with an abandoned hotel on a big parcel of land.
With the money we’d saved with all of us living together in a small house, living four to a bedroom, and a small business loan, we were able to get the property and officially started our MC, the Saintless Sons.
When the burner phone showed up at our doorstep the day before we took off, with a note telling us the mysterious person that dropped it off would text us when there was going to be a sacrifice, we made the unanimous decision to always answer the call. No boy should have to go through what we had.
Being the President of the club, I’d taken on the responsibility of making the runs back to Montana to pick up the boys on the day of their sacrifice.
Unlike the older generation here, they didn’t have to make the trek down the mountain by themselves.
I’d found a place I could park the club’s van and then I took a trail close to where they would appear.
The three hour drive there was torture, thinking about all the emotions I’d felt on my sacrifice day and thinking about the boy going through that right then.
Would he be hopeful that the bush would burst into flames, giving the community the sign from God that this boy shouldn’t be exiled from the community? Did he already know, like I had, what was going to happen? Was he terrified of what would be waiting for him on the other side of the mountain?
The community talked about the evils of the outside world.
They talked about the torture and murder and how horrible life was for everyone.
They called them the saintless because they were without God’s blessing and were doomed to a miserable existence here on Earth, then would spend eternity being tormented in Hell.
What a crock of shit.
When I walked into the main room, I saw Sol, our VP sitting at the bar with a mug of coffee and a plate of eggs and toast.
I grunted as I gave him a nod and poured a cup of coffee. “I take it I’m not the only one that slept worth shit last night.”
He shook his head as he chewed. “It never gets easier.” There was a plate of food sitting on the counter and when I looked at Sol with an eyebrow raised, he smirked with a nod, telling me it was for me.
“Figured you’d need to eat before heading out.
” Silence descended on us as we ate, before he finally spoke again. “Want me to come with you today?”
My head was shaking before I could speak. “Nah. Need you to stay here and hold down the fort. We’ve not had a new kid since Kain and the spare room has been a bit of a storage room for a while so it needs to be cleaned out and set up.”
Sol grunted. “Sounds like the perfect job for Kain.”
I didn’t disagree, but we both knew if Kain was put in charge, this poor boy would show up tonight with no place to sleep. Kain was a pretty good kid, but he had the attention span of a goldfish for anything other than girls and cars. If boobs were involved his focus was on point.
It had been almost two years since I’d picked him up off that mountain, and part of me envied him for getting to have relatively normal teenage years.
I was eighteen before I got my dick wet for the first time because the first three years out of the community were about survival.
Kain barely lasted three months here before he was breaking hearts.
“This kid will have had a hard enough day without having to come back to a strange place with a bunch of bikers and no bed to sleep in.”
He chuckled. “Touché. Who’s up in the rotation?”
While I always went to pick up the boy, and the club paid for everything he needed, someone had to take guardianship of the kid.
There would need to be a “parent” on file at the school and doctor and shit.
We’d set up a rotation when we moved here so that the responsibility didn’t fall on just one of us. I had guardianship of Kain.
“Technically it’s Kai, but he’s been on the road a lot lately, and is in New York now so we’ll need to skip him.
” Kai, most commonly known as Remnant, was our Sargent of Arms. He was one of only two of us that didn’t work at one of the club owned businesses.
Instead, he carried out murder for hire, or gave people the supplies they needed to carry it out themselves.
“Agreed. Who’s after him?”
“Z.” Zion was a good guy and protective as shit, but he wasn’t the biggest fan of kids.
Sol burst out laughing. “He’s gonna be so pissed.”
“Who’s gonna be pissed?” Grizz walked to the counter and poured himself a coffee while popping a pod into the fancy machine for Drew, his boyfriend.
“Cipher. It’s his turn for guardianship.” We all had road names, and while typically we didn’t use them unless we were talking business, Grizz never used anything but our road names. And if someone ever used his legal name, he would lose his absolute shit.
Grizz growled as he ran his hand through his hair. “He’s gonna be in such a shitty mood today.”
Sol grinned. “Yep.”
As fun as it might have been for us to rile up Z, I didn’t want this terrified boy walking into the clubhouse tonight to an angry man on a tangent. He needed to feel loved and supported. Not like a burden or obligation.
I turned my attention back to my VP. “Tell him early, then tell him to go get laid and come back here in a good mood. I want him in the right mindframe for welcoming the kid.” He nodded and my attention swung to Grizz next.
“You and Drew clean out the spare room and get it set up.” Looking at the time on my watch, I cursed as I finished the food on my plate and chugged the rest of my coffee.
If I didn’t leave in the next ten minutes, I might not make it to the spot on the trail to intercept him on time. Usually, I had to wait a good thirty minutes to an hour, but when I went to get Kain, traffic had been a nightmare and I was only there ten minutes early.
“I already packed the cooler for you and put it in the van.”
I turned back to Sol, letting out a sigh of relief as I rummaged through the cabinets for a few snacks to take. “Thanks, Vice.”
He gave me a small nod. “Rachel gets off at seven and said she’d come straight here.”
Rachel was Sol’s wife and was a nurse at the local hospital. She made sure the boys had what they needed and got them started on all of their vaccinations and shit.
It was a three hour drive on a good day, and while I’d take the kid to the diner in the town at the base of the mountain for lunch, snacks were always needed.
I’d probably eat again when I got closer, my nerves getting the better of me, and sometimes the kids were starving, having not really eaten for a few days because of the anticipation.
As I jumped in the driver's seat of the van, I blasted the music hoping if it was loud enough, it would drown out my thoughts. I knew damn well it wouldn’t, but it seemed like it was worth a shot.