7. Sawyer
SAWYER
My hand settles midway up the girl’s back as the Bastion comes into view.
The Bastion, home of the Keepers, named like it’s a ballroom instead of glorified dog kennel, complete with a communal shower to hose off the prisoners… I’m assuming, if it’s anything like the Cultivators home—the Grove. Nothing here is nearly as exotic as it sounds.
The girl’s pace quickens as her spine arches to run from my hand, only for me to stretch my legs in time with hers.
She relents after a few moments, arms crossing as she begrudgingly accepts my touch.
Her feet, once walking the sidewalk’s edge, now fall flat on the concrete, ankles aligned with her hips. Progress, real measurable progress.
“Look.” I nod to the all-black, cinder block building with a few Keepers lounging out front. Lounging—not guarding. No snipers peek from the roof, no bars cage the windows.
They aren’t guarding the money here.
“That’s where the Keepers live,” I go on just to keep talking as if this is a leisurely walk instead of a scouting mission. Since I arrived, I’ve found every excuse to walk this path alone, but if I hang around here much longer by myself, the Keepers are bound to get suspicious.
Peeking at the girl, I find her sizing the Keepers up from fifty yards away, her mind swirling with all the same questions I had twenty-four hours ago. How many are there? How well are they guarding the exits? Where are the exits?
Part of me finds it adorable. The other part wishes she wasn’t so tuned.
“What do they guard?” she asks with the slightest hitch to her tone. Her pitch sweeps upward on the last syllable—not quite as sly as she wishes.
Now that is adorable.
I fight a smile. “They haven’t given me a list, but all sorts of things, I imagine… The fence, of course. The elders. The cult’s fortune.”
“Fortune?” She turns her squint toward me.
My hand slides down her back and tucks inside my pocket. “The property sits on a rhodium mine. There’s approximately fifty million in cash hidden somewhere around here.”
I watch for interest to lighten her scrupulous eyes, but she just goes back to peeking at the Keepers. No cares for money. Too focused on escape? Or born rich?
My tongue slips over my bottom lip.
Born rich, I think. Which makes her successful but not self-made and certainly not greedy. She’s not a lawyer or a sales rep or a corporate exec. She’s probably too young to be at least one of those even if it did fit her.
I’m going to say athlete. Final answer—lock it in. That explains the focus, the tolerance for adrenaline, the attention to detail, and the body. Interested in passion, not money.
She’d make a terrible accomplice.
After returning my hand to her back, I steer us off the path toward the front of the Bastion. Luna’s heels catch on the ground like little beats of friction that slow our pace but don’t stop us. Not refusal, just reluctance.
“What are we doing?” she whispers like they can hear her thirty yards away. Cute.
“I just need to ask about something.”
Her back stays tense beneath my touch, but she drifts closer to me as we approach the Keepers—her internal sense of danger shifting from me to them. I love that.
Raven is the one to stand from the porch steps and walk to meet me. She looks more pleasant than when we met. Her hair is in that same too-tight ponytail, but there’s a slight, welcoming smile on her face instead of a self-righteous scowl. I’m not sure what to make of it.
“May I help you with something, Mr. Hans—”
“I was wondering where my friend was,” I say before she can get the rest of my name out. Luna may not recognize me by my face, but she’s most certainly read about me in The Times.
Raven’s mouth hangs open on a delay, eyelids pinching like she isn’t sure who I’m talking about. She sucks in sharply when recognition flares, and her gaze bounces from Luna to me. “He’s in the arena.”
“Arena?” I blink hard, the word short-circuiting my brain for a moment. “Like Gladiator or Hunger Games?”
She stares at me, vacant as the unplugged TV she’s never seen. Books, movies, culture—none of it lives here.
“Can I see him?”
She tugs the collar of her shirt as if the fresh air is suddenly hard to breathe. “I’m sorry, but … no. Mr. Wilcox is preparing for his initiation ceremony this evening.”
“This evening?”
Raven nods, licks her lips, sweeps a hand toward Luna. “You’re both required to attend… It’ll be in the square. Listen for the horn.”
Luna’s shoulder grazes my arm as she hovers close. It’s distracting. And annoying—a reminder of all the shit that’s keeping me from doing what I came here to do.
I’ve scouted most of the compound… Why don’t I know about an arena?
“We’ll be there…Thanks,” I say to Raven before heading back toward the path, the girl glued to my arm. Which is … a good thing. At least my work with the captive is going as planned.
“I won’t let them hurt you,” I tell her once we’re back on concrete.
She doesn’t reply—or I’m too distracted to hear it. Movement in the tree-line catches my eye.
Two Keepers emerge from the woods like shadows wearing skin, charcoal uniforms blending with the dark pines behind them.
The coiled metal strapped to one’s hip catches the sun—tight spirals of steel built for pain.
Not barbed that I can see, so… It’s electric, I think.
The sight alone raises the hairs on my neck.
It’s the first time I’ve seen a Keeper armed.
And the first time I’ve seen either of these faces.
Both blank. Black soot streaking one of their foreheads, not from the trees but from…
The mines.
“What does initiation mean?” Luna asks.
“It means becoming a member of the cult. Sorry, one sec…”
I pause on the sidewalk; turn; lower to one knee to put the Keepers in my line of sight.
With quick hands, I yank my shoestrings loose and retie as thoroughly as a kindergartener.
Two more blank-uniformed drones step from the Bastion.
They exchange bottles of water for the coiled weapons and start toward the forest where the others came.
To the mines.
To guard them.
Because that’s where the money is.
One side of my mouth curves with a smile I don’t even smother as I glimpse Luna eyeing me. “Drives me crazy when my shoes are loose,” I say with way too much spunk.
After finishing the knot, I stand and wipe my hands together, trailing the men heading into the forest. Sniffing, I face Luna and immediately lose my breath.
Red eyes, faint but demonic, glint off a ray of sunlight and peer straight into my soul.
It startles me so much, I flinch; regret it; open my mouth to apologize; close it when her expression doesn’t change.
“Will I have an ‘initiation ceremony?’” she asks, unperturbed by my rudeness. Not because she doesn’t see it, but because…? She’s used to it? She doesn’t give a shit what I think?
Staring square into her red eyes, I try not to let them unsettle me.
Try not to let my composure break. More than once, I’ve found myself in an interrogation room while detectives screamed and prodded and filmed every lie I told.
I’ve never found keeping an innocent expression as difficult as I do now.
“I’ve never done this before, so I don’t know the particulars of the Seraphs’ initiations. I’ll find out and let you know.”
She stares, never blinking. I count to five before she looks off, delicate hand smoothing up her arm, apparently content with that answer. Like a trance breaking, my breaths deepen, my heart rate slows. I didn’t even tell her a lie, not fully, so the effect her eyes have on me is baffling.
We continue down the path until we reach the house where Wilcox and I met Aurelius last night. The house where I’ll be “preparing” Luna.
Every door is open except for one room I’m not yet ready to show her, and as we pass I watch her glimpse it.
I walk her to the bedroom and apologize profusely as I handcuff her to a bed, frowning, cringing, anything to show remorse.
The performance is over the top, but as sorrow sinks her face, the act becomes real.
I really am sorry for her predicament. I didn’t do it; I can’t control it; but I’m sorry.
Relief expands my lungs as I step outside, fresh air heavy with the scent of something cooking—or someone burning thyme.
A meow pulls my attention to my feet, and I bend to rake my fingers along the back of a skinny, black cat, its back arching into my touch.
For a moment, I’m able to push the girl from my mind.
She’s a distraction. An unfortunate casualty.
And as much as I feel for her… I have work to do.
Giving the cat one last scratch behind the ears, I stand and head for the forest.