Thirty-six
Panic blinded Jennifer and filled her mind, blocking
out the sight of John Cantrell standing over her, clutching the goat’s
head knife. John did not recognize her. He was looking out into the
shadows, victim of their horrible deceit.
His eyes looked wrong. Dulled by despair. Drugged,
maybe. He couldn’t see through the utter simplicity of their trick.
He lowered the cold steel to touch the skin of her
body. The knife was so sharp that she felt no pain, only the cooling drop
of hot blood rolling across her belly.
The priest reached out with an open palm for the
sacrificial blade. John held it out to him, handle first.
He saw the dark stain upon the hands of the priest.
How could he not see!
John paused.
He then reached out with his free hand and pulled
Jennifer’s leaden body off the altar, dropping her to the stone floor at his feet. The crowd roared. Rosie and the priest reared back
in regal anger, confident that John had only sealed his own doom.
John reached out with inhuman reflexes, grabbing
Rosie by the throat, slamming the butt of the sacrificial knife into her
stomach and lifting her bodily into the air, end over end, body-slamming
her with vicious impact upon the altar warmed by Jennifer.
“Take this one in Jennifer’s place,” John growled at
the priest.
The roar of the congregation
ceased in an instant.
“She’ll destroy you all!” John roared,
startled to hear his voice amplified and carried easily through the
amphitheater. “She’s leaving a trail of the dead to your doorstep! She’s
not one of you!
“But I am!”
The hand of the priest shot out, palm facing up,
begging for the sacrificial knife, knowing instantly the course of action
he would have to take to salvage the damage John had inflicted. John slapped
the silver goat’s head into his stained palm and stepped aside.
Jennifer saw the flash of the blade and heard
Rosie's horrible shriek, and then her horror-laden grunt of the knife’s
impact, amplified as John’s voice had been amplified, echoing throughout
the subterranean labyrinth.
John lifted Jennifer from the floor, scooped her into
his arms and retreated from the frenzied roar of the crowd. He entered a
cell in an empty corridor at random and set Jennifer down on a musky
smelling bunk. He unwrapped her frantically, felt for her pulse, and
grasped her hands and feet to judge her body temperature. With a sigh, he
sat at her side, gazing into her opened eyes, looking lost and haunted by
events that had almost slipped beyond his control.
The door behind him creaked open. John stood and whirled about,
but paused at the sight of the priest with the stained hands standing
unarmed in the doorway. “You have become an instrument of the Disciples,”
he murmured. “You are free to go.”
“What did you do to Jennifer?”
The priest glanced at her in disinterest. “The drug
is a only a temporary paralyzing agent. She will recover.”
John studied the man and nodded at his stained
hands. That hadn’t been an oversight. The priest held his
stained hands out to view. “Rosie fulfilled her destiny,” the priest said, “but
she had lost sight of it. When you arrived, it became evident that
you were to become our redemption.”
“What happens now?"
“You’re free to go. There is a condition, of course,
a trade, a life for a life. Dimitri and now Rosie failed their missions.
You will take their place. You know the life of the individual you must
take. Bring to us an item of her anatomy, a piece of an internal organ,
her heart would be best, anything convenient for you, except that it must
imply a fatal wound. DNA analysis will confirm the identity of your
victim.”
“Evelyn Haxx?”
Gravely, the priest nodded.
“What’s the catch?” John asked after a moment of
contemplative silence. “There’s no trust here.”
“The catch is a toxin. The consequences will be
sudden and fatal in about three weeks. If you have fulfilled your
obligation to us by that time, I’ll give you a number to call for instructions
to obtain an antidote. Ship by overnight express
proof of the woman's demise and we will return a preloaded hypodermic that will
neutralize the toxin.”
“You don’t expect me to take that on faith.”
“Of course you will, if you give it a moment’s
thought. If we betray you and the child dies, you will return here, devastate this place,
and murder all you can. Property damage alone is not worth her life. Will
you remember the number?”
“I never forget a number.”
The man spoke a phone number and John repeated it
once. “How do we know there’s really a toxin?”
“The child will become ill in twenty four hours.”
Jennifer
closed her eyes, wanting to block out the sound of the man’s voice,
wanting to
sleep and to forget everything that had happened.
"The child," John said in
despair.
“The symptoms will be flu-like, acute,
but she will recover. You will be more inclined
at that time to take us seriously. In
three weeks, if you have not accomplished your mission, she will die
without the antidote, suddenly and painlessly.”
John stared at the man in disbelief, unable to
evaluate to the slightest degree the nature or extent of the threat these people posed.
“Strange forces stir in this complex and overcrowded
world of ours, John Cantrell. We are but pawns with a limited field of
vision. If we play our roles, we are far more likely to survive than if
we defy them. You are a killer. Kill one more time and those you deem
important to you shall survive.”
