Cult of the Hexad (Afterlife saga Book 6) (3 page)

“I have a plan.” She replied waggling her eyebrows at me and I groaned out loud. I was just about to ask what I knew would most definitely mean trouble, when we heard voices outside my window. We both signalled to each other at the same time, smiling as we usually did whenever we did something at the same time, like twins often did.

“Trust me.”
She whispered as she got off the bed and walked softly to the door. I gave her a nod knowing that there was only one person on this planet I trusted and it was her.
   

“One month honey and then we will be free.”
Ari reminded me and then held up the ring of keys giving them a little shake. I knew she had swiped them off the hook in the kitchen and I rolled my eyes at her humour, making her wink.

She left me, quickly relocking my door and I held my breath as I usually did until I knew she had replaced them back in time. The clue in this was that I didn’t hear my mother’s high pitched shock of horror that her daughter could do something so insolent.

I heard Ari’s feet on the staircase before I heard the front door open and I closed my eyes against the feeling of loathing I felt every time I heard my mother’s voice from behind a locked door.

I knew it wasn’t right…that
she
wasn’t right. I remembered what my life was like before this horrible place and when you have lived a taste of the good, wholesome and normal, well let’s just say that it then shines a brighter light on all the wrong you’re forced to live with. All the wrong you’re forced to be a part of. I never feared Hell for all the reasons the elders taught us to fear it… no, I fear Hell for all the things they taught us to do and we were foolish to believe in. I fear the Hell I was living in right now and Ariana was right…

One more month of Hell and we were free.    

Chapter 2

Madness Seeped Through

“I’m trying to help you…
I want to help you.”
  I said tapping the glass I always saw her through, only now that glass was slightly cracked around the edges. Did this mean something? We had both tried to break the glass on various occasions, thinking it just as simple as then being able to walk through into each other’s world but it had never worked. So what had changed I didn’t know but looking at her now she seemed even more broken than before.   

It was another one of those times she simply sat on the bed and stared out into the night with tears streaming down her pale cheeks. She looked so sad I almost preferred it when she was angry just so that I too didn’t have the same reasons to cry as I did now. It looked as if someone had just taken her world away and I frowned knowing who. I swiped away my tears feeling angry at the same injustice that was forced upon us both. 

He had no right just to take her against her will and keep her locked in that room until he was ready for her body again. Could he not see what he was doing to her? I wished we had found some way of communicating but in all this time not one word had been spoken between us.

Oh, we had tried in the beginning but nothing had worked. She had written things down on paper from the Demon’s desk but no words had shown. We had both tried to over pronounce our words so that we might lip read them but her mouth would blur and it didn’t take a genius to guess mine did the same.

I had given up telling her that I would try and save her. Sometimes I spoke about the Colony and how long we had left until I could search for her. I had nothing to back up the ways I would accomplish this other than my blind faith and determination. Not because this girl looked exactly like me, even in ways not even my own twin did but because I had been living her nightmare right alongside her for so long now, that I couldn’t actually remember a time before I dreamt of her.

The stranger thing still was when I spoke to Ari about this she said the same thing about her Angel. She had no idea what he was called and like the man in my dreams, I too had no clue as to what his name was either. But there were some things I could be certain about and that was he definitely wasn’t human.

Ari didn’t speak much about her dreams and for the first time in our life my twin and I were keeping secrets from each other. The funny part was that I knew we did this for the same reasons…the same
sexual reasons.
  The only difference I guess was that the man in my dreams did things to the other version of me, whereas Ari’s Angel did his things to her personally.

The sight of the door opening dragged my eyes back to the room and I felt my heart kick into a new beat at the first sight of him. It was the same as always. The very second I laid eyes on him I was gone. My mind would only focus on the most handsome monster I had ever seen. Carnal thoughts would flood my sensibility, rendering it as useless as if my hands were banging on the glass.

He wore a dark suit this time and I actually swooned against the frame of my private window pane. I never took my eyes off him whenever he entered the room and I wasn’t the only one that he would overpower with his intimidating presence.

My other self would watch him the same way I would, which was as though every time could be the last. Secretly the thought actually caused me pain and I never understood why. I was both terrified and infatuated with him. In fact if the other girl in his life didn’t look like my exact double then the agony of seeing him with another woman every night would have driven me even more insane than I most likely already was.

I saw him speak and could tell instantly he wasn’t happy about something. His tensed square shoulders said as much even without seeing that formidable frown on his face. He removed his suit jacket and casually threw it over one of the chairs in the room like it no longer mattered. I spared a glance at the figure of me to see her swipe at her tears before turning to face him. She never cowered away from him and I had to admire her spirit. If that had been me I would lower my head and only move when he ordered me to.

I narrowed my eyes and saw a little tick in his cheek that I had grown to recognise as him being slightly amused. She must have said something that made him have to fight the urge to smile. Those were my favourite times when looking at him. There was nothing more beautiful in this hidden world than
that
smile. If I hadn’t seen what he had done to her in the past, the brutal and raw ways he had taken her body, then I could have believed he too was
my
Angel.

But the creature he transformed into when angry or lustful couldn’t be ignored. It was beauty captured by the beast alright and I too was right there in that locked cell of my own mind to witness it all. Because when I turned away from the church window and looked around the dark room all I saw was an iron chamber with a door that led straight back to
my
Inferno. One that would only open when my time here was done and it would force me through the gates of what I loathed to call home.

The secret part of me wished I could just step into their world, free the girl and take her place. At least then I would discover what it felt like to be touched that way by a man, no matter how terrifying the thought was. Sometimes I would see the way he looked at her and there I would witness the proof of his love and devotion, one buried there so deep I knew nothing could uproot it. But then why did he keep her locked there?

I had never seen her anywhere but this room and every single time she had been trying to tell me something. She would even try and get to me when he wasn’t around, so what else could it mean other than her trying to escape and needing my help to do so?

I had replayed so many dreams over and over in my mind and the only conclusion was that he was obsessed with her and used his powers over her. That was the only way to make sense of why she would willingly go to him and make love to such a man who upset her so much. I mean good Lord, she let him feed from her for Christ sake! And speaking of which he was just loosening his black tie from his crisp white shirt when he started to approach the bed.

He ran a single finger across her bare shoulder where her loose t shirt had slipped to one side. I shuddered for her, almost feeling the same touch for myself. This often happened and was shamefully how I nearly experienced my first orgasm.

I remembered it like one would with an early childhood memory. It was weird the way it felt like the first one I ever truly believed in, as if all the rest had been the dream and this one was the only one that had really happened. It was like a switch had been flipped eight months ago and the hate I and Ari both had for the Colony had multiplied to new levels, until leaving was all we could think about.

I remembered waking up and crying out at just the exact moment my other self did in the dream as we neared our release together. But for me it never came and it only left me feeling empty and cold.

She looked up at him and I saw him shaking his head softly at her as he wiped away a stray tear. It looked so caring that you could almost believe they were just two people in love and I was the intruder. But then she ripped her face from his and stood up to walk away from him in anger. He let his hand fall and turn into a fist, one that thankfully I had never seen him unleash on her yet. She came to stand opposite me with only this thin pane of glass between us but it could have been a vaulted door for the strength it held.

We both raised our hands together and placed them over each other. I looked up into her eyes and saw my own staring back at me. Our tears fell in sync and we both lowered our heads at the same time as the pain became too much to bear. Then one word escaped my lips that I had no control over…

“I’m sorry.”

“What did you say?!” My head snapped up the moment I heard my own voice but knew it hadn’t come from me. My other self was staring at me like she couldn’t believe what was happening. Had she just heard me? Had I just heard her?

“You…you can hear me?” I asked tentatively and her mouth dropped open.

“Yes! Yes I can!” She shouted and I saw the man shift across the room at an impossible speed. I took a tentative step back in fear of him being this close. She saw my reaction to him and shouted,

“No! Don’t go!” I stopped in my tracks as she ordered. Then I saw his lips moving but couldn’t hear him and she turned her head to speak back to him,

“Why can’t you hear her and I can?” She asked him and he nodded towards the cracks that had appeared around the edges of the glass. In our last dream before this the whole of the glass had shattered just as it finished. Did this mean something was coming? Did this mean we were meant to break the glass completely in order to speak to one another?

“I need your help Keira! Please…free me…free…LOOK OUT, BEHIND YOU!”

“AHHH!” I screamed as hands suddenly grabbed me from behind and painfully dragged me backwards through the door that was my life.

“NOOO!” I shouted kicking out and wrestling with the hands that held me down.

“Wake up you stupid child!” My mother’s voice pierced through me and my last and fading vision I took with me was my other self trying in vain to break free from the arms that held her from behind. Arms that stopped her from breaking free and trying to get to me. As the door slammed shut on that image I thought I heard the sound of a small amount of glass cracking even more and could only pray to the Gods I would find it to be true.

“Mother?” I said after being shaken awake.

“Get up! You will be late for your chores if you do not hurry.” I closed my eyes against the wave of emotions that dream had flooded me with and I let my head fall back against my pillow.

“Did you not hear me?!” My mother yelled and for just a few more precious seconds I blocked it all out.

“I did, but I don’t think they did in Kentucky…was that what you were aiming for?” I said and then gasped right along with my mother. I couldn’t believe I had said that and I covered my mouth as if it would help.

“What did you just say to me?”
She hissed and I knew I was in big trouble now. Okay so I could either say sorry and grovel or just roll with it and accept my punishment with dignity. I took a deep breath and in my mind said, oh bugger it!

“I am sick of you speaking to me like I am a child and just walking in here thinking you own me!” I said whipping the covers back and getting up to face her. The shock on her face was almost laughable and I might have done so if my heart hadn’t been racing.

“You little Bitch!” She screamed and then before I could dodge her she was at me. She lashed out at my head and clocked me right on the side with her fist. The blow knocked my head to one side and before I could recover from the ringing she had grabbed my ear, like so many other times before. She used it to get me to walk with her and I squealed in pain.   

“Well upon my word, you have gone and done it this time Missy!” My crazed mother shouted walking me to the basement.

“NO! Not down there! Anything else! Not down there!” I screamed in vain and twisted only to find another blow to my face. I slumped to the ground and gave my mother the time to find the right key. I tried to crawl away from her not caring about the pain but only about the horror that awaited me down there.

“The Elders will hear about this Katie.” She said before she kicked me in the abdomen, putting too much pressure on my solar plexus for me to be able to breathe properly. My diaphragm was still working through its painful spasm when she dragged me up and pushed me down the stairs. I felt each bang down and only managed to stop myself from rolling further when I was already half way down. I was lucky I didn’t feel anything break other than receiving a nasty bump to the head that I could feel bleeding from my temple.

“You will pay for this…one day soon… You. Will. Pay!” I spat out the threat back up at her from the staircase now smeared with my blood. The shock was written across her face and as plain to see like our lying Bible. Suddenly the thought of hitting her with it came to mind and I couldn’t help it when I started laughing like I had lost my mind. I don’t know what had gotten into me but it was like I had brought some of my dream self back with me.

She frowned down at me like she knew the reasons for this outburst but instead of saying more she simply crossed herself like this was what she was programmed to do, not what she wanted to do. Was it all a religious act with my mother
?
Why had I never noticed this before? But more importantly…

Why had I never thought to ask myself this before?

She slammed the door and left me in the darkness, with only a current of strange thoughts to keep me company. I winced as I lifted my bruised body from the staircase and felt around in the dark so I could find my footing when I stood. There was no banister and the last and only time I had been punished down here, I had fallen off the edge and cracked a rib on my way down. Well at least that hadn’t happened this time, although my head certainly pounded enough to remind me of what pain felt like.

I don’t know what it was about being locked in a basement but I was terrified of it. And the sickest thing about this punishment was they knew it. I was the only one I had heard about that received such a punishment and as far as I knew it hadn’t even been used as a threat to the others. I had no idea how they knew I had been as terrified as I was considering I had never said a word. Not even to Ari, so how did they know it was my ultimate fear?