The Cult (21 page)

“Brutally?”

He shook his head. “It just doesn’t look elegant, Captain. You have removed all the art from the concept of martial arts.”

She shrugged. “I don’t need to be stylish, I need to kill you.”

He chuckled. “Now that is the difference between you and me, Captain. I see beauty in the act of killing, you only see it as a means to an end.”

“If it means I survive and my opponent dies, I guess you’re right.”

He bounced around her, feinted a charge then struck out with back-kick, catching her on the hip, causing her to stagger back. “There is so much more to killing than the brutal act itself, Captain. It’s a ceremonial rite of passage to the losing party, a sacrifice to God.”

Alexa stepped up, shot out a boot, aiming the kick at the priest’s groin, but he blocked it with both hands. This was the opening she had been waiting for. She grabbed his shoulders and smashed her forehead into his nose. He fell back, clutching his face, blood seeping between his fingers.

“This is the difference between me and you, Casanellas. You’re a sick psychopath who enjoys killing, and I enjoy killing sick psychopaths.”

He looked up through teary eyes, then pointed a bloody hand at her. “You’re an abomination to humankind, you little whore!” Blood dripped from his bloody nose and chin as he shouted, spittle flying from his lips.

He clutched his hands open and closed, a sneer on his face. “I’m going to rip you limb from limb, you piece of Satan’s spawn.”

He was getting angry, which didn’t bother her a bit. What did bother her was the cut on her brow, blood was starting to seep into her left eye. She must have connected her brow with a part of his upper eye socket which.

She wiped her face with the back of her hand, trying to see through the red haze.

Casanellas lunged in a complicated whirl of twists and turns, high kicks and swirling arms. He connected with two powerful blows, one against her upper thigh and the next against her arm as she stumbled, trying to recover her balance.

The man was attacking like a demon, spinning and striking as he went, connecting Alexa with glancing blows, pummeling her to the ground.

She fell down on all fours, blood dripping from her nose and mouth, splashing onto the ground between her hands.
 

He stood back with a grunt, hands clutching to his sides, sucking in deep breaths. “Prepare to die, whore.”

Her shoulders jerked as she sobbed, and she lifted an arm defensively. “Please wait, Father. I need to make a confession before I die.”
 

The man stopped dead in his tracks. “You’re Catholic?”

She nodded as she sobbed. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

He grabbed her arm roughly, pulling her up to her feet. “Tell me, bitch.”

“Both of you, stop!” McGill shouted.

The priest turned to face McGill. “Give me one good reason not to end this whore’s life—“

“Because I never murdered any—“

Alexa jumped up and grabbed Casanellas in a neck hold, went down on a knee and leveraged her position to exert as much pressure on his neck as she could. She heard him choke and gag, slapping her arms, it would be a matter of seconds before the blood and oxygen supply to his brain was cut off and he blacked out.

He thrashed his limbs, trying to kick himself out of the death grip, but his attempts became weaker.

“Captain, no!” McGill screamed. “Don’t do this, please.”

“He’s a goddamn murderer, McGill,” Alexa grunted. “If you’ll pardon my French.” She felt the man’s thrashing stop and his body go limp. She yanked his head to the side and heard the bones in his neck crack, then dropped his body to the ground and stood up on shaky legs, breathing deeply. “Forgive me for I have killed a priest,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her arm.

She looked up as she heard heavy footsteps on the stairway and Laiveaux burst into the room, weapon held ready. He cast her a questioning look as he holstered his weapon. “I guess I’m a bit late.”

Alexa dropped her shoulders. “You guess right, General.” She stumbled over to McGill and started untying the ropes around his arms and legs. “Bishop McGill, General Alain Laiveaux. Laiveaux, McGill,” she introduced the two men.

Laiveaux strode forward holding out a hand, a friendly smile on his face, but McGill simply sat there, mouth wide open, his eyes locked onto Alexa’s face.

Alexa sat crouched, waiting to the side of Bishop Daniel McGill’s home. She blew into her hands, rubbed them and checked her watch. It was six fifteen AM, and even though they were in the desert, the nights got cold. The horizon was tinged a pretty hue of pink and orange, soon the heavenly furnaces would be lit once again and stoked to provide the inhabitants of scamster’s paradise - as Peter Di Mardi had called it - with another hellishly hot day. She rubbed her arms and shivered. McGill would leave soon; he had mentioned that they had early-morning choir practice.

The previous evening had been busy, the place had been teeming with police who needed statements and special investigation units who needed fingerprints.

Alexa peeked around the corner as she heard the front door open. McGill whistled a tune as he opened the garden gate and swung it shut. The bishop marched down the pathway leading to the church, whistling as he went. Alexa did a final sweep of the property, slipped her backpack onto her shoulder as she stood up, satisfied that the place was empty. She slapped her arms while making her way around the back of the house.

A couple of things that McGill had said had bothered her, niggling at the back of her mind like an itch she couldn’t reach. She tried the doorknob to the kitchen door, but it was locked. She removed a lock pick from the backpack and fiddled with the lock, turned the doorknob all the way and heard a satisfying click as it unlocked.
 

She surveyed the kitchen and proceeded through the door and into the passageway. She felt paranoid and slightly guilty as she sauntered down the hallway, opening doors and checking into rooms. She stopped, tapping her lip with her finger before turning around and heading back to the kitchen.

She walked inside and looked around. She realized that this was one of the rooms in the house she had never actually seen. During her brief stay at his home, McGill had always made the coffee and attended to domestic chores like meals, always finding a reason to keep her out of here. Everything seemed normal, painfully tidy, but that didn’t stop the hairs on the back of her neck standing up.
 

She opened and closed cupboards, rummaged through doors and checked the pantry. Nothing.
 

She scanned the room again, trying to find anything that didn’t seem typical. It was an old-fashioned kitchen, like Bruce’s on the farm. Eye-level oven, no microwave. A large, white double-door fridge stood humming against a wall. No decorations on the walls, no appliances on the countertops. Everything was neatly stowed away in cupboards or packed away in drawers, giving the place an almost clinical appearance, unlike the other rooms in the home.

In the centre of the large room stood an aluminum table with four chairs. A white vase with a yellow smily face stood on top, a red material rose placed inside, the only decorative feature in the place. Like an afterthought. Or something you would place on a grave if you had a twisted sense of humor. Beside the vase lay a Petzl headlamp.

She walked closer, examining the floor and noticed some scuff marks. She pulled the table away, it was light, but there were definite indentations on the linoleum tiles, probably caused by a previous, heavier table, recently replaced.

She peeled back another layer of linoleum of the same pattern which had been stuck beneath the table. It revealed a trapdoor of some sort. It had two holes inside and she inserted her fingers and pulled it back. It was heavy but lifted up easily enough, revealing a wooden staircase descending into the shadows below.

Alexa picked up the Petzl headlamp on the table and fitted it over her head, then switched it on. The LED lights were bright.
 

She tiptoed down the stairs, and they creaked as she descended. She stopped dead in her tracks, cocking her head as she heard a soft whimpering noise, like a puppy or small animal, but it immediately stopped.

She walked down and found herself in a large, cavernous room, it was empty.

She glanced around the room, the light from the kitchen casting eerie shadows of her silhouette on the stairs against the brick walls. She walked deeper into the room and noticed a door against the furthest wall. Beside the door stood a table and a chair. A black moleskin notebook lay open on the table and a key was placed on top. Alexa opened the notebook and thumbed through it, then flicked through all the pages. It was filled with writing, an ugly cursive scrawl, a single sentence, repeated over and over.

THOU SHALT NOT KILL.

Alexa gingerly picked up the key and inserted it into the lock, turned it slowly and it opened with a click. She hesitated before pulling open the door all the way. She clapped a hand over her nose and took a couple of steps back as an awful smell assaulted her nostrils.

Alexa gagged as she cast the beam of light around the room. She sucked in her breath when she noticed a figure hunkered back in a corner, shivering. She swallowed and focused her light on the thing.
 

She blinked, trying to comprehend what she was looking at.
 

It was a man. At least it used to be.

Alexa swallowed, breathing through her mouth, trying to ignore the vile smell pervading the room. She stepped inside, slowly, examining the quivering, cadaverous figure slumped in the corner. The room looked like a small, padded cell, the type you see in the movies where they lock up the psychotic patients.

She scanned the room. A couple of pinpricks of light emanated from a grid above the door. She forced herself to look back at the frightened man.

He was a specter of what would have passed for a healthy male, skeletal and wasted away with bulging eyes in deep eye sockets. His wrinkled face was covered in a sparse beard, his grey hair matted and tousled, giving him the look of a deranged madman. He wore a cream-colored robe. Alexa saw his mouth moving and Alexa walked closer, shining the light on his face.

He shrieked and covered his face with an arm.

“Sorry,” Alexa said and cast the beam down. “What is your name?”

The man looked up at her, his lips opening and closing, but no words came out. A tear spilled from his lower eyelid down his grizzly cheek, then she heard his voice crack and a faint whisper emanate from his chapped lips. She kneeled beside him, trying to comprehend what he was saying.

“John talk to the lady?”

She frowned, nodded.

He lifted his hand, slowly, touched her arm, then gently touched her hand and cupped it in both his trembling ones. He looked up and a slow smile spread across his face. “You first lady John talk to,” he lisped, he had no teeth.

Alexa squeezed his hands. “For how long have you been down here?”

The man pursed his lips, looked down at his lap and back up at her, shaking his head. Tears ran down his cheek and he sobbed. “Years, many, many years.”

“Why?”

The man sucked in his lips, blew them back out. “John do very bad things.”

Alexa stood straight up, took a couple of steps back, repulsed. “You’re…, you’re John Jordan, leader of the People’s Church in Guyana, aren’t you?”

He nodded sadly, sniffed.

She kneeled down in front of him, stabbed his chest with a finger. “You murdered all those people, didn’t you?”

He nodded again, took a deep breath and looked at her with eyes glistening with tears. “Thou shalt not kill.” He lifted his hands to his face and his shoulders jerked up and down as he sobbed.

Alexa sat back on her bottom, resting her arms on her knees. She didn’t know if she should feel repulsed at the man or ashamed at the conditions he had been held captive in for all of these years. She swallowed back the bile rising in her throat.

The man took his hands away from his face. “John may speak to pretty lady, please?”

“What about?”

He shrugged, wiping the tears away with the back of his hands. “Anything.”

“Why?”

“John never speak, John always listen. Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not speak, thou is not human, thou is an animal, not worthy of love or…“

“McGill said that to you?”

He looked up, nodded, his lip curling up into an evil smile. “Bishop McGill, did God’s will. What did he get? He got them killed.” The man threw back his head and cackled a spine-chilling laugh.
 

The man stopped abruptly and Alexa looked back as a loud voice shouted, “No!”

McGill stood at the top of the stairwell looking down at them. “He will not have any human interaction, whatsoever.” He jogged down the stairs and held the door. “Alexa, please get out.”

“But—“

“Get out, now!”

She pushed herself up, glanced down at the man in front of her. He was still snickering, he had somehow changed, his eyes serpentine, tongue darting in and out of his mouth, licking his lips.