Page 78 of Taken

17

Jolie

“There’s another plane.”

Mason handed me something to look through so I could get a better view of the airplanes in the night sky. He’d brought me up here again to show me more.

As I squinted through the device, I saw the flashing red lights transform before my very eyes. This was no plane. It was the glinting eye of a demon.

It rose in the inky blackness, revealing its unspeakably hideous face and a mass of red limbs terminating in claws as sharp as swords. The red glint in the eyes vanished until the only way to describe them was a complete absence of light. Not just terrifying blackness; there was now nothing at all in those sockets. A plane of non-existence. Despite that, I knew the creature could somehow still see me.

It opened its mouth to reveal rows and rows of teeth, eerily incandescent, emitting a red glow.

I screamed and dropped the black viewing device. “Mason, what is that?” I cried, turning back to him.

But he wasn’t Mason anymore. At least not the man I thought I knew. His hazel eyes had turned red, and he’d grown two feet taller. His teeth had sharpened into fangs, and he was covered in washes of blood. Somehow I knew it wasn’t his own.

“What’s wrong, baby girl?” he asked, holding up a black serpent with glowing yellow eyes. It hissed at me, baring its fangs. “I thought you loved this stuff. I thought you wanted it.”

“No!”

I tried to run, but I was suddenly surrounded by a ring of fire. Trapped. I turned back to Mason to plead for my life, and I found him writhing on the ground with hundreds of hissing snakes.

“Please stop this!” I cried.

I tried to run again, hoping I could survive the flames long enough to escape the fiery ring. Mason got up and followed me, his snakes slithering beside him. He was far more powerful than me. I couldn’t outrun him or subdue him. He tackled me to the ground and lifted a red-hot brand. I screamed as he brought it down on my flesh. An upside down cross.

“This is what you wanted,” Mason hissed. He had the same glowing yellow eyes as the snakes now. “This is what you invited in.”

Pain and misery enveloped me. The world was aquiver, tearing at the edges. I heard the screams of my fellow Path of the Covenant members as they burned underground, set ablaze by Mason’s minions.

I wasn’t breathing anymore. A snake was in my mouth. A blinding light exploded across the universe, and I choked as the serpent moved into my body, ripping me apart from the inside out. A scream tore from my chest and dark shadows fell, washing away the blinding brilliance of the sky.

I woke with a scream, my face damp with perspiration. “Just a dream,” I told myself in a low whisper, trying to steady my racing pulse. “It was just a dream...”

Though I couldn’t actually remember the nightmares I’d had every other night for the last few weeks—all I recalled was a feeling of terror and dread—I knew deep down that they had all been the same as the one I just suffered through.

Panting to regain my breath, I got up and dressed for the day. Try as I might, I couldn’t erase the petrifying images from my mind. Mason’s glowing eyes. The huge demon breaking through the black sky. The snakes. The fires. The subsequent shattering of the world, followed by eternal darkness.

I was certain I knew why the nightmares were happening. After all the years of brainwashing and guilt, followed by the sudden awakening from Mason, my mind was whirling around in confused circles, still trying to make sense of everything. The bad dreams about demons and betrayal were simply a way of processing it all. I was sure they didn’t mean anything beyond that.

“Did I hear a scream from in here, Jolie?”

I turned to see Dale Sardelic at my door. He was the man who came around to the women’s section every week to replenish our vitamin supplies.

“I had a bad dream,” I said. “It was very frightening.”

“How unfortunate.” He held up a bag and smiled, clearly not caring about my fears in the slightest. “I’m here to give you a refill.”

I nodded and handed him my vitamin box. I’d been crushing them and putting them in a drain every day for the last few weeks, and so far, no one was any the wiser. Except Mason, of course.

“You didn’t take yesterday’s doses,” Dale said with a frown, tilting the box so I could see inside. There were two little beige pills in yesterday’s slot.

My heart skipped a beat. Did I forget to destroy them?

I thought back, and with a sharp jolt, I realized I’d definitely forgotten. I was so busy making that testimonial video with Mason in the Penance Rooms that I forgot all about the stupid pills.

“It must have slipped my mind,” I said.

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