I grabbed onto the man’s wrist to try and keep him from pulling out any more of my hair as I glared up at him.
“He only stole from you because you lied to him. You said you could save him and instead, you took advantage of a dying man.”
My captor didn’t even have the decency to look guilty at the accusation.
“Our order is only interested in saving souls. The mortal body is of no concern of ours. If your brother misinterpreted our gospel,that’s his own fault. Not ours. Now, tell your friend there to hand over his gun, or your soul will soon be joining your brother in damnation.”
No way in hell was I going to tell Brody to hand over his gun. I may not be able to fight, some days I could barely even take care of myself, but I wasn’t so useless that I would endanger the man I cared about to save my own life.
It didn’t matter, anyway. Brody took the hint without me even needing to ask. He dropped his gun to the ground and kicked it over toward my captors the same as he had done with the key.
“Very good,” my captor said with a mocking tone as one of his accomplices also snatched up Brody’s gun. “Now, let’s get going. I’m not going to stand around in this tunnel all day.”
Brody was ushered off to the side of the tunnel, as far from me as the space would allow and always with several guns pointed at him. My own captor, meanwhile, barely seemed to notice that he had a gun pointed at my head.
It was obvious which of the two of us they considered more dangerous.
Using Poppy Milford’s key, our captors unlocked the large door. It had no handle, but as soon as the lock clicked into place, several of the carved vines moved as if they were growing up the door right before our eyes. The door swung open on its own, eerily silent on its old hinges.
The outside of the door was the size of a vault, but on the inside, it was as large as a cavern. Stairs were carved directly into the stone, leading to the floor, which was at least a full story below the door. Most of the rock had been left in its natural state, but there were a few carvings here and there to show that the cavernhad been constructed with intent. All three of the Milford sisters’ namesake flowers were present in the carvings, but there was a definite emphasis on the poppy flower overall. While all three sisters must have had a hand in this secret underground vault, it was clear who was responsible for it overall.
The stairs were narrow, so our group could only descend one at a time. I went down first, with my captor right behind me, keeping his gun trained directly between my shoulder blades. Only once I was brought to the bottom of the stairs and to the other side of the cavern was Brody then escorted down under armed guard.
“Kind of excessive, don’t you think?”
My captor just scoffed.
“I’ve seen that man’s military record. Trust me. Nothing is too excessive.”
“Trust you? Yeah, sure. I’ll get right on it.”
I spoke with as much sarcasm as I could muster to hide the fact that his words had hit a bit too close to home. In all the time I’d known him, Brody had made some vague comments about his time in the military, but never told me anything concrete. No horrific war stories, or funny anecdotes from his training days. It was as if, the moment he retired, that part of his life was locked away behind a sealed door even more impressive than the one leading into this cavern. I hated that there was such an important part of him that I didn’t know, almost as much as I hated the fact that the man holding me hostage seemed to know more about Brody’s past than I did.
“If he’s so dangerous, then why risk taking us captive. Surely, you could have figured out a way down here without us.”
I had meant for my comment to point out how stupid it was for them to take us captive in the first place. However, as soon as the words left my mouth, I realized my mistake. My comment could just as easily serve as a reminder that, now that they had the key, there was no reason to keep us alive anymore.
Pressed almost intimately against my back, with his hand fisted in my hair, my captor laughed in my ear and pressed his gun harder against me. “I could kill you both right now. It would certainly save us some trouble. However, you might still be of use retrieving Angus Grieve’s body.”
Angus Grieve? I’d never heard the name before.
Momentarily forgetting about the gun pressed against me, I turned to look at my captor over my shoulder.
“Grieve? Who the hell is that?”
Without warning, my captor suddenly reared his hand back and slapped me hard across the face. My whole world spun, and I fell to the ground like a puppet whose puppeteer had suddenly abandoned him. In the distance, I heard Brody calling my name, but it was drowned out by my captor’s furious shouting.
“Don’t you dare play dumb with me. After over a century of searching, our founder’s body was finally located, only for the police to lock it away as evidence and keep it from us. You and these other damned sodomites have been hindering us at every turn, so you are going to shut up and finally make yourselves useful for a higher cause.”
I was still too dizzy after the sudden blow to get up, so I didn’t even try. I simply lay on the ground and waited for the cavern to stop spinning, muttering under my breath about how many headinjuries one person could withstand in a short amount of time. Surely, I was reaching the limit by now.
At least we’d finally identified the body that Magnus and Brody had found. If my captor was to be believed, the corpse’s name was Angus Grieve, and he was the founder ofThe Tamed Souls. How he ended up buried in a concrete foundation was still unknown, but at least we’d solved one part of the mystery.
Sometime while I was regaining my senses on the floor, my captor and his cronies continued with their plans. Brody was subdued and tied up in a far corner—still kept under the watch of an armed guard—while my captor located the vault’s contents.
It wasn’t hard to find.
A single stone podium stood at the center of the cavern, about chest height and only two feet across. A small wooden box sat on top of the podium, clearly very important despite its stark simplicity.