Page 30 of Creed
The old man’s eyes had a slightly milky quality to their color, a sign of his advanced age, but his gaze was still sharp.
Every nerve in my body burned with the urge to lash out at him as I stared into his eyes.
“You’re right. I won’t deny that. But let me warn you, if you kill him, then there is nothing you can do, no torture on this earth, that will make me help you.”
Like two predators locked in a battle for the last piece of territory, we stared each other down in silence. I refused to flinch, even as the rest of the world turned gray and muted around me. My vision tunneled, until all I could see were those cold, cloudy eyes staring back at me.
Chester Grieve broke first and looked away.
“Take them somewhere to rest for a bit,” he instructed the others in the room. “Our guests have had a long journey, and Mister Landry here needs time to think over my proposal.”
Immediately, the black bags were shoved back over our heads, and we were hauled to our feet. More hands shoved at us, leading us out of the room to whatever prison they had planned for us.
Despite the rough manhandling, a sense of pride swelled up inside my chest.
This time, I’d won.
CHAPTER 6
Kayden
Two days.
We’d been held captive for two days. Locked in a small, windowless room, there was no sunlight to show us the passing days, but there was a clock to mark each second that ticked by.
At least there was a bed. When we’d been dragged off, I’d feared these crazy cult people would lock us in a dungeon of some sort, but it was just a regular room. Small, and likely underground, based on the staircase we’d been brought down to get here, but a normal room otherwise.
I sat on the bed and leaned against the wall as I watched Creed work at the desk in the corner. The room had very little furniture, literally just the bed and the desk. It was barely big enough for one person, let alone two, so although Creed was technically across the room from me, he was still close enough for me to reach out and touch if I wanted.
He’d agreed to decipher the journal for the cult leader. There wasn’t really another choice, unless either of us suddenly turned suicidal. Even when Creed had stood up to the cult leader, acting like he wouldn’t give in to the old man’s demands, I knew it had been an act. Playing along with what they wanted was our only means of survival.
Still, it had been terrifying, and I’d bitten the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood to keep myself silent during the nerve-wracking moment when Creed had been staring the leader down.
Now he sat hunched over a table, pouring over the papers spread across its surface. The cult hadn’t trusted him with the original journal but had instead given him copied photos of all the pages.
For hours at a time, Creed just sat there, constantly scribbling on a notepad. I had no idea what he was doing, but based on his frustration he didn’t seem to be making any progress.
Over the last two days, my fear had quickly given way to boredom. There was nothing to do but stare at the blank walls while Creed worked.
Curious, and with nothing better to do, I waited until I noticed Creed’s pen stop scratching over the paper and left the bed to stand beside him.
“Any luck?”
Creed leaned back in his chair, making the old wood groan, and stretched his arms above his head until his back made an audible crack.
“No sudden breakthroughs, if that’s what you’re asking.”
I picked up the notepad, looking over what he’d been writing. It looked like the same gibberish that filled the journal.
“What exactly are you doing?”
With a heavy sigh, Creed threw his pen down onto the table.
“Well, with these kinds of things there’s generally two ways to crack a code. The first is to study the author and figure out what kind of code they would use, and they probably would have written about so that you know what you’re looking for. Unfortunately, this author has been dead for nearly a century, and nothing is known about this journal, so that’s not an option.”
“So, what’s the second option?”
He looked up at me with a tired grin. “Brute force. I keep trying different methods until something works.”
