“Ah, I see it’s the beautiful Ms. Valentine who was sneaking in the woods.” The professor walked towards me with slow deliberate steps, his eyes gleaming in the light’s reflection. “What’s really going on with you two? You’ve shown an awful lot of interest in the death of a bunch of students to just be an interested party. There’s more here. Who are you really?”

He took out a vial of clear liquid from his cloak’s pocket, along with a syringe. He drew up some of the liquid into the syringe and depressed it, causing some of the liquid to arc through the air.

“I’m holding in my hand a vial of untraceable poison that will kill Amber within minutes if you don’t tell me who you really are, Christos.”

Foxy stepped up to the professor in shock. “Professor Owens, what are you doing?”

One of the other members pulled him back and held on to him.

Mason stepped in front of me to shield me. “I already told you. I knew one of the students, so I thought I would investigate what happened to him since he wasn’t the suicidal type. Once I got here and looked into the matter, I discovered the other deaths and thought I would see if they were related.”

“Very well, if you don’t want to tell the truth, we’ll just have to take you somewhere to think through your options for a while. Of course, if you want to tell me the truth now, we will let Amber go and deal with you on your own.”

“Christos, don’t!” I warned him, although I nearly said his real name. That would have been a disaster.

“So, there is something else going on. I highly doubt you’re the mastermind of it, dear Miss Valentine. No, it’s Mister Ianthos here who is lying about who he is. Don’t you worry, I’ll get to the bottom of it.”

Mason stood his ground and pointed at the syringe of toxic liquid.

“Is that how you killed the other students?”

“Oh, now you’re accusing me directly of killing them?”

“You’re the one holding the syringe and threatening about how it will cause a slow painful death.”

Professor Owens grinned but it never quite reached his eyes.

“Take hold of them. We’ll hide them in the old Order building. No one will think to look for them there.”

The member holding onto Foxy pushed him forward and two of the other members grabbed hold of me and Mason. They dragged us through the clearing to where the cars were parked and bundled us into separate cars.

We arrived at the university campus within fifteen minutes and the cars all parked up beside an old, disused building. I was forced out of the car and looked over and saw the same thing happening to Mason.

Mason and I were taken inside the old building. It was dark and dusty as if it hadn’t been used for a long time. The gothic décor lent an eerie feeling to the place, as we were taken up some stairs to the first floor. The professor led the way and took us into a large room, which looked like it had been previously used as some kind of office.

Mason and I were forced down onto metal chairs. One of the inner circle then tied us with zip ties to the chairs while the professor watched.

“Now, I’d take this time to think very carefully if I were you, Mister Ianthos. We don’t want anything bad to happen to the lovely Miss Valentine, do we?”

Then, they left us alone in the room.

Chapter 31 – Mason

“Dammit!”Iyelled,asI struggled to break my bonds. The plastic of the zip ties cut into my skin.

“Mason…” Amber wailed; her voice full of terror. “How are we going to get out of this?”

“I don’t know. I’m still hoping that Andrew will have pinged my location from my phone.”

“I did speak with him earlier. He was going to try and locate you. How easy is it for him to do?”

“Fairly easy. Hopefully he’s managed to do it, or we’re royally fucked.”

“What are we going to do?”

“There’s nothing we can do, Amber. I can’t get out of these bonds. They’re tied too tightly. Even dislocating my thumbs won’t work.”

“Ouch!”