“Let’s go,” he pushes.
“Not until you tell me what I need to know.”
“I don’t have to do any of that.” He roughly grabs my arm, but I plant my feet and send my hands flying, unexpectedly connecting with his face. It only makes him angry and he wrestles me to the ground then pulls zip ties from his pocket. He yanks my arms behind my back till they nearly break. “Now get up. Walk,” he demands. Although I desperately don’t want to go, my feet begin to move without my direction and that’s when the numbness rips through my cold arms once again. He presses a gun to my neck and leads me deeper under the waterfall. This is dangerous, yet I’m just following his lead. I try to tell my legs to stop, but there is no mind–body connection. All I can do is slow us down and make him angry.
He grabs me. His large body overtakes me easily and he slams me against the solid rock wall. A knife slips beneath my chin as he presses his cheek to my head until I can smell his rancid breath. “Do not think fer one second that I will not end this right here. Fer years I have wanted to end ye . . . just rip your bloody heart out. Give me any reason, Remy.”
“I don’t know who you are. I swear.”
“Let me remind ye. I’m Meryl and I hate ye more than the devil himself. I would give anything to get me hands on ye. Ye just happen to be in luck that Navin’s waiting. Do ye understand me? Do not tempt me.”
Finally, we continue. Farther back, deep and echoing, the rock tunnel leads us beneath the earth. Eventually he twists a knob on the wall, which sends a dim light over our heads, but it is still dark just ten feet ahead.
“I did this,” he says as we walk forward, my feet no longer listening to my own refusal. Yet I’ve felt this before, and he isn’t the only one in my head. Suddenly it is clear that each person left their own imprint on my brain—just like everyone has their own smell. Navin is somewhere near. He continues, “Arek will never find us because it systematically turns off once we leave. Ye see—look back.”
About ten feet back is dark. With every step, only the light overhead stays on.
“I came up with that.” He proudly smiles.
Just then, a vision returns to me and I look at him. “I know you. You’ve worked for Navin for years.”
“So, ye do remember?”
This memory makes me panic. “Meryl . . .” Just the look of this tall man, his eyes empty and the twitch of his mouth aggressively angry. “You hate me.”
“Always have. I’ve thought about killing ye myself fer years. You’ve been lucky—Navin has always kept ye fer himself.”
There’s a green mossy overgrown path under the constant drip of water that comes from somewhere we can’t see. Something about this place, whether it be the sounds or the darkness, tells me of its haunting. I get a strange feeling as though we aren’t alone and yet I can tell it’s not human. Somehow a spiritual world, possibly roaming free, brushing by me until the hair on my body stands straight.
“Many have died in here . . .” My voice is barely audible even bookended by stone.
Meryl keeps quiet, possibly ignoring the thick morbid air or possibly unaware of it. All the while, my heart and stomach turn with the awareness that we are in a sacred place.
He pushes me until my back flares with irritation. It takes twenty minutes, the light constantly following us through the gray cave, until the light of day meets us and we duck under hanging roots. We enter the forest again. Only now, just ahead the crumbling stone of an ancient castle sprawls across the green, moldy, moss-covered scape.
My chest tightens and instantly I begin to shelter my mind like Geo taught me.
This Bryer oozes dark mysteries and I wonder if all Bryers are the same. Black windows seem to stare like vacant eyes. We pass a tall, broken gate that is rusted through and walk up the long-overgrown path that was once red brick, manicured, and beautiful. Yet the crimes and sins of this place seem to suck the color and life from every inch like an old man just before his last breath. I want nothing to do with it.
Meryl whistles.
This is the exact situation Arek has been desperate to avoid. Several men and women rush outside, catching sight of us.
“Arek’s here!” Meryl calls with a deep growl.
Everyone looks me over like vultures to a carcass and I know it is because Remy caused a lot of trouble for them.
“Hey!” a man hollers from the mossy post on the stone castle. His gray shirt is wet from the moisture in the air and his black jeans sit tight against his lean thighs. Suddenly he runs and jumps from the edge of the rock wall, slamming into me. Our bodies create a crash in the forest. His thick angry fingers grab my hair, as he points his knife at my skull just behind my ear.
“Hold back, Chase!” Meryl yells.
Chase’s face is bright red and the anger pulses from a vein in the middle of his forehead. “We can end the entire thing right now.” His hand shakes as he presses the weapon into my skin, but just enough so that the skin breaks very little.
“He said don’t touch her,” Meryl growls, but makes no move to stop him. “Chase, step back. Ye want to deal with Arek? We’ve no time! Tell Navin and everyone to pack up.”
Chase is desperate to press his knife farther and I watch the battle in his eyes. “Ephemes killed my wife. A group of them. They killed her because they found out who she was.” His spit hits my cheeks and lands in my eye. “And you stand against us for taking back our sanity . . . our freedom.”
“I don’t stand against anyone,” I say, my lungs smashed by his body, which makes my voice tight. “I don’t know you. I’m not Remy.”
Chase’s eyebrows furrow as he slowly pulls away. “What the hell?” he says, then looks at Meryl.
Yet the tall man only shrugs as he pulls me to my feet. “That’s what she says.” He yanks me up the crumbling steps to the thick wooden front door that is nearly ten feet tall with hard black iron hinges. Already, the digging in my head begins. Walk into nothing unguarded. Have intention at every moment. It takes just a second to remember the chant from the night before. I repeat it while checking every window from the outside. Was Ian nearby?
The sinister quiet that imprisons the castle on the outside transforms to a bustling business on the inside. Computers line the stone walls, while men and women run around connected to the internet from an underground system. It is bizarre to watch them carry on like Silicon Valley. Guards stand nearby looking as I imagine the KGB or FBI to look. I can tell that my presence is the reason they run about with panic.
“Ye didn’t expect this, did ya?” Meryl asks.
“No.” I whisper as I step over cords.
The word was beginning to spread that I was there, so groups were gathering to watch us walk through. Meryl whistles again and several more men come to surround me with protection. They hurry through and Meryl’s accent grows stronger as he begins to explain things to me. “Ephemes killed us fer years. They murdered our families and yet ye want us to find peace. What peace do they offer us? None. Ephemes will do anything to separate themselves because of their ego.”
“But I do agree. I hear what you are saying.” Perhaps the only way to get out of this mess is to connect . . . find a way in? Yet he hates me. He said it himself. “Why can’t there be something else? There has to be a way to—”
He interrupts with a laugh. “Ye may say that yer someone else, but ye sound the same as Remy. My daughters died—my seven-year-old twin girls were killed by a man who found out that we were Velieri. So, I killed him. Do ye understand the pleasure that gave me, to hear his misery?”
There is no ignoring the way humanity—Ephemes or Velieri—hurt each other. I feel stuck, unable to give any comfort. These men and women in the rebellion aren’t evil—they’re broken. Nobody knows more than I do, after my mother and the attack, what it feels like to be changed without hope of ever changing back. Yet I can’t give up.
“There has to be a way,” I say softly.
