Dr. Sabian reached out and gave her a stone athame, a sacrificial knife to draw the boy’s blood with. “Go on,” he commanded tenderly, “be the Last Mother of the Red Messiah!”
“Where is Hannah?” Isabella whined loudly when she realized that Hannah was absent. Maria looked around but saw no sign of the skinny acolyte. She shrugged apathetically, assuming that Hannah had lost her footing and fallen from the ledge they’d hiked in on.
Madalina saw them all look up as the sun lost its face, leaving only a thin circle of light in the mighty sky. Inside the cavern it was shadowy, looking dreary and haunted. The men kept chanting. In her childish screech, Isabella shouted and pointed to the disc in the sky. “Look! The Black Sun in all her glory!” Proudly, Maria and Isabella venerated the image, seeing the insignia of their clandestine organization displayed so regally by the very powers of the universe.
“Now! Madalina, now!” Sabian bellowed, his voice trailing through the chasm like the howl of a demon. Raul’s little body was shivering, but Madalina did not care if it was fear or cold that shook the boy. In fact, she did not care about him at all. Her hand tightened around the hilt of the stone weapon and inside her, she felt happy and strong. Words became commands from a language she did not know, yet understood.
To her newfound mindset, the child looked deliciously vulnerable and Madalina felt her mouth curve in laughter as she reached around him. Her one-armed embrace around his neck turned into a smooth motion to slit his throat. She heard herself apologize, but she felt nothing.
Finally, the child cried. Thus far, he had controlled his emotions splendidly, hoping that he could still be saved, but as he felt his beloved keeper drag the knife across his throat, he knew she was lost to him.
32
Litanies
Blood trickled from the meeting of tender flesh and hardened stone, prompting the priests of the Black Sun to chant louder and faster. In the chasm, the gate to the lost city of gold was about to open, revealing temples of solid gold long hidden by the mountains of Peru. Raul screeched like a piglet at slaughter, a sound so piercing that Madalina cringed.
The sound momentarily severed Sabian’s words from the tether they had on her mind, and she knew she had to act quickly. Growling with effort, she dislodged one of the spikes that secured the boy’s restraints.
“She is untying him!” Barnard shouted at Maria. “Get her! Secure the ties!”
Maria and Isabella charged toward the unwilling Last Mother, but she was not untying Raul at all. Before they reached her, she stabbed herself in the ear, deafening herself instantly. Howling in pain, she repeated the self-mutilation in both ears and succeeded in losing her hearing entirely. Gripping her bleeding head in her hands, as the excruciating agony spread through her skull, she let out an unearthly snarl of defiance.
Their words had no hold on her anymore, and their spell was left impotent. Sabian and Barnard were furious. In desperation, Barnard lunged forward and seized the athame from where Madalina was writhing on the ground. “I’ll finish him off before the moon moves!” he shouted to Sabian.
“It won’t work! It has to be the Last Mother, remember?” a man advised the two frantic priests.
“Who are you?” Sabian spat, livid at the failure of the sacrifice. Barnard ground his large incisors in a snarl when he saw David Purdue towering over him from the ledge, dangling Hannah off the ledge by her wrist. Disbelief gripped him and he shook his head profusely, refusing to acknowledge what his eyes beheld. “I said… who are you?” Sabian repeated.
Barnard turned to his associate and panted in rage, his face reddened and sweating. “That is David fucking Purdue!”
“I thought you killed him,” Sabian scowled.
The obviousness of his remark only infuriated Barnard even more. “Well,” he pointed at the white-haired billionaire, “apparently not, you imbecile!”
Nina raced to untie Raul as the eclipse started to pass, but she had two obstacles in her way. One was a brunette and the other a redhead. Nina did not feel like explaining or mouthing off. There was a wounded teacher and a little boy who both needed medical assistance and she was at the end of her tether.
“Why bother?” she asked them. “Your eclipse has passed. There is no point in being a dick, ladies.”
Hannah was kicking at Purdue, while Barnard and Sabian assessed their opposition. Raul was bleeding and sobbing, and so was Madalina. Purdue lightened his grip a little to allow Hannah to control her own fate. Her violent kicks dislodged her from Purdue’s grasp and she fell, screaming, until a thump on the jagged rock silenced her. In shock Maria looked at Purdue, but he showed no emotion.
The distraction was all Nina needed. She bolted towards Maria, but instead of throwing a punch, the petite historian fell into a slide, knocking Maria’s legs out from under her. A loud crack came from Maria’s knees and she folded like a mousetrap, roaring in anguish.
Isabella went for Nina while she was on the ground, but a bullet stopped her for good. Ripping through her neck, Sam’s bullet spoiled any chance of a tourniquet for the immature Italian girl.
“Penetration, just as you asked,” Sam told her, turning to aim his barrel straight at Barnard. His broken arm was in a cast, but Sam was ambidextrous when it came to guns. “Now, you can march out with us to meet Capt. Pedro Sanchez and his Interpol friends for attempted murder and robbery, or you can join your little whores,” Sam offered.
Nina got the boy loose. She took off her vest and put it on him.
“Gracias,” he choked on his tears. He moved past Nina and sank to his knees next to Madalina. Raul stroked her hair and her cheeks as she begged him to forgive her. He said nothing in reply, but wrapped his arms around her neck. As the two of them sat weeping and bloodied, the sun grew brighter with every second’s passing and illuminated them like a beam of redemption.
Barnard, Sabian, and the stout Maria were not going to be taken, but they had to pass Purdue, Cleave, and Nina only to be confronted by Interpol outside.
“What do we do?” Barnard asked. “Offer to tell them where the golden statue and the prayer stick is?”
“No,” Sabian objected sternly. “The Black Sun is the most powerful society in the world and we do not give in to charlatans like these!”
Barnard looked at Purdue. “I’ll tell you where I put her, the golden woman. In return you let me go free.”
“Don’t you dare!” Sabian yelled at his associate.
“Bribery,” Purdue shrugged. “I like it. It is the last escape route of a coward. But unfortunately for you, your mole Hannah spilled her guts…” He laughed at the irony as he peered down into the depths to which shed plummeted moments earlier, “…so to speak… and she told us everything we needed to know.”
Barnard fumed. “You’re bluffing.”
While he played blow for blow with Purdue, Sabian had begun to recite another chant, attempting to influence their actions. Soon everyone began to feel their thoughts intruded upon. It was an odd feeling to be completely cogent and yet have an unbridled urge to walk off the ledge.
“You feel that?” Sam asked.
“Aye, and I don’t like it,” Nina reported, her eyes wild.
Purdue stood frozen, fighting the suggestion. From Madalina’s embrace the little boy stood up, his chest splattered with the blood from his throat. Those big, dark eyes Madalina so adored turned into blazing pools of anger. He walked toward Sabian, murmuring a litany so rapidly that they could not discern separate words. Continuously, he muttered the invocations of his ancestors, rendering Sabian mute in his abilities.