Page 71 of Old Secrets

Well, I had a tendency to be ready and willing to sacrifice myself, but I wouldn’t tell her that. I might end up bent over an altar for all I knew. “How did you know to gather here?”

“We saw your bringers of life in the airport, and we heard whispers of your presence with them, reunited after long years of sacrifice. We hear the whispers seeking vengeance for the loss of your blood-kin. We hear the whispers, and we answer.”

My parents must have done something other than mark their souls, but until I could ask them, I would assume there was substance to her claim rather than a case of severe psychosis. In the United States, cults sometimes showed up, and between the brainwashing of the leadership’s victims and their seclusion from society, psychosis was one of many problems.

Some recovered.

Some didn’t.

Still, for my parents’ mark to be as dim as it was, she likely fell into the brainwashed category, inducted at an early age. That thought kept my fox at bay, although she made it clear she abhorred everything those bowing held dear.

“You know what I’m after, then?”

The woman sat up and repeated the series of three bows before resuming her prone position. “You want those who hold true responsibility for the loss of your blood-kin. You want those who want to usurp your power rather than worship all that you represent. They defy the very Earth, wanting your power for their own.”

Well, I could work with destroying Greenwich through using their own members. To my disgust, she had me dead to rights.

“You’re correct. Those who hold true responsibility for shedding the blood of innocents? They displease me greatly. Get to your feet, and if everyone here doesn’t speak English, you will translate. But if you seek absolution, there might be a way to earn it. But you have generations upon generations of shed blood, all of innocents, to atone for.” I allowed my anger to enter my tone, and I said, “You begin with telling us all you know about those who are truly behind this—those who darkened your hearts against babies, mothers, and fathers.”

While I wanted my parents to receive justice, there were people who no longer had a voice. Their premature deaths had spared me, in some ways, from the biting grief of loss at an early age, but the truth remained.

They deserved justice.

“Yes. We can do this.”

“When I arrived in the United States, still an infant, there was a couple who accepted me into their home. They did so out of the kindness of their hearts and a wish for a child.”

“Oh, yes. We know of them. Nobody liked that job. They adored you. We were forced to study them, learn about them, and take you when they were alone and vulnerable. You cried your protest, and we felt the very Earth grieve with you.” She paused long enough to repeat the series of bows. “We knew what we did was wrong. I was the one who slipped you away to someone you could trust. I did it while the others looked the other way, and we told the sinners that you had not survived the strain of the journey to the United States.”

Well, we’d gotten some of the story right.

Greenwich had killed my first adoptive parents.

“Why did you kill them like a fox?”

“It was all we could do.”

The pain of her words reminded me of the times I’d been engulfed in the sea of endless hopelessness, unable to do anything other than struggle to catch even a single breath of air. “You were sending a message.”

“Yes. We’re not like the others, who simply kill. We killed because we must. I was just old enough to no longer be sacrificed for disobedience, but my brothers and sisters were not.”

My fox’s fury crested, and I clenched my hands into fists before forcing my fingers to relax. “They made you come to America to kill my adoptive parents?”

“Yes. It was my second mission. My first was to witness your rise as a goddess, to see your survival with my own eyes.”

What sort of monster forced a child to witness the slaughter of newborn babies? “How old are those they sacrifice?”

“You may no longer be sacrificed upon turning the age of six, Dawa.”

The way she spoke the name my aunt had gifted to me implied I was far more than some mere celestial being to her.

I struggled to make sense of what she said, failing to compute how anyone could force a child to murder another human being. How had she survived? How had she had any hope of clinging to even a vestige of sanity?

What sort of hell did the leadership of Greenwich put their followers through?

“All right. Please sit up—and tell those who don’t speak English to sit up.”

The woman did as told, and after a moment, she spoke in another language. One by one, everyone sat up and rested their hands on their legs, waiting with eternal patience.