AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Wait, wait! You don’t care about the cult?” Ivo catches up to me and puts a friendly arm across my shoulders.
I don’t understand how he can so easily do that. We’re not friends. We’re barely colleagues.
“Not really,” I answer truthfully.
“I think it’s fascinating. Not every day I get to take out a cult.”
“Oh, yeah?” My voice drips with sarcasm.
He finally gets the point and lets go of me. “This is why it’s so hard to be friends with you. You’re too grumpy all the time.”
“We’re not friends.” I wave without turning to face him. My path takes me around the compound, along its concrete circular wall. How they were allowed to wall themselves off from the world, I will never know. And for what purpose?
The cult thing has piqued my curiosity, but I toss metaphorical cold water on it before it burns me on the inside. In my line of work, it pays well to be uncaring and keep your questions to yourself.
As I walk past a small break in the compound’s wall, I spot something moving in the dark. A dog or a cat, probably.
Realizing there’s no one around and that I don’t feel like squaring off with some random animal scared by the explosions, I pick up my pace.
Chapter 4
The air is warm enough, but my hands shake. The whole thing with the stalker kinda rattled me. But no matter, I stood my ground. I wasn’t weak.
After I took my sequined dress off and put on my comfy leggings and hoodie, I was supposed to go to my apartment. Relax, sleep, eat. Whatever normal people do after work. But it’s late and the streets are still full of the sounds of the night. Usually comforting, today—irritating. I can’t be there, in that shoebox of a home, alone.
So my feet take me farther and farther from Love and Err and the city center. Farther from the rented apartment where I store my stuff and sleep. Into the darkness of little unlit streets and dodgy passages through quiet parks. I’ve got my most comfortable shoes on—a worn-out pair of Sketchers—and a taser in my pocket.
A man walks toward me, so I cross the street and keep following his movement with my eyes without turning my head. A group of loud people has me slipping into another alley.
It’s not that I hate humans. I just don’t want to interact with them so frequently. And after pretending for a whole night that what they say is important, or funny, or curious, I’m exhausted.
Step after step, I go forward, seemingly without a destination, but my body knows the way to the only place that reminds me of home.
In my little apartment, I can hear all the hustle and bustle of Chicago; the docks are quiet. The blinding lights in the city center make my head hurt; the darkness of the docks envelops me like the embrace of a friend.
The darkness used to be my biggest enemy once. That was until I realized the light can be just as frightening.
I climb onto a shipping container and plop myself down, staring into the vast, dark sea. I close my eyes, inhaling the salty air. The smell summons a memory of Murmansk, the only place on Earth I felt I truly belonged.
With a sigh, I lie down and stare at the sky, unable to see any but the brightest stars. Murmansk had a generous spattering of them, and the Northern lights to match.
Not that I can go back there. I wouldn’t dare.
My calm slips away from me the moment I put my hand in the big pocket of my hoodie and take out the flyer.
I bring it to my face, covering the sky with it. It’s dark and I barely make out what it says, but I don’t need to see it to feel the stab of fear it triggers.
I know by heart that there’s a building, a row of children, and a person in the middle that should be dead. Should be, but apparently isn’t.
My grandfather should have burned with the cult village eight years ago. I watched him burn.
And yet here he is, the proud head of an orphanage. Maybe another cult, under another name?
I crush it in my hand for the third time this week, as if that would somehow make my grandfather unalive.
Maybe I should seek Sophie and Damien’s help? Maybe they can take him and his allies out?
No. These are the thoughts of a weak, helpless girl. I’m not her anymore. I don’t believe in stupid fairy tales about being saved.
