The kidnapper slammed the trunk lid closed, and I lay in total darkness as we drove. The drug didn’t knock me out entirely. I remembered hitting pothole after pothole and thinking he was aiming for the things.
I thought about summoning Angel. About three seconds before I lost consciousness.
*
We hit another pothole. That had to be what roused me from my sleep. I blinked and tried to gain my bearings with little success. Mostly because I couldn’t see shit.
My shoulder and hip ached from the hard surface I’d been riding on. And the bumps in the road didn’t help. We took a sharp turn. A few seconds later, we slowed. I heard voices outside, then the trunk lid popped open, and two sets of arms reached in to drag me out.
At first, I thought we were in an underground garage. It was dark and cold. Then I realized night had fallen.
I shook my head. How long had I been in that trunk? The dried drool on my cheek would suggest quite a while. And I had to pee like nobody’s business.
They dragged me into an outbuilding of some kind. Perhaps a storage building or a barn. It was lit with lanterns strewn across a dirt floor. I knew the floor was dirt because I tried to walk but couldn’t quite manage it, so my feet dragged along the ground, stirring up clouds of dust.
Then they dropped me, and I fell forward, landing on my knees and palms and face. I pushed up and took in my surroundings. Mostly I just saw legs. Several sets of them. Then I saw someone very tall. I raised my head, tried to look up, but it took every ounce of strength I had not to fall face-first again.
I finally sat back on my heels and my gaze traveled the length of the really tall guy. But he wasn’t so much tall as … hanging. Shawn Foster was hanging by his wrists, his arms over his head, his mouth gagged, his face and body bloody and bruised. They really did have him. It wasn’t the Fosters after all. Then who?
A woman stepped into my line of sight. She wore Sketchers, jeans, and a button-down. But the higher my gaze traveled, the more my head spun. I couldn’t seem to keep the room steady. Whatever they’d given me was powerful.
“Aren’t you something,” the woman said, squatting down in front of me, her smile genuine.
Mrs. Foster. It was Mrs. Foster, looking as happy as a python at a bunny farm.
“I’ve never seen anything like her,” a man said. Probably Mr. Foster.
Around us stood a group of about fifteen people, if my leg count was correct. Mostly adult males, but a couple of women and even a teen or two. Were they watching their parents torture the Fosters’ son? Because that could not be healthy.
Mrs. Foster leaned closer. She cupped my chin in her hand and asked, “What are you?”
“Wasted. What did you give me?”
She displayed a smile that was so smug, my palm itched to slap it off her. Still, violence was never the answer.
I smiled back. I’d had just about enough of the Fosters and their personal brand of crazy. “You’re going to die soon.”
A loud slap sounded, and I lost sight of her as my head swung way too far to the side. Apparently, she didn’t get the violence-is-never-the-answer memo. The world tilted and I struggled to stay upright.
“You think we don’t know how to handle your kind? We’ve been doing it for years, sweetheart. Decades. It’s why we were put on Earth. To smite the work of the devil. To erase the abominations to God. To cleanse the Earth of your kind.”
“That shouldn’t take long. There’s only one of me.”
“Is that right?” Mr. Foster asked. I could see him more clearly now. His short brown hair wasn’t as groomed as it had been at the diner and he had a layer of scruff on his jaw. But he was still an incestuous wiener. “Well, then, this should be easy.”
“Why did you … why are you hurting your own son?”
Mr. Foster knelt before me. “You know perfectly well he’s not our son. It was only a matter of time.”
“We tried to do a good deed,” Mrs. Foster said.
As she spoke, the Diviners clapped and shouted an occasional “Hallelujah!” or “Praise be!”
“We took him in,” she continued. “Raised him. Nurtured and cared for him. He was so full of light when he was a baby, but even light can be corrupted. As you are well aware.” She tsked and walked back to Shawn. “Even the brightest of lights can be swayed. He went to you. He turned to you, a corrupted soul, to investigate us, the Divine. He knew the consequences.”
Somehow I doubted that. “He had nothing to do with my investigation.”
She whirled around and glared. “He turned to you and your evil husband.”
They knew about Reyes? “Dude, you are so much eviler than the man who’s going to snap your necks like kindling.” That came out wrong.
A surge of whispers erupted but then quieted just as quickly. “Please, Mrs. Farrow,” Mr. Foster said. “Or do you still go by Davidson like so many of the unclean in this world?”
I didn’t see the connection.