Black Sheep

Well, shit. I guess Gabriel-slash-Caron knows that Ava-slash-Bria’s hostage demands might be disingenuous, thanks to my fuckup with Abigail-slash-Theresa.

I’ve been kicking myself the last thirty-two hours since the first interview. I should have seen the giant red flag that Abigail’s photo was in the Archive subfolder Samuel pulled from Praetorian. Fucking sloppy. Samuel would be disappointed. I’m disappointed. It was an amateur miss.

Not only that, but the FBI is now on the same page as Caron and me in our little game of house cat versus feral cat, thanks to Abigail-Theresa’s revelation of Caron’s awareness of another player on the field. I was hoping to keep that between the cult and me, but it wasn’t meant to be. The next day’s interview subject, Sienna, went into more detail about what she overheard from a discussion Caron had with Koffi N’Doli, the CEO of Praetorian. As it turns out, they’d had their suspicions before Tristan went missing. They’d already figured out someone was on their tail.

So, all in all, the interviews have been great for my doctoral research, but a little shitty on a personal level. I try to remind myself of Samuel’s sage advice from years ago. One day, Bria, you might make a choice you regret. You cannot allow yourself to be limited by the confines of frustration or dismay. You must endeavor to find the hidden benefit your choice unveils.

It’s hard to mine any gems from such a careless error. I’ve been thinking about it continuously, all through the second interview, through dinner with Eli as we compared observations, even in my dreams. The only temporary reprieve was sex with Eli on the couch of our cabin…and then the breakfast nook table…and the kitchen counter. But other than that, my error consumes me, and as hard as I try, I can’t make anything good come from it.

And it’s not like I want to keep all this from Eli. I don’t want secrets between us. I know there can’t be any if I want to hold on to this new life that seems to be growing around me. I just wish I knew how. How to tell him without scaring him away. How to open myself up.

I’m tumbling through every future option as I watch him pace by the entrance of the coffee shop, his phone pressed between his shoulder and ear as he holds our espressos. He paces when he’s excited or agitated, and the fleeting hope that Caron has turned himself in to the FBI passes through my thoughts. It amazes me that a few short weeks ago, that would have been my worst nightmare. But now, catching Eli’s dimpled smile as he hangs up the phone and walks to the car, I can’t think of anything I’d want more, all because it would make him happy.

“What’s up?” I ask as Eli enters the vehicle with our coffees.

“Good news, actually,” he says as he starts the car. “Before we head back, there’s one more woman we can interview, and she’s all yours to question.”

“Really? That won’t pose any problems?”

“No, not at all,” Eli says as we pull away from our spot and prowl through the parking lot. “She’s not part of the active investigation. She’s not from Legio Agni. She’s from another cult.”

The sensation of spiders scuttling beneath my skin tingles down my back. “Another cult?”

“Yeah, it’s one that disappeared about twelve years ago. They were called Disciples of Xantheus, or DOX. They had a small, remote community in Nevada, and one day they just up and left. Turns out, they made it to Bolivia. This woman, Sara, she was with them in Nevada and might have some knowledge of some disappearances that caused them to leave. It’s a long shot, but maybe she can shed light on what’s happening to Legio Agni.”

I’m sure the car is hurtling into another dimension as we accelerate onto the road, heading for the Hilton. My heart constricts in a tight cord of adrenaline. “She’s…from DOX?”

“Yes,” he says. I fall silent, mentally calculating my chances of survival if I jump from the moving vehicle. Eli glances over, registering the unease creeping through my bones. “You okay?”

“Of course,” I say around the block of wood that’s mysteriously become lodged in my throat. “I…you said her name was Sara?”

“That’s right.”

I don’t know a Sara from DOX, so I’m betting it’s another instance of someone-slash-someone else. “Do you have more information you can share in preparation?”

“Only a little. We’ll have a bit of time to review the files the FBI are sending over before she arrives. According to Agent Espinoza she’s just recently left DOX, so our information is not comprehensive. Sara’s been reluctant to participate in interviews. She was badly injured.”

“In…injured?”

Eli’s expression turns grim and then drifts away from me as his gaze follows our left turn. “Before they cast her out, they blinded her.”

I exhale an audible lungful of air in relief which Eli mistakes for empathy.

“Yeah, she’s still adjusting,” he continues. “She was found wandering on a remote road. Someone brought her to a hospital. She had no ID, of course, but the embassy arranged for her transport when she told some of her story and they contacted the FBI. She’s been in Washington ever since.”

We fall into silence as we speed past businesses and vehicles, the streets beckoning me. I want to get out and run. I want to lose myself in the anonymity of this city and forget my past. I don’t want to face it. I just want it to die.

“You sure you’re okay?” Eli asks as he lays a hand on my forearm. He feels like fire. I feel like ice. All the warmth has been sucked into the core of me, like I’m imploding, a black hole sucking everything in, powerless to stop the destruction.

“Yeah,” I lie as we enter the parking lot of the Hilton.

I’m not okay, I think as we glide to a stop in a parking space. I’m about to lose it all. 

And it would be now, wouldn’t it. It would be right this instant when I realize the star I thought I would never reach is right here in my grasp. It has been all along. I’ve been propelled into an unreachable destiny by an inescapable past.

I’m in love with Elijah Kaplan.

I would do anything for Eli. I would even go against my own nature. He’s the hearth in my darkness that gives it warmth and light. I’ve never wanted to be anything other than a better version of what I am. More ruthless. More lethal. Until I met Eli.

Maybe I’ll never want to stop hurting other people, but the thought of harming Eli disgusts and saddens me. If he can’t love me because of what I am, I will do whatever I can to release the rage that fuels me. And if I have to embrace my past to succeed, I’ll find a way. If I have to tell him every truth, I’ll do that too. Starting with the most important one.

I’d never thought about what it would be like to fear a few simple words, or how they could be so insufficient yet immense, both at the same time.

“I love you, Eli,” I whisper.

There’s no sound. No movement. I look straight ahead at the unremarkable bricks of the building in front of us through the bug-spattered glass as though I didn’t just try to conjure magic. My throat closes around a tight knot of everything I wish I could say but just can’t.

Eli turns in my periphery. I feel the weight of his gaze on my skin.

“What?” he whispers. He brushes the hair from my face. My eyes sting. “What did you say?”

“I love you.”

The air feels heavy and thick between us as Eli lays his hand on my cheek. He turns me to face him, a shine glassing his eyes in the overcast light as he looks right into the heart of me. “Bria…” he says, letting my name linger. “I love you too, sweetheart.”

Eli leans forward and envelops me in the strength of his embrace. He holds me tight. He whispers it again, his breath and promises warming my neck. “I love you too, Bria Brooks.”

When Eli pulls away, he traps my face between his palms. The pain in my throat won’t let up, not with the way he looks at me, a tide of apprehension rising in his eyes. “What’s wrong, Pancake? Something’s not right. Is it the interview? If you’re worried about taking the lead—”

I shake my head and press my eyes closed.This content provided by N(o)velDrama].[Org.

“Then what’s going on?”

I take a breath. I’m about to step into my past and drag him with me. Eli’s own past is right behind it. I have to tell him, about DOX, about me, about Gabe and Cynthia, but there’s never been anything I feared more than losing him. It’s just like Eli promised when he spoke of love.

“Eli, I—”

Three knocks rap at the driver’s side window. Agent Langille waits as Eli breaks away. Worry still hangs heavily in his eyes as he gives me one last glance before he rolls down the window.

“Sorry we’re early, Dr. Kaplan,” Langille says with a flick of his glance to me. “We have to take an earlier flight back to DC, so we don’t have as much time.”

Eli nods but looks at me, taking my hand with a gentle squeeze. His brows draw together as he surveys my face. “You don’t have to do this,” he whispers.

But I do.

Samuel was right, as always.

I’ve been killing every person who reminded me of my past. If I want to get beyond its hold on me, I need to turn around and shut a door that was never closed.

“It’s okay,” I say, squeezing back with a faint smile that seems to do nothing to allay Eli’s concerns. “I’ll explain later.”

Eli nods and we exit the car, gathering my equipment before following Agent Langille into the hotel. I walk by Eli’s side as we cross the foyer and take the stairs to the meeting room. My adult body feels discordant with the part of my mind that vividly remembers life in the desert, this latent self that emerges like a neglected twin bent on revenge for the Ava I left behind.

Agent Langille knocks twice before we enter the room.

The coarse whispers of a grainy desert wind blast my thoughts clean as I take in the woman before me.

She sits at the table, sunglasses obscuring her missing eyes, hands curled around a glass of water, their skin weathered and speckled with marks from the sun. She’s in her mid-forties, but she looks older, her face lined by a life spent outdoors. She’s still beautiful in a harsh way. A defined yet feminine jaw, a birdlike grace that seems unsure as her head swivels in our direction.

Maybe her real name is Sara Munroe. But I knew her as Sunniva.

My mother.

“Bria?” Eli whispers as his hand wraps around my bicep. He pulls back as though he means to talk to me in the hallway but I rest my hand on his and shake my head.

Agent Langille introduces us as we enter the room. Eli sets my equipment down on the table and asks a few questions of Sara that barely register in my thoughts as I set up my monitors and laptop. He takes a seat next to Agent Langille along the wall as I describe my research to Sara in a way that feels mechanical. She doesn’t ask any questions, just consents. I have to fold her fingers around the pen and guide her hand to the paper for her to sign the consent form. A simple touch evokes so many images of destruction. My hand trembles when I slowly pull the pen from her grasp, forcing myself not to plunge it into her flesh. I think about how satisfying that would feel as I attach the leads to her skin and start my machines. But as I sit before her, I realize she’s also the keeper of the blind spots in my history.

And for the first time in a long time, I need her.

“I want you to think back to the first moment you met someone from Disciples of Xantheus,” I say, keeping my voice gentle and calm. “Try to imagine your surroundings. Try to place yourself back in that moment. Think about what you heard or felt or sensed around you.” I give Sara a pause as she takes a deep breath. “Where were you?”

“I was at a bus stop,” she says. Her voice is more like I remember as she slips into memory. A little smoother, but still just as meek. “There was a hot wind that blew the dust around. The cicadas were singing. I remember thinking how I’d like to be one of them. I’d not have to worry about where I was going or how much money I didn’t have. I’d just sing. I was sitting on the bench wishing I had a different life when these two women came from down the street and sat next to me.”

“Do you remember their names?”

“Hannah and Grace.”

I swallow with the mention of Hannah’s name, Xantheus’s favorite wife and the mother of Xanus. She meted out many of my worst beatings and enjoyed each one. “What happened when they sat with you?”

“We got to chatting. I was pregnant and showing so they asked about the baby. I’d just turned eighteen, hadn’t been to the doctor, and didn’t know where I was even going. I told them I wanted to make it to California and maybe get a job in a restaurant while I took some classes. I wanted to be an actress. I knew I didn’t have enough money to make it to LA, so I’d go as far as I could and work my way there. When the bus came, they sat across the aisle from me and talked about their community. They said they had a little town around a spring. They said I could work there and help tend to the gardens and animals in exchange for a place to live and a chance to get on my feet.” Sara fidgets with her fingers, twisting her skin across her knuckles. “It didn’t take me long to agree. It sounded so perfect the way they described it. They were so nice, and I didn’t have anyone.”

I check the readings coming through my laptop, the scene she describes connecting the untethered ends of my history in loose knots. “Describe for me what you felt and experienced once you agreed.”

“I was relieved, at first. It was like I made a wish and it came true in an instant. But you know what they say about wishes…” Sara exhales a long breath and bows her head. Her fingers twist and unravel in constant motion. “It was good, at first. I met Xantheus and he welcomed me, explained the rules of the community. It didn’t take more than a few weeks before I’d settled in. I was praying in the temple like I’d been doing it all my life. I was helping with the garden even though I’d never had a green thumb. It felt good being part of a community, even if it was a little weird.”

“Weird in which ways?” I ask, curious about what she saw as strange from her vantage point as one of Xantheus’s chosen favorites.

Sara shrugs. “They hardly ever left the community. Only Hannah and Grace were allowed to go. I had to be blindfolded when they took me in. Then there were the prayers, the speaking in tongues, all that stuff. Before long, though, it didn’t seem so weird. It became normal. Even comfortable, because Xantheus liked me. I became his fifth wife before the baby was even born. I worked hard to stay in his favor.”

“Were you worried about not being in his favor?” I ask.

“Yes.”

“What made you feel that way?”

Sara bows her head again. Her shoulders fall. “He would find excuses to…punish…anyone who fell out of it.”

I resist the urge to shift in my seat. Discomfort pulls at my skin. My scars feel like living creatures on my back, squirming and scratching, desperate to be seen. “Punish how?”

“Beatings. Whippings. Burning. Isolation in a metal coffin he called the Sinner’s Box. Falling out of favor could have terrible consequences,” she says on a shaky breath, gesturing to her sunglasses. “He’s the one who took my eyes, after all. He told me it was my fault things had fallen apart over the years. He said I’d never look upon the beauty of God’s creation again.”

I glance at Agent Langille but he doesn’t look up from his notes. Eli’s presence next to him is heavy with the weight of interest and curiosity, but I don’t meet his eyes.

“Why did he think it was your fault, Sara?”

Sara’s chest shudders with uneven breaths. Her lip quivers. She sniffles and reaches out, tapping her hand across the surface of the table. I push the box of tissues into the path of her wandering fingers and she takes one. Tears streak down the left side of her face when her head tilts forward.

“Because Xantheus thought I birthed the daughter of the Devil.”

I feel the spike in curiosity from Eli and Langille like an electrical current in the room. But this isn’t news to me, of course. I’d heard it from Samuel’s encounter with Zara. They’d told me similar things in my childhood, that I had the influence of darkness, or that I allowed the Devil’s whispers to guide me astray.

I glance at Eli. He gives me a reassuring flicker of a smile, a nod to continue. There’s no way I can stop now. My brows draw together. An apology rolls across my tongue but never passes my lips.

“Why would he think that?” I ask, refocusing on Sara.

“Ava wasn’t…normal. I mean, everything seemed normal in the beginning, I guess.” Sara bows her head and wipes the tears that weep down her left cheek. “At least, that’s what the others told me when Ava was little. The children were raised communally and I wasn’t around as much as I should have been. I just…wasn’t ready.”

I look at my laptop as though I’m checking important data, but I’m not really seeing the screen. It’s only the desert compound and my earliest recollections of my mother, her quiet, detached demeanor little more than a shadow in my memories.

“They told me she was advanced. ‘Gifted by God,’ they used to say,” Sara says without prompting. “Ava learned to talk young. She could read and solve math problems long before the other kids. And she could remember anything she wanted and never forget it. One day, when she was just four or five, she was walking with Grace and stopped next to the metal gate of the garden. She closed her eyes and recited a passage we’d read at the last prayer service. When Grace asked her how she remembered it, Ava told her she memorized things by imagining them around the commune, and she’d put the whole passage right there at the gate.”

The air around me changes. I don’t look away from Sara, but I catch Eli’s movement in my periphery as his hand covers his mouth. Agent Langille whispers something inaudible to him and Eli replies that he’s fine, but leans forward in his chair and rests his arms on his knees.

I swallow and clear my throat. “When did they start thinking she was…evil? What changed?”

“I think it started with the questions. If something didn’t make sense to Ava, like in the scriptures, she’d say as much. She’d challenge the teachings. No one did that, and she quickly found out why,” Sara says as she dabs her damp skin with fresh tissues. “But beating her didn’t deter her. It just made her…darker. She became even more defiant.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’d fight with the other kids. She’d destroy things. She had a fit of rage once when she was seven and ripped up all but two of the tomato plants before anyone caught her. She got thrown in the Sinner’s Box for a whole night for that,” Sara says as she twists her knuckles and one of her joints cracks.

I can still feel the cold steel against my bloody hands. I can taste the dust, smell the piss when I’d had no choice but to go in the metal box. No one was there to let me out or check on me. They just left me in darkness. Screaming. Screaming until I couldn’t scream anymore.

I glance at Eli. There’s so much sorrow in his eyes that I nearly get up and cross the room to sink into his embrace. But I know his sorrow will only last as long as it takes him to figure out the rest of me, and then it will be gone. He mouths my name but I look away.

I refocus on Sara, determined to exhume the child I left behind in the sand. “Is this why they thought you brought the Devil among the community? Because of a defiant child?”

Sara shakes her head. “No, no. I know it sounds crazy when I describe it like that, but other things started happening. Strange things they could never prove Ava did, but she was never affected by them. She sometimes seemed to enjoy them.”

“Like what?”

“One day, Xantheus was going to do a reading for the weekly praise service, but the pages in his bible were in the wrong order. It’s not that they were loose, they were still bound in the book, but not in sequence,” she says. I have to catch myself from smiling at that memory. I’d made glue from bitumen and spent all night carefully detaching pages of Xantheus’s bible and gluing them back out of order. “There were strange smells of rotting flesh in some of the houses but no one could find the source. People would find symbols drawn beneath their beds in chalk or strange packages of herbs and sticks. One night, several members of the community hallucinated and saw dark figures and phantoms.”

It was always me, of course. Me, finding dead lizards or rotting meat or eggs to hide in walls or beneath floorboards. Me breaking in to draw random, meaningless symbols under beds. Me who found drugs among the books in Xantheus’s library and spiked their ritual tea. I tried everything I could to make them think they were going crazy. They thought I was the devil, so their devil is who I became.

If only I had known then how it would culminate in the life I have now. Everything I’ve gained. Everything I’m about to lose.

My voice is barely more than a whisper when I ask, “What happened to Ava? Why did you leave the desert?”

“Ava was supposed to marry Xantheus’s son, Xanus. As soon as the ceremony was over, the storage barn caught fire. Just out of nowhere. It was suddenly this raging inferno. We all ran to put it out but it burned to the ground. When we got back to the temple, Ava…she killed Xanus. She had an ax. And she…she…”

I remember the horror on my mother’s face when she pushed through the doorway with the others. It was just a glance as I swung the ax. And then I looked away, consumed by rage as Xanus’s blood sprayed from the blade, spattering across my face.

“They beat Ava until she passed out, and then they dumped her far from the compound. They wanted her to suffer a long death out there in the desert. I tried to tell them no. I begged them not to do it but they threw me in the Sinner’s Box and didn’t let me out until the next morning when they’d already done it. Hannah convinced Xantheus that morning to make sure Ava was dead. She made him believe Ava could find her way back and kill us all. He sent Zara to do it. Hannah and Grace went with her to make sure she got rid of the evil once and for all.”

“And did she? Did Zara kill Ava?”

“No,” Sara says, wringing her damp tissue with trembling fingers. “It took them a while to find Ava. She’d walked and crawled some distance and must have passed out trying to reach an old mine shaft that was several yards away from where they found her. Hannah and Grace said they told Zara they would leave and come back that evening, but they wanted to be sure she’d keep her word to get it done, so they hid behind a rocky outcrop to watch. Zara had struggled, they said. She cried. She didn’t want to kill anyone, even after what Ava had done. Ava was still just a child, after all. She was only fourteen.”

God, the searing heat. The delirium. The pain. I remember finding that mine shaft, unsure if it was an illusion in the distance, a well of darkness that would save me from the sun. I tried so hard, but I just couldn’t make it there.

“They said Zara picked up a rock. She was standing over Ava, trying to make herself do it when a man showed up out of nowhere. They said he walked over the rise with a bag in his hand. Well-dressed, like he’d been plopped down from the city. When Zara saw him, she just lost it, they said. She started begging this man to help her. She told him everything, that Ava had killed someone, that she was the devil, that she needed to get rid of Ava’s evil. They said he seemed caring at first. He approached and laid a hand on Zara’s shoulder. But suddenly he struck her in the back of the head and knocked her out. They said he tossed her to the side and hovered over Ava, checking her wounds. Then he said, “I hope for your sake that what she said is true, young one”. He picked Ava up and carried her away. Hannah and Grace ran before they could find out what happened to Zara. They came back to the commune hysterical, saying the devil had found his daughter and we needed to leave before they killed the rest of us. Within twenty-four hours, we were gone.”

“Zara never rejoined your group?” I ask. I still feel the pull of satisfaction in my chest as I remember sitting in the dome structure with a glass of cool water, watching as Samuel wrapped Zara’s lifeless body in the plastic from the floor.

“No,” Sara replies. “We took what supplies we could and left. Xantheus had money hidden away from those of the community who’d come with some and given it all to him. When we left the desert, we bought an old bus and a van, and we started heading south. For a while, we were all bound together with the fear of this man and Ava finding us. But eventually, it gave way to resentment and anger. I was the next one in line to blame whenever anything went wrong.”

Sara sobs through her tale of her final weeks with DOX, describing how the group was crumbling with infighting and Xantheus’s waning control. I barely pay attention as she talks about Xantheus blinding her and setting her loose to the forest before the rest of the group packed up and left. The ever-present rage that simmers deep within me boils closer to the surface as she weeps, my armor hardening to contain it. Sara finishes her story when she stumbles upon the roadway and I stare at the laptop readings, folding my fists tight beneath the table, pressing my nails into my palms.

My mother was defined in my childhood by her absence, her aloof presence when she was there, and her inaction in my abuse. And now she cries for the suffering she endured?

“What kind of mother am I?” she whispers, interrupting my fury. “I thought it would be a safe place for us. If I hadn’t gone there, maybe Ava and I both would have been different. And now I have no idea where she is or what happened to her. What if she’s dead? What if she’s still alive and her life is even worse? What if the man who took her was a madman? I’m here with protection just for telling my story and where is she? I should have fought harder, like Ava did. I should have told her I loved her even though we weren’t allowed. I did, I did love my daughter, I just didn’t know how to do it right. It’s torture, not knowing where she is. And I deserve it, for everything I didn’t do for my daughter.”

I slowly sit back in my chair, watching Sara for a long moment as guilt and regret pour into the space between us. There’s only one question I can ask now, the one that solders the past to the present.

“Do you believe Ava would have the skills and ability to pursue other cults similar to DOX?”

Sara thinks on this for a moment, her expression hardening into something that almost looks like fear streaked with pride. “My daughter never spent a day in the real world,” she says. “But I will tell you this. If anyone could learn and overcome that world, it’s Ava. And she would destroy it.”