Sin and Sacrifice (4 page)

“
A mark of evil?” She
didn't know what else to say except to echo him.

“
From the serpent in the
Garden of Eden. What a clever way for satan to spread the disease
of corruption through millennium. One bite and you're tainted
forever, blessed with immortality to do his bidding and cast the
seed of evil far and wide. Clever, but not clever
enough.”

With righteous fervor, the
Templar answered questions that had plagued Evelyn and her sisters
for thousands of years. The 'snakebite' had been completely
misconstrued and misunderstood by the Knights, used as a catalyst
for the daughters own destruction, all probably under the
assumption that the Templars would be saving the world. If she
looked at the situation obliquely, she could
almost
see how they had come to
their wrong conclusion. Unbeknownst to the Knights, their
conjecture couldn't be further from the truth.

And she couldn't simply
explain that the marks were
reminders
not to make the same
mistakes once made by their parents; that meant admitting who she
was, and
what
she
was, and Evelyn was certain in that moment that the Templars
wouldn't believe a word she said. They had subsisted for centuries
believing and nurturing ideals of defeating evil, a noble cause,
surely, and any argument from her wasn't likely to change that. All
she had were vehement denials and urgent pleas of
innocence.

“
I don't know what you're
talking about. I really don't.” In her distress, she choked on the
words. Fear made her skin prickle. Sweat slid down from her
hairline and over the bone of her jaw.

“
I expected no less from a
daughter of Eve. Nothing but lies. I can do this for longer than
you, I promise. And the rest of it will not be as pleasant.” The
hissing threat ended with a jerk of his fist in the hood and her
hair. Then he released her.

Evelyn gasped, gagging on
blood. She pushed the mouthful out over her lips rather than try to
swallow it down.

Another pair of footsteps
approached.

The muscles of her thighs
tightened in anticipation of more violence, teeth clenching so hard
her jaw ached. Her hands were picked up again and a pinky held in
the vise of the man's fingers.

Instinctively, she tried to
pull it out of his tight grasp. From behind, a second man reached
over and braced her arm so the first could position something at
the edge of her short nail.

“
What are you
doing?”

“
I'm going to give you one
last chance to tell me how many of you are left,” the man in front
of her said.

“
Please, listen to me. I'm
not whoever you think I am--” The dry state of her throat put a
rasp on her words.

Without further warning,
something thin and sharp slid under the nail of her pinky finger.
She screamed, the sound rebounding off the walls. Part of the hood
sank into her mouth when she sucked in another breath, cutting off
a second scream. The sense of suffocation made her gag and twist in
the seat. Anchored in place by both men, she arched in reaction to
the burning pain shooting along her arm and into her elbow. It
radiated out in waves, causing nausea to roll through her stomach.
Dizzy, suffering from fear and claustrophobia, Evelyn tried again
to get them to believe her.

“
I don't have any sisters.
It's just me. My dad never remarried after my mom died. I swear.”
She hated how the words clattered and shook when she
spoke.

The first man, the one
doing the torture, moved on to her ring finger. He held it trapped
and pressed the tip of the sharp thing against her skin. Just
enough to let her know it was there.

Evelyn swallowed. She
needed water. Air. Space.

“
How. Many. Of. You. Are.
There?” He enunciated each word.

She knew in that moment
that this was going to go on and on until she either passed out or
died. Each finger, each hand, moving from this to battery to body
part removal. Or something equally horrible. They weren't going to
stop, and she wasn't going to give in. The Knights felt justified
forcing confession from her, perhaps even felt justified with their
torture.

Eradicating evil, as he'd
put it, was serious business.

Faking unconsciousness
wouldn't hold up under the pressure of their interrogation. A stab
of an instrument in the right place would provide a telling
reaction.

All she could do was endure
until she slipped into unconsciousness for real.

To Evelyn's horror, she
discovered they were adept at keeping her awake. Of bringing her
back from the blessed brink of blackness that was her only escape.
They used water and smelling salts to revive her, relentless in
their pursuit of the truth. Relentless in their pursuit to break
her.

Evelyn
couldn't
break. Wouldn't subject her
sisters to this even if it meant her own death.

Soon, she knew, it would
come to that.

Sometime during the
following day, when she was rigid with pain and screaming the walls
down, she felt the blackness swoop in and claim her. Time meant
nothing in her dark world of flitting nightmares and hazy returns
to consciousness. She couldn't focus on faces or voices or commands
that they barked near her ears.

It was all distant.
Dreamlike. Not a part of her reality. Once, after they'd removed
the scratchy hood, she thought she glimpsed the tattoo of an iron
cross between the shoulder blades of a Templar.

They all had them. Their
own mark. A brand of power and loyalty.

The strong scent of urine
and the taste of old blood in her mouth finally woke her. Someone
trickled water past her lips. She could taste it mingling with the
blood. Men moving forward and back through the room were blurry for
long minutes until she squinted and brought them into focus. Four
of them, all built like the warriors they were. Thick chested,
broad shouldered, lean hipped. Dressed in casual, everyday clothes
instead of white robes and red crosses.

But they were Templars,
every one of them. Men with sharp, assessing eyes and grim
expressions. Hands that had delivered more pain in a day than most
people suffered in a lifetime.

Evelyn tried to assess the
damage to her person; bloodied, abused fingers, a menagerie of
burns, bruises and bumps and a raw split in her lip. Nothing felt
broken. Fear crept through her system when she realized that if
they didn't kill her soon, they would start to recognize the way
her body healed the superficial injuries.

By tomorrow all the open
wounds would be closed. The day after that, the burns would be just
blushes and rosettes on her skin. Any fractures she might have
suffered would be correctly healed. And on day three, there would
be no sign of abuse at all. These were gifts from eating fruit off
the Tree of Life. It was part of their immortality, what set them
apart from the rest of humanity. Genevieve, Alexandra and Minna all
had the same gift, given before they were cast out from
Eden.

The dehydration she could
do nothing about, and it would eventually kill her if they didn't
continue to give her water. Healing ability aside, she could die
like anyone else under the right circumstances. If she suffered
mortal wounds or denied what the body needed to function (food,
water, air), she would perish.

One of the men, her main
torturer she presumed, broke off from where he murmured with the
other three and approached. In his hand, he had a rolled up piece
of parchment that he unfurled when he stopped before the chair. It
was thicker and more pliable than modern paper with crinkles
through the surface and faded drawings that looked like crude maps.
She glanced up from the paper to the man's face. Hard, cold eyes.
Tight, displeased mouth. Deep lines across weathered
skin.

“
We will start again. This
time, you will correct the mistakes on this map. After that, you
will tell me how many of you remain.”

For a crazy moment, Evelyn
wanted to scream. She wanted to rail and rant at this man for
answers she could never give him.

Because she knew what that
map led to, or where it was supposed to lead, and she wouldn't give
up the location anymore than she would give up her
sisters.

Day one had been almost
more than she could bear. What pain would he bring for day two? She
swallowed past the dryness in her throat and said
nothing.

“
So be it,” he said,
retreating to a tray of implements that he rolled closer to her
chair.

She got a glimpse of sharp,
shiny instruments and other, less familiar objects that looked old
and frightening. Her mind conjured images and ideas in a rapid
slideshow that left her weak and terrified.

“
I can't tell you what I
don't know.” Her meek lie was met with a vicious backhand. Fresh
blood pooled under her tongue. For a moment, her world was nothing
but white noise.

“
Today, you
will
tell me or you will
start losing pieces of yourself faster than you can count them.” He
snatched a scalpel off the tray with a menacing gleam in his
eyes.

“
I told you I don't
know.
I don't know
!”

Snaring her under the chin
with one hand, he brought the scalpel right to the edge of her eye.
“You didn't even blink at the map, which means you know exactly
what it is and where it leads. Tell me. Tell me where to find Eden
or I will carve out your eye, so help me.”

Chapter Three

With a sudden, violent
crash, the door to the chamber burst open. The blade nicked the
skin of her brow when the Templar spun around in surprise. Furious
shouts and commands overlapped each other.

“
Get on your
knees!”

“
Put the gun
down!”

“
Drop it—now!”

“
I
said
, on your knees.”

Evelyn twisted her wrists
to try and loosen the ropes. She didn't know what was going on, but
she wouldn't waste the opportunity to get her hands free. Dizzy and
weak, the task proved difficult. The bonds were too
tight.

“
Don't make me tell you
again.”

The Knights, surly and
growling, got on their knees.

It gave Evelyn a glimpse of
the man who'd burst onto the scene. Over the heads of the Templars,
she made sudden eye contact with a man taller than any of those in
the room—which was saying something—and just as broad. Evelyn's
first impression of him was a shocking one. He had a lion's mane of
sandy blonde hair to his shoulders, a chiseled jaw, and the palest
green eyes she'd ever seen. When he turned them on her, they were
sharp and intense. Assessing. Dressed all in black, with a long
sleeved shirt that fit high on the throat and snug across his
torso, he made an imposing figure that she found it impossible to
look away from.

“
Move it or we're both
dead.” He gestured to her with the hand not holding the gun.
Get up. Come here. Hurry.

She heard the unvoiced
commands as clearly as if he'd said them aloud and lurched to her
feet. Sometime between yesterday and now, she'd lost her other
shoe. Barefoot, she shuffled around the kneeling Knights, leaving a
wide berth between them, and made for the door.

“
Stay close,” he ordered
when she was within reach. Sliding a hand around her upper arm, he
escorted her out of the room with his gun leveled at the Knights,
and then down the dark corridor. Like he expected there might be
others.

There probably were. Evelyn
suspected the numbers of the Templars ranked into the hundreds, at
least. She stumbled once and he caught her against his side,
letting her use his body to lean on. Over a thin layer of material,
she felt the strain and flex of honed, hard sinew. Weakness and
dizziness came in violent waves that she battled with every
step.

“
You! Stop!”

At the juncture of another
corridor, someone called out from the far end.

The man at her side didn't
even pause. He fired into the darkness and hustled her the other
way with haste. Up a stairwell that she remembered coming down.
Through a door he kicked open with a boot. Out into the night that
disoriented her as much as the confusing hallways had. She couldn't
get her bearings and had no time to.

He ushered her by the arm
toward a car waiting at the curb, letting her go at the last second
to open the door. “Get in.”

Evelyn had no choice but to
do what he asked. With pain screaming along her nerve endings she
slid into the passenger seat. Out her window, she could make out
the rising spire of what appeared to be a church. The stone walls
were inset with arching panes of stained glass, the details lost
with the darkness. The Knights had been keeping her in the basement
or some other subterranean room. So far, none of them had burst out
from the door to give chase.

After he got in, she
glanced across the car. “Where are we going? Who are
you?”