The Cult

When I opened my eyes, I sucked in a deep breath, so deep that it felt like the first one I’d taken since the last time I was conscious. I died and came back to life…but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to be alive.

My body jolted upright, and I looked down at the bed that supported me. A soft comforter was underneath my fingertips, pure white, fluffy, and clean. My chin lifted, and I looked at the head of the bed where there was a display of white pillows on a gray headboard. A string of white lights was on the wall above it, looking like Christmas lights. “Where the fuck am I?” I stood up and felt the furry white rug underneath my feet, the tufts sliding between my toes. I took a look around and saw a golden harp in the corner, along with a stool next to it. The windows showed a forest outside, brown earth with patches of grass and weeds. It was quiet, just the sound of my breathing keeping me company.

There was an opening that led to another bedroom, another white bed, another harp. I moved around the foot of the bed I’d been in and approached the bookshelf that was full of books, not a single space left open on the shelves. I scanned the titles. Holiness: The Path to Absolution. Redemption: A Spiritual Road for Sinners. Divinity. The Way of the Angels. “What is this…?” I turned to look at the nightstand and saw the bible sitting there.

The room had hardwood floors and light-colored furniture, and when I opened the dresser, I saw women’s clothing—all in white. Inside the closet, I found white dresses on hangers…with white angel wings attached to each garment. “Oh…this is bad. This is really bad.”

A quiet whisper came from behind me. “Mom…she’s awake.”

I turned on the spot and saw a young girl standing in the archway that separated my bedroom from the other. She had long blond hair, blue eyes, and large gaps between her teeth.

I recognized her immediately. “Claire…?”

The girl stiffened immediately, her eyes wide when I guessed correctly. “Are you…really an angel?”

“An angel?” That was when I noticed she was wearing all white—white pants and a long-sleeved white shirt. “No, my name is Constance.”

“Mom?” She went into the other room and disappeared from my sight. “This lady knows my name. She must be an angel.”

What the fuck was happening right now? I stayed in my place near the bookshelf and didn’t go after her. For the first time in my life, I had no idea what to do. The world around me was a false reality, and my brain simply couldn’t process what I was experiencing. It couldn’t form connections or patterns. It couldn’t logically explain any of it.

Footsteps sounded, and then a woman stepped into my room, wearing white jeans and a white shirt, her brown hair in curls down one shoulder, a slight hint of glitter in the fabric of her clothes. Her eyelashes were thick with makeup, and there was a touch of glitter to her cheeks. She had an ethereal glow because she was a stunning woman.

I recognized her too. “Beatrice?”

She stilled when she heard her own name. Her eyes narrowed, and her beauty faded as the consternation took up residence in her face. Claire came up behind her and peeked around her body to look at me. After a few breaths, she spoke. “How do you know our names?”

“Benton is looking for you.”

Beatrice drew a deep breath when she heard that name. “How do you know Benton?” She inched closer to me but kept her guard up, as if she didn’t understand her reality either.

Seeing this woman somehow brought me comfort, when it should only bring me fear. I was in the same situation as they were, and I would probably never get out. But knowing she was real, that she and Claire were in the same room with me right now, made me feel less alone. She wasn’t covered in bruises and scars. She didn’t have a cattle skull on her head. “He’s looking for both of you. I’m a ballet dancer, and he came backstage after a performance and asked everyone if we’d seen you.”

“Daddy is looking for us?” Claire stepped out from behind her mother.

Beatrice’s arm moved around her daughter’s shoulders.

I looked into her eyes and saw the hope, the beautiful brightness of her gaze, the innocence of a child. “Yeah, he is.”

Claire looked up at her mother. “He’ll find us, Mom. Daddy is the smartest person in the world. I know he’ll find us.”

She rubbed her daughter’s back and gave a nod, but she didn’t have the same hope in her eyes that her daughter did. She still looked pained, her beautiful features washed away by her fear. But she said what her daughter wanted to hear. “I’m sure he will, honey.”

“What is this place?” I didn’t fire off my questions right away, not when Claire was around. The bedroom might be beautiful and the girls looked healthy, but I wasn’t stupid enough to believe we’d truly stepped into heaven.

Beatrice sat on the bed beside me, her hair falling down her chest to her stomach because it was so long. She glanced into the other room to see Claire sitting up in bed with a book in her lap. She watched the girl for a moment before she turned back to me and whispered her answer. “I have no idea.”

“Have you been outside?”

“No, but we’re in the middle of a forest or something. I have no idea what our location is. Not even sure if we’re still in France.”

“How long did it take you to get here?”

“I was knocked out cold.”

“Claire too?”

“No. They didn’t drug her, but she can’t really give me any descriptions either.”

I didn’t remember a single aspect of my journey here. I’d collapsed in the street, and that was the last thing I remembered. I had no recollection of how I arrived or if it was by car or plane. They must have injected me with something strong to keep me under so deeply. “So, what do they want with us?” I feared the worst, that we would be raped, beaten, and possibly sold to someone elsewhere.

“I honestly don’t know.” She kept her eyes on the floor, the stress visible in the corners of her eyes and the purse of her lips. “We got here maybe two weeks ago, but I don’t know how much time has passed, so it might be more like a week. They bring us food, and they kinda just leave us alone in here. I haven’t been outdoors yet. All I’ve seen is the view outside the windows.”

“So…they haven’t…” My eyes glanced at Claire.

“They haven’t touched her. Either of us, actually.”

While that made me feel better, I wasn’t naïve to assume the conditions would stay that way. “What do they want with us?” I turned to look at my open closet, where the white garments hung with the wings attached. “What’s with all the white? The books on the shelf… Your daughter asked if I was an angel. Why?” I turned back to her.

Her eyes stayed down, as if she were already lifeless when our fight hadn’t even begun. “They think we’re angels.”

I stared at her blankly, not understanding the words coming out of her mouth. “What?”

She lifted her chin and looked at me.

“Like, actual angels?”

She nodded.

“Like, from heaven?” I asked incredulously.

“Yes.”

The new show my ballet company performed was about angels, an angel expelled from heaven to live a normal life on earth. I was the star angel because I was the best dancer, and I had those heavy wings attached to me every night of the show. But that was all just a production. Was that why this happened? They watched me on stage and assumed it was real? “They took me because of the show…”

“Me too.” She glanced at her daughter again, making sure she was busy reading before she turned back to me.

“So, if they think we’re angels…real angels…what do they want from us?”

Her arms gently crossed over her chest, and she stared at the floor once again, her beautiful face tight in sadness. She rubbed one of her arms as if she was cold. “Forgiveness. They want us to forgive them…for their sins.”

There was no knock before the door opened.

A woman stepped inside my room with a tray in her hands, holding herself with a posture so rigid, she didn’t seem real.

I’d been sitting on the bed when she’d barged into my quarters. There were books around me because I wanted to understand why they’d left them in my room, to learn more about these strange people who thought I was literally from heaven. I jerked slightly at the sight of her and gripped one of the books in my hand, ready to slam it down on her skull if she came too close to me.

She was roughly my age, a blond woman with green eyes. There was a table against the wall with two chairs, so she set the wooden tray on the surface. She looked normal, a petite woman who didn’t cover her face with a skull. But if she were normal, she wouldn’t be in a place like this.

Whatever the fuck this place was.

She straightened then turned to me, her hands clasped in front of her waist. She stared for several seconds, regarding me with an absorbent gaze, taking in my features. She was in black jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt, dressed the way the rest of the men were. The longer she looked at me, the colder her stare became, her mouth even pressing together in a distinctive frown. Without asking me a single question or even hearing my voice, she’d decided she hated me.

Loathed me.

“You aren’t in white.”

I glanced down at my clothes, seeing the denim jeans and the long-sleeved purple sweater I’d been wearing when I was taken. There had also been a scarf, but that had disappeared. I had just been relieved to see I was still clothed when I woke up, that someone hadn’t touched me without my consent.

Her anger intensified. “Change.”

I looked at her again, my skin prickling at the command.

She took a step closer to me, her eyes fierce. “Discard your earthly form and embrace your ethereal truth.”

Total nutjob.

“You don’t need to hide your identity here. We know exactly who you are.” Her voice lowered, and not once in this standoff did she blink. As if she’d put numbing medication in her eyes, she didn’t need to close her eyes to fight the dryness. “Don’t be afraid.”

“Don’t be afraid?” I knew I should hold my tongue because I was at the mercy of this situation and it wasn’t smart to provoke anyone or anything, but her statement was absolutely ludicrous. “You’ve taken me from my home and locked me up in here—”

“Your home is heaven—which you left willingly.”

P-S-Y-C-H-O.

“And you aren’t locked in here. The door is unlocked—always.”

I hadn’t even checked. My head turned to the door, the slab of wood that no longer confined me to this place. Did Beatrice know the door was unlocked? “Then I can just leave?”

“Yes.”

What was I missing? “So, I can just…head back to where I came from?”

“Theoretically.”

There was a catch here. I just didn’t know what it was.

“Your immortality allows you to do things the rest of us can’t. None of us can leave—and survive.”

Yep…there was a catch.

“Put on your wings.” She moved to the divide in the room that led to Beatrice’s. Her hand slipped inside the wall, and she pulled two solid pieces of wood toward the middle and locked the door in place. She slipped the key into her pocket then turned back to me.

“Why?” I continued to grip the book in my hands so I could knock her out if she came too close.

“Because an angel needs her wings.”

“Bitch, I’m not an angel. I’m just a person that you kidnapped.”

That stiff expression never relaxed, her fingers interlocking firmly, her skin stretching because she gripped herself so tightly. “Don’t make me retrieve them. You won’t like what they will do to you. It hurts us all to hurt an angel…but sometimes, we must.”

“Who’s them?”

She stepped closer to me, her shoulders back and her head held high, like she was some kind of royalty in this godforsaken place. “The Malevolent.”

I pictured the men with the cattle skulls on their heads, faceless beings that did the grunt work for the man who grinned at me. They weren’t figments of my imagination, but real nightmares that crawled out of the darkness underneath your bed and grabbed you by the ankle. These monsters were real. Their slowness and their silence disturbed me. They didn’t seem to be from this world—and that terrified me. The threat was enough to quiet my fight.

She seemed to realize that. “He’s ready to see you.”

Now my heart pounded harder, the sound of drums in my ears, the weakness emerging in both of my hands. Flashbacks hit me all at once, his face across the street, standing right up against the window with that smile. His eyes reflected the stage lights as he stood in the middle of the auditorium, his evil presence silencing the protests of the people in the neighboring seats. “Who’s he?” I asked the question without needing the answer. His face was permanently ingrained in my mind, and even if I’d never been taken, he would still be the star of my nightmares.

She stared down at me for a long time, her lips pressing harder together until they were just a thin line on her face. “Your demon.” Her body was so rigid it didn’t seem like she needed to take a breath, like she was a living statue that had no bodily necessities. “Forneus.”