Messiahs by Matt Rogers (bookstand for reading txt) 📕

put both King and Slater at risk. Even though she hadn’t revealed anything concrete, she’d said too much. Now they’d better accept her offer, or they wouldn’t be allowed back into society with what they already knew about Mother Libertas.

It was already all or nothing.

They either devoted their lives to the cult or were silenced forever.

The truck bounced on a pothole as it surged further into the grasslands.

46

King saw the cluster of buildings first as the soft lighting broke up the darkness.

There were only a couple of exterior lights switched on, but it was enough to make the commune look like a homing beacon, especially surrounded by such emptiness.

Maeve rounded the outskirts so as not to wake everyone in the bunkhouses — at least, that’s what King assumed they were — and drove up the incline to where the farmhouse lay dormant. No lights blazed inside the two-storey house, and the porch lights were off too. The headlights from Maeve’s pickup lit up the wraparound porch with stark white lighting.

Exposing someone sitting on an outdoor rocking chair.

He was long and spindly, and he rose off the chair as soon as the light hit him.

Maeve said, ‘That’s Dane. I don’t know what he’s doing out of bed, though.’

They all got out of the pickup as Maeve killed the engine. The headlights took another few seconds to die, but when they did they plunged everything into total darkness. Dane’s silhouette had been watching them silently, and now it disappeared.

King stood fixed to the spot, thoroughly unnerved.

Maeve called through the night, ‘Turn a light on, would you?’

The porch creaked as Dane moved across it. Slater was on the other side of the vehicle, and King suppressed a shiver, shaking the feeling of being starkly alone. He regretted leaving the Mossberg and the Glocks back in Gillette. Maeve had forced them to dump their weapons and then frisked them both carefully before letting them into her truck. They’d gone along with it. He was coming to realise she had a way with words, a certain inflection of tone that made you grateful she was even paying you attention.

He’d gone into this knowing exactly who she was in her core, and still he had to fight not to be put under her spell.

There was a reason Mother Libertas was growing so fast.

The porch light came on, and revealed Dane Riordan in better lighting. He was far taller than his wife, his shoulders slightly stooped from the shame of being the centre of attention due to his height. But he was all thin muscle and bones, and probably weighed no more than a hundred and seventy pounds.

He said, ‘Jason and Will, is it?’

Looking up from below the porch, they both nodded.

Dane descended the porch steps and extended a hand. ‘Dane. Pleasure.’

They shook his hand one by one.

Maeve drew up alongside him, completing the subtle two-on-two face-off.

Dane said, ‘Obviously there’s a lot that’s still up in the air. I’m sure you can both understand.’

King said, ‘Same goes for us. But we’re interested. Whether this works out or not, I think we’ve got more in common than you think.’

‘Is that right?’

King nodded.

Dane looked at him for a beat, then said, ‘You might be right. Can I speak my mind?’

‘Please,’ King said.

‘I’m not the type to make small talk and skirt around the point. Nor is my wife here. If you two have a problem with operating outside the parameters of the law, I suggest you enjoy our hospitality tonight then make your way back to Gillette tomorrow. If you stay, you’ll be asked to do things that will make you uncomfortable. Is that going to be a problem?’

King said, ‘No problem. We’re both war criminals if you judge what we’ve done within the “parameters of the law.” Is that going to be a problem?’

Dane smiled. ‘No. It certainly won’t.’

He turned to Slater. ‘You don’t talk much.’

Slater said, ‘You’re right.’

‘Dinner,’ Dane said. ‘Tomorrow evening. You and I.’

Slater glanced at Maeve, who smiled knowingly. Her eyes said, See? I know my husband.

Slater said, ‘Sure. You’re buying.’

Dane laughed.

He turned to Maeve and said, ‘I like them.’

Still facing them, Maeve said, ‘I’m afraid we need sleep. But Elias will show you to your room.’

‘Elias?’ Slater said. ‘The guy we’re replacing?’

‘No,’ a voice said behind them.

47

They turned.

Elias was blonde-haired, blue-eyed, fair-skinned. He was tall and wiry like Dane Riordan, but his poise was more athletic, more graceful, less laboured. His posture was impeccable underneath the simple garments he wore. He was a baby compared to King and Slater, somewhere in his mid-twenties, but his eyes were intensely confident.

Slater could see through them, though.

He saw false confidence. A kid who’d never been in a street fight. Slater guessed, just from the posture, that Elias was trained in some Eastern martial art. More about looking good and flowing smoothly, less about being able to destroy someone’s face with a barrage of strikes.

You never know…

Elias said, ‘You’ll be working alongside me. Not replacing me.’

Slater squared up to him, brash and unashamed. ‘And how does that make you feel, kid?’

Maeve darted in behind him and seized his wrist in an iron grip.

Slater turned.

Maeve said, ‘You don’t talk like that to him. You don’t talk like that to any of us. Is that the example you want to set before we’ve hired you?’

‘No,’ Slater said. ‘I’m sorry. He just snuck up on me, is all.’

His tone smug, Elias said, ‘Scared you? Sorry, friend.’

His wrist still in Maeve’s grasp, Slater said, ‘I’m a little jumpy. Quick to defend myself. Two tours will do that to you, make you check every corner. I’m sure you can relate, Elias.’

Elias said nothing, brushing off the thinly veiled insult to his lack of worldly experience.

Elias said, ‘Do you practice Wing Chun?’

Slater paused at the question’s strangeness. ‘Is that a requirement? Being a ninja?’

Elias pursed his lips, looking Slater up and down. ‘It would help. How will you defend us from threats?’

‘With my combat training,’ Slater said. ‘There are other martial arts.’

‘They’re