Messiahs by Matt Rogers (bookstand for reading txt) 📕

of her back, and now she fired once and blew the newcomer’s brains out the back of his head.

He slumped in a widening pool of his own blood and the rifle spilled from his hands.

The door hung wide open behind him.

Alexis turned to look at Dane, frozen in the window.

He couldn’t move, paralysed by how fast everything had unravelled.

She said, ‘What were you saying?’

He turned and ran.

King couldn’t believe it. If Dane had simply walked away from them, left them there to rot, they wouldn’t have been able to get out. They would have died of thirst before they got through the steel door or the bulletproof glass. But hubris and sheer human idiocy and impatience had led to the man wanting to make a statement. If he sent one of the disciples in to pump them full of lead, their bodies could be strung up on poles in the centre of the commune for all to see. A grotesque morale boost for Mother Libertas, showing the disciples what happens to their enemies.

Impatience and a need for dramatics lead to the deaths of many men.

Quiet professionals don’t take those risks.

Slater said, ‘“Gun. Singular.” Nice touch. Like we’d ever forget to take a dropped weapon.’

King scooped up the carbine, checked it was loaded with a full mag and ready to fire, and nodded to the other three.

Slater fetched the Beretta that King had kicked away, then they left the room. They swept the whole building, but Dane had already abandoned it.

Slater said, ‘I know where he’s going.’

Alexis said, ‘You do?’

He nodded. ‘What will you do?’

‘I’ll go to Addison,’ Alexis said. ‘She needs someone there for her when the cult is destroyed.’

Slater nodded.

He turned to King and Violetta. ‘What will you do?’

King said, ‘Destroy the cult.’

102

The log cabin wasn’t as terrifying without Bodhi crippling his emotions.

Slater strode across the prairie, keeping a tight grip on the Beretta. He expected resistance, but not a lot. The world Dane had so carefully built out here was coming down on his head.

There was no cohort of disciples standing guard around the cabin. No one at all. Just the wind and the dawn light and the stillness.

But the lights were on inside.

They’d been switched off last night.

Someone had repopulated the cabin.

Slater grappled with something he could only liken to post-traumatic memories. Laying eyes on the cabin sent a bolt of fear through him, making his stomach drop. His brain connected it with the mind-boggling Bodhi trip, and pleaded, No.

Slater had spent a lifetime mastering his fears.

He wasn’t about to change that.

He advanced.

As soon as he got within fifty feet of the cabin, the small door opened and Dane stepped out. His eyes were hollow and sunken, his forehead was lined with stress marks, and his teeth were clenched.

He held a switchblade knife to his own carotid artery.

Slater stopped in his tracks. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’ll end it,’ Dane said. ‘Right here. Then you’ll never get what’s in my head.’

Slater stood motionless, aiming the Beretta at the dry prairie ground.

He didn’t raise it.

He simply raised an eyebrow.

It forced Dane to elaborate, to fill the silence. He was the one pleading, after all.

He said, ‘Wouldn’t that drive you mad? All this madness I’ve created, all these people I’ve killed, all this damage I’ve done to my followers. I would never repent for it. I’d just be dead. By my own hand, too. There’s a satisfaction in that. You want me alive. You want to hurt me for what I’ve done. I can see it on your face.’

Slater said nothing.

Dane pressed the blade tighter into his throat. ‘So what’s it going to be?’

‘You’re going to give this a moment’s thought,’ Slater said. ‘And you’re going to realise how stupid you are.’

Dane went tight-lipped.

Wind whistled across the grasslands.

Slater said, ‘Go on. Do it. I won’t stop you.’

Dane said, ‘We can negotiate. There are some things I want.’

‘You’re not going to get them. Go ahead and kill yourself. See if I care.’

Checkmate.

Dane didn’t take the knife away, didn’t admit defeat, but he didn’t break the skin either.

He stayed frozen.

Slater said, ‘It’s just you out here. No one else doing your bidding. And you don’t have a damn clue what to do.’

Dane said, ‘There are things I know. About the movement outside of this commune. You think this is it? This is a training ground for new recruits. You have no idea who we’ve bribed, who we’ve hooked on Bodhi. I can name names that would blow your mind. If I die, you’ll never get them. This thing will spiral out of control and there won’t be a thing you can do about it.’

Slater let him talk, let him get it out of his system.

He waited a long time to respond.

Then he said, ‘You’re a master manipulator, Dane. You wouldn’t tell me. You’d send me on a wild goose chase and you’d do everything in your power to save yourself. That’s who you are.’

Dane shook his head, but he was rattled by the tension, and he couldn’t lie as effortlessly as usual.

Slater said, ‘And there’s one other thing.’

‘What’s that?’

‘No matter what I tell you to do, or what you think is right, you’re not going to cut your own throat. Because that takes incredible strength of character and your spine is weaker than glass.’

Dane’s face paled.

Slater said, ‘For example…’

He put the Beretta down and walked straight at Dane.

Who took the knife away from his neck and made a wild lunge at Slater.

Slater caught his wrist, bent it until it was inches away from snapping, and ripped the switchblade out of his hand by the hilt. Then he bent down and plunged the knife into Dane’s thigh and yanked downwards, carving a jagged line and severing the main artery in his leg.

Dane’s face went white as snow and he collapsed back against the side of the log cabin.

Arterial blood poured from his leg.

He was dead. He just didn’t know it yet.

103

Alexis entered the empty church with her gun up and cleared