Chapter 8: The Frenzied Flame Altar

He caught the sharp, spicy fragrance of tropical plants overhead. Roche was sure he was beneath the greenhouse now. A stone wall stood in front of him. At first glance, there was nothing unusual about it, but when Jodie pressed the bricks one by one in a particular sequence, the wall slowly split apart, revealing a vast altar.

Yes. Altar was the only word Roche could think of to describe the place.

Three enormous concentric circles had been carved into the floor at the center of the vast round chamber. Each ring was decorated with patterns of flames that seemed to flow, and in the middle of the circles stood a massive brazier piled with smoldering coals. Its dull red glow pulsed like a breath. Suspended above it was a metal frame. Its outer rim echoed the circles below, while the center was a jumble of bizarre, twisting metal lines. Roche could tell there was no pattern to them—but that didn’t mean the frame had been carelessly made. It took effort to create chaos this thorough, and the lines avoided symmetry in every possible way.

A charred corpse lay on the frame, bound fast with barbed wire. The person must have been burned alive over the fire. The flesh beneath every strand of wire had split open in a grotesque bloom. Roche could easily imagine the agony of it.

Nunnally had been thrown to one side, bruised and swollen, curled into a tiny ball. Three familiar corpses lay beside her, all cut open. Roche spotted a shock of bright blond hair on one of them. Koin.

He jerked his head down, fighting the urge to vomit.

“Poor thing. So very, very poor.” Jodie stroked the back of his neck again and again. “The girl cried and screamed at first. Then she saw their bodies and started shouting that she’d kill me. How, exactly? She couldn’t, could she? I was going to offer her to the flame first, but He told me He wanted someone else very badly. So I had to put her death off and let her watch our sacred ritual.”

“Now that the ritual’s over, it’s this young lady’s turn.”

Jodie let go of him, took a pair of needle-nose pliers from the tool wall, and went to the brazier. He began loosening the barbed wire, ready to clear the corpse from the frame and make room for Nunnally.

With his hands bound, Roche could only wriggle and crawl toward her. The girl sat hunched over, her face blank. She looked as if she’d been frightened out of her wits. Who could blame her? She’d just watched a living person roast over the coals, and the same fate was waiting for her. Going mad in advance was better than being forced to stay lucid as they laid her on the frame.

One look at her told Roche she wouldn’t be any help. While Jodie was busy unfastening the corpse, he tried to get to his feet. He reached toward the tool wall as inconspicuously as he could. There were hammers and saws hanging there—even a utility knife.

Jodie wasn’t blind, of course. Roche’s furtive movements hadn’t escaped him. He turned around and spread his arms like a statue of a god, looking at Roche with tender affection.

“What are you doing? Didn’t I tell you I wasn’t going to kill you?”

“What a disappointment, Roche. I thought you were a good person. You helped my sister keep her secret, and you didn’t hold it against my mother when she mocked and insulted you out of sheer spite. But now you’re going to side with that brat?”

Roche honestly couldn’t remember Rachel ever badmouthing him. Maybe he wasn’t clever enough to pick up on the things she’d implied. But he knew exactly how to answer Jodie.

“Nunnally might be reckless and impulsive, but you’re just disgusting.” Roche spat on the floor.

Jodie took a step toward him. His god remained silent for once, offering no divine command. Jodie took that as approval of his actions.

“Maybe I was wrong. You’re the one who should’ve modeled for my painting, not Nunnally.”

“I don’t give a damn whether your name’s Linvanx or not.” He forced a twisted smile. “You’ll be a pile of charcoal once you’re burned.”

Roche didn’t turn to run or throw an insult back. He just stood there, staring at Jodie in surprise. Jodie was sure he hadn’t expected this. He didn’t care that Roche was a Linvanx. He’d meant to save this surprise for after he’d burned Nunnally alive: Surprise—you’re a sacrifice too. But now he had to bring the plan forward. It was all Roche’s fault. He’d provoked Jodie until he lost control and had to abandon his perfect plan.

I’m not going to kill him outright, Jodie thought carefully. I’ll break his arms and legs first, then put him on the frame. I can raise it a little so the flames don’t touch his body. The heat will make the fat beneath his skin catch fire on its own.

Then he stopped moving.

In that instant, Jodie realized Roche wasn’t looking at him at all. His gaze was fixed on something behind Jodie. And now Jodie heard it too: the crackling pop of wood splitting in a fire.

There was nothing behind him but the altar.

Nothing but the altar—and the corpse. The corpse they’d already freed from its wires, charred to coal, dead beyond any doubt.

A hand burned black as charcoal settled on Jodie’s shoulder.

The joints in his neck seemed to have rusted solid. It took all his effort to turn his head even a fraction. His eyes rolled as far to the side as they could, blood vessels bursting in the whites. And there, inches from him, was a face burned beyond recognition—and a pair of deep green eyes without eyelids.

Roche cut through his ropes with the little knife, hoisted Nunnally over his shoulder, and ran. Behind him, Jodie screamed. Someone had shoved him headfirst into the brazier. His legs stuck out, thrashing wildly like a chicken scalded alive in a pot before anyone had even drained its blood.

Roche had never hated the peculiar layout of Escher Manor more. He ran into dead ends several times before finally finding the stairs to the first floor. He shoved open a door—and found Lulu Escher seated at the top of the steps with a rifle in her arms.

“Jodie told me we were going to play a game. It’s called ‘Who’s the Bad Kid?’” Her face once again wore that innocent, languid smile. “Whoever goes upstairs before Jodie is a naughty, disobedient child. Naughty children have to be punished.”

She raised the rifle. Roche had no idea how her thin, twiglike arms managed to hold it up, but she kept it steady, its black muzzle trained right at him.

“Lulu.” Roche swallowed. “Do you really want to kill us?”

“Hm? No. We’re playing a game, aren’t we?” She answered with such guileless sincerity that she seemed not to understand the rifle could take someone’s life.

“Do you like this game?” Roche wasn’t sure whether she meant what she said or was teasing him, but he had no choice except to stall for time. Damn it, he couldn’t use any of his abilities. All he could do was hope Drake had dealt with Jodie and would hurry up and catch them.

“It’s all right.” Lulu pretended to aim, her finger tightening on the trigger and then easing off. “Though I like some other games better.”

Roche thought he’d found a glimmer of hope. “Like what?”

She giggled. “You’ve seen it before, haven’t you? At the Sanchez house. I was going to ask you to join me.”

Roche couldn’t imagine what sort of home the Escher children had grown up in to become so utterly devoid of common sense, morality, or even a basic sense of right and wrong. Lulu had no notion of shame. She obeyed her desires whenever they struck. Jodie casually took lives, all in service of the god he worshiped.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Lulu lifted her eyes to him, bewildered. “Did I do something wrong?”

Roche couldn’t find the words. He wanted to tell her that nothing about the way she acted had ever been normal.

“Forget it. Whatever.” She muttered like any ordinary girl. “I used to think pretty well of you, you know. You were the first man I’d ever met.”

“The first? Did you go to an all-girls’ school?”

Roche had thought the Escher children were merely kept under strict supervision, but that alone couldn’t explain how they’d grown up so completely ignorant of the world. Lulu asked cheerfully, “What’s a school?”

“Oh, right. I heard a lot of new words that day. Like society. What’s that?”

Roche began to understand. “How many times have you ever left the house?”

“Never. I’m not an adult yet, so I can’t go outside. Children aren’t allowed outside. It’s illegal. They’ll catch you and have you destroyed.”

Now that he thought about it, there hadn’t been a single sign of modern life in the house. No TV, computer, or phone—not even a radio. The bookshelves in the study were locked, and every curtain was drawn. The two Escher children knew nothing of the outside world. Whatever they believed must have been twisted and fed to them by their parents, which explained the way they’d turned out.

“The last time, Mom and Dad had to go to a lot of trouble to get me a permit, so I could go out. But it’s all right. Dad told me I’d become a woman soon. Then I’ll be allowed to go outside.”

“Sorry, but could I ask what you mean by ‘become a woman’?”

She made a rather vulgar gesture, her expression perfectly matter-of-fact.

Roche squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them again. The implications of Lulu’s words made him sick—not because of her, but because someone had taught her to think this way.

He smiled at her. It wasn’t the awkward, perfunctory smile he’d worn at the dinner party that night. This one was sincere, full of concern.

“You’ve seen the outside world once. What did you think?”

“I don’t know,” Lulu answered seriously. “I had a blindfold on in the car.”

What the hell is wrong with these parents?

Roche cursed them inwardly. The speech he’d been piecing together to persuade Lulu had just fallen to pieces, but he managed to keep smiling.

“Would you like to see what the world outside is really like?”

Lulu sat up straight, then glanced around in a panic. Only when she was sure no one else was there did she look back at Roche.

“H-How? I can’t leave the house. I don’t want them to catch me and destroy me!”

“You don’t have to leave.” Roche took out his phone. “You can see what’s outside in this little box. You can even talk with all sorts of different people and see how they live.”

He woke the phone, but there was no signal. So he opened a local picture folder and showed her a photo of an amusement park.

“This is somewhere kids and couples like to go. There are lots of fun rides: roller coasters, drop towers, carousels, pirate ships, and haunted houses.”

“I can’t see it clearly.” Lulu hugged the rifle to herself, and for the first time she looked afraid.

Of course she longed to see the outside. In that house, the only entertainment was listening to her father describe what he’d seen out there. If they behaved exceptionally well, he might choose a book for them to read. Lulu had never once been given that chance. One time, Jodie was given a fairy tale, and he read her one of the stories. Lulu was captivated. She desperately wanted to know how the ugly duckling’s long, miserable ordeal ended—but Jodie stopped right there. He looked down at her and said, “This is your fault for behaving so badly. If you listened to Father, you could have gotten this book too.”

Lulu tried with all her might to behave. But she truly couldn’t understand what she’d done wrong. Her mother was always sighing at her. She’d begged, too, telling them that if Jodie could do something, then so could she. But her father refused her again and again, then praised Jodie extravagantly whenever he came up from the basement.

Now the chance was right in front of her, in the glowing little box in Roche’s hand.

“You’re not lying to me, are you?”

“Of course not. If you don’t shoot me, I can even take you outside and show you all kinds of things you’ve never seen before.”

Lulu hesitated, then started down the stairs, one step at a time. The old wooden stairs creaked beneath her. Roche waited at the bottom, holding out the world she’d wanted to see for so long.

And so she walked out of the darkness into a place even darker.

At last, she reached Roche. He took her hand and gently set the phone in her palm. When he told her she could swipe left and right to see more pictures, she let go of the rifle and began flipping through them one by one: a strange wooden horse at an amusement park, streets lit by glowing pink and purple signs, tall, thick groves of trees, and the vast, impossibly broad ocean. How many things are there in the world outside? She’d only ever heard those words.

She was so absorbed that she didn’t even notice whether Roche was still beside her.

Then a hoarse voice snarled, “What the hell are you doing, you stupid woman?”

Huh? Lulu hurriedly looked up. Jodie’s body was horribly burned, and vivid green flames coiled around him like a venomous snake. She turned—and saw Roche standing at the top of the steps, their positions completely reversed. He had the rifle in his hands.

He pulled the trigger without hesitation. The bullet tore through Jodie’s skull. The resulting cavitation blew half his head away, spraying Lulu’s face with thick, ketchup-red blood.

The phone slipped from her hands and hit the ground. Its screen showed a beautiful farm, now smeared with a red-and-white mess of blood and brains.

Huh? What was happening? Jodie was dead?

Lulu stared in disbelief as she picked up the bits of brain and shattered skull scattered across the floor, futilely trying to put them back together. Dad would be angry. Mom would be angry too. Jodie was dead. They’d both be furious with her.

She kept repeating the same senseless motions until the next gunshot rang out.