United

Alone

At the top of the stairs was a flat brick wall. Dead ends of any kind had always made me claustrophobic, and this one was even worse because of the knife poised at my throat. I dared a glance back at the steep flight we’d climbed. From here, it looked like a very long and painful fall.

Belinda was speaking in tongues, muttering under her breath as she skillfully eased open another hidden door. She shoved me into a tiny chapel and locked the door behind us. It was freezing inside and smelled overwhelmingly of chalky dust. I struggled to breathe, to swallow the bilious saliva in my mouth.

Stella could not be dead. That whole thing could not just have happened. Belinda was the devil himself. Colleen warned me. She had told me about what Belinda could be capable to do. Colleen had her suspicious.

Harry had said to trust Belinda. But he didn't know the things I had known about her. I tried to tell him but... He’d said to go with her until he could come for me...

Belinda paid no attention to me, merely made her way around the room, lighting candle after candle, genuflecting at each one, and continuing to chant in a language I didn’t know. The twinkling votives revealed that the chapel was clean and well maintained, which meant it must not have been too long since someone else had been up there. But how Belinda would have a key to the hidden door? Who else would even know this place existed?

The red tile ceiling was sloping and uneven. Broad, faded tapestries cloaked the walls, depicting images of creepy halfman, halffish creatures battling on a roiling sea. There was a small white altar up at the front, and a few rows of simple wooden pews ranked along the gray stone floor.

I looked around frantically for an exit, but there were no other doors and no windows. My legs were shaking with fury and fear. I was in agony over Stella, betrayed and lying alone at the foot of the stairs.

“Why are you doing this?” I asked, backing up against the arched chapel doors. “Harry trusted you.”

“This is all your own fault, darling,” Belinda said, roughly twisting my arm. Then the dagger was back at my neck and I was being marched up the chapel’s aisle. “Trust is a careless pursuit at best. At worst, it’s a good way to get yourself killed.”

Belinda pushed me toward the altar. “Now be a dear and lie down, would you?”

Because the knife was still too close to my throat, I did as I was told. I felt a spot of coolness on my neck and reached up to touch it. When I took my fingers away, the tips were red with dots of blood where the knife had pricked me. Belinda slapped my hand down.

“You think that’s bad, you should see what you’re missing outside,” she said, making me shudder. "You don't know how much I want to be out there but I have to take care of a few loose ends first. For once and for all."

Harry was outside. Didn't she care about him? I thought she cared about him too.

The altar was a square white platform, a single slab of stone no bigger than myself. I felt cold and desperately exposed atop it, imagining the pews filled up with shadowy churchgoers waiting for my torture to take place.

Looking straight up, I saw that there was a window in this cavernous chapel, a large stained glass rosette like a skylight in the ceiling. It had a complicated geometric floral pattern, with red and purple roses against a navy-blue background. It would have been a whole lot prettier to me if it had offered a view of the outside.

“Let’s see, where did I ... ah yes!” Belinda reached below the altar and returned with a thick length of rope. “Don’t wiggle, now,” she said, waving the knife in my direction. Then she set about securing me to four holes drilled into the altar’s surface. First each ankle, then each wrist. I tried not to writhe as I was tied down like some sort of sacrifice. “Perfect,” She said, giving me intricate knots a firm tug.