I don’t remember sitting or even falling. It’s bright daylight. Morning, maybe, but it’s hard to know what time it is when the sun is always too bright, it hurts my eyes.
Was I so tired that I just dropped?
The soles of my feet throb, and I consider staying right where I am. Not that there’s even anywhere to go.
The sky is vast and blue, stretching out forever in all directions. So does this red dust, so hot I swear it was burning my feet as I walked.
My gaze snags on a small black something circling overhead.
I narrow my eyes at it, struggling to identify it as with every lazy circle, it closes the distance between us.
Had that bird screamed, waking me?
Wasn’t there a bird that ate dead bodies? Why am I certain that I know what that bird is?
I moved schools so many times that I rarely made it through a year before Mom was tossing our clothes into bags, declaring that things with her boyfriend hadn’t worked out, and it was time to move on somewhere else. Somewhere fresher and more exciting than wherever we were at the time.
I learned to crave routine and stability, knowing that when I found them, they would never last as long as I wanted.
For the first couple of days at the compound, I was so damn happy to have those things that maybe it’s what blinded me to the fact that Mom had brought us to a cult.
Vulture.
That’s the bird circling me.
My stomach twists, and I struggle to remember everything I learned in school about the carcass-eating bird—not much. I keep imagining this bird with the red head and sharp beady eyes, tearing into the thin skin on my belly to get to my tasty organs.
I lurch to my feet, wincing as my feet throb. There’s nowhere to walk to, but if I stay still for too long, that vulture will think I’m dead and try to eat me.
So I walk.
I walk for hours. Until I go cross-eyed from the red dirt, increasingly annoyed by the green clumps of weeds that trip me.
The stink of my sweat bleeds through the knee-length sleeveless dress Jeremiah’s acolytes dressed me in, a ripe stench growing stronger with each passing minute. The sun burns the top of my shaved head, and I have no idea if I’m even going in the right direction or wandering deeper into the desert.
But if I stop, I might die.
So, I keep walking.
Chapter 5
Makhi
“Get away from my house. You think I haven’t heard all about you?Get.”
The dark-haired man in his forties, who opened the door five seconds ago, would have immediately slammed it in our faces if I hadn’t stuck my foot in the way to wedge it open.
After giving Nash a pointed look, since this is going exactly as I expected, I decide to take the lead. “Look. Nance, our housekeeper, said you have your mom visiting from New Mexico. We just need to speak to her for five minutes.”
“So you can put your filthy hands on—” He grunts and rocks to the side.
Alice, a gray-haired woman who looks to be in her sixties, steps into his place. She bears too strong a resemblance to the man she nudges aside for them to be unrelated.
She eyes us suspiciously, her gaze lingering on my bruised face. “You wanted to speak to me?”
The man looms up behind her, bristling with rage as if we’re the devil here to drag his grandma to hell. “You don’t know what they’re capable of. Let me?—”
She rolls her eyes at him. “Didn’t I bring you into this world and keep you safe and alive?”
