I follow behind him, going in theopposite direction I usually do in this hideaway. Further down the hallway, away from the kitchen and living area, until we reach a set of stairs leading down. Once again, the pitch black awaits, and even though I think I've gotten used to a lack of sunlight, nothing prepares you for that kind of darkness.
He goes down the stairs first, his steps measured and sure. When he reaches what must be the bottom, light reaches up to me from below, the motion sensors picking up movement. "Come on," he calls. You can't stay trapped in your room forever.
"Not forever," I mutter as I descend the stairs, the cold steel seeping through my socks. "I'll only live another like 70 years at the most."
Discomfort fills his face briefly before he shakes it off and rolls his eyes, "You're not going to be here for the rest of your life, Isla. Don't be so dramatic."
"How long, then?" I ask the question that's been my only solace on late nights when I wonder if ending it now would be better than spending the rest of my life locked away from the sun. He can't plan on keeping me here indefinitely; surely there's an expiration date on all this.
As he turns and walks down a hallway that mirrors the one above us, he shrugs, "That I don't know. Hopefully within the next year or two, the Sanctum will stop looking for you. They've given up on getting their hands on your friend and her demons after they proved to be far more trouble than they're worth."
"But not me?"
"Not you," he sighs. "They've picked through your apartment several times since you've been out of it, searching for anything, scrambling to figure out where you and all your shit went."
Chills skate down my spine at their insistence on finding me. Now that I know what kind of power my parents have behind them, their ability to track me down after every move, everyphone number change, every new email makes perfect sense. I thought they were just crazy, but the depth of their madness goes further than I could ever have imagined.
"And I'm important because of my blood," I repeat what little he told me when he scolded me for being reckless.
"Yes and your uterus."
A brief laugh forces its way out, and I smack him across the shoulder, "Gross."
He chuckles, looking down at me with a look that might almost be fondness but definitely seems closer to pity, making my skin crawl. He sadly smiles, "In hunter families, when they have a boy, they know to send them off to training very young. 18 or 19 usually. They'll do their duty, and be assigned a wife to pop out more babies while they do so." A sick feeling fills my stomach thinking of the poor wives forced to live this life, but he must know what I'm thinking because he continues, "The wives are treated very well. They have money, community, status, everything their hearts could desire, honestly. And all the while, they're brought into the fold slowly, indoctrinating them to their religious extremism while not sharing with them the exact nature of theevilthey face. So when they have more boys, they don't bat an eye at sending them off to repeat the cycle. It's very cut and dry, right?"
"Okay…?"
"But, when they have daughters, it's a bit different. Daughters carry the bloodline, but they don't train in the sense that boys do. They are taught from the very beginning to be wives and mothers. That's it for them."
I remember the teachings of my parents and our leaders as a child. I had an overwhelming sense that the most important, in fact, theonlyimportant thing I could do in this life was to have children and raise them in our ways. "Are they treated well, like those that come from the outside?"
I think of all my cousins that I love. Tia, whose birthday is coming up in April, who always wanted to be an astronaut. Mia, her baby sister, late August birthday, dreamed of singing on Broadway. I haven't been in touch with a single one of them since I left, but I think of them constantly, wondering if they worry about me the way I do them or if their thoughts of me have been poisoned by our family and their beliefs.
With a heavy shrug, he stops before a door and faces me, "Not as well. They're already so deep in their beliefs that they think it's normal. They eat, sleep, and breathe the life, so there's hardly a need to convince them with monetary things and comfort."
"So if I went home, that would be my life."
"No, Isla. You wouldn't be allowed such comfort," he hands me the coffee, opening the door. "Which is why you're here."
The lights flick on, a torture chamber coming to life right in front of my eyes.
"What the fuck is this?" I ask, taking a step inside. My eyes don't know where to focus; weapons of every kind sit on each available surface. Some modern, some decidedly not. "Is that a mace?"
I unceremoniously drop the coffee on the first table I can find, all thoughts empty in my head except getting my hands on all the sick weaponry around me. Half of them are guns of all shapes and sizes, a few swords, beautiful daggers, but what I'm really interested in are all the things I don't recognize.
Eamon almost completely forgotten, I gently pick up the mace. The weight takes me by surprise, but it's so gorgeous that I can't help but hold it and run my fingers along the spiked ball.
"I knew you'd like this," he chuckles, coming up behind me.
"The mace?" I ask, still mesmerized by it.
"All of it," humor fills his voice. "Whether you like it or not, you are a hunter. There are advantages to it. You'll have morenatural strength than most mortals, better instincts and reaction time. You can run faster, fight harder."
"That sounds fantastic," I breathe, eyes wandering to the plethora of man-killing toys around the room.
From the corner of my eye, I see Eamon nod, "If the hunters were smart, they'd take advantage of the women in their midst. But fortunately for me, they're not."
"But you're going to teach me?" The first glimmer of hope burns in my chest. Something to focus on outside of my misery sounds like heaven right now.
