Page 20 of Broken Empire
“Okay, this needs to be perfect because we only have one take,” the director boomed as he took his place behind the main camera a few minutes later. “Does everyone know their cues?”
Everyone in and around the clearing nodded and murmured that they were ready, apart from the tied-up people in front of the bull, who were still crying bitterly and begging for their lives.
“All right.” The director muttered something to an assistant next to him, and then he lifted his chin. “One, two, three… action!”
Someone pressed a button on a sound system near us, and loud, creepy music filled the air. It started out with slow drumming, followed by a series of gong sounds, and then it progressed to something that sounded like a religious chant from an ancient culture.
The robed Schöneberg members closed in on the naked victims in the middle of the clearing and moved in a slow circle around them as the chanting and music continued. Then a loud horn sounded, and a new ‘character’ stepped into the clearing. It was a tall man dressed in a black robe and a bronze mask with bull horns protruding from the top.
The horn sounded again, and he stepped over to the trembling victims, slowly withdrawing a knife from the front pocket of his robe. He knelt and cut one of the women free before pulling her to her feet and tearing her mask off.
“Please,” she whimpered as the bull-horned man started chanting something at the camera. “Please, don’t—”
Before she could finish, the man drew the dagger across her throat. Blood spurted from the gaping wound as she gurgled and fell to her knees.
I opened my mouth to scream, but Robert clamped a hand over my mouth. “No noise,” he whispered in my ear. “You’ll disturb the shoot, and there are no do-overs.”
He kept his hand firmly on my mouth to silence me as the sick, twisted film shoot progressed. The masked executioner continued his murderous frenzy with the dagger until all six victims were dead and the air in the clearing was thick with the coppery smell of blood.
The robed extras took the limp bodies and lay them all on the granite altar. Blood was still seeping out of some of them, staining the pale gray sides of the altar as it spilled over the edge.
After all the bodies were laid out next to each other, the masked executioner lifted the bloodstained dagger and shouted some words in a language I didn’t understand. He turned to kneel before the altar, hands still in the air, and bowed his head.
“Cut!” the director shouted a moment later. “Good job, everyone!”
Robert turned to me with a smile. “What did you think?”
“I… I feel sick,” I mumbled, one hand clutching at my abdomen.
“It’s okay. Nothing is going to happen to you tonight. You have at least five more days,” he said, patting my hand. He turned back to the director. “The music got a bit weird toward the end, but you can fix that in editing, right?”
The director nodded. “We always overlay new music during editing. The stuff we play during the shoot is there to get the actors in the mood.”
“Ah, that’s right.”
“Are you happy with it overall?” the director asked, cocking his head to the side.
“Yes. The prince will love it. Now we just have to figure out a way to top it next year,” Robert said. “I’ve been kicking around an idea about using an ancient Norse theme with carved runes and statues based on folklore. There are some amazing-looking ancient weapons that could be used, too.”
“Ah, yes, like the battleaxes and swords they used back in the day,” the director said, rubbing his chin. “We could definitely do something with that.”
As the two men chatted about committing horrific ax murders on tape like it was no big deal, I turned to look at the center of the clearing again. My veins felt as if they’d been filled with ice water as I stared at the pale corpses resting on the stone.
Soon, it would be me.
8
Killian
“Welcome to your initiation, Killian.”
Twenty smiling faces stared at me from around the enormous mahogany table in the room I’d been led into upon my arrival at 1 Belvedere Museum Lane. Another twenty or so people looked over at me with blank faces, including my father, who kept avoiding my gaze whenever I tried to meet his eyes. Leon Hildebrand was at the table too, but like my father, he studiously avoided eye contact with me.
After my failed blackmail attempt with Leon, I hadn’t uncovered any further information about the Schöneberg Group or Shay’s location. I was still certain they had her, though, because the organization obviously held a lot of terrible secrets. Why else would Leon seem scared of them despite being a member?
After days of agonizing, I’d realized that initiation into the Schöneberg Group was the only remaining option. If I could get through it and get accepted into the fold, I’d be able to find out a lot more about their illicit activities.
The man who’d spoken to me from the other end of the table smiled. He’d introduced himself as Murray Engler earlier. “This isn’t what you expected, is it?” he asked, casually waving a hand around the room.
