New York: Allie's War, Early Years

"Is this a church?" I managed.

"In a manner of speaking." The man smiled.

"You're burning people outside a church?" I stared at him, unable to keep the disbelief out of my voice. "Didn't they stop doing that a few hundred years ago?"

When he only smiled, I struggled with my wrists again but only managed to slide a little further down the side of the log. I was getting dangerously low now. I wouldn't even have the log to protect me, or to buy me time when the fire reached the end of my spoke. But I couldn't figure out what else I could do, other than lie there and wait for a slower death. They hadn't tied me with rope, but with handcuffs, presumably the same as the seer's. Whatever material it was, it gave slightly under my fingers, but I couldn't make a dent in it.

"We are making an offering to the Three," the man explained. "You really should feel honored, Ms. Taylor. Your blood will shape the course of our races for generations to come...it will help bring us to the next stage of our evolution..."

I fought to make sense of this, couldn't. Finally, I motioned with my head, indicating towards the guy with the writing and burns all over his chest and arms.

"What's wrong with him?" I said.

"Ezekial?" The blond man smiled, glancing at the half-naked man. "There is nothing whatsoever wrong with him. He volunteered, Ms. Taylor."

But I was still looking around, trying to figure out where we were. Had they driven us somewhere outside the city? If so, why could I see so much light wherever I glimpsed pieces of the horizon? Looking back at that stone basin surrounded by fire, it hit me.

"The Cloisters," I said, disbelieving. "You're burning me at an art museum?"

My mind whirled around this, remembeirng the oddly out-of-place reconstructed medieval church, or pieces of a church, on a hill in Washington Heights. It housed the Met's medieval art collection; Rockefeller had it built and filled it with privately-owned works, then donated the whole thing as a cultural landmark. I'd only been there once, with Jaden a few years back, but I remembered it was in Fort Tyron Park, and as close to the boondocks as existed in Manhattan. Other than junkies, I had no idea if anyone would be in visual distance of the park.

Maybe someone would see the fire? Or the smoke at least?

Looking around, I realized we were half-surrounded by stone walls, the outer walls around the museum itself.

My eyes returned to the bonfire, seemingly on their own. Flames had already climbed halfway down the row of logs and broken crates forming the spoke leading to me.