Kissing the tip of her nose, I stand firm. “No, I’m not going to cut you to shreds as you chase a release that won’t come. Get rid of the fear, the memories that trap you inside your body.” I slap her ass as I saunter over to the seating area. “Then we’ll fuck.”
Delilah lights her fans as I turn the music system on, and she tilts her head back, just listening for a moment before she moves. Seeing her perform under the lights in full costume is incredible, but seeing her here, raw and raging, it’s something else.
Her hips sway gently as she twirls the fans, spinning them around her forefinger and her middle finger, creating swirls in the air around her body. She inhales as the tempo picks up, and that’s when she begins to turn her whole body, going around and around on the spot. She’s dancing with abandon by the time the bass drops, doing kicks and little steps as she throws the fans into the air. I watch, mesmerized by the girl on fire in front of me. Delilah was under my skin, there was no doubting that.
I watch her dance for almost thirty minutes, and when she drops the fans into the sand bucket, she’s covered in a sheen of sweat, her chest heaving.
“Better?”
She nods as she wraps her arms around my neck and grabs the back of my neck, pulling me into a kiss. I capture her lip ring between my teeth and tug sharply, making her arch into me as she makes a satisfied groan.
“EZRA!” Jerry shouts as he runs into the tent, out of breath and panicked. “Charlotte is gone.”
“Where the fuck is Charlotte?” I roar, at the same time Delilah steps back, brows furrowed as she asks, “Who the fuck is Charlotte?”
I don’t have time to pacify her, I need to find Charlotte before I’m following a trail of bodies. Storming over to my trailer, Delilah and Jerry are both on my heels as Jerry explains that one of the trucks is gone and no one has seen Lottie since before the incident with the protesters earlier. Shit.
The door to my trailer is wide open as I burst in and call her name just in case she’s hiding somewhere. Nothing. I call Darryn, but it goes straight to voicemail. Fuck. Same when I try Maia. Where the fuck is everyone?
“Who’s Lottie?” Delilah asks, looking around my trailer nervously, obviously afraid that she was about to discover that she was a homewrecker.
“She’s my sister,” I say, as I try Darryn’s number again.
Delilah’s shoulders drop with relief, and her face relaxes. “Why haven’t I met her yet?”
“Charlotte is sick,” Jerry says nervously from the doorway.
“Say it like it is, Jerry,” I scoff. “Lottie is crazy. She was abused and tortured and something inside her snapped. Now, she’s dangerous.”
Delilah opens the door to Lottie’s room and peers inside. “So, why do you keep her here if she’s dangerous?”
I push past her and slide into the tiny room, opening the closets in case there’s a clue as to where she could have gone. Giving her a look, I use the same argument Alina used on me with Delilah. “The Carnaval doesn’t turn freaks away. And without her, there would be no Carnaval.”
Delilah stoops down and begins to look in the bedside drawers and under the bed. A few moments later, she pulls out her black backpack and tosses it on the bed.
“Ezra...that’s mine.” Her face has paled as something occurs to her. “It was Charlotte in my room last night? I thought...I thought it was you.”
Charlotte was in her trailer last night? Why? How had she snuck out without me knowing? “What was in it?”
Delilah rifles through it quickly before tipping it out onto the bed. Various things fall out—a hairbrush, a lipstick, a pair of panties, a tampon, and some paperwork. “My purse is the only thing missing, and all that’s in that is a hundred dollars, maybe, and my driver’s licence.”
She opens the front zip and slides her hand in, before bringing it back out empty. Eyes wide, she looks at me, voice barely a whisper as she says, “My knife is gone too.”
Jerry and I look at each other as he hisses, “Shit.”
Rubbing her forehead, Delilah frowns. “You don’t suppose that she’d go to my house, do you?”
Why would she go to Delilah’s house? What was it about the protesters that had set her off? Why had she been in Delilah’s trailer? The possibility that she may have had something to do with Delilah’s tent fire dawns on me too, but I push that away because all that matters right now is stopping her before she wreaks havoc.
“I think that’s exactly what she’s done,” I sigh, lighting up a cigarette. Keeping my hands occupied as the pieces begin to slot together in my mind.
“Why?” Delilah asks as Jerry scowls before leaving. I know he’s going to get one of the vans ready and round up an extra pair of hands to help us. If Charlotte had planned this, then she was even more deadly than usual.
I grab Delilah, and we practically jog toward the parking lot, her little legs struggling to keep up with my long strides. My voice is gravelly as I try to explain, “Charlotte likes to kill bad men. And your father is a very bad man.”
The drive to Delilah’s house takes us just under an hour, which is tortuous as we all sit in silence, trying to prepare for what we’re about to find. Jerry is in the van with Delilah and me, while Burt and another rigger, named Mark, are in a truck, following closely behind.
Delilah’s family lived in a cul-de-sac out in the suburbs, but the other houses were occupied by church members, she tells us as we get near. That could be an issue if Lottie had already caused a scene, because while I would fight the world for her, I’m not sure I could take on an entire cult.
The street is eerily quiet as we pull into it, none of the houses have lights on, and there is only the sound of insects in warm night air.
We clamber out of the truck, Jerry grabs his shovel, while I tuck a knife into my waistband and grab a gun from the glove compartment. This wasn’t our first rodeo, and we’d learned a long time ago to be prepared.
“Where’s your church?” I ask Delilah as I hand her a blade too.
“It’s in a pasture behind the houses,” Delilah replies, turning the knife over in her small hands. “It is private land owned by one of the elders.”
She nods to a lane, and grabbing some torches from the truck, we creep along the dirt track. The church windows glow lightly, indicating that they’re using candles rather than lights tonight, which suits us fine as we inch closer, using the shadows to hide us.
Jerry reaches the small building first and peers inside, before motioning for us to follow. “Ezra,” he says, straightening. “You need to see this.”
I move next to him and look inside. I was expecting to find twenty or so people deep in prayer, surrounded by candles and crosses as they spewed their twisted gospel. Instead, I see bodies. And blood. It’s everywhere.
My mind flits back to Delilah, but before I can stop her from seeing the gore, she’s rushed into the church and stands amongst the bodies of the people she grew up with. There are glistening pools of crimson liquid everywhere and blood spatters up the walls that look like a fucking Jackson Pollock painting.
I count six bodies, but Lottie isn’t amongst them. Delilah says nothing, her eyes dead as she steps over the corpses and signals for us to follow into a backroom lined with bookcases. Pulling a red spine book off a shelf to her left, she doesn’t look surprised when a secret door swings open. Grabbing Delilah, I shove her behind me as we go down the steps. There are no sounds below us, but that doesn’t mean anything as we keep going deeper. Finally, the steps come to an end, and we’re faced with a large stone room, the walls have metal hooks and rings, and as I reach out and touch the cold iron, I realize it’s to restrain those who are being punished. This is a room for torture. On the wall to our right, there are a collection of restraints, some rope, some leather, and a few chains. Just above that, there are a range of whips, displayed neatly under a gold, garish cross. Talk about shit decor.
My foot lands in something wet and sticky, and shining my torch at the floor
reveals more blood and three more bodies. I shuffle further into the room, Delilah’s hand in mine as we visit the place of her nightmares.
At the front of the room, there are two steps leading up to an altar of a weeping angel with a bible resting on her wings. And sitting at the base, by the angel’s feet, is my sister, covered in blood. Her face is smeared with bloody fingerprints and lines, it’s in her hair, matting her dark locks, and her clothes are saturated with the ruby red fluid. There’s no doubt in my mind who was at the center of the bloodshed, she was basking in it.
She doesn’t look at us, instead she sits staring straight ahead, twirling Delilah’s knife between her fingers, the gemstones catching in the torchlight. Jerry curses behind me, and I don’t blame him, seeing Charlotte like this was terrifying. She wasn’t Lottie, she was a monster. And I loved her all the same.
Delilah drops my hand and squeezes past me, ignoring my attempt to stop her. She shines her light on Charlotte, before she breathes, “I... I know you.”
The words echo around the chamber, and Charlotte’s eyes snap to Delilah. There’s a strange edge to her voice, she sounds calm but detached, and I’ve never seen her like this.
“You didn’t help me.” It’s not an accusation as such, more like an acknowledgment, and my chest hurts at the thought of both of them being trapped down here in the dark and the cold, while they were broken. It also confirms my suspicion that Lottie knew Delilah, she’d been the one to set the fire that night. Shifting closer, I try not to startle Lottie because in the dark it’s difficult to read her mood, and I don’t want her to snap and kill Delilah.
Delilah falls to her knees. “I couldn’t.”
The helplessness in her voice is crushing, the guilt suffocating, and I know that if we don’t leave this place soon, we’ll all be caught up in the horror that lingers in the cracks of every stone and every tile of this fucking hell.
Charlotte stands and moves slowly toward Delilah, her steps deliberate and menacing. She reminds me of a jaguar, waiting to pounce before she leans down and hisses, “He’s mine.”
I step forward, but Lottie lifts her hand and stops me. I wasn’t sure she had even registered my presence until that moment. Startled, I stay where I am and watch as Delilah lifts her head in confusion. “Who? Ezra?”
Shaking her head, Lottie smiles, the white of her teeth a stark contrast to the scarlet-stained skin. “Trevor. His blood is mine.”
Eighteen
Delilah
Her words hit me like a ton of bricks, and a memory floods back, knocking the air out of my lungs as I look at the woman whose life Trevor ruined. “His initiation into the church…”
My words hang in the air, heavy and full of darkness as the others register what it means. Charlotte was Trevor’s first.
She squats down, so that we’re eye level with each other, and I ignore the warm blood soaking into my clothes. Her voice quakes as she relives the memories. “I was his gift. His chance to prove that he could cleanse a filthy soul.”
Ezra stiffens behind me, and I know he’s struggling to contain himself, but this moment isn’t about him. It’s not even about me. It’s about Lottie.
I can’t help the tears that stream down my cheeks, hot and laden with pain. “I am so sorry...so...fucking...sorry.”
She places her hands on my shoulders and forces me to turn around, sliding my hands through the sticky wet floor as I do. Using the knife, she cuts open my shirt, uncovering my sins. “You didn’t escape either.”
I’m on my hands and knees now, hands submerged in a pool of blood, my flesh exposed and my torment laid bare. Sobbing, I manage to choke out, “No.”
Crawling in front of me, she takes my chin in one of her hands. “We are free bodies,” she murmurs as she taps the knife against my temple. “But we are not free up here while they still breathe.”
Our eyes are locked, and she looks so much like Ezra that it hurts all the more to stare at her face and know that I could have saved her. I could have tried harder.
She pulls me in close, arms wrapping around me as the knife clangs to the floor. I can feel the beat of her heart between us as her words sink into my skin. “Revenge is the only way.”
“Ezra, we need to leave before the cops come,” Jerry whispers, breaking the bubble that Lottie and I have been sucked into.
Looking at her brother, Lottie says nothing but gives him a small smile. Outstretching his hand, he helps her to her feet and hands her over to Jerry before grabbing my elbow and yanking me up.
Burt and Mark are upstairs in the church, piling up the bodies when we find them again. They watch Lottie nervously, but a nod from Ezra seems to reassure them, and they carry on with their task. I spot several cans of gas near the door, and I know that by the time we get back to the Carnaval, this place will be nothing more than ashes, lost in the breeze.
As we get closer to Santa Monica, Ezra begins to relax, and Lottie falls asleep, her head resting on my shoulder as she snores softly.
“What do you want to do about your father and Trevor?” he asks, looking between Lottie and I as we’re sitting in the back seat, holding hands. We weren’t the only ones suffering, Ezra had cared for Lottie when she had shattered because of my father and his church. He had borne the brunt of the aftermath. And that made me hate my father even more.
I warned them, I told them to leave, and they hadn’t, otherwise, their bodies would’ve been in the church with the others. I knew my father wouldn’t give up easily. And seeing Lottie had reminded me why I came to the Carnaval to begin with. I wanted to fix myself so that I could stop him. I needed to be whole in order to be heartless. It may not make sense to anyone else, but it didn’t need to. He broke me over the years. He tore me apart in every way possible, and yet, I still felt like I had to obey his rules. I still sought his approval. I still accepted his punishments. If I had gotten my revenge before it was time, I would have felt guilt and regret. I might not have been able to do it. I wanted to be sure. I needed to be heartless when I had retribution in order to carry on with my life afterwards. He wouldn't ruin everything. I wouldn’t let him.
Stroking Lottie’s hair away from her face, I say softly, “I think I need to make a phone call.”
I don’t bother to clean up once we get back to the Carnaval, there’s no point. I’d called my father when we were in the van and told him I was trying to escape the Carnaval, that Ezra had been holding me against my will and asked him to come with Trevor to help me sneak away.
He was an idiot, and believing he still had power over me, he agreed. My father was always the same, so full of pride and sure that I would eventually bend to him. My mother’s body hadn’t been at the church, but I didn't care whether she was alive or not. In my eyes, she’d let him hurt me, she was as guilty as he was. She’d let him break my spirit and try to snuff out the flame that burned inside me. The irony is that he’d created the very thing he preached against: I was a freak who craved the darkness.
Ezra takes my hand in his and leads me into the Big Top, where some of the others are waiting on the sidelines. My devil stick and a can of gas are waiting under the spotlight for me as the music starts, and I prepare to give the performance of my life.
Only I am visible in the tent, under the spotlight, dancing with my flaming baton like nothing else exists. I slide down into the splits, before rolling in the sawdust and moving back onto my knees. From there I stand again, doing a series of leg kicks, spinning the baton before throwing it into the air and catching it in time with the tempo. And that’s how my father and Trevor find me, twirling and bending to the music as I let it consume me.
“Delilah!” my father hisses, rushing toward me. “Let’s go!”
I don’t stop, throwing my baton up again, doing a forward-roll, and standing to catch it with one hand as I slide down into another split.
Trevor is quicker, reaching me before my father, but a movement behind me makes him pause. They’re so desperate to reach me, to dra
g me back, that they never notice the others. The freaks waiting in the darkness for them. Lottie is the first out, dancing out into the light as if this was a show for a full audience. The others cheer and scream from the edge of the ring, and she does a series of cartwheels before landing them perfectly, right in front of Trevor. The others move into the edge, that space between the light and the dark, their figures visible and terrifyingly sinister as they continue to cheer for our little show.
Trevor’s face will forever be burned into my brain, as his mouth drops open, and he takes in the horrifying mess that stands before him, arms out proudly, knife in her hand, and she’s still coated in blood. There’s a second wave of panic when he realizes who she is, and he quickly scrambles backwards, but it’s no use because Jerry is waiting behind him. With Jerry trapping him in place, Trevor lets out a shout for help, but the noise dies inside the tent as Lottie grabs his tongue and cuts it out. The crowd goes wild, loving the sight of fresh blood. Revenge is sweet, and no one fucks with the Carnaval.
“Come, it’s time for your punishment…” Lottie sings as Jerry and Burt drag Trevor from the ring, blood pouring from his mouth as he wails. They move out to the back of the tent where Lottie has got some very special treats in store, and as they vanish into the shadows, I hope it brings her the closure she needs.
“Delilah. We need to leave. Now,” my father shouts, seeing Ezra emerge from the darkness, dragging a chair behind him.
His blue eyes are bulging out of his head as I stand, tilting my head, twirling my devil stick. “And go where?”
“Home, of course,” he barks, hesitant to move any closer to me. “The church loves you.”
Ezra stops in the middle of the ring and places the chair down under the main spotlight. Moving to stand behind it, he leans on the back, and with a wicked smirk, he taunts my father. “The church is gone. We burned it to the ground.”
Master Page 10
