Arlen led Vicky to it and stepped back. Romero kept Marco as far back as the twine would allow. “Free ride’s over, motherfucker,” he announced, unceremoniously dropping Marco on the floor.
He was covered in sweat by this point, his chest heaving as if it pained him to breathe.
“I think I know where this is going,” Cobra crooned.
Laughing, I stepped back. Romero wrapped his arm around my shoulder and tucked me into his side.
“Do the honors.” He waved to Vicky, giving Cobra the green light.
Having the foresight to know what was about to happen, Marco writhed on the floor like a wounded animal.
Cobra lifted Vicky over the banister like she weighed nothing and sent her airborne. The fact that she never saw it coming made it ten times more enjoyable.
The real entertainment and payoff was watching Marco’s dick go from an ugly pink to a dark purple as the twine angrily dug into it, cutting off all the blood flow and circulation.
He couldn’t walk and was in so much pain he just lay there and screamed in agony, being dragged across the hardwood floor. Just as he reached the banister that would have stopped him from following his wife to the lower level, the twine broke apart.
I stepped right over him and peered down to see Vicky lying motionless at an odd angle. Her neck was bleeding and her right leg was clearly broken. The bone had shifted to an obtuse angle, almost pushing clean through her flesh.
“Well, alrighty then.” Cobra nodded.
“That was like, cathartic, in a really weird fucked up way,” Arlen agreed.
“What do we do with him?” Romero asked, resting his boot on Marco’s side.
I looked down at the man and studied him, committing this moment to memory. I imagined it wasn’t quite so fun with the tables turned.
When you went from being the strong to the weak, helpless, and completely at someone else’s mercy, and you could do nothing to make the pain and degradation stop, death would be a welcome relief.
He and his wife had made me feel like that many times.
This—what I was doing to him—was an act of kindness compared to what I had planned out in my head. But my options were limited in this cabin so I had to do the best with what I had.
Did it change my past and erase years of being an abused fuck toy? No. Did it make me feel better and thirst to hurt someone more, do something crueler? Hell yes.
I hated these assholes.
I wanted them dead.
“Let’s go check on your hole” Romero’s voice filtered into my head, bringing me back to the moment. Our bloodied fingers intertwined and we walked away together.
Cobra and Arlen followed, dragging Marco behind them.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The grave was shallow perfection.
Cobra dumped Marco right into it and managed to squeeze Vicky in slightly on top of him.
Being buried alive with your dead wife had to be a nightmare. Fortunately, I was the dream-maker and not the victim.
“How did you do this so fast?” I asked Bryce, toeing the soft dirt.
“It was already started. We haven’t found whatever it was they wanted buried.”
I hummed and stared down into the hole. It was caddy-cornered from the cabin with a clear view of the upper master-bedroom.
I wondered if that was planned.
“He looks damn pitiful,” Arlen sighed.
She was right, he did. He was naked from the waist down, his dick was engorged, he had crusted blood on his nose, and the gaping wounds on the back of his feet rested squarely in the dirt.
“Let’s bury him and get our asses to church,” Grimm said.
As he and Bryce got busy filling the grave with dirt, Cobra went to drag the delegates to where we were.
“You need to relax. You know, the more you panic, the quicker you’ll use up all your air,” Romero explained as if he were speaking to a child. He tossed a cellular I hadn’t seen before down on Marco’s chest and grinned. “Tell David I said hello.”
I shook my head and smiled. He knew full well that call was going to go unanswered. Marco still had a gag in his mouth and his arms were left bound. He turned his head left and right, yelling up at us, trying to shift from beneath his Vicky’s body.
“You know how paranoid he’s going to get?” I laughed just thinking about the look on David’s face when he couldn’t get hold of Marco.
“I know.” Romero smirked, crouching down so he could look Marco in the eyes.“In just a few minutes, all your open orifices are going to be filled with dirt. It’s going to crush your chest and your ribs. You won’t be able to see, and you won’t be able to breathe. You won’t even be able to move. You’re going to suffocate.” He titled his head and grinned. “Slowly.”
I rested my cheek on his shoulder and watched each mound of dirt bury Marco a little more. It was a small victory.
Whatever was lurking beneath my surface was far from satisfied. She didn’t want slow, methodical torture. She hungered for fast, spur of the moment brutality. And I was going to find a way to give it to her.
“How the hell are we going to get in there?” I studied Jericho, popping another tortilla chip in my mouth from the bag I’d taken from Marco’s.
“I can’t believe this place still exists,” Grimm commented, rubbing his beard.
Jericho was supposed to have been torn down before I’d ever been born. The church was more like a fortress. It looked ancient.
There were heavy padlocked chains in the shape of an X across the large double doors, and the windows were barred.
“I think they learned their lesson about windows,” I mused, thinking back on how easy the acolytes had broken out the windows from the last church we showed up at.
Speaking of acolytes, I could see a few of the ones Romero had called on the other side of the property, which meant somewhere behind us were more.
“Where do they go when they’re not with you?” Arlen asked him.
“I have the entire Badlands to keep track of. Who do you think helps shit stay in running order? Contrary to what you believe, I usually don’t run around after fucking bishops or spend my every waking moment thinking of David. I do have an actual life. All three of us do.”
“Not to mention this small thing called war that’s going on. Who do you think’s been dropping delegates and outliers left and right as we speak?” Cobra added when no one said anything.
“So they’re like your employees.”
“Close, but no,” Grimm cut in, stealing a handful of chips from my bag.
Cobra sighed and waved his hand at Romero. “The devil is king here. The Badlands is his kingdom. The crazy as fuck blonde beside him is his queen, and all the insane fuckers wearing masks? They’re hell’s army.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. And you’re the greatest, his best friend, and simply just fuckin amazing, while Grimm’s the dark and broody as hell Reaper, collector of souls,” she deadpanned.
“I don’t fucking brood,” Grimm scoffed at the same time Cobra said, “You think I’m amazing?”
He grinned, placing a hand over his heart. I half-listened to their conversation, eyeing Jericho for another entrance.
“The back of the church has a crawlspace that leads to the wine cellar right by the rear doors,” Bryce said out of the blue.
I’d almost forgotten he was with us. The man didn’t go out of his way to say anything to anyone.
“He’s right, there is,” Romero confirmed, running a hand over his chin. He didn’t question how Bryce could possibly know that, so I assumed there was another untold story there.
“And if this door is chained up, the rear isn’t,” I concluded, staring in that direction with a frown. This place was old as dirt; I could only begin to imagine what underneath it looked like. Dhal chose that moment to open her fucking mouth. I hadn’t forgotten she was standing there but I was petty enough not to acknowledge her.
“If this crawlspace is limited on size, we should probab
ly send the smallest person here in there.” She made it sound as if that idea wasn’t appealing to her.
“You could have just said send Cali in. None of you are smaller than me.” Bitch. I added in my head. Romero glanced at me and smirked like I’d said it aloud.
“You know she’s right, baby.”
I pouted for a full ten seconds. On one hand, I was overjoyed he wasn’t trying to wrap me in bubble wrap and treat me like glass because I was pregnant. On the other, I would have liked a little more resistance on his end about me crawling around under a church. The damn thing would probably crush me just for being on holy ground.
“Let’s just figure out how we need to do this,” I sighed.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
This was the epitome of bullshit.
Cobra had snuck up first, finding the crawlspace and removing the grate. He’d returned and the first words out of his mouth were, “It’s dark as shit under there.”
That wasn’t an issue. I liked the dark; it had always made me feel safer than the light.
I was given a mini flashlight, a knife, and a swat on the ass as my send off. “No bullshitting,” Romero had warned.
There was an acolyte named Jeremy coming me with me. We were the same damn size, so him fitting wasn’t an issue ,either.
We’d made it to the crawl space without being spotted, and were now crawling in what I hoped was the right direction.
The bullshit was the smell, the spider-webs, and the moldy dirt underneath me. I held the flashlight in my mouth and moved at a steady pace.
There were some fallen beams and spiders the size of my hand watching me from them. Their beady eyes seemed to say, “You aren’t supposed to be here.”
Going out on a limb and adding mice or rats as another species that lived under here wouldn’t be a far stretch.
“You good back there?” I whispered to Jeremy. I didn’t want to turn and blind the kid with my flashlight.
“Yes, my liege,” he answered respectfully.
I rolled my eyes and huffed.
Little pebbles pressed into my palms. I shuffled forward, dragging my jegging-clad legs.
The crawlspace opened up after another few minutes into a circular area. Aiming the light, I spotted the old door in the ceiling that led into the church.
To get to it, all I had to do was crawl over a small graveyard of bones. My flashlight beam bounced off three skulls, one much smaller than the others. The rest of the bones I couldn’t offhandedly identify. None of them were together anymore, and the skulls all sat in different places, coated in dirt and cobwebs.
“I would like to go first, my liege,” Jeremy said softly.
“Its Cali,” I reiterated for the fourth time since we’d been down there, moving out of his way.
He crawled past me towards the door. I kept the flashlight aimed up so he was able to see better.
I had no idea how he was moving so gracefully and not passing out from heat stroke, wearing his black robe.
The door lifted right up, which I found anticlimactic as fuck. Jeremy slowly eased himself up and out of the crawlspace.
I listened for a few minutes and waited. There was a soft thud right above me but no voices. Just when I began to think he’d been caught, his head popped back down and he gestured me onward.
Moving to him, I did my best not to crush any of the remains. I wasn’t that disrespectful as to screw with someone’s resting place. Even if this more than likely wasn’t their number one pick in terms of burial sites.
Jeremy lifted me out of the crawlspace with ease, gently shutting the hatch behind me. “The back end of Jericho seems to be empty as of now, but there are voices coming from the front. I believe it’s some sort of meeting,” he quickly explained, opening the door of the small wine room we were in.
I shut off the flashlight, no longer needing it, and followed him out into an open foyer. “You get the back door open and let the others in. I’m going to eavesdrop.” I took one step towards one of the halls that split off the foyer before he blocked me.
“I was told to stay with you. I—”
“Well, I’m telling you to go open that door. They could say something useful, and every second you stand here trying to stop me is another second wasted.”
He stared at me without saying a word—or I imagined he was. I couldn’t see his eyes beneath the mask. “Don’t worry about me, I’ve done this before,” I reassured him, and didn’t wait to see if he responded or not. I darted down the hall.
I set my pace at a quick jog, trying to keep my steps quiet on the old wooden floor. Jericho’s age showed everywhere I looked. Old woodwork and arches portrayed a design from a different era.
It was beautiful in its own special way. Too bad, really, because I wanted it burned down.
The place was just as large on the inside as it looked on the out.
I slowed when I got as close to the front room as I dared, hearing voices just like Jeremy said. Peeking around the corner, I saw the room was set up to my advantage. The pews all sat horizontally in the opposite direction.
I’d just spotted Bishop Jonah at the front of a group of delegates when the room exploded into a flurry of activity. Acolytes rushed in from the opposite hall.
Jonah didn’t waste one second, taking off at a run for a stairwell in the back of the room. I debated what to do for only a split second. Pews were shoved backward, screeching across the floor and slamming into the ones behind them with loud, echoing booms.
It had gone from a meeting to a bloodbath in a matter of seconds, and the Savages had nothing to worry about.
The acolytes were ruthless. They were an impenetrable shadow that moved as one.
Anyone in their way was heinously cut down. This wasn’t even a fraction of them; I couldn’t picture dealing with the entire army.
I took one last look at the scene before me and then made a mad dash for the stairs.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
He’d beat me upstairs by taking another staircase.
The fucker was always ten steps ahead of me.
I crept down the hall towards their voices, snagging a heavy bronze chalice off a decorative podium.
“You were always my favorite, Romeo.”
What the fuck? I froze just a few doors away from where they were.
“Look at you,” Jonah wheezed. “Your father is so proud of you, my boy.”
Confusion clouded my brain but I didn’t get much time to dwell on his words. The telltale click of a gun had my legs moving on their own accord.
I peeked through a slit in the door and saw Jonah aiming a tiny black gun at Romero. My heart stumbled and sped up. This fraudulent fuck had the balls to point a gun at my beloved devil.
Before I even realized what I was doing, I had the door flying the rest of the way open. Jonah’s head whipped around and he gaped in what looked like confusion. It gave Romero the small distraction I knew he needed.
He grabbed hold of Jonah’s arm and wrenched in a full circle, bringing the man to his knees. There was a loud crunch, followed by a gunshot.
I moved up behind Jonah and swung the chalice like it was a bat, crashing it into the side of his head. An audible gong sounded from the heavy cup and he fell to the side.
Romero looked at me for a split second before taking over. He flipped an unconscious Jonah onto his stomach and jumped up.
He seemed to be searching the room for something, seeing as it was a study of some sort; I was lost as to what.
His eyes were impossibly dark. I could feel the anger rolling off him in suffocating waves. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the first part of Jonah’s words. There was only one reason why a man like him would have called a younger Romero his favorite.
Sick fucking asshole.
I didn’t say anything. I moved to the corner where a desk was and lowered myself onto it. There were no words I could say to make this okay for him.
“I’m sorry they hurt you too,�
�� just seemed so meaningless, and an apology would never fix us. Whoever said violence isn’t the answer was full of shit.
Violence soothed our demons and gave them a semblance of peace. I sat and watched the man I loved unleash his. There was no doubting that anymore. I didn’t need to know the definition of a word to feel its meaning.
I think I loved him before we met. We’d been together only a moment, but it felt like a thousand lifetimes. Even then, as my brain slid pieces of a puzzle together that made my chest hurt, I still loved him.
Romero was irrefutably deranged and diabolically astute. He was a lethal fucking cocktail that came with a hazardous warning label, and I would die being blissfully inebriated by him.
I watched him strip Jonah of his robes and throw them in the fireplace. He grabbed a lit candle from the candelabra sitting on the mantle and shoved it straight up Jonah’s ass, flame side up.
The act had Jonah screaming himself awake. He never got the chance to move. Romero’s steel toed boot met his side, and something else cracked. Giving the man no time to reciprocate, he grabbed hold of his hair to lift him up. He dragged his heavy body like it weighed nothing to the other side of the room where he grabbed a cross off the wall.
Grimm flew into the room, quickly assessing the scene, falling right into a role he must have played a hundred times. He approached Romero cautiously, like one would a raging bull, taking hold of Jonah by the back of the neck.
Romero relinquished his grip as they shared a look. In one second flat, Jonah was on his back, the movement wedging the candle deeper, tearing the sensitive tissue in his rectum. A trickle of blood ran from between his legs.
Grimm grabbed hold of his upper and lower jaw in a familiar move. His muscles flexed and he pulled as hard as he could.
He kept hold of it as Romero slammed his boot down on Jonah’s chest and the metal cross he’d snatched off the wall in his mouth, forcing it to fit.
They proceeded to tag team him. Jonah’s wide hazel eyes met mine only once.
“You don’t get to look at her, you piece of shit,” Romero growled, sounding like a possessed beast. I thought he’d forgotten I was even in the room.
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