Priest went static behind me, his hand on my throat flickering with the urge to crush the life out of the murderer. I reached up to put my own hand over his against my pulse.
“I’m hardly going to turn myself over to you. I don’t even know what you want with me. Why you’re doing this for me.”
That laugh again, this one tinged with hysteria. “I didn’t set out to do this for you. I am doing this for God, for Him, so that His teachings can be practiced as they should be.”
“And how do you know how they should be practiced?” I rebuffed, thinking of Cleo once more, her sweet face beaten in and misshapen with violence.
“God speaks through me,” he said simply with a finality reserved for facts and established truths of which this was absolutely not. “He sends me visions of how the world is supposed to be. In this world, you are my holy wife, meant to tend to me and our new flock.”
One of the cops, Hutchinson, a member of the local PD and a friend of The Fallen, held up a piece of paper that said ‘ask about his flock’.
“Do you have a flock?”
“Of course, there were many people in this town previously corrupted by criminal elements like The Fallen who were begging for my light. How do you think I found Cleo, hmm? She came to me. Amelia Stephens too. She was looking for some peace after a life with a criminal.”
I closed my eyes against the surge of molten anger that threatened to spew through my lips.
For the first time in my life, I wanted to kill a man myself.
“You think I would consent to be your wife?” I asked, flabbergasted by his gall even though I knew psychopaths could suffer from delusions of grandeur and severe narcissism.
“You spent the night with that murdering sinner from The Fallen!” he shouted suddenly, a crash sounding from the other side of the phone. “You soiled yourself with his embrace!”
Another pause, this one because I didn’t know what to say in response. The knowledge that he had been watching me left a thick residue on my skin, something like dirt I knew I would never be able to scrub clean.
“No, Bea,” he said again after a moment, all calm eerily restored. “I don’t expect you to consent right now, not when I haven’t been given the opportunity to make you understand. I’m confident you will when the time comes. For now, I have an incentive.”
Foreboding slithered down my spine like the cool skin of a serpent. “What are you talking about?”
I knew every single member of The Fallen and their family members were on the compound. There were enough beds to make it work between the clubhouse, Hephaestus Auto, and the house Z’s cousin Eugene spent half his time in on the edge of the property. It was cramped, but no one complained.
It was clear we were under attack. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last.
So it couldn’t be someone from the club.
“I think you call her your Tabby,” he said with a little laugh. “You really are so expressive with your loved ones, Bea. It made it so easy to decide who to take from you.”
Eric and I looked at each other in blatant horror.
Tabitha.
The doctor’s wife, the woman who wore sugary perfume and taught music classes to the disadvantaged youth at First Light Church after Bible study.
Sweet, meek Tabby.
Before I realized it, I was standing as if I could rush out the door and find her myself. Through the glass, the cops were already on their phones and typing into computers. Lion made a gesture for me to continue.
“If you don’t meet me in the clearing between Potter’s farm and Waverly’s apple orchard at eight tomorrow morning, I’m going to kill her, and you’ll have only your cowardice and sin to blame. Then tomorrow, if you still haven’t come, I’m going to take someone else you love, and I’m going to kill them too.”
“Why?” I breathed. “Why am I so important to you? I’m no one.”
“Ah…” He sucked in the air the way one did when they were smelling flowers, as if my words had a fragrance. “The way you belittle your light, such modesty, such purity. And you wonder how I know you were meant to be my spiritual equal.”
“But I’ve sinned,” I pointed out, trying to understand the loops and twists of his fevered mind.
“You have,” he said, almost cheerfully, still in that deep, booming voice that wasn’t truly his. “But I’m not worried. I’ll make you pay your penance and then we will move on as one.”
The dial tone clipped in as soon as his last word was uttered, the monotone noise perfectly matching the flatline of my failing heart.