38. The Sinner
Chapter thirty-eight
The Sinner
Dinah
T he last few days have been a whirlwind of activity. My little impromptu speech on the balcony was broadcast worldwide through the rebels’ network. I could have never anticipated the reaction to my words. I truly believed that no one would follow me, that they would see right through me, to all the pieces that are irrevocably broken, and coated in bloodshed. Yet, to my horror and amazement, that’s not what happened. Instead of ignoring me, or seeing me as an inadequate leader, they took to the streets in every major city, small town, and village. They set fire to all of the Brotherhood compounds, and embassies. They fought valiantly against their oppressors, using whatever they had on hand as weapons. Many have died on both sides, and many cities are now piles of rubble and ash. There was so much loss that I wish could have been avoided.
Women all over the world have risen up angrily, and demanded their freedom. They are breaking face with the rules dictated by the Order, and I couldn’t be prouder. Somewhere in the heavens, my beautiful mother is smiling down at all this, and I feel like, finally, I haven’t entirely let her down. Even with all this excitement, I know the Brotherhood is not entirely defeated. There are still pockets holding strong against us. We had reports last night of rebels just outside the city limits being slaughtered, and crucified, as a warning to the masses of what happens when you defy the Brotherhood of the Sacrament, by their remaining armies. The gruesome images just further fueled my rage, and intent to destroy every last one of them. Do I realistically believe that we will be able to murder all of the members that oppose us? No. Some of them will change sides, preferring to be on the winning team, but their true alliances will still be with the Order, and we will once again have rats in our midst, much like the one cowering before me now.
“Tell us why we should even trust a word coming out of your mouth, Asa? You have been a high-ranking member of the Order, since you were of age to take over for your father, who was part of its inception,” Abe angrily questions the pathetic man flinching on his knees before me. I scrutinize Asa Bishop; he’s my father’s age, but I’ve never met him before. He’s from one of the outlying cities, in what used to be known as Canada in the world long ago, but now, it is the Brotherhood’s northern reach. Asa managed to make his way quite rapidly to the Holy Father’s compound once the rioting began, laying himself at my feet, with an adamant request that his family be spared.
My gaze bores down on him, and he seems to squirm under my scrutiny. He’s not much to look at, thinning, graying hair at the top of a large round head, a sweaty face with evidence of his enjoyment of excesses in his ruddy cheeks, loose jowls, and broken blood vessels around his nose, all of which tell me Asa here likes to drink too much, and enjoys the bounties provided by his position within the Brotherhood. His large, overweight body can barely keep upright, as he’s forced to bend the knee to the Unholy Ghost before him. A trickle of blood splashes on the pristine stone floor in front of him from the gash on his cheek, courtesy of Abe’s fist. My berserker had to be pulled off of him and restrained, before he really did some damage, not that it wasn’t amusing to watch, because it was. My dark soul craves bloodshed and violence, and Abe is always ready to provide it with nourishment.
I can feel all of Abe’s volatile emotions swirling through the room. He wants to hurt this man for simply existing, and based on Zeke and Sammy’s expressions, he’s not alone. They perceive him as a threat to me, even from his knees. I, however, am keen to hear this information that he wishes to trade for his safety. His wife and daughter have already been removed from his care by Sarah, who came and reported that both had suffered the same fate as my mother and her, and so many more of the Brotherhood’s sacred women. For that alone, regardless of what this man is able to impart, he will die by my hand, but I have no intention of telling him that, until I’ve gotten what I want out of him. I stare down into his frightened crystal blue eyes, and allow him to see his imminent death in the depths of mine. “Speak, or die here and now by my blade.” I don’t hesitate to bring forth the large blade from the sheath strapped to my leg, gripping the black metal handle tightly, and allowing the bright lights to shine off of its surface. Asa cries out, like a child being faced with a boogeyman that haunts all his nightmares. “Please! I swear I have the information you want!” The stench of urine fills the room, and a yellow puddle starts creeping towards my combat books from Asa’s direction.
“Fucking pathetic,” Zeke growls, and bitch-slaps the back of Asa’s head with his tattooed hand. “Kill him now, Dinah. This fool is worthless to us. He doesn’t know anything of value. He is just trying to survive another day in the cleansing.” Ah yes, the cleansing, the apt name the populace has given themselves for the uprising.
“No! Please... I know where your father is! I know where Noah Rothesay is hiding. I helped him... escape,” Asa stutters on the last word, knowing he pretty much just damned himself. He helped Noah Rothesay escape from my clutches. Zeke squats down before him, a menacing look across his handsome features. “Oh, Asa, you’ll be lucky if I don’t rip out your beating heart right here, and offer it to her as a gift of my undying love. I suggest you quit withholding that information now, and spill your traitorous guts, before I slice you open and have them spill from your body while your family watches. I’ll just bet your wife and daughter would be relieved to see you die a painful death.”
“Enough!” I growl. I get what Abe and Zeke are trying to do, but frightening him to death won’t help us find Noah, and so far, this maggot seems to be the only lead we have. Noah has gone underground and disappeared, and although the rebels are trying to use their network of internal spies to locate him, it’s pretty much been like finding a needle in a blood-soaked haystack. If this wretched man can lead me to him, then I’ll delay his inevitable execution. “Tell me what you know and hold nothing back. Your time on this earth will be cut short if you don’t. I’m not negotiating with you. You know full well what I am capable of, so unless you want to die a horrifically painful death, like your Brotherhood scum brethren, you will tell me all I want to know now.”
Sammy’s silent form observes from the shadows. He has left it up to Abe and Zeke to mete out violence on my behalf. The lines of strain are clearly visible on his exhausted face. This is all too much for him. He’s still dealing with his healing injuries. The trauma that he suffered isn’t going to go away overnight, and, in fact, it may never go away. He refuses to sleep in a room with us, for fear that he will wake up and not remember where he is, and lash out with violence. A huge part of me is so relieved to have my protector back in my life, and in my arms, but another part of me realizes that he is no longer that same man, and things will never be able to go back to the way they were before he was captured. I hold onto a tiny morsel of relief that at least Zeke, Abe, and he have put aside their need to kill each other for now. It’s an uneasy truce, and one I know they are committing to for me. Love is a funny, fickle thing; one moment, it can destroy everything you know about yourself, and the world around you, and in the next instance, it can be all that is keeping you going.
“He’s...” Asa seems to choke on his very words, and as a reminder that I am not fucking with him, I strike forward with the blade and slice his cheek open. “He’s hiding in a textile production warehouse I own, five hours outside of the capital. He and a few of his men are there, hiding from you and the rebels.” I release a sigh filled with disappointment. I was looking to inflict a little more violence on this fucker before he gave me what I wanted. Damn quivering coward.
“How many men are with him?” Sammy asks, and this is the first time we have heard his voice since this interrogation began. “I will not answer to low-born scum,” Asa has the nerve to sneer in Sammy’s direction, with a look filled with insolence. Wrong move asshole. I don’t hesitate, slashing the blade once more, this time across the ragged collarbone of his shirt, and parting the fine material to reveal the instantly bleeding skin below. “Jesus, this fucker still doesn’t understand that his world is over. Listen to me, you disgusting cunt. He may be low-born in your eyes, but he’s more than twice the man you are. He has everything you don’t, including fucking pride and self-worth.” Zeke grabs a fistful of Asa’s receding hair and forces him to look up at him, and the high-pitched, terrified screams are a balm to my soul. “Ten... ten were... with him... last I saw him.”
I turn away and try to hide the smile, and joy, that Zeke’s defense of Sammy brings me. It means we are one step closer to them not hating, and wanting to murder, each other. Baby steps. I can live with that, at least for now. I turn around and meet Sarah’s eyes. “Find all the information you can on the warehouse. I want to see schematic building plans for the warehouse, and an aerial map of the space around it. I refuse to walk into a damn trap that Noah may be setting for us.”
“I will make sure we have everything you need. Dinah, his daughter is demanding to see him.” This should be interesting. I thought to spare her and her mother ever having to see this abusive monster again, but it seems perhaps the girl needs closure. I know how hard it is to live with anger and grief. It becomes like a vat of boiling water, steamy, and ready to spill over, at any moment. I can give her what she needs, to help her move past this and heal, and a quick look at his wretched appearance should suffice. I nod my head, and Sarah walks to the shuttered doors of my father’s study in the Holy Father’s mansion, disappearing for a moment, and reappearing with a girl no older than sixteen.
She doesn’t hesitate to meet my glance, her blue eyes identical to her father’s, and hold my stare defiantly, as I take in her appearance. She’s small, barely five feet, and can’t weigh more than a hundred pounds wet. Her body is dressed in the dark green fabric dress of a sacred, pious daughter, covering every inch of her from her neck down to her feet, even though the heat in here is stifling. Her bright white blonde hair is plaited down her back, in some elaborate French braid, and leaves all of her features exposed. She’s pretty in a way that isn’t obvious, her rounded cheekbones giving her still a childlike innocence, which her intense gaze belies. This young woman has suffered unspeakable harm at the hands of the man before me. She doesn’t seek to only speak with him, she’s pursuing her own brand of justice. Do I dare allow that to also taint her soul forever, darkening it like mine?
“Thank you for allowing me to see him, Unholy Ghost,” her soft voice addresses me formally and respectfully, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Zeke smirk. The fucker is getting a kick out of people behaving like I walk on fucking water. Nothing could be further from the truth, and I am not here to be anyone’s messiah, despite words appearing out of thin air on the side of the building. “Why did you want to see him...” I don’t actually know her name, and Sarah didn’t provide it, so it puts me at a slight disadvantage in terms of what to call her. She doesn’t bother to respond, stepping forward and beginning to unbutton her gown. At first, shock hits me; what the hell is she doing? I want to grab her and shake her, to tell her that she’s no longer a pawn for men, and she NEVER has to expose herself again, but Abe takes two steps towards me, and his fingers tighten around my arm, halting me in my place. When she’s down to her chemise, and her dress is discarded at her feet, she glares with venom at her father, and that’s when we all get a good look at her skin.
Holy fucking hell. The surface of her pretty porcelain skin is covered in scars, and healing lashes from a whip. Her arms, shoulders, back, and legs, as far as we can see, all have thin, painful looking stripes, to various degrees. This man has terrorized his daughter, and not just recently; some of those stripes look really old, and set deeply into her skin. Motherfucker, I will tear out his fucking heart, and make him choke on it. I move towards him, with rage filling all my limbs, but again, Abe pulls me back and nods to the girl. “It has to be her. She’s earned this freedom from him. You can’t take that away from her, Atasi. Not even if you want to protect her.”
“My name is Bithiah. That monster before you is my father. The man that God sent to protect me from the evils of the world, but instead left me like a lamb to the slaughter, of his wickedness and sins. He has spent my whole life abusing my mother, and me, in the name of the Brotherhood. He justifies his sins, and ungodly actions against the wickedness of women, while taking his pleasure of his wife and daughter.” Fuck, I think I am going to be sick. He not only beat her, but raped her, and shared her with his friends. What kind of disgusting man can do that to his child? A demon, one so morally rotten and corrupt, that they genuinely believe they have the right, my mind whispers to me. Abe stiffens at my side, and one quick glance around the room confirms that Zeke, Sammy, and Sarah are equally as horrified.
“I ask, in my name, and that of my mother, for the right to send him back to the hell that he crawled out of. I know what I seek is not right or pious, and I am prepared to live with my sin, and the shadow it will cast across my heart.” Her eyes tear away from his, and there is so much emotion on her face. She’s terrified, but also steady in her need to claim his death, and free herself from the shackles he has placed around her. “You... can’t allow this! You can’t kill me! I told you what you wanted to know!” Asa bellows with outrage, attempting to get back to his feet, but Sammy kicks the back of his legs, until he falls in his own puddle of piss. “Stay down, fucker. You’re in no position to make any fucking demands here.” Sammy’s face is ashen, and I know just staring at the girl’s condition is causing his own nightmares to rise. I hold his stare and whisper, ‘real’ to him and, after taking a steadying deep breath, he nods back.
I step away from Abe’s hold, the blade still clutched in my hand, already tainted in her father’s malevolent blood, in Bithiah’s direction, until I’m standing before her, looking down at her from the few inches of height I have on her. I shouldn’t allow this. It will taint the rest of her life, and she will forever relive this moment, but in the same instance, I cannot deny her request. She has suffered at his malignant hands, and she deserves to be the one to take him from this earth. “You understand that there is no wiping the slate clean once you have done this? You will be forever tainted in your own heart. It is not for the world around you to judge you, Bithiah. It is only what you, yourself, can live with.”
Tears begin to fill her sky-blue eyes, and one trickles down the corner before she quickly uses her fingers to wipe it away. “My nightmares plague me, of him slipping inside of my room and hurting me. He’s done to me what no father should ever do to his daughter. He’s taken everything from me. I... I need this, so that I can feel safe. I need to know that, when I close my eyes at night, he won’t be there to hurt me.”
I feel her pain deep in my soul, and while I was never raped by my father, I can still understand the fear she’s living with. I hand her the blade, handle first, and she takes it carefully in her fingers. “So be it. It is your choice what you can endure, and I will not stop you from seeking your righteous justice on him.”
“NO! Please! Don’t do this! I told you what you wanted to know! Don’t allow her to hurt me!” Asa screams, as he tries to slither along the floor away from Sammy and Zeke, who are standing as sentinels against him, preventing him from any attempt to escape. Zeke kicks him again and again, until the miserable fucker falls into the fetal position, sobbing incoherently. No pity stirs inside of me at the vision before me. He deserves so much more abuse than what he is receiving. If it was left up to me, he would suffer a worse fate than all those Brotherhood men I dispatched, along my journey as the Unholy Ghost. “Hold him, so he cannot escape her justice,” I demand, and Sammy and Zeke each grab one of his arms, and force him back to his knees.
Tears, snot, and blood coat his face, and he stares in terror as his daughter approaches him with the blade. Her body is heaving with the sobs that are slowly leaving her, and pity fills me. Her arms rise high above her head, the blade clutched tightly in her hands. “You are a plague on this earth! A demon who destroyed mine and mom’s lives. You deserve to feel all the pain you put us through, but I just want you dead.” She slams the blade down, aiming for his neck, but gets his shoulder. It doesn’t deter her, however, as she strikes again and again, until pitiful screams echo around the room, and finally, blessed silence ensues, only broken by her quiet sobs, and our heavy breathing. She’s covered in blood splatter, her body trembling until she can barely stand. Sarah moves over to her, and cradles her in her arms, like one does with a frightened child, moving her away from the annihilated flesh of the man who attempted to break her. “Let’s go see your mother, child, and get you cleaned up. It’s over now. All will be well, Bithiah, you are free now.”
Bithiah stops before me, her hand clutching the blade and shaking, as she offers it back to me. “Thank you,” she utters, before allowing Sarah to lead her from the room without a backward glance.
“Jesus fuck, it just keeps getting worse, Snow. How many more daughters will come before you asking for retribution?” Zeke questions, as he drags his blood-tinged fingers down his face, which has Asa’s blood splattered on the surface. It’s a good look for him; he resembles a warrior coming back from battle. Despite the horror of what I just witnessed, my body begins to fill with arousal and heat. I need him, need them, to help me wash away all the evil that is perpetually surrounding us.
“Don’t look at me like that, Dinah, unless you want me to bend you over his dead body, and fuck your pretty cunt,” Zeke growls, and in response, I give him a raised eyebrow and a naughty smile. “You really are perfect for us, aren’t you, Atasi?” Abe groans as he moves closer to me and wraps me in his large arms, his lips nuzzling my neck, and causing goosebumps to rise on the surface.
“Make me feel alive, I need all three of you,” I moan.