three
The Merciful
I slip on my trusty, thick-soled clogs to complete my outfit and step back from the mirror. The shoes are the closest things to high heels I own, but it’s not for any sinful reason like vanity that I wear them. I paired them with knee-high white socks to cover my pasty legs, the required tartan skirt, which I pulled down as low as possible to make sure no skin shows except my unfortunately knobby knees. I got my white button-up shirt a few sizes too big to hide my chest, and with a grey blazer with the Thorncrown crest over it, I doubt I could extract a sinful thought from a man if my life depended on it.
“For you, E,” I whisper to the mirror.
I touch the cross hanging around my neck, aware of the sin in its meaning. I don’t take it off, though. I never take it off, though it chokes me with contradictions and messy feelings more than calming me. Checking to make sure not a single, strawberry blonde strand is out of place in my tight bun, I step away from the mirror. Vanity is another sin, after all.
I straighten the fall afghan I crocheted for my first semester in a dorm room, soft yarn in caramel and rust and chocolate, then prop Raphael against my pillows. He stares up at me with his one remaining eye, his fur long ago worn flat by being cuddled under my chin too many nights. I give his misshapen head an affectionate squeeze and then pick up my backpack and leave my dorm, heading for breakfast at the dining hall. No one pays me a bit of attention, which puts me at ease. Some irrational part of me was afraid that after being sheltered for so long, the moment I set foot outside the protective bubble my aunt built for me, a roving gang would fall upon me, sensing vulnerability.
I shake the thought away, knowing how silly it is. No one here knows me, even if I am back in Faulkner. The campus is small enough that everyone probably knows each other by sight, but there’s a whole new class of freshmen, around hundred people, and I’ve made sure I won’t stand out.
I get in line at the dining hall behind a group of guys. A couple glance over their shoulder, their eyes sweeping over me without pause before landing on a trio of girls behind me. My nerves settle.
Complete invisibility achieved.
“Is that one of them?” one of the girls asks, chewing at her lip and craning her neck to see who’s sitting at a small corner table completely surrounded by a crowd of preening girls.
“I can’t see who that is, but it’s definitely not the Hellhounds,” one of the other girls says. “They always travel in a pack. You’ll know them when you see them. You can’t miss them. They’re… Obvious.”
“Is it the Sinners, then?”
“Nah, they take all their classes together,” says the third girl. “It’s not that weird in a big seminar, but I had them in one of my smaller classes last year, and it was like… Quarter of the class was this dark, glamourous presence. Another quarter was their fangirls. It was all very intense.”
“Oh,” says the first girl faintly, her eyes wide.
“Just stick with us, and we’ll make sure you don’t fall into any bad stuff,” says her friend, who must be older. I find myself wishing I wasn’t alone, that I had a couple friends to show me the ropes and point me in the right direction.
But then, if I still had Eternity, I wouldn’t be here at all.
I turn away as we shuffle forward in line. At least I got some good intel this morning, a place to start.
The Hellhounds.
The Sinners.
The names send a shiver over my skin. They don’t sound like groups that should be at a Catholic college. But then, that’s exactly what I’m looking for.
I keep an eye out for these “obvious” groups all through breakfast and on the way to my first class. The population of Thorncrown is small, but after homeschooling for four years, it’s overwhelming. I don’t see any dark presence to watch out for, which is a relief. At the same time, a shiver of fear and excitement ripples up my spine at the prospect of laying eyes on this mysterious group.
I slip into the lecture hall where I have my first class and find a seat in the corner, behind a pair of girls. I take out my notebook and pens, ready to take meticulous notes. I always got the highest scores in my class when I went to public school, not because I’m the smartest or most ambitious girl in the room but because I seek external validation, as my therapist explained. Almost like a person could be affected by knowing the people who should love and protect you most in the world wanted nothing to do with you.
Thanks, Mom and Dad. Your abandonment gave me just the motivation I’ll need to graduate Summa Cum Laude.
“Hey, Ronique,” says a goth girl in front of me, elbowing her companion. “What do you have next?”
The other girl looks up from her phone. “Finding God in Science.”
I signed up for that class too, so I switch over to my schedule to see if I have it next hour. I do.
“With Father Hot Priest,” says the first girl, wiggling her brows as she looks at Ronique’s schedule. “I’d call him Daddy any day.”
“Annabel Lee,” Ronique scolds. “How do you even know he’s hot?”
“I had confession with him,” Annabel says. “I’m going to have to keep going back every week just from the thoughts that man put in my head.”
“Ew, he must be old,” Ronique protests, wrinkling her nose. “Plus, priests are pedos. I can’t believe they even let them teach at a school.”
“We’re all over eighteen,” Annabel points out. “And it’s not their fault they’re creepers. All that celibacy drives them to madness.”
“Not an excuse!” Ronique protests.
I open my phone and click through the tabs I haven’t closed in four years.
“Local Teen Missing”
“Family Pleads: Bring Our Daughter Home”
“Thorncrown Takes Up Collection for Grieving Family”
Each article is shorter than the last, though none are long. The last one is less than a paragraph as hope faded.
“His celibacy is going to drive me to madness,” says the girl called Annabel, startling me from my anguished thoughts. “And like half the student population. I bet his confession schedule is already full for the entire semester.”
“Why would you want to confess to someone hot?” Ronique asks. “That would be so embarrassing.”
“Um, hello. Every girl on campus is going to want to tell him her most salacious tales and try to tempt him to break his vows for her.”
“Not every girl,” Ronique mutters.
A boy slips into the empty seat next to the girls just as the lecture begins. I take notes, my thoughts slipping through the cracks to what they said. I try not to dwell on my own confession, on the man behind the screen.
Voice like smoke and velvet.
The scent of sandalwood.
The ominous ache between my thighs when he called me his lamb.
In my next class, I arrive on time and slide into my seat, my heart pounding erratically. The moment the priest strides into the room, every breath catches. He’s commanding, his presence emanating power and domination. He doesn’t have to tell the class to be quiet. Everyone stills, watching the perfect specimen of masculinity take control of the students with a single glance.
His dark chocolate hair is combed back, forming a slight widow’s peak on his finely sculpted brow. Thick, masculine eyebrows draw low over his dark eyes as they survey the class with gentle detachment from behind his wire-rimmed glasses. Olive skin, a Roman nose, an unsmiling mouth, and a jawline that could cut glass complete the image.
When his eyes meet mine, a warm, melting sensation swims up my limbs, heating my skin. I drop my gaze, only to be confronted with a body every inch as perfect as his face. His suit fits like it was tailored specifically for his broad shoulders, tapered hips, and muscular thighs. He wears the collar instead of a tie, and I return my focus to that, reminding myself he’s a priest.
He isn’t lusting after any of us. He’s just here to teach.
So why couldn’t he teach me to get rid of these impure thoughts?
*
When I step out of class, I’m immediately greeted by a hush in the hall. I turn the same direction as everyone else and see a group coming through. My pulse stutters, and I’m sure this must be the dark and mysterious Sinners. There are seven members, enough to fill quarter of a classroom, like the girl said earlier. They move as one, almost like they’re psychically connected.
They’re all gorgeous, with black hair, fair skin, and grey eyes that range from the color of a stormy sky to flinty steel to the soft grey of a kitten. They all wear black shirts, black ties, black pants, and black blazers. Six are male. The one girl in the group looks just as tough as the guys. She has thick eyeliner, pouty blood red lips, and wears a black shirt and blazer with a black-and-white tartan skirt. Her socks are bunched around her ankles, and I spot a tattoo on her calf. Sweeping my gaze back over the men, I note more than one visible tattoo on them as well.
They look more like a biker gang than a Catholic school clique.
They slow when they reach the congested area outside the classroom. The guy in the center, who’s got to be close to seven feet tall, stops and turns slowly on his heel, surveying the crowd like he’s looking for something. My breath catches, and I bite down on my lower lip to keep from hyperventilating and drawing attention. Still, his steely grey eyes settle on me, as if the merest movement of my teeth cutting into my lip was all the reason he needed to choose a target.
He points one long, thin finger at the floor.
“Bow,” he orders, his voice like a physical force pressing onto my shoulders, almost forcing me to obey. My knobby knees threaten to buckle, but I force them to lock so I don’t collapse under the weight of the attention he’s drawn to me.
“What?” I blurt out.
“Bow,” he thunders.
Everyone around me edges away, and I stand there gaping in disbelief at the giant currently ordering me to my knees like he’s a king and I’m a peasant.
“We don’t live in Tudor England,” I point out in my most logical tone. “I’m not bowing to you. I don’t even know who you are.”
The silence in the hall is deafening, and I replay my very justified and rational refusal with rising panic. Maybe I should have bowed. Would that have made them lose interest faster?
The guy stares at me with those cold eyes like a blade raking over every inch of my concealed skin.
“We’re the Sinners,” he says, his voice as hard as his gaze. “And you will get on your knees now and every time you see us for the rest of your time at Thorncrown.”
“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” I say, glancing around nervously, curling my toes inside my clogs.
“Do you know the consequences of refusal?” the giant asks, his voice almost curious.
Before I can answer, there’s a slight commotion further down the hall as some new students arrive, probably heading for the classroom I just left. “Oh shit, ” crows a voice that sends a spear of white-hot dread directly down my spinal column. “The Sinners are breaking in the freshmen!”
It can’t be.
I can’t breathe. I’ve forgotten all about the giant and his crew of clones with their murderous steel dagger eyes. My fingers have gone numb. I can’t swallow, and I think I’d choke on air if I could get any into my lungs.
And then I see him. The boy that goes with the voice, the one I haven’t heard in four years. He’s taller and broader, filled out in all the right ways as he moved from the sixteen-year-old boy I remember into a man. His hair is bleached blond now, spiked up in careless disarray, and tattoos peek out from the neck of his black shirt. His face is more angular, more masculine, but his eyes are the same color of the churning sea I remember, crinkled at the corners as he makes big gestures with his arms in that way boys do, like they’re entitled to all the space they can occupy.
Meanwhile I shrink, my heart ceasing to beat as I pray that I’ll wake from this nightmare and find myself in a cold sweat in my bed at my aunt’s, where I’ve slept since the night I escaped Faulkner.
Behind Heath are two more boys I never wanted to see again, both grown into men in the four years since I’ve seen them. Angel’s attention lasers in on me, his pale jade eyes locking on mine, his serpentine gaze snapping closed on me like the jaws of a snake, rendering me immobile. I strain to draw a breath, but he holds me pinned, tightening his grip like a boa constrictor.
“The Hellhounds,” breathes a girl beside me, sounding halfway terrified and halfway to being condemned to hell for the strength of her sinful thoughts alone.
For a second, Heath is too busy checking out the attractive girls in the crowd to notice an invisible one like me. Later, I’ll wonder why the Sinners singled me out, since I dressed to be as unimpressive and unnoticeable as possible. Right now, though, all I feel is terror and a ridiculous, irrational stab of jealousy that Heath is still as shameless as he was growing up, always the ladies man even before temptations of the flesh entered the equation. He was the boy picking wild clover and dandelions at the edge of the playground and giving them to the girl he liked in kindergarten.
And then his gaze lands on me, and his ocean eyes turn arctic storm. They don’t go dead like Angel’s. Behind their sparkling depth is a wild, feral hunger that demands to be fed, as if he’d devour me whole if given half a chance.
I finally manage to swallow, dropping my gaze to the curved lines of ink sinking into his shirt like a tease, inviting curiosity and exploration. I want to follow the path those tattoos map out, where they lead, what secrets he’s inked onto his skin since the days when he whispered them to me.
I wonder if he got them in juvie.
That thought jars me back to reality, back to his accusatory gaze. Back to the present moment where, for the first time in four years, I’m facing the boys I grew up with, boys I never expected to see again. Not like this, together in a group, looking at me like my demons come to extract their pound of flesh one slow torment at a time.
“Back off, Bain,” Saint says, breaking the crackling charge in the silent hallway. He steps forward and grips the back of my neck like I’m a dog. “This girl’s an innocent. She doesn’t get on her knees for anyone but God. Isn’t that right, little sister?”