Chapter 48 Scarlett #2
I turned back to the sign, reading the single word over and over again. Gluttony. Lack of self-control, greediness, over-indulgence. He had committed a sin, and they were punishing him for it.
I felt a chill fill me as, without a single word to the woman, Azrael turned away and we walked to the next exhibit.
This one was a woman, younger than me. Her head had been shaved haphazardly, her makeup smeared as if she had been crying.
She was spread wide on a table, the position familiar to something Azrael had done to me once, but rather than something fun being shoved into me, something clamping onto my breasts or teasing my skin, she had a device shoved into her vagina that spread it wide.
The wire around her wrists and ankles wasn’t barbed, but it was thin enough to cut into her skin, blood dripping from her extremities.
Her head had fallen to the side, and when I met her eyes, all I saw was emptiness. She wasn’t dead, she had just shut down. There was nothing left inside of her. No fight, no life, just…nothing.
The sign on her table read ‘Coveter’.
I looked over her carefully, taking in the old scars and fairly new lashings she had gotten. The blood, her barely moving chest. Coveter of what? Of something more than the life the church had given her? Of freedom? Of choice?
What had she coveted so terribly that she deserved this?
The next three were worse than the last. Each person hung or nailed in a certain position, some sort of contraption clamping them or opening them up, making them suffer for the sin the church claimed they committed.
And everyone around us ‘ooed’ and ‘ahed’ as if they were fascinated by these people suffering. As if they believed they deserved to be on display. Would I be one of these people had I stayed with Thomas? Would he have hung me up for the world to see because he believed I had sinned so deeply?
We stopped in front of yet another display, this one the worst I had seen tonight.
Children. Two of them. Contorted in a way not meant for children. Wrapped together in barbed wire, staged with rods that forced them to remain still.
They were both whimpering and crying, their eyes searching for help.
My hands gripped into fists, the only reaction I couldn’t stop tonight. I could feel my heart pounding, feel my skin heating. That chill within me spread so fully, my entire body filled with a freezing electricity that turned my blood to ice.
“Aren’t they just precious?” a familiar voice asked.
A roaring raged through my ears as I turned, the anger overpowering any feeling of fear or habit that I might have felt had we reunited elsewhere.
Thomas stood feet away from Azrael, a smile on his face.
It was the first time I had seen his face for as long as I could remember, and it was just as putrefying as I thought it would be.
The tar within him had tainted his outside.
His face was splotchy and red, although he tried to hide it behind a beard.
His hair was greasy, combed back, several strands falling into his eyes, his smile was yellow, his brown eyes the color of shit.
His smile faltered when I met his eyes, his anger and irritation growing.
“I knew he would allow your leash to go,” he hummed before releasing a sigh.
“I took them from Absolution,” he went on, turning back to the children.
“They deserved to be there, and they were a great addition to my museum. The most popular display of the night.”
I tapped Azrael’s hand, albeit aggressively. Of course, Thomas was filled with tar. How could he not be?
“Will they be returning when the night is done?” Azrael asked, that lilt dancing through his words.
He felt the same way I did, but where I was ready to burn this whole place to the ground, rescue these people, try and save them, he was more calculated, and I think that was part of the test for tonight.
I had to control this. The urge to hurt them.
I had to refrain from doing anything that might jeopardize our mission.
“I haven’t decided yet,” he replied, glancing over to me, taking me in. It made my skin crawl. “How is fucking a stolen blessing?”
“Everything you’ve ever dreamed of fucking your hand to at night and so much more,” Azrael hummed.
I lifted my chin a little higher at the compliment. I would do anything for Azrael, but Thomas? Looking back, I was ashamed that I ever gave in to the idea of pleasing him.
“Are all of them from Absolution or have they been donated by other members?”
Thomas was fuming. His jaw was tight, his eyes alight with rage. “Thinking of donating her for all to see?”
I didn’t even have to look his way to know how sharp his smile was. “I don’t like to share,” he purred.
“Is that why you gave her such a gawdy ring?”
My eyes locked with his, and the next thing I knew, I felt his hand over mine.
Somewhere between Thomas’s comment and that motion, I had grabbed his cane. He had been holding it behind his back, and I had grabbed it, sliding it out of his grip, only for him to grab my hand and force the cane down between us, the sound of it hitting the floor with finality.
I could feel the deer head biting into my skin as I glared at Thomas, Azrael’s warm, but firm hand covering all of mine.
Thomas laughed. “Oh, look at that, she thinks she has teeth. What were you going to do with that cane, girl? Hit me with it?” He chuckled. “You’d never get the chance.”
Before I could have any sort of reaction, someone else joined us. People I didn’t recognize; a couple.
“How beautiful,” the man said, admiring the crying children.
“We should get something like it in our home, shouldn’t we, dear?”
I looked over just as she leaned into him, both of them looking at the children with lust in their eyes. “I would do absolutely anything for you,” he said, kissing her head.
When I turned back to Thomas, he was watching me with a sick look. “That could have been us before you whored yourself to the church.”
My grip around the cane tightened, as did his grip around my hand, a warning, but I wasn’t going to attack him. I wasn’t going to give him whatever reaction he was trying to pull from me. I wanted to pass my test more than I wanted to take my anger out on him.
“You never answered my question,” Azrael said as I turned back to the couple, studying them. “Did they all come from Absolution?”
“I’m interested to know as well,” the man from the couple said, turning to us. He briefly met my eyes before turning his attention to Thomas fully.
Tar. I didn’t expect any less. They were all filled with it, infected with it. Every single one of them.
“Not all of them,” Thomas answered, sounding more professional than he had before. “These two are, some of the others were donated by unhappy owners.”
“Looking to sell?” the man asked.
Thomas turned back to the children, studying them. “Perhaps, for the right price.”
His wife gripped his arm tightly. “I’d like them.”
He nodded and turned back to Thomas, raising a brow. “Price? Nothing is too much.”
They slipped into a negotiation and her eyes drifted over to me, looking me over, her smile softening. “Is she for sale?”
Azrael ignored her completely and guided me away. He kept hold of my hand on the cane until we walked to a dimly lit blue corner, away from everyone else.
He then turned to me, his eyes sharp. “Were you going to kill him?”
“Yes,” I thought towards him. Wasn’t it part of his mission to flood the rivers red but also save the innocent? Those children were innocent. Shouldn’t we save them?
He studied me carefully, but it wasn’t because he didn’t know my answer, he was searching for something. After a moment, he finally released my hand and began uncurling my fingers from his cane. “Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how much you want to, you can’t save everyone.”
My hand fell to my side, too cold now. “They’re going to die?” I signed at my hips.
“Many will die,” he answered quietly. “More so than we would like, but that’s the cost of this. We need to get to Absolution. It’s one of the last puzzle pieces I need to end this.”
I glanced towards the room. There were so many people now.
People from my church and others. All gawking and praising Thomas for what he had done, for the ideas he had come up with.
Even I knew Pastor Masters wouldn’t approve of this, so this had to be the darkest and most depraved of the Daylighters. The owners no Favorite wanted to have.
My eyes found his. “I could do it,” I relayed to him. It wouldn’t be hard. I was his wife. All he had to do was say he was dissatisfied. That I had sinned so terribly that he had to get rid of me. I could figure out whatever information he needed me to find and bring it back to him.
A smile touched his lips. “What a little sacrificial lamb you are,” he hummed. “But right now, you are making decisions out of your anger towards Thomas, your frustration towards the people hanging in this room. We don’t do that.”
My brows pulled together, my frown deepening, and I hope he saw exactly how angry I was. I cocked my head to the side. “Then what do we do?” I thought towards him. We had to do something. This place couldn’t stay open. That couple couldn’t get those children.
But…it had to, didn’t it? Some people would have to die, that was the cost.
He slid those antlers around my jaw and forced my chin up. “Let it fester,” he purred, his eyes sliding to my lips, “while I put you through Hell.”