Page 41 of Be My Sacrifice
“Answer her questions honestly, girl, or you will take your last breath with my hand wrapped around your throat,” Abe addresses the pitiful, crying woman before me.
Dinah turns her attention to Ruth, positioning the gun underneath her chin and forcing her head to rise at an uncomfortable angle. “Please… I beg of you, don’t murder me.” Tears cascade down Ruth’s blotchy face, her brown eyes large and terrified. Sympathy rises within me for this poor girl, who had no choice in the world she was born into. She was a captive long before today, and I may end up being the reason she takes her last breath.
“Where is Noah Rothesay?” Dinah’s words are clipped and cold, as she holds Ruth’s and everyone else in the room’s attention. Will she really murder this innocent girl? This girl who had no choice in marrying me, much like she herself didn’t? Does she not realize that she could have been this girl, if she had not had Sammy and become theUnholy Ghost?
“I don’t know! I swear! He was here, by my father’s side, when the marriage ceremony started.”
“Your father? This father?” Dinah asks with a nod to the right. A trembling man with pale blue eyes is hauled forward between two soldiers wearing rebel attire.Jesus fuck, he’s a mess.One of his ears has been blown off, and his face is caked in blood that soaks the expensive fabric of his shirt, making it stick to him like a second layer. Tears and snot leave a trail down his ruddy face, and he’s trembling like a leaf, even with the two soldiers holding him up.
Dinah removes the gun from Ruth, and points it at Zakariya Dartmouth’s head. “Where are Noah Rothesay and Sammy? Are they hiding within the walls of this estate? Is there another way off the grounds?”
“Fuck you, you demon cunt. The Lord will protect and save us from your evil. He will send down his angels and cast you aside. The Brotherhood will protect us. I do not fear your wrath.”
“I see. Where, pray tell, is your Brotherhood now? Where are your angels?” An evil-sounding cackle leaves Dinah’s lips as she leans forward toward Zakariya, and a shiver dashes down my spine. “I am the only angel here, Brotherhood scum.The angel of death.The angel of vengeance.Your Lord cannot save you. Your Brotherhood has abandoned you, as it seems Noah Rothesay has.”
She trails the muzzle of the gun along his nose, pressing into his nostril before running it under his eye. “Tell me what I want to know, and I may absolve you of your sins, before you meet your maker.”
“I will go to my Lord, knowing that I have kept his covenant and followed his commands, and no demon-whore will force me to break my faith.”
“Pity,” Dinah snarls before pulling the trigger, and blowing out the back of his head, brain matter and gore splattering on all of us close to his proximity. She turns back to Ruth, her face covered in blood from Zakariya, and in that moment, she does resemble the Angel of Death that she claims to be. I’ve never been terrified of her, not even when I watched her torture men of the Brotherhood, but I am afraid now. Something has snapped inside of her, and I’m not sure she even cares any longer about who may be innocent.
“Where is Noah Rothesay?” She once again questions the girl hysterically crying at my feet.
“Please! Please, I beg of you, I don’t know. He was here, I swear it. Then the first blast happened, and he moved away towards the shadows with his men, but not before instructing my father to proceed with the ceremony and ensure that we were wed.”
“Are there other ways off this estate?” Abe’s deep voice inquires, malice dripping from each syllable, his cold and unforgiving eyes trained on her.
“Yes… Yes, tunnels hidden behind the servant’s kitchen walls lead to a pasture a quarter of a mile down the road.”
“How do you know,” Dinah inquires with suspicion.
“I… I’ve used them in the past… to meet… someone,” Ruth sobs, her face morphing into pain and embarrassment.
Well, will you look at that?It seems my innocent and dutiful bride-to-be wasn’t as innocent or obedient as her father claimed. Not that it matters. I am relieved that I never actually married the girl, not that I could legally, or morally, with my wife being still alive. Not that a little detail like that would have stopped my father from forcing me.
“Did you want to marry this man?” Dinah questions calmly, her voice evening out as if she wasn’t holding a gun to the miserable girl, and Ruth immediately shakes her head no.
“I was forced, against my will, by my father. He said it was my duty to fulfill the will of God, and my obligation to the Order.”
Dinah places the gun at her waist, tucked into the waistband of the dark pants she wears, and nods to one of the rebels, who may be a woman hidden behind her mask based on their stature. “Get her to show you the tunnels, and then take her to one of the rebel safehouses, blindfold her, and watch her, in case she is a spy for the Order.”
“Please, my mother is a prisoner too. She’s locked in one of the rooms. She tried to stop the wedding, but my father beat her,” Ruth’s shaky voice begs for mercy from a woman I am not sure has any left.
“Get her mother out of here too.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The rebel tugs at Ruth’s arm and drags her to her feet, even as the poor girl jerks and protests that she is not a spy.
“What now, Dinah? Will you murder me, just like you did him?” I nod towards the discarded body of Ruth’s father.
“I should, husband, after all, I am a territorial woman. I thought you knew that, Zeke.” She turns her glare back on me, but I notice a quirk of her lips. She’s enjoying this, all this bloodshed, and death. It makes her feel alive.
“Despite enjoying being shared by the three of you, I don’t allow what is mine to be handled by others. Call me greedy, hypocritical, or even unfair. It doesn’t matter. What is mine, belongs to me alone. Yet I find mybelovedhusband about to marry another woman when I come calling.”
Her reminder that she was shared between us, and the memory of her body’s response to us, has me taking a sharp inhale of breath. Now would be a hundred million percent the wrong time to get a boner. I force my mind to remember that she just killed a man in cold blood, to help keep myself in check.
“You were dead. I believed it.I had no choice.I needed to keep Sammy and myself alive. This was the cost.”
Chapter twenty-seven