Page 18 of I Will Mend You

He cries out. “Who’s there?”

“What’s your connection to Amethyst Crowley?” I crouch at his side.

“Who?” he wheezes.

“Wrong answer.” I press my thumb into his bandaged eye, earning a shriek that gets absorbed by the truck’s sound-proof walls. “Tell me exactly why you attacked Amethyst.”

He groans, his breath coming in shallow gasps, the undamaged eye streaming with tears. “Please… I’ll tell you. Just stop.”

I ease off the pressure and take hold of his bandaged hand. In the videos my people retrieved from the vicarage, Amethyst stabbed a knife through his palm before she escaped.

The truck’s driver-side door opens, and Jynxson steps in just in time to witness the priest’s confession. He fires up the engine and pulls out of the parking space.

“I don’t know her as Amethyst,” Reverend Thomas says. “I only know her stage name was Little Doll or Dolly.”

“What are you talking about?” I snarl.

“She’s a porn star… Sort of.” He grimaces.

“Meaning?”

“Dolly started out with X-Cite Media the same as all the others. A few hot sex scenes, followed by the finale.”

Fury and disgust battle within my gut for dominance. He talks like the victims consented to being murdered and mutilated for his viewing pleasure. I clench my teeth and snarl, “By hot sex, you mean gang-rape, and finale means getting killed on camera?”

Reverend Thomas gulps. “Yes, but something went wrong. In the last scene, the man who was supposed to make the kill choked her out, but Dolly grabbed the knife and slit his throat.”

“And you know this because…?”

“I was watching the live stream. Everyone went wild to see her win. She scrambled off the bed, covered in his blood, and started slashing everyone who came close.”

My throat tightens. “What happened next?”

“The screen went black. All of us at home were going wild, wanting more of her. No one had ever seen anything like it.”

“When?” I rasp.

“I don’t know… Ten years ago?”

“A child?” I snarl.

“Hey, I had nothing to do with it. I was just a viewer.”

The last shreds of self-control snap. Vision narrowing, I punch him in the face, feeling the satisfying crunch of his nose breaking under my fist. His screams echo in my ears, intensifying my fury.

“Easy,” Jynxson yells from the driver’s seat. “We need him conscious.”

I pull back my fist, my molars grinding. Jynxson is right. We still haven’t gathered enough information. I glance over my shoulder to the windshield to find him already racing down the highway.

Turning back, I ask, “Then what happened?”

Reverend Thomas cowers, his body curling into a tight ball. I repeat my question with a sharp kick into his ribs.

“Weeks passed,” he replies with a groan. “Everyone on the forums was asking what happened to that girl. Eventually, Delta said she was still alive and set up a poll on how we wanted her to die. By then, we were all calling her the little doll.”

Reverend Thomas describes the next video on a gladiator set, where Dolly fought against three actors who took turns assaulting her in front of a crowd of men dressed as Romans.

Revulsion tightens my chest, aggravating my damaged lungs. I don’t believe this Dolly is my Amethyst—I can’t believe it—but every instinct screams at me to tear this man apart for contributing to the torture of an innocent girl. I hold back, my hands clenched into fists. He’s too useful. I need to keep him alive. At least until I’ve found my little ghost.

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