Page 7 of Deliver us from Evil

Gotta get help.

I take out my phone.

Shit! Cass has been trying to reach me. I must have forgotten to take my phone off silent this morning. I turn on the ringer now. Then I go to call Cass.

“Coming,” Trinity says, and this time I hear her fine. But it’s too late, because her eyes are already wide, her lips peeling open in dismay.

Maybe if I’d understood sooner, Gabriel wouldn’t have had the upper hand. But he works out. Stays fit.

I don’t. Hate getting sweaty. Hate feeling tired and stiff.

When Father Gabriel comes at me from behind, slings an arm around my throat, and puts me in a chokehold, there’s nothing I can do about it.

Sweet fanny fuck all.

I swat at him, try and scratch out his eyes, but he dodges like a snake.

Trinity watches, eyes brimming, lips distorted. Angry, scared. But just sitting there like a broken doll propped up against the wall in some filthy playhouse.

I finally make contact. Scratch his cheek.

But the light’s fading. I can’t fend him off much longer. And once he’s rid of me…

“They’re coming for you, you piece of shit,” I manage through a collapsing windpipe. “I’d run. Run fucking far.”

God, it takes everything I have to say those words. Not just physical effort, because taking a nap right now is all my body wants to do.

I’m giving up everything we’ve tried so hard to conceal. No vote. No consensus. But I can’t let him take her. And I know that’s what he’s going to do after leaving her here like this. Probably had to go fetch some ropes, or a carpet to roll her up in like those old spy movies.

Life is more important than revenge. Trinity’s life especially.

I don’t care if she’s Gabriel’s daughter.

I don’t care if she was sent to spy on us.

I care too much about her for that shit to matter.

My brothers might never forgive me, and that’s fine. I can handle that. But I’ll never forgive myself if I didn’t do everything in my limited power to protect her.

“They? They who?” Gabriel says. It sounds like he’s trying not to laugh. Like he thinks I’ll say anything to drop his guard.

“My brothers. They’re coming up the stairs. You’re trapped.”

“Brothers? You don’t have any brothers.” He laughs outright now, so hard his chest shakes. That vibration goes through me. Fills me.

The Guardian wasn’t one of the sick fucks who took turns offloading their unrighteous perversions on us. He never touched us.

But he orchestrated everything.

The feel of him so close against me, it’s worse than cleaning out the fucking grease trap.

It turns my stomach, gives me the shakes, and just when I think I’m about to puke…

It flicks a switch.

I’m useless, a victim. Then suddenly I’m not. Because all that rage, all that horror, all that shame and humiliation and pain rises up in me like a motherfucking tsunami.

And wherever it goes, it leaves devastation in its wake.

---