Page 38 of Wanted

When I spray the Prophet with another bloody mist, he finally loses his temper.

His anger crackles and pops like static in the air.

“I had hoped you’d be compliant. It would have made everything that’s to come much easier,” the Prophet warns.

His other hand snaps out and he presses his fingers hard into my forehead.

Electricity sizzles through my veins, causing me to jerk and spasm against Jeffrey as if I was just struck by lightning.

As indescribable pain surges through me, stealing all thought, stealing all breath…

The last thing I hear is the Prophet snarling in Latin.

“Wake up,” someone pleads. “Please, you must wake up. I can’t carry you.”

The desperate urging of the words begin to tug me out of oblivion. But the moment I feel sharp pain throbbing through my limbs, I choose to ignore them.

I don’t want to wake up ever again. I don’t want to know what the Prophet did to me.

But the annoying words persist. “Wake up, Alena. Please wake up! I beg you!”

A warm, sweaty hand touches my shoulder and shakes me.

Every nerve in my body screams in misery. I cry out in reflex and taste something thick and foul coating my tongue.

“I’m sorry. I know it hurts, lass,” the man apologizes. “But for the love of God, you must wake up!”

Squeezing my eyes shut, I huff and pant through the pain. “No.”

Fuck God’s love.

It hurts too much.

The man sucks in a surprised breath. “Please don’t say that. I know what’s been done to you is unforgivable, but I assure you God had nothing to do with it.”

“Go away,” I groan and try to roll away from the man, wishing he’d remove his sweaty hand.

“I can’t do that. If I leave, you will truly be damned,” he insists.

I’d laugh at that if it wouldn’t hurt so bad.

“If you get up,” he goes on, “I can help you escape. I will take you somewhere safe, but we must act quickly.”

“Why?” I grit out, annoyed that the more he talks to me, the more I find myself awake.

His voice cracks with emotion as if he truly believes what he speaks. “Because you don’t deserve this fate. No one deserves this fate.”

“No… that’s not what I meant. Why are you helping me?” I groan, and do my best to ignore the taste of rot still coating my tongue.

They must have somehow forced Jeffrey’s putrid blood down me when I was unconscious. That or forced me to eat a dead rat…

“Because you need it,” the man says, “and I can stand by no longer and watch this… this farce of a church commit atrocities in God’s name.”

Slowly, painfully, I focus my strength on peeling my eyes open. To see the face of the man who would speak against the Order in such a way.

When my gaze falls upon Father McCall’s face, I find I’m not the least bit surprised. Though, I should be.

He’s a priest of the Order. He knows such words are heresy and worthy of death. Yet he’s not afraid to speak them. Unless this is some kind of test…

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