Page 115 of Turn That River Red

Ambrose watches me, his eyes burning, his ax swinging at his side. Reverend Gunner opens and closes his mouth like a fish.

“You didn’t give me a choice,Sterling.” I hiss his name. “I never had a choice, because you shaped me into the perfect helpmeet for you.” I’m trembling with rage, flames shooting through my body.

“He’s a killer,” Gunner whimpers. “He’ll kill you when he’s done with me.”

Ambrose meets my gaze and electricity arcs between us.You’re mine, and Idon’t kill what’s mine.

“He’s not even denying it!” Gunner shrieks hysterically. “Please, Mercy! Get his gun! Shoot him in the head! You can end this!”

“I know I can.” I take deep, slow breaths. Ambrose watches me, his fingers gripped tight around his ax. He’s barely concerned about Gunner. All his attention is on me.

“He will kill you!” Gunner screams.

“No, he won’t,” I say evenly. “Because he’s mine.”

Ambrose breaks into a terrifying, feral grin. Then, in one lightning-fast moment, he slams Gunner’s head against the rock I’m standing on, the dogs flanking me on either side.

“Bow to her,” Ambrose snarls.

I do feel like a queen.

Gunner sobs and lifts up his head, blood pulsing out of his mouth. He tries to say something, but the words are slurred and distorted, like his tongue doesn’t work. He bit it.

“Bow to her,” Ambrose repeats, slamming Gunner against the rock again. Blood splatters across my shoes, but when Ambrose lets go, Gunner doesn’t move, just slumps there, his back rising and falling with his panicked breaths.

Ambrose lifts his face and looks me in the eye. “‘And she, being put forward by her mother, saith, Give me here on a platter the head of John the Baptist.’”

Then he swings the ax down. There’s a clean, wet ripping sound and the clank of metal hitting stone.

A breath of silence. Of stillness.

And then Reverend Gunner’s head rolls sideways. Ambrose catches it by the hair and hoists it up, and for a moment I think of Raul, of the last time I was in this river. The pain I felt. The terror.

And I think of all the pain I’ve felt in my life. All the times I bent to meet Gunner’s needs. The tears I sobbed in my bed, a pillow pressed over my mouth to muffle the sound even though I was alone. The prayers I whispered in the shower afterSullivan took me for the first time, how I turned the water on so hot it scorched my skin. The loss of Madelyn, the closest thing to a mother I had, because her husband decided he wanted to fuck me.

I think of all that pain?—

And I know that it’s gone.

Ambrose tosses Reverend Gunner’s head to the riverbank, where it lands in the scrub brush, his eyes turned up toward God. He slides his ax back into his belt and holds out his hand to me.

“Come here, humanita.”

I slide my palm against his and step delicately around Gunner’s headless body. The rock is already slick with his blood, and I have to take care not to slip and fall face forward in the water. But Ambrose is there to keep me steady as I take one step down into the current, then another. After being out in the heat for so long, the water’s chill makes me yelp as it swirls around my bare legs.

Ambrose whistles a lilting little melody, and the dogs descend on Reverend Gunner’s head. But he cups my face in his hands and presses me toward him so I can’t watch.

“We can’t stay here,” I murmur.

“No one’s here but us,” he answers, right before he kisses me like he wants to prove it, his tongue sensual and probing. When he eventually breaks the kiss, he nuzzles against my neck, his breath warm on my skin.

“I need to dress the body,” he whispers. “But I have something to ask you first.”

I pull away to look at him, his hair wet with river water. He’s always hard to read, with his flat dark eyes and predator’s expression. But right now, illuminated by the blazing sun, I think he almost looks—nervous.

“What’s wrong?” My chest gets tight, and suddenly I’mafraid that I’ve been so, so stupid, and he is going to kill me after all.

But then he takes my left hand, rubbing it between his palms.

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