Page 78 of Turn That River Red

“Let me go,” I repeat, trying to suppress the thought.

“And where would you go, if I did that?” Ambrose tilts his head. It’s not mocking, the way he asks it. “Back to the Church of the Well? To the police?”

“I won’t tell anyone about you,” I say. “Just let me go back—” The wordhomecurdles on my tongue. “Just let me go back.”

“Is that really want you want?” He shifts on the couch, eyes burning into me.

No, it’s not. I don’t want to go back to the church. I don’t want to go back to Reverend Gunner, back to being a helpmeet but not really a wife, back to being an object that isn’t even treasured. Ambrose is a monster, a demon, but he looks at me like I matter. He’s doing it right now. And that’s more than I can say for Reverend Gunner or Pastor Sullivan or Madelyn or any of them.

“I hate you,” I say, because I do. I hate him for showing me what my life could have looked like but then taking it away from me because he’s a psychopath.

“You already said that,” Ambrose says softly. “And it hurts just as much the second time.”

Then he stands up, his dark eyes fixed on me. I feel faintly stunned—how can he care if I hate him? How can he care about me at all?

And why do I want to believe he’s telling the truth?

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

AMBROSE

It’s too fucking hot to be out in the barn, but I’m out here anyway, slumped in an ancient lawn chair and smoking a cigarette, a vice I haven’t indulged in for a few years. But smoking helps calm me down, and I never have to worry about cancer anyway.

Right now, though, the smoke just tastes like ash.

Roxi and Max sit at my feet, the heat making them lazy. I haven’t bothered to wipe down their bloody muzzles after they tore apart Lakowski’s arm, and there’s a small, petty part of me that wants to send Max into the house to check on Mercy, bloody muzzle and all. A small, petty part of me that wants to hear her screams and smell her fear and jerk off to it.

Pathetic.

The cigarette is almost to its filter, and it’s doing fuck-all for me, so I stub it out on the metal cabinet where I keep my various torture devices and add it to the rest of the barn’s mess. Like the nail Mercy stepped on.

She doesn’t know it, but I licked my fingers clean of her blood after I left her alone in the living room, eyes closed as Iran my tongue around my fingers. She hurt the fuck out of me, saying she hated me the way she did, but tasting her blood was a small consolation. Reminded me, in that moment, of what I am, and what she is, and what creatures like me are supposed to do to humans like her.

It’d be easy, wouldn’t it? To grab one of my blades off the wall—the ax, maybe, the ax is always a classic—and stalk inside and swing it down to split her head open. I’d kill her fast, same as I did her preciousRaul, and unlike Raul I’d eat her right away, cut big steaks off her gorgeous thighs and fry them in butter and garlic and rosemary.

The idea makes my cock swell, and I shift in the chair, angry at myself for wanting her so badly even when I’m fantasizing about destroying her. I shouldn’t be thinking about her at all. I shouldn’t have felt a stab of panic when I realized she’d stepped on that fucking nail and she might have tetanus and I can’t do a damn thing about it without the risk of exposure. I shouldn’t have wrapped her foot up so tenderly while she raged at me about what a monster I am, and I sure as shit shouldn’t have felt bad about it.

I shouldn’t feel pangs of jealousy every time she says Raul’s name.

I sigh, exasperated, and pull out another crumpled cigarette. The pack is almost five years old, an artifact I keep stashed next to a box of big metal hooks.

I light the cigarette with my old Zippo and draw the smoke in, leaning back in the chair. Even with the fan blowing on me, it feels like I’m simmering in an oven. Ironic, that.

Max whines and nudges at my foot.

“I’m not letting you go in there,” I mutter to him. “She hates us, remember?”

Max licks the sweat off my leg. I pet him and take another drag of my cigarette. Even though I shouldn’t, I put my senses out until I find Mercy. She hasn’t fled like I expected her to,which is kind of a relief, because I know I would chase her if she tried. Not just because I don’t want her going to the cops. But because?—

Because you wanther, you fucking fool.

I suck down more acrid smoke like it’ll save me from myself. That’s the truth of it. I do want her. I also want her to be happy, which is the other reason I don’t want her to flee. I can hide from the cops easily enough. Go south to one of my houses down in the Rio Grande Valley, take on a new persona for a few years. It’s not like I haven’t done it before.

But what would happen to Mercy, then? She’d have to go back to that piece of shit Sterling Gunner. He doesn’t even have the decency to let her be a wife to some sad sack in the church. He had to claim her for himself.

You’re doing the same thing.

The thought hits me hard, and it burns as bad as the cigarette. Something like guilt pulses through me, and that’s an unfamiliar fucking emotion, let me tell you.

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