Page 88 of Wrath
Why wasn’t Mary fighting back?
The suspicion shouted at him. It was wrong. This scene was wrong. Mary’s hard expression was almost impassive. Apart from her thumbs beneath the cord at her neck, she seemed not to notice, nor care about the stool holding her feet up, or the whip connected to her neck and the ceiling, preparing her for death.
A groan came from Wyatt’s right, and he caught movement under a fallen table. Deep beneath a pile of red splattered bodies, a hand burst out, followed by Sloan’s sleeve, then her shoulder and head as she pushed the dead weight from herself. Blood streaked down her face like macabre war paint. She groaned loudly.
With one cautious eye on the stage, Wyatt offered Sloan his hand, and he pulled her to her feet.
He tugged his mask down. “You good?”
She nodded curtly. “I’ll heal.”
“Arrows?”
“Gone.”
Shit.
“Guns?”
“Nada. And before you ask, it’s all gone. I’m out. You took your sweet-ass time.”
“Sorry.”
Her grim face hardened, and she nodded in the direction of the stage. “Do you think she realizes that won’t work on Mary?”
Hanging Mary, probably not. All of them had spent time training their iron necks with the Shaolin Monks. It was well known in martial arts that to control your opponent was to control their head—whether that be mental or physical. So they spent hours, days, sometimes over weeks hanging from a tree by their necks. And then hours and days slamming iron plates against their foreheads, or to carry loads on their heads to strengthen muscles, turning their most vulnerable body part into an unexpected weapon.
But had Mary kept up her strength training?
From the look of calm on her face, he guessed yes, but he couldn’t risk it. A fifty-something-year old woman’s neck wasn’t the same as it was in her youth—strength training or not. He had no idea what was rushing through Mary’s mind—she felt no wrath in that moment. The turmoil of emotion bubbling in her eyes was not connected to anger.
But it was connected to sloth because Sloan flinched and whispered to Wyatt, “Mary’s guilty about neglecting something.”
Their stony gazes met and then Sloan gave Falcon a pointed look.
He exhaled in a rush. It could only mean one thing. When his eyes landed back on Falcon, he stepped closer and asked, “What do you want?”
The white-haired woman coiled the end of her whip around her fist, tested the torque on the hangman’s noose. As the whip lifted, so did Mary’s neck until she stood on tiptoes, hands straining at the cord for support. Her feet scuffled on the stool, precariously rocking with her slipping foothold.
Wyatt snarled and lurched forward, but Mary shot him a halting look. “Don’t,” she rasped.
He stopped, four feet from the stage, shocked. “Why?”
“Despair,” was all Mary managed to hiss out.
Sloan hissed in shock, but Wyatt wasn’t surprised. He’d suspected it before.Despair.The forgotten sin… back from the dead. If she—Despair, Falcon, or whatever they should call her now—gave any indication that she heard Mary, or cared, it was lost. The woman just stared down at Wyatt with cold eyes.
“Give me your blood, and I’ll let her go.”
“Despair?” Sloan asked. “As in… the sister we thought was dead?”
Wyatt took another step closer and narrowed his focus on the woman. She certainly looked related with her wide lips and delicate facial structure. Put her next to Sloan, and she’d be the light version next to Sloan’s dark. Tall, like all of them. Strong. Another step closer and he noticed the burn marks down the side of her face, so pale and silvery in the light that he almost didn’t register. They believed Despair died in a fire, and he knew as well as anyone, that although the Lazarus children could heal and regenerate, the scars remained.
“We thought you were dead,” Wyatt announced gruffly, and then took a step. “We had a funeral for you. We gave you a name.”
Almost there.The stage was within reaching distance.
“Stop.” She wrenched on her whip, lifting Mary higher. “Last warning.”
