Page 19 of Cast Stones
“Thiswillhappen, my child. My Mary.”
Mary?
“Never!” I try to scramble away, but he grabs me by my hair and throws me down again.
“Spread your legs, you wicked whore of Eve… You filthy Mary!” he spits again, losing his temper. “We must know if you’re still pure.”
“Please! I’m begging you!” But fear and hunger have weakened me. His cold hands are everywhere. I can’t push him away. I don’t want him to see me, to lift my skirt…to violate me.
“I want my mom!” I scream at him, as if she’s a sacred talisman that’s going to ward off this evil. “Please take me home, she’s missing me!”
“No one misses you anymore, Mary. You belong to the Divine Disciples now. This is the will of God.”
“But he’s not my God! He will never be my God!”
“Blasphemer!” he shrieks, his vicious slap blooming fire and flame across my cheek.
“Luca, help me!” I groan as the old man hooks an icy finger into the crotch of my panties and drags them down my legs. The boy has hardly spoken to me since he stole me away, but he watches me all the time.
Maybe if I can catch his attention… Maybe if he sees what this perverted bastard is doing to me…
In desperation, I scour the room with my eyes, but when I find him, he’s standing motionless in the doorway—eyes cast to the floor like an animal in disgrace. There hasn’t been a flicker of a reaction from him since the old man invaded the cabin, but his fingers grip the doorframe tightly, and his knuckles are a ghostly white.
My thoughts stutter wildly as my legs are forced apart. I’m remembering a talk on cults at my high school last year. There was a woman: a pretty woman with long brown hair. She’d escaped from the Children of God at nineteen, and now she was dedicating her life to helping others to learn how to avoid cult indoctrinations. I bet she never met a beautiful boy with black eyes, though.
I’m dry and innocent. The first finger jabbed inside me is agony.
“Easy now, Mary,” he murmurs thickly as I scream. But he doesn’t stop.
Fighting back the waves of nausea, I rip my head to one side so I can’t see the dark pleasure now sparking in his lifeless eyes.
The torture lasts and lasts—an endless stream of pain and humiliation. Tears spill onto my cheek as he tries to force my hand toward his crotch.
“Stop.”
The word is softly spoken, yet jagged with conflict.
“Hush your mouth, boy,” I hear the old man roar.
“You’ve gotten what you came for.” Luca’s gaze is still cast to the floor. “She’s pure.” There’s a pause. “You only ever linger with the pretty, pure Marys.”
My hand gets dropped from his crotch. The evil finger is wrenched from my body.
Sobbing, I roll away, drawing my knees up to my chest. My talisman proved an empty charm. My mom couldn’t stop the torture, but a black-eyed boy did.
Luca takes his beating without a sound, absorbing the punches and kicks like his body is a powerless vessel on a stormy sea. He never resists. He never fights back. It’s as if his mind and soul have floated up to the same place mine went when that pervert forced himself on me.
After he leaves, Luca unfurls on the floor—like a bloody flower coming back to life after the coldest winter. He drags his body over to the bed and drapes a thin woolen blanket over my body.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers back, and his voice is so full of pain that it brings fresh tears to my eyes.
I hate this boy for what he’s done to me, but his kindness is a drug that stupors that emotion…
“Miss Bailey?”
Evan’s imaginary face snaps to Jackson’s: flushed, perspiring, panting…
