Page 59 of Her Wicked Knights
I was shitfaced the last time we were here in the church, when Whit announced our next victim. Fucking stupid of me to have checked out the way I did, leaving them open to his bullshit. What if he'd not given us a month of warning? What if he decided to go through with it when I was passed out from trying to drown my sorrows? What if he killed her and took away the only fucking light in this town? She's already been dimmed so much since her parents' death, and now he wants to put her out entirely. There's not a fucking chance we'll allow it to happen. But Colton's right. The only thing to do is to keep him close, to play along, to let him think we're working together for a common goal. It's why the three of us show up together tonight, though there's only one other car in the parking lot.
It's why we walk into the chapel to find Whit alone, already at the front of the stage rather than making a grand entrance like usual.
"Brothers." He greets us with a grin. "Welcome."
I look around, taking note of the empty pews. No Jake, no Audrey, no Mark and his entourage.
"Brother?" Colton sneers. "Are wefamilynow?"
"Always have been." Whit shrugs, descending the steps and headed straight toward us.
"Just us tonight?" I ask, watching his face for any indication of what's going on... any indication that he knows we aren't aligned.
"Wanted something more intimate?" Tripp teases, indicating the candles lit all around the church. They're normally lit, but without his ridiculous fanfare and the others with their nonsense, it feels different.
"You could say that." Whit chuckles, adjusting the thing tucked under his arm. "I wanted to share something in confidence."
"Maybe try a therapist." I suggest. God knows I need one after getting wrapped up in his bullshit; I can't imagine having to live in it day in and day out like him. What must the delusions be like?
"I minored in abnormal psychology, actually." Whit grins. "But thank you for the concern."
"Do you ever get tired of your own bullshit?" Colton chuckles. "Seriously, isn't it exhausting?"
"No more exhausting than it must be to try and deny who you really are." He shrugs, flipping open the book in his hands and thumbing through the pages. "I mean, trying to come up with excuses to rationalize what you saw with your own eyes, what you felt with your own hands, what you know deep in your bones?" Whit chuckles a little. "That sounds far more exhausting than embracing what you were made for."
I don't believe for a second that he studied abnormal psychology, unless he means he studied his own delusions.
"Ah, here it is." Whit turns the book toward us and watches expectantly. I don't know what he expects. The page doesn't contain much... just a bunch of symbols and shapes, and some letters arranged to look like words. But they're barely legible, the ink smeared over ancient-looking paper.
"This supposed to mean something to us?" Tripp laughs.
"It means everything." Whit assures him. "This is the spell that binds souls together."
"A spell?" Tripp snorts, at the same time I ask, "Binds souls together?"
"Mmm." Whit agrees. "Our souls, specifically."
"You have one of those?" I muse. "Didn't sell it to the devil or something?"
"Is that what you think we've been doing here?" His laughter echoes around the chamber, filling it with the eerie sound of his maniacal humor. "You think we're sacrificing people to the devil in exchange for magic?" He shakes his head. "Magic doesn't come from the devil or God or anything beyond this world. It comes from the earth, from nature, from the balance between life and death. And when you know how to harvest it, a world of possibilities opens to you. That's what you're here for, isn't it?"
We're here because he got into people's heads. He convinced gullible, feeble-minded people to commit murder for him, and we could have ignored that. It would have been fucked up, but we could have just let the police handle it and left it at that, left them to their weird ass circle jerk without us. But his decision to involve Jake and Audrey had a ripple effect, and I'm holding him responsible for the death of the Lavignes. And now he wants to pick off another.
"Let's not pretend that we're everyone else." Colton says. "I know you're used to your cronies watching your three-ring circus in awe, but we're not buying into any of this shit. You have to know that, right?"
I tense.
It's been months of Colton saying just to play along, to not let on that we have an ulterior motive here, and then he goes and says that?
"I've felt your reluctance to accept it." Whit laughs. "That's why I'm showing you this. The binding of souls."
"I'm flattered." Tripp deadpans. "But I don't like you like that. Hell, I don't think I even like you at all."
Well, fuck. I guess we're laying all our cards on the table.
Whit gasps in fake indignation, lifting a hand to his heart and soothing the fabric of his shirt. "Your words hurt, you know?" He winks, though, and Tripp glances at me, like I might be able to explain any of what just happened. "And what about you,Rene?"
The sound of my birth name on his tongue makes me freeze. But maybe it's not just the name, the fact that he knows it, but the way he says it... the way his tongue rolls perfectly around it, as if he's spoken it a million times before.
