Page 23 of Prince Of Sloth

Pru

My head was pounding, and my eyes felt like they were swollen shut. The splitting pain at the crown of my head pulsed, and if I wasn’t bleeding, I knew I would be bruised.

Broken memories from the night before flashed in and out of focus with the waning of lights and spots over my blurred vision. I’d been screaming for Ezra in a small, cramped place for what seemed like hours. I had either passed out from panic, pain, or exhaustion, and I didn’t remember being moved.

After Ezra had let me walk out of the hotel, I made it to the end of the block before I fell to my knees on the sidewalk.

A man had stopped and crouched down next to me. “Are you all right, miss?” His voice was low and familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

“No. I’m an idiot,” I’d sobbed. “And now I have to find my way back home tonight. I shouldn’t have come down here.”

I hiccuped through my jumbled word vomit to the stranger. He brushed a hand down my back and shushed me softly.

“There’s a coffee shop around the corner. Let me buy you a coffee while you figure out your next move.”

His offer was kind. Kinder than most people would be to someone losing their ever-loving mind out in public.

I’d shaken my head and got to my feet. “Thank you, but . . .”

When I looked up at the man, I realized it was the priest I’d met in the courtyard. The one who had caused the fight between Ezra and me.

I had a choice to make: run away from the man and back up to Ezra or allow the man to buy me coffee and maybe get answers from him.

Neither felt right in my stomach, but I was reeling from the argument with Ezra, and I couldn’t cry on the sidewalk all night.

The last thing I remembered was rounding the corner with the man and looking for the coffee shop he’d said was close by. Then, everything went black and my memories were broken up by my own screams for help and missing time.

Now, I was finally peeling open my eyelids to focus on the room around me. The cloudy early-morning light was streaming in from colorful glass windows. The smell of burning candles and dim dots of light deepened my suspicion that I was somewhere sinister.

The pain in my head radiated down to my face, and when I tried to wipe the grogginess from my eyes to get a better look, I couldn’t raise my arm. My wrists, torso, and ankles were tied to a hard wooden chair. My pelvis was aching from it, adding to the onslaught of agony assaulting my groggy brain.

The room was vast and open, but my vision was fading out again. Pain had taken over my senses. My eyes drifted shut until a hard smack set fire to my cheek. I tried to scream, but it was muffled by something tight over my lips.

An icy splash of water rushed over my body and up my nose. My eyes bolted open and searched for whoever was trying to drown me.

“Time to wake up. He’ll be looking for you,” said a cold voice. “For that to be possible, you have to be conscious.”

I turned one way, then the other, but I couldn’t see the source of the disembodied voice.

“In my experience, a desperate demon is a careless demon. He’ll be worried sick about his precious Prudence.”

This man knew me. He knew my full first name. Was he talking about Ezra?

How would Ezra know how to find me, and was this man calling him a demon because of the kind of music he performed?

He had to be some sort of nut-job-stalker-Jesus-freak hell-bent on ridding the world of the plague of good music and fun. He definitely had to be crazy, but that didn’t change the fact that he had me strapped to a chair and had bashed me over the head. The slap across my face had woken me up, but the freezing water had brought my fight-or-flight instincts to the surface.

The few steps down from the altar would be enough to break the chair if I landed just right. Then I could run out the door or use scraps of the chair as a weapon. But before I could coil my muscles to make the small leap over the edge, his hands gripped the back of the chair. He leaned down once more to deliver a sentence that set my heart slamming against my ribcage with a new kind of fear.

“He’s here.”

12

Gaap

Silent dread filled up the small church. The iron smell of blood and the salt of tears flared my nostrils before my eyes adjusted to the candlelight and darkened sanctuary. The previous glory was dimmed by the evil being committed within.

My stomach sank when I realized the small, wet figure bound to a chair on the altar was Pru. Silver bands of duct tape made an excessive X over her lips, and her tear-stained cheeks were red. My focus landed on the distinct mark of finger outlines just between the frayed tape.

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