Page 17 of Be My Sinner

Sammy is violent but doesn’t crave death and blood like I do. Yes, he hates the world that has been changed into this travesty that it is now, but alone, he would not have thought to take out members of the Brotherhood. He had his own vendetta against them, and he could readily seek his retribution from behind a keyboard. Helping the resistance slowly topple the Order, one Founding Father at a time. It was me who needed the constant hit of violence—the constant need to see blood spilled.

It is me that Sammy craves above all things. I am his God, his salvation, and his prayers. He would follow me to the end of the world and into hell, even if it broke him. I have no doubt that one day, we will both be welcomed into its deep, dark depths, but not until I fulfill my promise.

I turn my body around, my back leaning against the stone countertop, and allow my fingers to trail over the scar on his face; the one put there by the Brotherhood when he refused to leave his home at fifteen. Leave his mother and sister defenseless against this world. He was called forth to be a soldier of the Brotherhood, and there was no denying that conscription. His sapphire eyes close tightly at my touch, and his breath leaves his puffy lips in a heavy sigh.

“The Lord said, cleanse the world of sinners, bring forth my wrath on all those that deny my true name, and let them see the glory of thy God.”

I smirk at him as I deliver my words, his eyes opening as he raises a snarky eyebrow at me. I’m not playing fair; we both know that I can be a manipulative bitch when I need to be. I’m sure he remembers those words. They were the last ones his pastor heard before I slit his throat.

The fucker had been raping Sammy’s sister for years, as ‘penance and atonement’ for being born a woman to the wrong class in the Order.

“I’ll load the truck.” He turns and walks away, but not before pressing his lips against my hair gently, reverently. The action causes my chest to tighten painfully, and I have to force myself to swallow my words of regret and not call him back.

Only one man left on this earth deserved to live, and he just walked away from me.Are you sure?My mind questions.

Fuck, I’m not sure about anything anymore other than the need to feel blood soaking my fingers, and the last breath of evil leaving this earth.

Chapter 9

The Protector

Sammy

Iloadthecarwith our equipment, a turbulent mix of anger, frustration, and worry coursing through my body. Dinah’s behavior is becoming increasingly troubling. A snicker leaves my lips at the acknowledgment that I’m only genuinely beginning to worry now. She has already brutally killed over twenty men in the last seven months.Maybe we should have been concerned twenty men ago?

Anger and dissatisfaction blaze through me at the words she just spoke to me. They leave a bitter taste in my mouth, which I never thought my Nightstar would place there. She’s manipulating me with the very words that she uttered when she helped me enact my vengeance and justice two years ago, against the man who brutally raped my only sister repeatedly for years while I was away, and unable to protect her.

All in the name of a faith I no longer believe in. I was drafted to fight in its army, compelled to uphold its twisted principles. The very values that shattered my family, and ultimately claimed the life of my sibling. Values that I now help Dinah extract painfully from the Order’s members while they scream.

Yes, my sister was the one who threw herself off the cliff in our hometown, diving head first to her death. Her small and fragile body hitting the sharp and jagged rocks below before being carried out to sea. But make no mistake, the Order of the Brotherhood of the Sacrament was the weapon that led to that destruction:cause and effect.

Her desperation to evade her inevitable fate left her with only one path to follow. As long as I draw breath, I’ll never forgive myself for not resisting them more fiercely back then.You were a boy; what could you have genuinely done?

I run my fingers along the rugged and calloused skin on my jaw. The bumps and grooves serve as a relentless reminder that I was once feeble, a disappointment. That I didn’t truly defy the tyranny of the Order until much later; by then, it was too late to rescue her or myself.

“Boy, you will take your punishment for being a coward. One unwilling to fight for God and do what is required of you. Your penance will be to look at your face in the mirror and witness your cowardice for the rest of your life.”

I fight against the hold of the two Order soldiers holding me down. Neither of them are from my village, but this sergeant is. Before the world lost its damn mind to this new world order, this man used to be a member of my church. He worked at the local mechanic shop fixing our cars. Now, here he is, standing over me with a blade while two gorillas hold me down, preventing me from fighting back or fleeing.

The sharp feel of the blade against my jaw has me holding my breath. A smug and maniacal look crosses his face. His dark eyes filled with joy at my misery. He presses the blade further into my skin, and I feel it give way, splitting and stinging. The sensation of my warm blood trickling down my neck, seeping into the torn collar of my shirt, fills me with a sickening mixture of disgust and fury. It drives me to thrash against their grasp, to fight for my freedom, but they show no mercy, gripping me even tighter until I fear my arms will be torn from their sockets.

The pain is harsh but bearable. I grind my teeth against each other, the taste of blood filling my mouth, while I swallow the scream that is trying its hardest to rip from my lips. These fucking grown men are enjoying torturing a fifteen-year-old boy. I know they want to break me so that they can control me, just like they have done to most of the boys who grew up with me in my village.

Those who now avert their gaze from their neighbors’ suffering. Will I, too, become like them after my service? Will I be all too ready to harm someone I’ve known all my life in the name of a ‘righteous’ order?

“Ship this coward out to the northern states. He is to go into the front lines to fight against the rebels. Maybe his ugly mug will scare them off!” All three of them laugh at my expense. I feel a metal vibration against my skin, and pain lances through my body with the shock collar they slap onto my slick skin. They drag me away from my home, the only place I have ever lived, and the only kin I have left in this miserable world, without even giving me a chance to look back.

I return to myself, pulling myself from the memory of that day. That was the last day I ever got to see my sister alive. The day the Order took away a boy who still believed things could change, that right would overpower wrong.A dreamer.

I was wrong, so fucking wrong. I spent ten years in that army on the front lines, fighting daily for survival while simultaneously wishing for death nightly. Fighting against former neighbors who would not bow readily to the dominance of the Brotherhood, and this new world they created in their image.

Those years took a soft, wistful dreamer and turned him into a death machine. A complex man with very few limits, and forced obedience to the Order. One who rose through the rankings and never again had to be reminded of his cowardice. My gruesome scar became my reminder and pledge to never be brought down to my knees again.

Who knows what would have happened to me had I not been promoted to the honored position of a loyal guard, and sent to keep watch over a future Sacred Wife? A task some of my fellow soldiers snickered about. In their eyes, it was demeaning work after so many years of service. In mine, I couldn’t wait to put all the killing on the front lines behind me.

That was indeed my beginning. My rebirth into this world that I no longer cared anything about. My family was gone, my sanity compromised, and my reasoning to keep going lost. Until the moment I laid eyes on a terrified, dark-haired girl with the biggest, fiercest, blue-gray eyes I had ever seen. I knew right then and there everything that had come before that moment was gone, like grains of sand through an hourglass. My life was restarted, my purpose reassigned and renewed.

The moment our eyes connected, it was like a live wire was being attached to my body and soul. At that moment, I knew what I would live for and spend my life protecting and giving my soul for. A fifteen-year-old Dinah Camrose, spitting mad, fighting against the hold of two large men, even though her small, fragile body was beaten and bloody.

---