When we’re in the car, he turns to glance at me. “I’m gonna pay you back for that, Ella.”
I hope you do.
Chapter Five
I pay her back for it, and then some. She took three shots when she got inside my house. If that’s what it was going to take for her to fuck me again, I didn’t care. I saw the mark on her face, the one I didn’t make, and I thought about asking her about it. I wondered if that’s what she wanted to forget.
I didn’t ask.
I have a feeling whenever she wakes up, she’s gonna be covered in more bruises. I think I should feel bad about that, but she begged for it. Not that I needed to be begged.
We didn’t talk much, and when it was all over, despite her feeble protest that she should leave, she fell asleep. I wonder if it hadn’t been close to five in the morning, still dark outside, if this would’ve happened so easily. If she would’ve let me carry her upstairs, dive my head between her legs, and then fuck her so hard she actually cried.
Monsters always get away with more in the dark.
Like whoever pulled that fucking fire alarm.
I got a report from the guards that there was not, in fact, a fire, which is another reason I don’t fucking like people. And tonight, I’ve got to deal with more of them. At Council.
But for now, Ella is asleep in my bed, and while I’m sexually satisfied, I’m not ever really satisfied.
Which is a good thing I got a text from an unsaved number in my phone just as I finished choking Ella, coming inside of her again, because I’m an idiot and believed her when she said she was on birth control.
It’s the same number that had taunted me about Poe’s The Premature Burial: “The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”
But this time, all the message said was, Ready for confession?
I lock a sleeping Ella in my room (this house is full of dark surprises).
I let Father Tomas into the garage, the sun not even out yet.
I purposefully parked the McLaren and pulled the Audi outside on the driveway for this reason.
The priest is dressed in his clerical clothing; black shirt and pants. Still, he’s got the Leviathan Cross around his neck hanging by a black cord, the infinity sign and double cross glinting silver in the garage light, reminding me just what kind of priest he is.
The garage is clean and tidy without my cars, nothing at all in here, which is how I like everything: empty.
I roll up my sleeves, get down on my knees on the cement floor.
Father Tomas sighs as he stands in front of me, his arms clasped behind his back. He’s in his mid-thirties, with thick brown hair that’s longer on top, stubble that he’s let grow since the last time I saw him, after the disaster at Sacrificium, a few weeks ago. He’s got brown eyes, thick brows narrowed on me as I look up at him, sitting back on my heels.
His hands are behind his back, but I can see the whip, nearly grazing the cement floor.
“Always with blood on your hands,” he murmurs to himself. And then, “You sure you want to do this?” But even though his words are kind, I can imagine him preaching fire and brimstone, telling everyone they’re going to hell and they should be thankful for it.
He’s the official priest of the 6, with no religious background whatsoever save for in Satanic studies. He has a church of sorts that’s his own little mashup of atheists and humanists. He’s a licensed therapist.
I trust him.
He used to take me from my parents’ house when I was a kid, when things got bad. After Malachi. After I earned my nickname, Mayhem, he’s the one that indulged me in my…desires.
He still does.
If any of the 6 knew he was here, and if they knew what he knows about my little basement debacle, they’d probably kill him for keeping my secrets. It’s how I know he’ll keep doing it, even though he’s tried to convince me to let Ria out. He’s kept my secrets for so long, it would be suicide to tell anyone about it now.
I pull my shirt over my head, drop it to the floor and kneel with my hands on my knees, my head bowed.
He was the one to suggest I bond with Sid over our mutual love of poetry.
No, thanks.
He was also the one to first find out Ria Cuevas was—is—living in my basement. He guessed as much when she “went missing”.
I don’t keep his number in my phone because I don’t keep anyone’s number in my phone. A way to keep my mind sharp, or maybe I’m just truly that masochistic. But I wasn’t surprised it was him that found out first.
He’s observant. It’s what’s kept him alive while dealing with a cult as volatile as mine all these years.
“Don’t ask me again,” I growl at him in answer to his question. I close my eyes, but I don’t squeeze them shut. I want to breathe through this. Feel every bit of it.
Before Sid, I hadn’t done this in a long, long time. And I’d never done it enough to scar. Never enough to draw blood.
But after her, and now with Ria and Brooklin, I can’t get enough.
“You know if you keep doing this, it’s going to fuck up your brand?”
I snort, shaking my head but otherwise ignoring him. My Unsaint’s tattoo—a skull with a U through one eye and smoke through another—is already a little fucked up. Scars from Lover’s Death, and now…this.
“How many?” he asks, adjusting his stance. I keep my eyes closed, but I can hear him move.
“As many as it takes.”
He blows out a breath. “Should’ve told me. I’d have cancelled my dinner plans,” he jokes.
I smile despite myself. “Should have.”
And then he’s done talking.
The first flick of the whip is like a shock to my system. Like stepping into a too-hot shower; something I also do. It startles me, and I have to bite my tongue to keep from crying out. But I don’t make a sound, and I taste iron in my mouth.
Father Tomas gives me five seconds before he flicks the whip again, right over the same spot he just hit.
He’s good, I’ll give him that.
I clench my hands on my knees, digging into my pants, but I still don’t make a sound. Even when I feel my flesh ripping in two, opening up the wounds that haven’t healed, I don’t let anything come out of my throat except my own breath.
Soon, he’s not waiting any amount of time at all, just flicking the whip over and over and over. I hear it whistle right before it hits my flesh, and he walks around me, so he’s standing at my back, watching it get destroyed as he hits me. I’ve stopped jumping, stopped flinching.
Stopped breathing.
Stopped feeling.
My back is numb with an undercurrent of fire. I have my eyes still closed, my hands still fisted against my pants, but I still don’t say a word. Make a single sound. He keeps going, back over where he started, and my stomach clenches as my body tries to brace me for the impact over the fresh wounds.
He pauses, and I know there must be quite a bit of blood. Through the numbness, I can feel the warmth of it, dripping down my back. I clench my fists, ready to scream while he waits, but I know why he’s doing it.
It’s a mental torture, having to keep my fucking mouth closed while I bleed inside and out, dying for him to keep going so this can really stop. But if I say a word, it’ll be over too soon. And I can still think of them: Sid, Brooklin, Ria. I can still imagine their lives in my head and my hands, what might happen to them if I don’t fix everything. Their fates rest on my shoulders. I’ve already fucked up Sid’s. I let my father fuck up Brooklin’s. And Ria? The others weren’t entirely my fault; I can acknowledge that. But Ria…she’s fully my responsibility.