“Luca!” she cries, meeting my violence thrust for thrust. “I’m coming!”
“Then come, cara mia,” I growl. “Let me feel you squeeze my cock. Take your pleasure.”
With a few more thrusts, Madi explodes in a brilliant array of prayers and curses, both woven with my name and God’s. The feel of her pussy contracting ignites my own orgasm. Throwing my head back, I come with a roar, filling her with my seed as my blood drips onto her skin. At the very end, I collapse forward, my front to her back.
Cross to cross. Promise to promise.
Our blood becomes one, bound by sacrifice and carnality. The past is no more. There is only us. Luca and Madi. Sole survivors of life’s most brutal lesson.
After pulling out of her, I fasten my pants and untie Madi’s wrists. I don’t clean my wound and neither does she. Instead, she dresses in silence, my seed still spilling down her thighs and blood staining her back.
I stand silently as she wanders to the cabin’s solitary window and leans against it. As if sensing her presence, the moon reappears from its shadowy confinement, spilling light through the muddled glass.
“It’s time.”
Lifting a finger, Madi traces the cracks in the foggy pane. “Yes,” she sighs. “I know.”
“Something’s wrong.”
She shakes her head, still gazing up at the night sky. “No, nothing’s wrong. It’s just this place, Luca. It feels like home, yet it’s centered in Hell.” Placing her palm against the glass, she turns a trouble glance toward me. “It’s hard to understand how something so beautiful can survive amidst so much evil.”
I know she’s speaking of the cabin and the solace it provided us during the dark days of her captivity, but I can’t help but feel as if the root of her question grows much deeper.
Crossing the creaking floor, I stand by her as she stares out the window at the trees that hid our secret for so many years. “You don’t have to understand it, my sweet rose. You just have to accept it. Under the right circumstances, life can grow in the most barren of fields. You were my circumstance, Madi. You saved me, and I saved you back. We survived.”
“I’ll miss this cabin.”
“It’ll miss us too. But it’s time to set it free, just like the others.”
Giving me a resigned smile, she nods and takes my offered hand, stopping only to retrieve the discarded red ribbon before I lead her out the door and down those rickety steps one last time.
I nod for Madi to continue walking toward the edge of the woods. Once she’s out of sight, I pull the lighter from my pocket and then the cloth I tucked into my back pocket. With one flick, an orange glow dances under the cloth, teasing the material until finally devouring it whole.
I don’t look back as I toss the burning cloth through the front door. Even as I hear the old wood crackle and hiss, I keep moving forward, following the scent of her floral perfume.
It isn’t until we’re both settled inside my truck that I glance in the rearview mirror at the orange ball of flames licking the sky.
Madi tilts her chin. “What now?”
I start the ignition, her simple question drawing the first smile to my face. “Now, we leave this evil behind...and seek others.”
Nodding, Madi slides across the seat and as she lays her head on my shoulder, I hit the gas, leaving the blazing inferno behind us as we drive away.
Toward a new life.
A new beginning.
And new justice.
Because for every sin that’s burned to the ground, somewhere, there’s another just sparking to life.
EPILOGUE
Madigan
The ribbon was my destiny. I know that now. I was just another Alice with a blonde braid and a future as white as the driven snow before I fell down his rabbit hole.
Since then, I’ve learned that regret is a wasted emotion. You take what you’re given in life and you shape your own salvation out of it. To paraphrase Luca: that ribbon led me out of a lie and into a truth. It led me to everything good in this world. It led me to him.
We grabbed hold of it together, and then we let it slip through our fingers, leaving a bloody trail of red behind us.
We crossed state lines for justice. We crossed international borders. In ten years, the tainted roots of the Divine Disciples of God had spread all over the world, but we took an ax to them all. Afterward, when there was no more evil to banish, we repented in a church of our own making.
These days, we live our lives according to another God—one who baptized us in the blood we spilled, and rewarded our murder with new life of our own. We founded another home in Maryland, in the heart of another forest with better secrets. We have children now: a family—a brand new boy and a brand new girl who will never know our pain and misery.
Sometimes I find myself thinking about my life at sixteen. I consider the parameters of living with a lighter soul and ignorance, and I always find myself wanting. I think about my old high school crush, Evan, and I end up feeling empty. Luca gives me purpose. He fills me up, until I can’t take anymore. He loves me with the savageness that I demand. His needs and desires are just as depraved as my own.
My parents still mourn a daughter who switched to the other side of the law. My sister still mourns the ghost of a sibling whose Most Wanted picture taints the internet. Grady refused to share his stories with the press. Still, his shock will fade in time. Maybe one day he’ll see the real story behind the headlines, but I doubt it. Only Luca and I can claim to understand this madness. What we’ve achieved together is more important than the past. It’s the essence of everything. It’s a beast that still needs feeding...
There’s a new evil rising. Teenagers are going missing again. There are whispers of another sex cult, and another sick missionary to depose. It calls to me, like it calls to Luca. I saw it on his face yesterday as he was sitting on the front porch with our three-year-old daughter cuddled up in his arms. It’s the knowing that somewhere, somehow, another child is about to be ripped away from their parents’ safety. It’s the knowing what we know...
I’m standing in front of the stove when I sense him moving behind me. I’m wearing a powder-blue, backless summer dress. He kisses the scar he gave me before he wraps his arm around my waist and slams our bodies together with a groan.
“The wages of sin is death, Luca,” I say, throwing my head back against his chest, feeling his cock stiffen against the curve of my ass as my words hit home.
When he smiles into my hair, I know it’s time to kill again.
DEATH IN THE FLAMES
Murphy Wallace
CHAPTER ONE
Sasha
Speeding down the two-lane back road in my old, light blue Plymouth Horizon, I cuss my brother out in my head as I tap my fingers on my steering wheel out of irritation.
“Why do I do this to myself?” I question.
You don’t do this to yourself; your brother does. You just keep letting him get away with it.
Inwardly, I roll my eyes at my conscience. She’s a blunt bitch, but she’s always right.
My brother is three years older than me, but I’ve been the one taking care of him for years. Our mother skipped town when we were little, leaving Dad to raise us by himself. He was an amazing man, the best father anyone could ask for, but with him working two jobs just so we could make ends meet, I took on the role of caretaker. I was the one who did all of the grocery shopping, cleaning, and laundry. I made sure we always had a warm meal on the table, even if it was just a can of peas.