And scream and scream.
Until he’d shut them all down.
Because Oren held the purse strings, his aunt and uncle could be controlled. When threats of disinheritance didn’t work, drugs did.
And that boorish slut . . . well, he told her that he’d cut out her tongue if she made another sound. With the other already-mute bitch bleeding to death beside her, she hadn’t needed further convincing.
Remembering, Oren’s smile turned to a grin.
His uncle’s slack mouth.
His aunt’s eyes, rolled back in her head.
The whore’s white-faced fear.
Shoving off from the rickety wall, refusing to look at the ghastly slash on his soft, pale arm, Oren started back to where his ride waited—in a nicer section of town. To facilitate the rest of his journey, he removed his backpack and dug out what he needed.
Later in the week, he’d return to this hellhole. He’d be sure to avoid the skinny dark-haired girl, and then he’d be more successful. No one would get in his way.
He wouldn’t allow it.
What worked on Aunt Dory and Uncle Myer would work on others.
If he didn’t keep his aunt and uncle occupied, they’d venture out on their own, and they were so brainless, ruled only by their base desires, that they ran the risk of blowing their whole setup.
But Oren liked things as they were. He liked the house, the freedom, the control he had over others . . .
In his mind, he pictured the dirty tramp, tied to the sparse frame . . . almost broken, almost there.
He laughed out loud.
Yeah, he liked it a lot.
Knowing Luther watched her every tiny move, Gaby turned her head to the side and smirked. Little by little, the grip of the righteous calling subsided, pulling its sharp talons out of her soul, releasing her to deal with more earthbound issues.
Like Luther.
It hurt to keep looking at him, to see how he looked at her.
After the hell of her life, she’d thought herself tough, strong enough to stay alone, to relish her isolation from the pathetic society surrounding her.
But God’s truth, walking away from Luther weeks ago had almost destroyed her. She’d needed a purpose, any purpose other than the agony God saw fit to strike her with at His whim.
Luther’s breath heated her neck right above the collar that she always wore. Like her association with divine forces, the choker gave her solace.
“Answer me, God damn it!”
The blasphemy bothered her far more than the bone-crushing grip on her wrists. “You know why I left.”
“Tell me.”
Temper snapping, she jerked her hands loose and shoved him back several feet. That felt good enough that she went ahead and shoved him again, her attack taking him by surprise enough that he stumbled backward and nearly fell on his ass.
As he took a stance against her, his nostrils flared. “Gaby . . .”
“Luther,” she mocked. She might be skinny, but when enraged, she had undeniable strength, with or without God’s influence.
Leaning in to him, stalking him, she snarled, “I left because I wanted you, all right?”
He planted his big feet and stopped retreating.
His savage expression didn’t impress her one iota. “You showed me things you shouldn’t have, Luther. But then Mort died and I . . .” The harsh memory of losing her only friend caused the words to strangle in her throat before emerging as a faint whisper. “I felt so guilty, I had to leave.”
Straightening on a deep sigh, Luther surveyed her, shook his head, and holstered his gun. “Gaby,” he said again, not as a warning this time, but with softened exasperation and what sounded suspiciously like condolence.
“Don’t do that.” She turned her back on him, resisting the urge to slap her hands over her ears. “Don’t talk all gentle and sweet when nothing can ever happen between us.” To reinforce that fact, more to herself than to Luther, she said harder, “Never.”
He had the audacity to laugh. “Bullshit.”
Whirling on him, she opened her mouth—
“It’s happening, Gaby.” To emphasize his point, Luther closed the insignificant space between them. “Believe it. Accept it. I can’t say when, but I know it will.” He looked her over. “You know it will, so stop fighting that much, at least.”
Meaning he knew she fought everything else? Her commiserable life? Her very existence?
Her purpose on earth?
Okay, so they had that unsettling sexual chemistry thing churning between them. She did accept that. But the rest?
Not possible.
So why did he have to hunt her down and start teasing her with impossible things again? As a paladin, a warrior for God, her life wasn’t normal, would never be normal.
She was abnormal—in every way.
Luther couldn’t know what she did, and he wouldn’t believe why she did it. Normal people weren’t summoned by God.
Normal people didn’t destroy life in any grisly manner necessary.
Normal people didn’t behold the abominable evil that showed itself clearly to her, the evil she was ordered to annihilate.
Like spilled oil in a dirty gutter, it all came back to the surface: her duty, and Luther’s inability to ever grasp or accept it. He was a damn cop, and given half a chance he’d arrest her, see her prosecuted, and stand by while unknowing normal people saw her locked away.
For life.
And that hurt more than anything could.
Ready to disguise her anguish with anger, Gaby charged forward, and Luther held up a hand to stop her.
“Mort’s not dead, sweetheart.”
She drew up short. Sweetheart? What sappy shit was that? No one called her . . .
Then the rest of what Luther said sank in and Gaby’s world tilted. Her knees felt weak. Her heart punched hard against the wall of her chest.
Not dead? But . . .
Weeks ago, Mort had died. She knew it.
She’d seen it.
Images burned through her mind with a flash-fire intensity that seared her soul and inflamed her agony.
She saw Mort bravely staying behind in the abandoned building after she’d dispatched the zombielike souls and the monstrous doctor who’d created them. She saw Mort showing his first signs of personal pride, practically glowing with his sense of purpose—God’s purpose.
And then . . . Mort falling beneath a madwoman’s lust for blood, buried in ashes and dust . . .
“No.” Lost on the night breeze, her whispered denial faded into oblivion. She wheezed, trying to draw in needed oxygen, but instead her lungs bloated on the nastiness of depravity and the craven sense of despair.
“Yes, Gaby.”
Luther’s reassurance didn’t touch her. Reaching out, she braced a palm on the roughened surface of broken bricks, her eyes burning and her throat constricted. “I saw . . .”
“What?” New anger sparked in Luther’s brown eyes. “What did you see?”
“Nothing.” She shook her head. She couldn’t let Luther know that she had been there, a part of it all, the biggest part—the part that butchered, hashed, and permanently destroyed atrocities too vile to survive.
He didn’t buy it. “You were there, weren’t you, Gaby? Mort lied about that much. Admit it.”
Luther didn’t approach her, didn’t touch her. He just waited, watching her, judging her reaction the way he always judged her—with suspicion and cynicism.
He was a good man.
Auras of strength and purpose always surrounded him, a protective halo to remind her of all the ways they contrasted.
That he remained distrustful of her was one good reason to keep her distance. If a do-gooder seraph like Luther ever found out what she did, he’d never be able to deal with it.
Reminding herself of that gave her strength, enough to amass her wits and face him again.
She steadied her palpating heart and locked back her jellied knees. Suspicious, hopeful, she surveyed him. “Mort’s really alive?”