Page 113 of Speak No Claim

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Hanging from a tree.

Chapter

Thirty-Six

Hennessy: Welcome to the Blood Oath Brotherhood. We’ve been expecting you.

I screamed bloody murder when I saw Caspian’s limp body hanging from my favorite tree. It was the same one I climbed the first time I’d set foot onto this property. I’d used it time and time again, wanting to know what the carved date meant.

“No!” I shouted, instantly going to help him.

His hands were tied to a branch with his mask still on his face. The Brotherhood crest had been burned into his chest, right over his heart. He was wearing only his boxer shorts. They humiliated him. He’d been whipped to a bloody pulp. It wasn’t just his back like with Onyx. It was all over his body, from his arms to his legs to all over his chest.

“What the fuck?” I exclaimed, immediately stripping off his mask to see if he was alive.

His face was the only thing that hadn’t been marred.

“Padre nuestro, que estas en los cielos,” I broke out into prayer. It was the only power I held, crying out.

I’d never seen anything like this. It was too much. It was too real.

“Onyx, help me!” I ordered, tears streaming down my face. “He’s still breathing!”

In less than a second, the rope hanging him up snapped in half, and he fell into my arms. Before I could help him further, a chain wrapped around my ankles out of nowhere. I didn’t have time to contemplate a single thing as I was flipped upside down onto the same tree Caspian was on.

The Brotherhood hung me from my feet.

“No!” Onyx called out with everything inside him. His tone hurt my heart, my core, my soul.

His scream could be heard by our ancestors and the bodies that were buried here.

The council was still dressed in their fancy cloaks, their masks proudly displayed. Not an ounce of blood was spilled on them as a few of them held on to Onyx.

These men hid behind those masks and those cloaks, having someone else do the dirty work for them. They weren’t as powerful as they thought they were, or they wouldn’t have to hide at all.

The truth would be in plain sight.

I’d really done it now, and I wondered if my uncle was among them, watching this tragedy play out as entertainment for their demons.

“You call yourself the Blood Oath Brotherhood, right? Well,” I challenged. “If you kill me, there’ll be consequences!”

They laughed in my face as the blood rushed to my head.

“You’re just like your father,” a voice I didn’t recognize announced.

Smugly, I hollered, “Then you know I’m a fucking witch!”

“Sweetheart,” the same voice boasted, “your father already cursed this Brotherhood.”

How long can a person stay upside down without passing out? Luckily, as a kid, this was my preferred method of hanging off trees. My longest record was seven minutes.

“Yeah?” I mocked. “Why don’t you ask me about my dead-man-switch?”

“Hennessy!” Onyx demanded. “Shut the fuck up!”

They gagged him, and he desperately tried to fight them off. I’d never seen anything like it. He was literally a feral animal, but it didn’t matter. There were too many of them.