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Stare still locked on Jedediah, Beck shook his head. “This unholy bastard is all mine.”
“If you kill your Messiah, think of what will become of your black soul.” Jed’s maniacal laugh, as if he thought he’d won, mimicked their father’s cackle all those years ago. “You can’t kill me.”
Beck smirked. “Funny, that’s exactly what Father told me just before I proved him wrong. I can teach you the same lesson.”
“No. Wait!” Esther pleaded, rising up on an elbow. “We’ll leave…and never come back. Don’t kill our savior.”
“Savior? Never. Shitbag? Yeah. He deserves to go to hell, Mother. But I’ll be merciful and off him quickly…unlike the way you killed me slowly all those years ago.”
“Satan had possessed you,” Esther wailed. “I had no choice.”
“Neither do I.” Beck sent her an ugly smile, then set his sights on Jed again.
“Die, bastard!” An evil grin spread across Jed’s face as he pulled the trigger.
Instead of a bullet ripping through Beck’s head, the hollow click of the empty magazine filled his ears. Jedediah gaped, wide-eyed in shock.
Yeah, he knew he was dead.
Beck didn’t waste a moment, just pressed the muzzle between Jed’s eyes and watched his face erupt in raw panic. “When you get to hell, tell Father I said hello.”
Justice wound like sweet satisfaction through his blood as Beck ignored his Hippocratic Oath and pulled the trigger.
The back of Jedediah’s head blew off.
In that instant, he freed all the victims his brother had ravaged and exorcised the nightmare that had haunted him for the past twenty years.
Well, almost.
“No!” Esther wailed, sobbing hysterically as she crawled to Jed’s body and threw herself across his unmoving chest.
Beck stared at her, now slowly dying mere feet away. A red haze of rage tinged his periphery. Raising his gun, fingertip poised on the trigger, he aimed it at the woman who’d once given him life—then made it absolute hell. The same woman who’d spent sixteen years tormenting, beating, and crawling inside his head to plant seeds of worthlessness and shame.
Clutching her bleeding middle, Esther glared at him. “Do it, Satan. I dare you!”
It would be so easy. But no way would he give the bitch what she wanted.
Beck lowered his gun and knelt beside her. “You don’t know this, but I’m a successful vascular surgeon now. I save people from death every day. I could pick you up and carry you into the lodge, give you medicine to numb your pain, and repair the damage that bullet has likely done to your kidney, spleen, and stomach.”
“Y-you can?” she whimpered, clutching desperately at his wrist. “You’ll save your mother, won’t you? After all, you wouldn’t be alive without me.”
“Would you like that?”
“Yes. Do it, Gideon.” She grabbed him tighter. “You owe me.”
“I owe you the same compassion you gave me growing up, Mother. You have somewhere between ten and fifteen minutes before you bleed to death.” Beck leaned in close to her ear. “I suggest you prepare to meet your Maker. I’m not lifting a goddamn finger to help you.”
Without an ounce of remorse, he turned and headed for the lodge.
Before he trekked inside, River burst out the door and sprinted across the drive, toward Dean’s lifeless body. Seth stood near the portal, expression grim.
“You bastard,” Esther coughed from behind him. “Fix me…”
Beck blocked out her gurgling venom as he spun around to see River drop to his knees beside his fallen friend.
With a backdrop of the blazing vehicle fires, he drank in the carnage around them. The stench of death and gunpowder hung in the air. Puddles of blood ran into the spent ammo casings that littered the pavement.
So much death and destruction. So fucking pointless.
