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“There is no mercy for your kind.”
Torr took a step forward, his lips peeled back. His jaws snapped and Borodin stumbled back a step.
He looked between the Beasts and the flames, and made his choice.
I watched him walk towards the burning church slowly, and decided to give him a nudge. I wanted my hands on him, the violation of it, to be the last thing he ever felt.
I slammed into him, digging my claws into his flesh and tearing him wide open, and the church steps crumbled beneath his feet. He dropped downwards, into a gout of roaring fire.
I listened to his screams until the breath was seared from him, my sense of peace growing as they grew fainter.
I leaned my head on Draven’s shoulder, and reached for Ash’s claws.
My work here was nearly done.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
By dawn,most of the village was nothing but cinders.
I stared at the wreck of the church, now nothing more than a blackened pile of smoking rubble. Everything I’d owned had been in that church; it was odd to look at it and feel nothing. To realize that absolutely nothing that made me Salem had been there.
I had lived my whole life in the belfry and left no mark on it.
Everything that made me Salem was contained within myself. And as long as I owned myself, nothing else could touch me.
I finally left the smoldering ruins and went to help the Beasts.
Strangely, most of the men in the village who had fought had done their best to kill my sisters first. Freya had been stabbed in the arm; she sat on a fallen runestone, allowing her Beast to clean and bandage the wound. Mercy and Aldis had emerged unharmed except for scratches.
All three of them were bloodied. They’d had many men on which to take out past grievances.
We were determined to leave nothing of Vostok behind but ruins. It would not become a graveyard; we had to pile the bodies in the ruins and set more fires, until the entire place had been cleansed with fire.
Later we would destroy the road, using the runestones to block them off, and allow the Wood to grow over these remains.
For now, it was necessary to clean up, and to find new homes for the women and children.
The children adapted shockingly fast to the presence of the Beasts. I watched one of the smaller werewolves lope by, several children hanging off his back. One of the mothers watched with extreme anxiety, following along. They were due to be transported to the Arbor.
But the one thing I noticed about all of the women we’d taken from the village… every single one of them had immediately ripped off her face veil, and many had unhooded themselves.
Freya’s Gran had actually harangued one of the Beasts into going into her cottage as the roof caught fire, and made him bring out baskets of embroidery and sewing supplies. She now sat by Freya on her runestone, working on bandages for those who were injured.
It was the women of the village who spoke for those men who had begged mercy; needless to say, very few made it past the jury of females.
One man was taken to be hung almost immediately; he was a known rapist. Another begged for his life, and was sentenced to exile by his wife. She couldn’t stand to watch him die; nor could she stand to stay with him. Marrying him had not been her choice.
He was given the gift of his life, and the Beasts pointed him south. He would find human civilization eventually.
Some of the survivors elected to return with us to the Mother Tree. Another small sect asked to be taken down to the wayroad, where they would find their way somewhere else, far away from the Wood and its denizens.
Gran chose to come with us to the Arbor. I loaded her baskets on Ash’s back, who crouched near us with good humor about being turned into a pack mule.
“You owe me for this, Granny,” he told her, showing his big teeth.
She just gave him a tart look. “It’s the least you could do after burning down my house.”
Freya rolled her eyes, smiling at me through her mask of blood and soot. “Don’t listen to her. She’s been threatening to burn it down for years.”
