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He hauls Raven into the bathroom, followed by Bec, and all I can do is watch helplessly. The door rattles when he slams it behind him, his eyes focusing on my face as he returns for me.
“It’s time to give me what I’m due, Little Lamb.” He yanks me up from the floor, forcing me onto the bed again. “And I won’t stop taking until I’ve had my fill, whether it’s from you or your friends in there.”
Terror streaks through me as he climbs on top of me, the weight of his body pinning me down as he tugs off his robe and unzips his pants. His thighs pin me to the bed as he shifts higher, yanking out his cock and shoving it into my face.
“Suck.” He forces my head down, locking me in place with his fist in my hair.
I stare back at the limp member in his palm, horrified by the sight of it. It’s marked by red, angry slashes that can only be scars. It looks like it was put through a meat grinder and pieced back together by a surgeon from a horror film. It’s… mutilated.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” he growls. “Suck it, whore. Suck it like the heathen you are.”
The overwhelming stench of the infected wound on his arm invades my nostrils, and combined with the sight before me, it churns my stomach so violently that I can’t help but retch.
“Oh god.” I gag again, trying to turn my head, but he doesn’t let me.
It’s too late to stop, and I couldn’t if I tried. Vomit spews from my lips, all over his dick, and panic washes over me when I realize what I’ve done.
“You motherfucking cunt,” he roars, belting me across the face so hard my head whips to the side, teeth gnashing together as the taste of blood fills my mouth.
Before I can brace for the next blow, he hits me again, this time with a closed fist. Stars burst behind my eyelids, vision swimming as I try desperately to cling to consciousness.
“This is because of you.” He flops his dick in my face again. “You don’t like the sight of it? You did this to me! You sent me to that hellhole!”
I couldn’t speak if I wanted to, but Caleb isn’t waiting for a response when he wraps his fingers around my throat and squeezes. My lungs burn as I instinctively try to move my hands, but they’re trapped behind me, held captive as he chokes me.
My vision dims, and I can hear Raven screaming from the bathroom, begging for him to stop. Praying to Mother Goddess as she tries to bind him from harming me. But it’s no use. I think this is it. This is how I’m going to die.
Don’t give up.
Elizabeth’s voice is a whisper in my ear, a chill on my skin. It’s the same thing she’d told me when Caleb had tried to drown me. I channeled her then. I don’t know how, but I did. I’d never felt more powerful than when I slashed his face with my ring and watched him stumble back, blood pouring from the wound.
I can feel that same energy building in me now, but I’m not sure I’m strong enough. I’m not sure I can survive him twice.
Blackness creeps further into my vision, and I know this is it. I have to decide whether to fight or die.
Don’t give up.
Another bite of cold air skitters over me, followed by a surge of something I can’t explain—something not of this world. It gives me the strength I need, and I use it to thrust my head up directly into the bridge of Caleb’s nose.
A crack resounds through the room, followed by his curse and then blood. So much fucking blood. His hands fall away, allowing me to drag in a breath as he brings his fingers up to touch his face, trying to stem the bleeding.
“That’s how you want to play, Willow?” His voice takes on an edge of darkness I’ve never heard, something so bone-chilling that I wonder if I just made the worst mistake I ever could. I may have saved my life, but I know it will cost me. Caleb confirms that when he balls his hand into a fist and slams it into my face.
“I’m going to make you wish you were dead.”
It’s the last thing he says before he beats me within an inch of my life.
5
AZRAEL
The sun breaks over the horizon as we near the compound, clouds bloated with rain closing in. I can’t help but think how much this looks like the morning Elizabeth Wildblood was hanged—at least, the way it plays out in the dream.
I wonder sometimes if my mind doesn’t conjure the scene based on the detailed description left by Isaiah in the Book of Tithes. I’ve read it so many times that I can’t tell if the book came first or if it was the dream that drove me to read it, to learn if it was true.
