Page 31

CHAPTER THIRTY

MERCY

Church of the Well Driver. 8/9. FM 3208.

T he freezer’s cold air turns to steam around me, billowing in the sweltering heat of this—it’s not a barn. It’s a torture chamber.

I read once that a poet, Dante, said that hell was a series of layers, and the deepest layer was the coldest, and I think that’s what I’m looking at right now. The deepest part of hell.

I drop the freezer lid and stumble backward, jostling up against a nearby workbench hard enough that there’s a sharp metallic clatter as a butcher cleaver falls to the ground. It’s streaked with red.

I scream again, the sound tearing my throat to shreds, and I try to run away. Except there’s nowhere to run, not in here. Weapons are everywhere. Dozens of knives. Gleaming saws. Coils of chains. I really am in hell.

And at the center of it?—

I can’t look at the freezer, glossy white in the middle of all this grime. All I can think about is getting out , but my brain is panicky and stupid, and I’m barefoot. Why did I even come out here? I know what Ambrose is. But I let myself be lulled into a sense of safety because of his tenderness last night. The way he tucked my hair behind my ear and brushed my cheek with his knuckles.

I came out here because I didn’t want to be alone and because I thought he might give me more of that tenderness.

Instead, I found Raul. Who else could that be? I know he died on August 9th.

I dart toward the barn doors, still cracked open, the stream of hot bright sunlight my beacon to safety. It’s all I focus on, even though it hardly feels as if I’m moving. I keep seeing that neatly labeled bag in the freezer.

The angle of sunlight widens, and then a shadow blocks it again. Ambrose.

I scream at the sight of him and whip around, furiously scanning the barn. There’s nothing but weapons and horror. No other exits. No windows .

The freezer sits like a toad.

“Mercy!” Ambrose shouts. I ignore him, skittering back and forth, as panicky as a rabbit. “Mercy, be care?—”

Pain sears up through the bottom of my foot, as sudden as a lightning bolt. I howl in agony and tip forward, landing hard on my hands and knees on the concrete floor. Screaming, I drag myself forward, my foot throbbing. All I can think about is getting away from him.

“Mercy, you’re fucking hurt.”

Ambrose’s shadow falls over me, and I flip around onto my back, sobbing with terror and pain. His eyes blaze. His swirling tattoos are sheened with sweat.

“You stepped on a nail,” he says softly.

“Get away from me!” I scream.

He crouches down and grabs my ankle, lifting my foot up from the ground. I fall backward against the damp cement, grinding my teeth in pain .

“You shouldn’t have come out here barefoot.”

“You won’t let me have shoes!” I try to pull myself out of his grip, but it’s no use. He’s too strong. “That’s how you’re keeping me here. This is how you’re keeping me here—” I gesture down to my foot, blood already puddling on the ground.

“I can’t have you going to the police,” he says stiffly.

“You have Raul!” I scream, my tears veiling the world with salt. “You have Raul, you monster!”

His grip tightens around my ankle.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes, I do.”

“You’re the devil!” I scream. “I hate you! I hate you !”

I try to jerk myself away from him, but Ambrose reacts too quickly, dropping my leg and grabbing me by the waist and then throwing me over his shoulder like I’m not even a person. My anger is swallowed up by terror.

He’s going to cut me into pieces like he did Raul.

“No!” I shriek, fighting against him, trying to kick through the pain in my foot. “No! You promised you wouldn’t kill me!”

“And you think I’d break that promise?” He stalks toward the barn’s entrance, leaving behind the worktable and the weapons and the freezer. It’s all I can see, though, as he carries me away. The white glare of the freezer that hides the horror inside it.

I sob and hiccup and try to fight against Ambrose, but it’s no use. His arm is wrapped tight around my waist and I’m bleeding from a wound in my foot and I’m trapped here, in hell, with Satan himself.

Ambrose drags the barn door open and carries me outside. “Sit,” he barks, and I think he’s talking to me until Max runs up behind him, tail wagging, his muzzle covered in blood.

I scream again, panic surging through me like nausea.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Ambrose says, stepping onto the porch. Max follows behind him, wagging his tail. “I was training him. ”

“Did you kill someone?” I gasp out.

“Not today, no.” Ambrose flings the back door open and carries me inside and then lowers me, with more care than I’d expect, onto the couch.

It’s still covered in his blood. It’s still marked by his depravity.

The depravity that you enjoyed.

I take deep, ragged breaths. Ambrose runs his rough hands over my bare leg, his touch gentle as he lifts my foot. I try to squirm away from him, but he glares at me and I go limp, afraid of what he’ll do. “Hold still,” he orders.

“Why did you keep Raul?” I choke out.

He looks away as he slowly lowers my leg to the ground. “Stay here,” he says. “I’ve got some bandages and antiseptic.”

“ Why did you keep Raul?!” I scream at him, my face hot with rage and fear.

Ambrose fixes me with a look so unfathomably dark that it steals my breath. And I know, in this moment, that he isn’t human. What we did yesterday on this couch was supposed to be the proof. But his expression right now, his black and glittering eyes—this is when I know .

“I was going to eat him,” he says flatly.

And then he walks out of the living room.

I’m too frozen with shock to do anything but stare at the place where he was standing. My foot throbs. Blood drips onto the floor. And I think back to the two meals I’ve eaten in this house.

No meat.

Neither of them had meat.

I scramble off the couch, knowing I have to get away. I have to get out of here. But I’m not thinking clearly, and I step down on my injured foot and the pain explodes again because the nail is still implanted into my sole.

I scream and slam forward, hitting my head against the floorboards. The world blinks. Distantly, I hear someone curse behind me.

“I told you to stay.” Ambrose’s hands are on my waist again, pulling me up. “I didn’t want to take the nail out until I had bandages.”

“You’re going to eat him,” I whisper, tears streaming down my cheeks.

Ambrose situates me on the couch and puts his attention on my foot. “This is going to hurt,” he says, right before he pulls the nail out.

I scream. The pain is so much more blinding, so much more sudden, than I was expecting, even with the warning and even with my frenzied grief. But it only lasts a second. Ambrose presses a pad of gauze against my sole, stopping the blood.

“I need to clean this and hope for the best.” He peers up at me. “I’m guessing you’ve never had a tetanus shot.”

“What do you care?” I try to kick my leg into his face, but his arms flex, pinning me in place.

“I don’t want to kill you,” he snaps, “and I don’t want you to die some other way, either. Hold still.”

“Did Raul hold still ?” I snarl at him. The question surprises me. Mostly because I don’t actually want him to answer.

Ambrose dabs the blood away from my foot, then rubs a smear of antiseptic across the wound, the cream cool and burning all at once. I gasp a little, sliding back into the couch.

“Stings, doesn’t it?” he says amicably.

“You’re a cannibal .”

“I know.” He wraps clean gauze around my foot, securing it with tape. Then he gently lowers my foot to the ground, his hands still wrapped loosely around my ankle. I’m terrified and sickened and I hate him, but the way he’s touching me reminds me of our time together at the Church of the Well, how he pried my legs open and kissed the pleasure into me.

“I told you, though,” he says. “I didn’t let him suffer. ”

“What?”

“Raul.” Ambrose stands up, towering over me. “I severed his spine before I killed him. He didn’t feel anything.”

The low-simmering nausea in my stomach surges upward; I couldn’t stop it even if I wanted to. The cup of coffee I drank before coming to the barn explodes out of me, splattering across Ambrose’s black cowboy boots.

I freeze, expecting him to attack me. To kill me like he did Raul. But instead, he pushes my hair away from my face and sidesteps the mess. “Let me get you some water,” he murmurs.

“I hate you.” Tears tremble through my lashes.

He doesn’t respond, just gets the water like he said. I know I shouldn’t, but I drink it, telling myself I want to wash the taste out of my mouth. Ambrose disappears again and comes back with an old towel that he drapes across my mess. “I’ll clean it up later,” he says, sinking down on the couch beside me.

I instinctually recoil from him.

“I didn’t mean for you to find that,” he says, after a few moments of agonizing silence. “I should have locked the barn door.”

“You shouldn’t kill people ,” I hiss.

Ambrose laughs darkly. “Well, humanita, I’m afraid that’s non-negotiable. I never claimed to be anything but a monster.” He turns toward me. “But I could have done more to protect you from my, ah, darker urges.”

I glare at him. “Why do you care?”

Something flickers across his face—a kind of discomfort. “Because I care for you,” he says stiffly. “Against my better judgment.”

My heart flutters at that, as if it still doesn’t understand what Ambrose is.

“If you care for me so much, then let me go.”

As soon as I say it, I’m not sure that’s even what I want. But how can that not be what I want? He’s a killer and a cannibal. He has a barn clearly designed to torture people. He covered me in his blood and then licked it away.

And you liked it.

“Let me go,” I repeat, trying to suppress the thought.

“And where would you go, if I did that?” Ambrose tilts his head. It’s not mocking, the way he asks it. “Back to the Church of the Well? To the police?”

“I won’t tell anyone about you,” I say. “Just let me go back—” The word home curdles on my tongue. “Just let me go back.”

“Is that really want you want?” He shifts on the couch, eyes burning into me.

No, it’s not. I don’t want to go back to the church. I don’t want to go back to Reverend Gunner, back to being a helpmeet but not really a wife, back to being an object that isn’t even treasured. Ambrose is a monster, a demon, but he looks at me like I matter. He’s doing it right now. And that’s more than I can say for Reverend Gunner or Pastor Sullivan or Madelyn or any of them.

“I hate you,” I say, because I do. I hate him for showing me what my life could have looked like but then taking it away from me because he’s a psychopath.

“You already said that,” Ambrose says softly. “And it hurts just as much the second time.”

Then he stands up, his dark eyes fixed on me. I feel faintly stunned—how can he care if I hate him? How can he care about me at all?

And why do I want to believe he’s telling the truth?