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CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

MERCY

W hile Ambrose digs, I pray.

I haven’t prayed since he killed Deacon Price. I haven’t prayed since I gave myself to Ambrose in the bunker, which had, at the time, felt like a prayer in and of itself—but a prayer to Ambrose, which made it a prayer to the devil even if I didn’t know it at the time. But tonight, in the warm air of the graveyard, I pray to God the Father, and to Jesus the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.

I kneel in the grass and bow my head as Ambrose redigs Raul’s grave, my fingers clasped so tight my knuckles whiten. I don’t pray out loud; I don't want Ambrose to hear. But I send my thoughts up to Heaven, as jumbled and wild as they are.

I pray that God welcomes Raul into the heavenly hosts, even though I know He already has.

I pray for forgiveness and for deliverance from my sins, as numerous as they are, listing them out by rote. Impurity. Fornication. Blasphemy.

I listen for God’s answer, but all I hear is the wind and the quiet powdery thump as Ambrose digs out the dirt of Raul’s grave. When I lift my gaze, it falls immediately on Ambrose, a strong dark shadow in the moonlight.

Heat flushes through me. Except it’s not lust. It feels like the Spirit, which I would feel during services at the Church of the Well, all those Christian voices joining together in worship. But how can it be the Spirit, when I also felt it that day Ambrose prayed over me? I was so sure it had been the Holy Ghost moving through him.

But it wasn’t the Holy Ghost, I realize now. It was Ambrose.

The monster. The murderer. The devil.

He stops, leaning on his shovel, and wipes at his brow. Then he looks at me, still kneeling in the grass.

I feel it again, a spirit arcing between us.

No. He killed Raul.

He did kill Raul. But look at what he’s doing now.

“Almost done,” he says softly. “Do you need more time?”

To pray, he means. But my prayers haven’t done anything for me. Not these prayers. Not prayers to God.

The prayers to him , though?—

No. That’s sacrilege. What we did wasn’t praying. It was sin and abomination.

So why didn’t it ever feel like sin and abomination? Even yesterday, when Ambrose slid inside me, our bodies slippery with his blood—I had begged him for it. I had wanted it more than I’d ever wanted anything.

“No,” I finally say. “No, I don’t.”

Ambrose nods and scoops out another shovelful of dirt. I can’t tell how deep the hole is, not in the dark, but I can see that it’s smaller than it should be.

“We won’t be able to get into the coffin,” Ambrose says, as easily if he was talking about the weather. “But we can get him as close as possible.”

I go over to the grave and run my fingers over the metal marker set into the dirt. No headstone. I suppose Raul’s family couldn’t afford one, and I twist with anger again, that Reverend Gunner didn’t cover this expense. Lord knows the church has the money. Lord knows he has the money.

There’s a thump behind me. Ambrose has hit the coffin.

I look back at him just as he tosses the shovel aside. He picks up the bag— Raul , I tell myself. That’s Raul. Or at least it’s Raul’s earthly shell.

“I haven’t done a funeral in decades,” Ambrose says, a little sheepishly. “But I more or less remember what to do. What to say.”

“The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose,” I tell him, rising up to standing.

“I sure can.” Ambrose watches me in the dark. “And right now,” he says softly, “my purpose is whatever will make this right. Or as close to right as I can get.”

Something twists in my chest. Nothing can make this right, because nothing can bring back Raul, and nothing can change the fact that I found his decapitated head in the Concho River and stared into his dead eyes and recognized him.

But at least Ambrose is trying. When did Reverend Gunner, when did any of them, ever try to do right by me?

The realization leaves me numb.

“Are you saying you’ll do a funeral for Raul?” I ask hoarsely.

“As best I can.”

“Is it—is it safe?”

“It’s safe.” Ambrose tilts his head back and makes a show of sniffing the air. “No one’s here but us and the dead.”

“Can you smell them, too?” The question’s out of my mouth before I can stop it.

“Yeah. It doesn’t bother me, though.” Ambrose steps up to the edge of Raul’s freshly dug grave, kneels down, and lowers him home. The wind picks up again, making the trees rustle around us .

“‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,’” Ambrose recites in a rich, rhythmic preacher’s voice. “‘The Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our affliction, that we may be able to comfort them that are in any affliction, through the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.’”

He stands up and looks across the grave at me. “The two of us are here today to celebrate the life of Raul Alvarez, who was taken from this world too soon—” Ambrose hesitates. “That’s true, by the way. I shouldn’t have?—”

“Keep going,” I tell him, my heart twisting into knots. “Please. Just—be a preacher right now.”

Ambrose nods, takes a deep breath?—

And transforms.

He becomes the man I saw in Reverend Gunner’s office: a fire and brimstone preacher with one eye on Heaven and the other on hell. I realize now that I was glimpsing his own darkness, but as he launches into a recitation of Psalm 23, his darkness seems to melt away.

“‘Jehovah is my Shepherd; I shall not want,’” he says, hands clasped in front of his waist, his eyes on mine. “‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures…’”

I let the familiar words flow over me. My tears brim up again, and I wipe them away with the back of my hand. The truth is I didn’t even know Raul that well. We exchanged friendly words here and there. I brought him water, same as the rest of the soldiers. He taught me a little Spanish and waved to me at the services. But I didn’t know anything about him. I didn’t know he had a family in Cocana. Most people at the church come from elsewhere. They come from far away.

Ambrose’s voice is a soft rhythm in the background as I stand by Raul’s grave and weep. I hardly knew him at all, but he was the closest thing to a friend I ever had. I went from an orphan to a wife and helpmeet .

Until I met Ambrose. Until I met the devil.

I lift my gaze to him, where he’s still reciting Psalms from memory. His eyes shine again, jolting me a little. But it occurs to me he’s the one I know the best. Not Raul. Certainly not Reverend Gunner. And not God, either.

Ambrose Echeverría, the cold-blooded murderer currently praying over one of his many victims.

“Do you want to say anything, Mercy?” he asks, pulling me out of my thoughts. “About—about the deceased?”

I look down at the gravesite, at the churned-up dirt. “No,” I whisper. “He’s in Heaven now. He doesn’t need me.”

Ambrose nods, then starts shoveling dirt back into place. I watch him, the wind blowing my skirt around my thighs, and for the first time since I discovered the truth about Ambrose, I feel calm.

“Have you ever done this before?” My voice is more clear than I expected.

Ambrose keeps shoveling. “Buried a body? Yeah.”

“No. Performed a funeral for someone you—” I whisper the last word. “Killed.”

This, he doesn’t answer right away. He just keeps shoveling the dirt. “Yes,” he finally says. “I used to do it all the time. But this is different.”

The shovel scrapes and the dirt thumps. The wind blows through the trees. I feel hot and strange and free. Not like myself. Not like Mercy Gunner, anyway.

“How is it different?”

Ambrose throws the last of the dirt into place and packs it down with the back of his shovel. To my untrained eye, the grave looks undisturbed.

Ambrose walks around the dirt, like he doesn’t want to step on it—a superstition I learned when I was a child before my parents died and I’d ever heard of the Church of the Well. He tosses the shovel in the grass and takes my hand, hesitantly, like he expects me to pull away. Maybe I should. I don’t.

“I’ve never done it with the hope that someone would forgive me,” he says softly.

I jerk my gaze up to him, my breath tightening. His eyes burn like hellfire. That strangeness I feel intensifies, like I’m drifting outside of myself.

“Are you saying you want me to forgive you?”

Ambrose nods, his fingers tightening around my hand. “I hope you’ll forgive me,” he says. “Although I understand if you don’t. Either way, after this—I’ll let you go.”

I’m stunned at his words. Stunned at the sadness I see crawling across his face, even in the dark.

“Let me go?” I shake my head. “Just like that?”

“Well, on one condition. That you don’t go back to that church.” Disgust curls in his words. “Don’t go back to Sterling Gunner. I’ll give you money, a bus ticket, whatever you need. Go to the cops if you want; they won’t find me. But don’t go back to the piece of shit. Gunner doesn’t deserve you.”

I can’t breathe. I certainly don’t know what to say. And still, I keep my hand linked to Ambrose’s, my eyes on his face, trying to comprehend what he’s saying to me.

This is what I wanted. To escape the church. And then, later, to escape Ambrose. I thought I didn’t have the means to do either. It turns out, he’ll give them both to me.

So why don’t I want to say yes? Why am I standing here in a graveyard, holding his hand and not wanting to let go?

Gunner doesn’t deserve you .

Ambrose’s words ring in my thoughts. A truth I’ve always thought, deep down, even though it felt blasphemous. Certainly everyone else in my life told me the opposite—and told me Jesus agreed with them.

But it still always felt like sin .

“Mercy?” Ambrose leans closer, tilting his head a little. I part my lips on instinct, even though he doesn’t kiss me. “What do you say? Will you promise not to go back to the church?”

The wind gusts, low and howling, and I think it blows me into him. At least, that’s what it feels like, as I fling my arms around his shoulders and press my lips to his.

“Mercy,” he murmurs against my mouth, against my cheeks, kissing me and speaking to me at once. “You don’t have to do this. I’ll help you?—”

I kiss him again because I want him to stop talking. I want him to devour me like he did before. I want to spread my legs for him and invite him in.

I want to choose the devil over God.

“Mercy,” he growls, nipping at my neck with his teeth. “If you keep going, I’m not going to be able to stop myself from fucking you.”

His words shoot straight through me, and I stop, breathing in the dark scent of his skin. My body’s on fire, and I can feel his arousal digging into my thigh.

I want you to fuck me , I think, even though he’s a monster and a killer. But I can’t bring myself to say it. I want him to take me, to absolve myself of this sin.

So I keep going, mashing my lips to his in a hard, fumbling kiss. Ambrose makes a sound like an animal, like the Great Beast itself, and digs his hands into my waist. He hoists me up, and I wrap my legs around his hips, our mouths never breaking. I thread my hands through his hair, pulling on it the way he pulled on mine, and his kiss turns into a bite, hard and sharp.

I jerk back with a gasp, and Ambrose grins at me. “Don’t pull my hair if you don’t want a little roughness.”

My clit throbs at the thought?—

And I pull his hair again.

Ambrose growls and drops to his knees, throwing me hard enough against the ground that my breath shudders. But not so hard that he hurts me.

“I warned you.” He shoves my dress up around my waist, shoves my thighs wide. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

A million possibilities flash through my head. But I settle on the one I mean the most.

“I forgive you.”