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CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

MERCY

T en minutes later, Ambrose leads me through the desert, his blood-streaked hand in mine. I’m as culpable as he is, and I know it.

But I don’t mind.

You’re mine . His voice keeps rumbling through my head. You’re mine .

When Reverend Gunner said things like that to me, it made me feel small and dirty. When Ambrose says them?—

I feel safe.

Ambrose stops and sniffs the air. The dogs are up ahead, snuffling in the dirt, guiding us along the scent trail Reverend Gunner left behind. For a while, even I could see the blood splatter from where he had stumbled away. But that’s disappeared.

“He’s heading toward the Concho,” Ambrose says.

The Concho River. The first place Ambrose ever saw me, even if it wasn’t the first time I saw him.

“He’s going to make it to the church,” I whisper.

“Not on foot.” Ambrose whistles to the dogs, who take off in a cantor. Ambrose strides ahead, pulling me along with him. “He’s slow. We’ll catch up.”

I’m doubtful, but I just squeeze his hand a little tighter. Part of me wishes I had stayed behind at the shed, but that would mean being with Pastor Sullivan’s empty body, his blood dripping slow and steady into an ancient metal bucket. And even in death, I don’t want his eyes staring at me.

We walk quickly, cutting across the empty field. Despite the rain we’ve had, the grass is dry and crackling. Sweat drips down my spine and beads along my forehead. Everything looks the same, flat and scrubby, and the pale sky is so enormous it feels as if it might crush us.

But then the dogs go still. Roxi leans forward, pointing at the horizon with her nose.

Ambrose stops and pulls me behind him. “Stay close,” he breathes. “I can smell him.”

I can’t smell anything but sweat and dirt—and the faint, steely scent of river water. The banks are just up ahead, covered in short, spiny shrubs.

Ambrose lets go of my hand and pulls an ax out of the sling he has around his waist, tightening his fingers around its wooden handle.

“There you are, you ugly motherfucker,” he murmurs.

I don’t see anything but the land. But then there’s a flicker of movement up ahead, like a bird taking off. Except it’s not a bird.

It’s Reverend Gunner.

He’s threading through the brush, trying to stay low. Trying to stay hidden, I think, but he’s not doing a very good job, if even I can see him.

“Do you want to watch?” Ambrose doesn’t take his eyes off Gunner, but I know he’s talking to me.

I suck in my breath, my heart hammering. My lips want to say no, but that’s just muscle memory. The truth is? —

I do want to watch.

I want to know my nightmare is over.

“Yes.” I exhale it out, like a sigh.

When Ambrose glances back at me, he’s smiling a little. “Stay close.”

Then he glides forward, lazy and unhurried, swinging the ax back and forth so the blade catches in the sunlight. I scurry up so I’m walking beside him, opposite the ax, and I take deep breaths, trying to calm myself. The dogs swarm around our feet, and they’re breathing heavily like they’re excited.

“He sees us,” Ambrose breathes.

I don’t know how he knows, but a split second later, there’s a sudden explosion of rustling shrubbery, and then a splash.

“Fuck,” Ambrose spits. “Come on, darling. We’re going swimming.”

He jogs toward the river, clutching the ax up to his chest. Something like panic seizes at me—panic that Reverend Gunner is going to get away, swept up on the current of the Concho. Although I had told Ambrose that I wanted to see, to know Reverend Gunner is gone for good, I hadn’t realized just how much I did until this moment, when there’s the threat of him escaping.

We skitter to the edge of the bank, the river glittering in the sun. Gunner splashes around—not trying to swim downstream, I realize, but trying to make it to the other side.

Ambrose chuckles softly.

Then he leaps.

I cry out—the river isn’t deep enough for diving. But Ambrose doesn’t move like a human, and he lands with a small, elegant splash on his feet. The dogs wait on the bank.

Gunner screams, his voice carrying on the wind. Then he stumbles sideways and splashes into the water, limbs flailing

I slide down the bank, stepping out onto the smooth flat stones to watch. Max and Roxi both follow me, sticking close .

Gunner shoots up, sputtering water, and sees me—for the first time, I think.

“Mercy!” he screams. “Help me! For the love of God!”

I don’t say anything, just stand on the stones with the river splashing around my ankles, my hand and face sticky with Pastor Sullivan’s blood, the wind blowing loose strands of hair into my eyes.

“Mercy!” Reverend Gunner wails, trying to splash toward me, his arms outreached. But Ambrose grabs the scruff of his shirt and drags him under the water. Reverend Gunner kicks up a froth as Ambrose pulls him toward me, yanking his head up only when they’re a foot away from where I stand on the bank with the dogs.

“You know why I’m doing this?” Ambrose asks, curling his arm around Reverend Gunner’s throat to pin him in place. He wails, water streaming over his face. Ambrose jerks his arm and Gunner’s head slams back so he’s looking right at me.

I’ve never felt so powerful in my entire life.

“To protect her,” Ambrose says in a dark, thorny voice.

“I t-took her in,” Reverend Gunner stammers. “I g-gave her a h-home. She would have been a wh-whore on the streets?—”

“And what was I in the church?” I shout, so loud I surprise myself.

Ambrose watches me, his eyes burning, his ax swinging at his side. Reverend Gunner opens and closes his mouth like a fish.

“You didn’t give me a choice, Sterling .” I hiss his name. “I never had a choice, because you shaped me into the perfect helpmeet for you.” I’m trembling with rage, flames shooting through my body.

“He’s a killer,” Gunner whimpers. “He’ll kill you when he’s done with me.”

Ambrose meets my gaze and electricity arcs between us. You’re mine, and I don’t kill what’s mine .

“He’s not even denying it!” Gunner shrieks hysterically. “Please, Mercy! Get his gun! Shoot him in the head! You can end this!”

“I know I can.” I take deep, slow breaths. Ambrose watches me, his fingers gripped tight around his ax. He’s barely concerned about Gunner. All his attention is on me.

“He will kill you!” Gunner screams.

“No, he won’t,” I say evenly. “Because he’s mine.”

Ambrose breaks into a terrifying, feral grin. Then, in one lightning-fast moment, he slams Gunner’s head against the rock I’m standing on, the dogs flanking me on either side.

“Bow to her,” Ambrose snarls.

I do feel like a queen.

Gunner sobs and lifts up his head, blood pulsing out of his mouth. He tries to say something, but the words are slurred and distorted, like his tongue doesn’t work. He bit it.

“Bow to her,” Ambrose repeats, slamming Gunner against the rock again. Blood splatters across my shoes, but when Ambrose lets go, Gunner doesn’t move, just slumps there, his back rising and falling with his panicked breaths.

Ambrose lifts his face and looks me in the eye. “‘And she, being put forward by her mother, saith, Give me here on a platter the head of John the Baptist.’”

Then he swings the ax down. There’s a clean, wet ripping sound and the clank of metal hitting stone.

A breath of silence. Of stillness.

And then Reverend Gunner’s head rolls sideways. Ambrose catches it by the hair and hoists it up, and for a moment I think of Raul, of the last time I was in this river. The pain I felt. The terror.

And I think of all the pain I’ve felt in my life. All the times I bent to meet Gunner’s needs. The tears I sobbed in my bed, a pillow pressed over my mouth to muffle the sound even though I was alone. The prayers I whispered in the shower after Sullivan took me for the first time, how I turned the water on so hot it scorched my skin. The loss of Madelyn, the closest thing to a mother I had, because her husband decided he wanted to fuck me.

I think of all that pain?—

And I know that it’s gone.

Ambrose tosses Reverend Gunner’s head to the riverbank, where it lands in the scrub brush, his eyes turned up toward God. He slides his ax back into his belt and holds out his hand to me.

“Come here, humanita.”

I slide my palm against his and step delicately around Gunner’s headless body. The rock is already slick with his blood, and I have to take care not to slip and fall face forward in the water. But Ambrose is there to keep me steady as I take one step down into the current, then another. After being out in the heat for so long, the water’s chill makes me yelp as it swirls around my bare legs.

Ambrose whistles a lilting little melody, and the dogs descend on Reverend Gunner’s head. But he cups my face in his hands and presses me toward him so I can’t watch.

“We can’t stay here,” I murmur.

“No one’s here but us,” he answers, right before he kisses me like he wants to prove it, his tongue sensual and probing. When he eventually breaks the kiss, he nuzzles against my neck, his breath warm on my skin.

“I need to dress the body,” he whispers. “But I have something to ask you first.”

I pull away to look at him, his hair wet with river water. He’s always hard to read, with his flat dark eyes and predator’s expression. But right now, illuminated by the blazing sun, I think he almost looks—nervous.

“What’s wrong?” My chest gets tight, and suddenly I’m afraid that I’ve been so, so stupid, and he is going to kill me after all.

But then he takes my left hand, rubbing it between his palms.

“Marry me,” he says.

I blink, certain I misheard him over the rush of the river. “What?”

Ambrose never breaks his eye contact. “I’m asking you to marry me.”

I stare at him. The wind pushes down across the river, lifting up sprays of cold water that, just for a brief second, shimmer into rainbows.

“Can you do that?” I blurt out.

Ambrose laughs and rubs his hand along the side of my neck. “I can do whatever the fuck I want,” he says. “And I want you to marry me.” He drops his forehead against mine. “Only if you want to, of course.”

I laugh, feeling delirious. “I daydreamed about this,” I whisper. “When I thought you—when I thought you were a preacher?—”

“So what do you say?” He grabs my chin and lifts my head, his eyes burning into mine. “You’re already mine. Nothing’s going to change that. But you can be Mrs. Echeverría if you want.”

This time, when I laugh, the laughter turns to tears, hot and wet and impossibly happy. I can’t think about the logistics of this—that he’s immortal and I’m not. That he’s a killer, not a preacher.

But here is, giving me the two things I’ve always wanted. The two things I never thought I could have.

Freedom—

And love.