Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men #6) - Giana Darling Page 0,159
met you, I knew it was you who was meant to tend to me and our new flock. Not her.”
Tabby shivered so violently, she moaned.
A niggle of terror worked its way like a worm into the soil of my mind.
This wasn’t right.
This couldn’t be…
“Isn’t that right, Tabitha?” he asked silkily.
Beside me, my friend shivered again, then rolled back her shoulders, affecting a change to her entire demeanor. It was as if she’d pulled back the curtains to reveal the operator behind them.
The glint in her eyes wasn’t fear. Maybe it never had been.
It was madness.
I flinched as she leaned forward to press a soft, sweet kiss to my cheek, then rolled easily to her feet as if she hadn’t been badly beaten. I watched with my heart beating hard in my throat, choking me of breath, as she almost skipped over to our abductor’s side.
“I’m not worthy,” she agreed simply as she leaned like a kitten into his shoulder and nuzzled. Then she looked at me with a soft, almost dreamy expression. “But you could be, if you would just repent.”
“Tabitha,” I said slowly, almost afraid of voicing my fears as if that would make a difference to the outcome of this nightmarish situation. “What are you doing?”
“Supporting my husband as a wife should,” she explained with a little furrow in her brow. “Supporting him as you should, Bea.”
“Oh, my God,” I choked as bile clawed up my throat and my stomach heaved.
“Do not take the Lord’s name in vain,” the hooded man admonished chillingly, stepping forward to kneel so close to me I could feel the wash of cold air as he descended to my level. When he flipped back his hood with a jerk of his head and regarded me with lovely blue eyes gone to frost with chill, I wasn’t surprised, only deeply, irreconcilably horrified. Seth Linley reached out to grasp my chin in a punishing grip in order to bring my face closer still. His breath, when he spoke nearly against mine, tasted of communion wine. “For the Lord’s name is also my own.”
Bea
He explained while he had Tabitha prepare me for my penance. It irritated him that I fought them both, especially when my foot caught Tabitha’s chin and sent her crashing into one of the construction lights. So he produced a startlingly large syringe from inside his dark jacket, flicked it a few times, then stabbed it mechanically into my neck. A painful pressure popped in my veins, then I went lax, every muscle in my body melting to inactivity within minutes
A muscle relaxation, he told me in that monotone I’d never heard before, a strong one.
They didn’t bother to tie me up, an oversight that I planned to exploit just as soon as I got sensation back in my limbs.
For the first time since his reveal, Seth touched me, leaning down to run his soft hands over my crown into my hair. The expression on his classically handsome face was so tender, a study in empathy. He looked so human then that it chilled me to the bone. Because I knew he was utterly inhumane, the worst kind of psychopath, who believed in nothing more than his own conviction.
And Seth? He was full of purpose.
He was God’s mouthpiece on earth. The first modern-day messiah. He waxed on and on about the lessening of morality today, how corrupted people were, how much guidance they needed, how Entrance was a cesspool of sinners from The Fallen to Irina Ventura’s pornography and sex trafficking operation.
“Your grandpa tried,” he allowed with a smile that sliced sharply between his cheeks as he flipped through a worn, black leather Bible. “But his connection to God was lessened by the sins of his house. Your sister turned your family name to one of wickedness.”
I wanted to speak, to tell him that my sister had done no such thing, that my grandpa was the saintliest man I knew, but my tongue was dry and heavy in my mouth.
Tabby was undressing me, I realized with a sharp stab of panic, cutting my clothes away until I wore just my underwear. Seth studied me almost clinically, but it was Tabby who spoke. “You and I will both tend to our messiah. I am his physical wife, tied to his bodily needs, and I will produce his heirs. But you will be his spiritual equal, his holy wife. He deserves this. God sent him a vision of it.”