Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men #6) - Giana Darling Page 0,168

he’d kill me too if I didn’t help.”

“Oh, Billy.” I sobbed, terror and hopelessness moving through me like poison, leaving an acrid, chemical tang on my tongue. “Trust me, Priest won’t let that happen.”

Billy didn’t look convinced, which was fair because when I glanced over at him, Seth had cut open his shirt with Priest’s own knife and was dragging the edge clean through his skin while he explained where the vital organs are.

“If I stabbed you just here,” Seth said almost lovingly as he stared at the blood seeping down Priest’s torso. “You’d survive, but the pain would be exceptional.”

“Do it, then,” Priest offered dispassionately.

Seth stalled, confusion flickering across his face.

Priest answered his unspoken question. “You can hurt me as much as you want, motherfucker. So long as you aren’t hurting Bea.”

“Ah, you think you’re in love with her,” he taunted, digging the blade an inch into Priest’s left side just below his ribs.

“I know nothing about love, but I know about death. And I am not afraid to die for her,” Priest stated, his eyes finding mine over Seth’s shoulder.

They were a deep, clear green in the yellow light of the construction lamps. I could read everything in that blank expression, the love he felt but couldn’t explicitly voice, the resolve he had, and most of all, the confidence.

I breathed deeply, the dirty, bloodstained white gown torn to ribbons at my bloody back fluttering under my throat with my exhale. I’d been right. He did have a plan.

Seth’s entire body seemed affected by a swift change brought on by Priest’s declaration, his muscles curling his frame in on itself, his muscles straining too tight. When he plunged the dagger into Priest’s side and twisted, he did it with a little hiss of pleasure.

“There are so many ways to kill in the Bible,” Seth explained as he left the knife in Priest’s torso and leaned close to preach in his face. “I wonder which God and I will decide on to kill you.”

A smile sliced bloody and raw across Priest’s face before he lunged forward, snapping his teeth at Seth’s neck. They landed on the side of his throat, and with one vicious jerk of his head, he tore a mammoth chunk out of the fleshy column.

Seth stumbled back, hands clutched to his throat, blood sluicing through his fingers and down his dark sweater with his mouth open in surprise.

Priest spat out the ragged lump of skin and grinned manically. “I doubt you’ll get the chance,” he finally replied with red-painted teeth, blood dripping from his lips as he smiled that feral animal smile.

I watched a red light dance through the cross-shaped windows on the front doors and land shakily on Seth’s leg.

Seth followed Priest’s gaze down to the red circle and blinked.

A moment later, a shot tore through the damp wooden doors and punctured Seth’s right thigh. He screamed in agony as he fell to the ground, clutching the profusely bleeding wound.

Priest moved quickly then, wrenching his hands off the wall, then absently pulling out the nails drilled through his palms as if they were splinters. The broken doors crashed open, Kodiak and Wrath storming inside with raised guns.

Billy froze at my side.

“Billy?” Priest asked over Seth’s pitiful wails as Wrath went to secure him. “Put down the knife, kid, yeah?”

He did no such thing, shaking so hard the knife pricked my dress and the skin beneath on my hip.

Priest took a step forward, but Billy held the knife up and pressed it against my belly in threat.

“Hey,” my man called, his voice suddenly soothing, soft, and liltingly Irish. “I once knew a man like Seth, who pretended to be a priest when he was really a monster. He did this to me when he thought I was bad,” he indicated the scars gleaming through his torn shirt. The blade was still in his belly, and he moved gingerly around it but didn’t make a move to pull it out. “He told me, ‘A worthless person, a wicked man, goes about with crooked speech, winks with his eyes, signals with his feet, points with his finger, with perverted heart devises evil, continually sowing discord; therefore calamity will come upon him suddenly; in a moment he will be broken beyond healing.’ Do you know which Bible verse that is?”

A vibrating moment passed then Billy nodded his head minutely. “Proverbs 6:12-15. It was one of the Prophet’s favourites.”

A shadow passed over Priest’s face, and he fisted his wounded hands so