tightly that blood rushed between his knuckles to wet the floor. “I’m not surprised. It was a favourite of my tormentor too. He tried to break me beyond healing, Billy, but look at me? I defied that man and his God, yet here I stand. You can do the same, trust me. Sometimes evil men use God as an excuse to do evil themselves. No one is going to strike you down.”
Billie shook so hard his teeth rattled, huge tears rolling down his face as he debated with his demons. Finally, he looked up at me, and whispered, “If he’s right, then my mum was killed for no reason.”
My heart broke for him, tears pooling in my own eyes. It was impossible not to draw parallels with the boy Priest had been so long ago, abused by the church, completely lost and alone. “Seth wasn’t right in the head, Billy. I think you know that. Let us help you, okay?”
His thin lower lip trembled as he looked back at Priest. “You won’t hurt me?”
Priest held his huge, scarred hands open wide. “No, kid, I’m going to help you.”
A moment later, the knife clattered to the floor, and Priest surged forward to pick Billy up, checking him efficiently for wounds before passing him off with a murmur to a waiting Kodiak.
“Get him outta here,” he grunted, already moving to me.
I sobbed the moment he reached me, the second his hands cupped my face and brought my forehead to his.
“Little Shadow,” he breathed into my face, his fragrance all around me, and God, it felt like coming home after a nightmare. “Mo cuishle.”
I was sobbing so hard, my entire body was shaking, throwing my cut open back into agony, but I couldn’t stop.
He was there.
The man everyone thought was a harbinger of doom who was really, always and in so many complicated ways, my saviour.
“P-Priest,” I called again and again as if I could bind us together eternally with the sound of his chosen name.
He kissed me hard to stem the flow of words, his lips on mine settling me enough that I stopped trembling.
“Hold on,” he ordered as he pulled away to cut my arms out of the ropes.
I hissed as the hemp slid across my raw skin, but Priest was back, holding me carefully against his left side so he didn’t touch my torn back.
“Mine, mine, mine,” he chanted like a pledge and a reminder, like his ownership of me was a great gift and responsibility.
“Yours, yours, yours,” I repeated.
He winced as I shifted and pressed into the knife still sticking out of his side. “Priest! You need to take that out.”
“Was worried about blood loss. It’s not nicked anythin’ dangerous, Bea, don’t worry.”
“Still.” I moved my hand over the cold grip and shot him a questioning glance.
He inclined his head.
I pulled the blade from his flesh with a faint sucking sound that sent shivers down my skin. Immediately, blood seeped through his hoodie, drenching the fabric from chest to belly.
“I’m fine,” he reassured before I could ask. “But I got work to do. You wanna stay or wait outside with Billy?”
I blinked, my exhausted, pain-numb brain sluggish. Then I understood. Behind Priest, Wrath was tying a shouting Seth with some of the ropes flung over a rafter. He was bleeding badly from his leg, the limb dangling uselessly as they hung him up by the wrists with his arms twisted backward, the sockets popping as they dislocated.
Bat appeared in the doorway with a sniper rifle slung over his back, took one look at the scene, and brought out his phone to text someone.
There was no calling the cops.
They didn’t intend to turn Seth over to the authorities because, in their minds, they were the authority. At least, the only one that mattered.
They’d found me, saved me when the cops hadn’t, and they were owed their retribution.
“Cleo?” I asked.
Priest’s mouth flatlined. “She’s gonna make it, but recovery isn’t gonna go easy.”
“I’ll be there,” I vowed.
Something like a smile moved in his eyes. “Don’t doubt it. Now, Little Shadow, you wanna stay or go?”
I looked up into his pale eyes under those dark, slashing brows and knew if I stayed, I would become a killer. But hadn’t I known that all along?
If I’m a killer, you’re a killer.
I wasn’t going to leave Priest to do the dirty work as if I could ever forget what he’d done, what Seth had done. Vengeance wasn’t a God-given right. It wasn’t, though Seth seemed