or worse, go to them themselves.
Noa saw the worry on her sisters’ faces—she knew it was probably a reflection of her own. This had become their purpose for living. Noa didn’t know who she was without it. None of them did. If they couldn’t save others from the Brethren, then what was the point?
“Let’s go,” Dinah said, cutting through the concerned tension in the room. Dinah led them down the tunnel and to the entrance. The second they reached the tunnel’s mouth, the sisters put their hoods over their heads, pulling the scarves over their faces so only their eyes could be seen. The frigid chill of the night bit at their leather clothes as they reached the van and climbed inside.
Candace and Jo took up the front seats, Candace driving. Noa and the others sat in the back. The van was silent as they drove the thirty minutes to the first home. When they arrived, the house was in pitch black, secluded and perfect for a retrieval. Dinah met Noa’s eyes and nodded.
They climbed out of the van and rushed through the shadows toward the house. Candace and Jo stayed behind, as was their role, and Noa, Dinah, Naomi and Beth moved to the back door. Dinah checked for alarms—there were none. Noa reached into her pocket and pulled out a needle. In seconds, the lock broke and they all piled in, silent as night itself. Noa and Dinah broke away from Naomi and Beth. The former pair ran upstairs to the priest’s bedroom, the latter to the cellar where the Brethren tended to hold their victims.
As Noa silently entered the bedroom, her lip curled in disgust at seeing the priest on the bed, asleep, his peaceful slumber not disturbed one bit by the fact that he loved to abuse and fuck up kids’ lives.
Noa felt her anger rise. Reining it back in, she took the gag from her back pocket and kneeled on the bed. At the movement of the mattress, the priest’s eyes flew open, then widened when he saw Noa hovering over him.
Before he could even open his mouth to scream, she tied the gag over his mouth, taking sick enjoyment from the terror that took over his expression as he drank in her hood and her half-covered face. But Noa met his eyes straight on—she wanted him to look into the eyes of one of the sisters who knew he existed, who knew who he really was and what fucked-up sect he belonged to.
The priest began to struggle as Dinah tied his ankles together with cable ties. Noa moved to his hands, which reached up to try to remove her face covering. But before he could, Noa whipped the back of her hand across his face, silently screaming glory when blood spilled from his lip and seeped through the gag.
The priest’s eyes turned from fearful to livid in a flash. This was the man Noa was used to seeing on nights like this. The arrogance of the Brethren priests. The belief that they were above anyone else, especially women.
The priest bucked, trying to throw Noa and Dinah from his bed. But Noa reached for the taser on her belt, pressing it against the priest’s throat and sending a mass of volts right into his neck. His eyes rolled and his body went limp underneath her.
Her heart sang.
“Let’s move,” Dinah said, but Noa just stared down at the priest, frozen with rage. “Noa!” Dinah said, harshly enough to rip Noa from her murderous thoughts. Her hands itched to smother his mouth, so he couldn’t hurt anyone else, but the haunting shadow of her past creeped up her spine and dampened that craving. A gentle hand on her shoulder chased the chill of hatred from her bones and soothed it with light. “We have to go,” Dinah said, clearly sensing where Noa’s mind had gone.
Noa inhaled deeply, then dipped her thumb into the priest’s blood and used it to write an “H” on his forehead, an echo of an insult given to her and her sisters for too many years by men just like him. If anyone in the world were heretics, it was the Brethren.
Liars. Murderers. Tormentors, every one of them.
Noa wiped the blood on the priest’s bed linen, then quickly left the room behind Dinah. She went out of the house and into the waiting van. The second the doors were closed, Noa saw the small boy beside Beth, no more than ten, looking half