The Sinners of Saint Amos - Logan Fox Page 0,259

echo around us, wild, but we’re miles from civilization.

Miles from anything.

“Exactly!” Zach stops moving, his chest heaving like he ran a marathon. Then he shoves at my chest. “You think I want this? You think I need this shit in my life?”

“Guys!” It’s Apollo. He sounds out of breath. But I can’t spare him any mind right now. My concentration is on Zach.

Lying, full of shit, bastard Zach.

I punch his jaw. The other side—his cheek.

“It’s Trinity!” Apollo yells.

A cold shock blasts through me. I spin around, pressing a hand to Zach’s chest as I stare over my shoulder at Apollo. If Zach hadn’t turned on the van’s headlamps, I wouldn’t have seen Apollo…or Trinity.

She’s bare naked.

My breath hitches. I’m already scrambling up, but Cass is halfway to her already. Apollo is at her side, but she shoves him when he tries to throw a coat over her shoulders.

She’s covered in blood.

That’s probably why I lose my fucking mind and race at her like a bull with a personal grudge for the matador. Zach leaps in front of me like a goddamn rodeo clown, but I don’t fall for it. I snatch the coat out of Apollo’s hands and toss it over Trinity’s shoulders.

But she pulls some kind of magic trick, and a second later she’s naked again, the coat at her feet.

“Stop,” she says through a tight jaw, holding up her hands when I duck to pick up the coat. Slamming her foot on the thick fabric, she stares me down like I’m a fool peasant kneeling for my Queen.

One I’ve just pissed off royally.

She turns, scowls at Zach. “Stop fighting. Stop killing. Stop all of it.”

I’m grimacing at her, because all I can think about is how tiny she is, and how fucking cold it is out here, and why the fuck is she covered in all that goddamn blood? I’m searching her pale skin for any sign of damage, a cut or a bruise or anything, but I can’t explain it.

“She’s lost it,” Apollo blurts out. “Just stripped, and then rubbed her hands all over him and then, and she, she’s pissed you guys.”

“Trinity, put on the fucking coat,” Zach growls somewhere beside me.

She pins him with a molten glare. “How dare you?” she whispers furiously. “How fucking dare you?”

I swear I can hear him grating his fucking teeth. “Trinity, you can’t stand out here in the cold. Let’s go inside, there’s a fire, we can—”

Her pointing finger cuts me off midsentence. “You can shut the fuck up,” she says, showing me her teeth.

They’re chattering.

Oh my god, she’s freezing.

I rush to my feet, but that finger has a kind of power I still don’t understand or even fully accept. Every atom of my being is screaming at me to scoop her up, to run back inside that hovel and snuggle her in every layer of clothing I can find while I cuddle her beside the fire.

But I can’t move.

“All of this ends tonight,” she says.

Apollo and Cass are nodding furiously, sending me and Zach big-eyed glances meant to impress on us that we should be doing the same.

My jaw clenches, but I manage a nod. Reluctant, grudging as all hell, but I do it.

Zach just glares at her.

“Tonight.”

Zach steps forward, his hands fisting at his sides. It takes everything I have not to tackle him to the ground again, just at the thought that he might hurt her for trying to impose her will on him…but she’s still pointing at me. Still holding me in place with nothing but deep respect.

I can’t explain how it happened, or even when. I suppose it was gradual. As the years wore on, as we grew a tighter-knit family, as the body count climbed…Trinity became the epitome of my hope and my salvation.

We’re all still broken. Shards that used to form whole, beautiful children before those wicked men crushed our souls.

But she bound those pieces together. Formed crude structures that somehow resembled who we used to be.

We’re happy, now.

Satisfied.

After tonight, fulfilled.

All but one.

The boy who’d been broken so many times, he never could find all the pieces again. But she tried. Over and over again.

“Put the fucking coat on!” Zach’s voice is shaking with anger, with frustration.

And Trinity’s face is cracking. Her blazing anger dissolving, fear replacing it. Dread. I suppose fearing that Zach is, in fact, a lost cause.

We tried to tell her.

She never did listen.

But I can’t hold that against her…because we’ve all said that about ourselves so many times