It was instant. The game of verbal tennis they had been playing crashed to a sudden stop, and he slammed against the bars, teeth bared as he hissed, “He needed to fucking die. They all needed to fucking die.”
“All?” Noa held her ground as the man turned feral before her.
He suddenly calmed, then lifted his head, the taunting side of him returning. “You. It was you who got to them all first. You tied them all up but left them alive.”
Noa suddenly realized what he was saying. “You killed more priests last night, didn’t you?”
“You’re fucking weak,” he spat. “Pathetic. You should have slit their throats and stabbed their hearts.”
“Why?” Noa said, focusing on the brand on his torso.
The man followed her eyes and then tilted his head as he studied her. He smiled again. His head twitched. But he stayed silent, hands gripping the bars, bloodied body unmoving.
Noa was done with dancing around this shit. She got to her feet and moved to the lock of the cage. “Yes,” he said, his Boston accent thick with excitement. “Open the cage, gentle Noa. I won’t hurt you.”
Noa felt her heart race, a trickle of fear in her veins. But she knew he was like her. The rack, the brand, the collar … she had to make him see he was like her, like all her sisters.
Noa unlocked the padlock of the cage and stepped back. She gripped her knife and held on tightly to the remote. The man watched her like a hawk but slowly got to his feet. She noticed he kept his breathing steady, taking calming breaths with every flicker of movement. The collar sizzled as the man reached for the cage’s gate. His attention never moved from her.
Noa gripped the handle of her knife tighter, and the door to the cage opened. The man filled the cage’s doorway and inhaled deeply, like he could smell freedom. His head twitched, eyes blinked, then without any form of warning, he charged at her, his expression morphing into one of pure evil. Noa dodged him, and the man roared as the collar spiked to high voltage, causing him to slam his hands on the nearest cave wall in rage.
Noa watched him closely. “I know why you were there. At the priest’s home.” The man spun. His lips were white from pain, but he fought it. His neck was corded, and Noa could smell the familiar scent of burning flesh. “I know why you were there to kill him.”
Those words seemed to ignite something in the man. “You know nothing!” He charged at her again, only this time he caught her arm and slammed her up against him. His face was in her face, his nose touching the tip of her own. He lifted her off the floor by her biceps.
“He was a priest,” Noa said, and the man’s face turned red with anger. “But he wasn’t an ordinary priest, was he?”
With a growl, the man ran and plowed her back into the cave wall, so hard that her knife dropped from her hand and her lungs were emptied of oxygen. “I’m going to enjoy killing you,” he said through clenched teeth, like he was fighting the need to rip her apart. Like he was somehow leashing his need to lose himself to the darkness running through his veins and tear her to pieces like he did the priest.
As she tried to catch her breath, Noa noticed movement from the mouth of the cave. She saw her sisters appear, weapons in hand. They were about to rush at the man in her defense, but Noa shook her head. Dinah stopped dead, arms out to signal to the others to stop.
Noa moved her finger and managed to turn the collar up higher, a piece of her succumbing to guilt as the man’s legs began to buckle under the pain. He screamed out in anger as he fought it. His hands tightened on her biceps, before he dropped his hold and staggered back, sinking to one knee as he fought to calm.
Noa caught her breath. “He was a Brethren priest. He was a fucking Brethren priest, and you were there to kill him in revenge, weren’t you?”
Despite the high voltage and his obvious pain, the man got to his feet and ran at her again. His face was contorted with anger, and she let him push her against the cave wall again. “What do you fucking know?” he growled. “What the fuck do you know of the Brethren?”
Noa lowered the collar’s voltage a fraction, and she laid her hand on his brand. The man stilled, and Noa could feel his heart pounding in his chest. “You wear the upturned cross. For being a sinner, a heretic.” Her fingertips brushed over his ruined skin. “You are evil, born of the devil, and the Brethren were there to drive out that evil, to cleanse you, to drive the wickedness from your blackened soul.”
The man inched his face closer, but he released one of her hands to slam his fist into the cave wall above her. Fragments of the stone fell to the floor around them like a shower of solid rain. “You’re one of them,” he said, his graveled voice dripping with hatred. “You’re fucking one of them!”
Noa took a deep breath, dropped the remote and ripped open the buttons of her shirt. “No, asshole, I’m one of you.” Noa heard her sisters talking in quiet whispers behind the man, but she didn’t look at them. Her focus was entirely on him.
Noa wore no bra, and her action had exposed her breasts and torso. But she watched as the man’s gaze dropped to her open shirt. And he froze. His hands on her arms kept her in place as his blue eyes moved over the pentagram on her torso … but what held him paralyzed was the upturned cross in the center of the brand.
The man still stared at her skin, which was marred black with the Coven’s brand. “My sisters and I were taken from the safety of our families by the Brethren.” His blue eyes flashed to hers, and he studied her face as if searching for any sign of deception. “We were deemed heretics.”
She swallowed and felt the swirl of anger beginning in her gut. “They told us we were born evil. They told us darkness ran in our veins.” The man’s head twitched over and over again, his eyes blinked in exaggerated movements. The collar buzzed, but he didn’t strike. He kept Noa locked in place, but he didn’t strike …
He was listening to her.
“They said we were evil witches.” Noa laughed, but there was no humor in her tone. “The devil’s whores.” Noa stopped her voice shaking from rage as she said, “And we were tried. For years we lived in what we knew as the Circle. The sixth circle of hell where heretics dwell. That’s what they told us, the Brethren. And we were tried and punished for turning from the faith, for being Satan’s agents on earth. For the sins of our forebearers.”
His breathing was stuttered, but he had lost the anger that contorted his beautiful features. He was listening closely, gaze drifting back and forth between her face and the brand on her torso.
“They called themselves the Witch Finders. The Brethren priests that specialized in ‘purging our souls of demons’ were called the Witch Finders, and their task in life was exorcising us. That’s it. Their entire life was dedicated to breaking us. Seven young girls. Until we got free.” Noa hated that her eyes filled with hot tears as she thought of those men—not men, demons. Demons disguised as holy men.
The man suddenly released Noa as if she carried the plague, and he stumbled away. His collar hummed, and his head twitched, but gone was the possessed man wanting to do nothing but kill. Confusion and shock flashed across his face instead.
“Now we find them,” Dinah said, walking closer to them. The man’s head whipped to Dinah and Noa’s sisters, who were poised and ready to fight the man in the mouth of the cave. “We track them down and free the children they are holding in their homes.”