Blood Sins (7 page)

"Really? Isn't that unusual?"

"Not for our church."

Since she wasn't offered any opening to probe that further, Tessa shifted the subject a bit. "No members live outside the Compound?"

"A few, though not many. We're a community," Ruth told her, smiling. "We don't require all our members to live here, but so far most have chosen to. Eventually."

That last word was oddly chilling, and Tessa did her best not to shiver visibly; it was a very mild day for January, after all. "I already have a home in Grace," she pointed out.

"Your husband's family home. Forgive me, but can it really feel like home to you?"

Tessa allowed the silence to stretch as she walked beside the other woman up the wide steps to the open front doors of the church, not answering until they stepped over the threshold. "It doesn't," she admitted after a moment, being more honest than Ruth could know. "The house is too big and . . . I ramble around in there. Sometimes it almost echoes it's so empty." She allowed her voice to wobble a bit, her eyes to tear.

"I'm sorry, Tessa--I didn't mean to upset you."

"No, it's just . . . The happy families out there . . . The way I feel in Jared's family home--"

"There's a restroom off the vestibule where you can have a few moments alone. It's as safe a place as you'll find in there. The stalls are tiled from the floor almost to the ceiling, and the doors are big. The recreation area where people tend to congregate at odd hours is downstairs, so the main-floor restroom isn't used much except around the times of services."

Tessa managed to squeeze out a tear. "If you don't mind--a restroom?"

"Of course, of course. It's just over there, ladies' room on the left side." Ruth's voice was warmly sympathetic. "I'll be here. Take your time."

The restroom was fairly large and brightly lit, with six stalls and three sinks, and like everything else she had seen was exceptionally neat, to the point of appearing to be newly scrubbed. Tessa looked around briefly but wasted little time in locking herself into the stall farthest from the door.

Hollis's information had been right: These stalls were designed for a great deal more privacy than those usually found in a public facility. In fact, the stall struck Tessa as a bit claustrophobic, and she had to take a deep breath as she closed the toilet lid and sat down on it.

Focus. Concentrate.

She was wary of opening herself up completely in a place where she felt so uneasy and even trapped, but she wasn't at all sure control was a luxury she could afford. Still, as she closed her eyes and concentrated, she did her best not to drop her shields completely.

Pain.

It was immediate and intense, fire burning along her nerve endings, exploding in her mind, and it took everything Tessa had not to cry out. Her hands reached out to the tile walls on either side of her, and she instinctively braced herself, or tried to, pushing against the cold tile, against the hot, shimmering pain, against the incredibly strong presence she was instantly aware of.

I see you.

H
e'd been given at birth the triple-barrel name that sounded so biblical and had served him so well: Adam Deacon Samuel. His mother's mocking joke.

There was certainly nothing biblical about being the bastard son of a whore.

Samuel frowned and shifted in his chair, keeping his eyes closed. It was his custom to meditate every day at this time, and every day God tested him by beginning the ritual with forcing him to remember where he came from and who he had once been.

It was . . . difficult. But there was no relief, no peace to be found until he forced his way through the memories.

The first few years were fuzzy; by the time he was old enough to wonder why she hadn't just aborted him, he knew the answer. Because she wanted someone to endure a more tormented existence than she did herself.

And she made sure he did.

He doubted most of the johns had even noticed, much less cared, that a usually filthy and often hungry boy had crouched in the corner of some seedy motel room and watched, eyes wide and fixed, the fornication that was always hurried and furtive, and often abusive.

She'd taught him to smoke, both cigarettes and pot, by the time he was four, burning his body with the glowing embers until he could inhale without coughing. Taught him how to steal by the time he was six and how to defend himself with a knife before he was seven--though she could always take the weapon away from him on those rare occasions when he found the guts to try to defend himself from her.

"Stupid little bastard. I could have let them scrape you out of my belly when I knew his seed had taken root. But that don't mean I can't scrape you out of my life now. Understand, Sammy? Or do I have to show you just what I can do to you?"

It never made any difference if he answered, because she always "showed" him. Sometimes he was locked in a closet for a day or longer. Sometimes she beat him. Other times she . . .played with him. Like a cat with a mouse, mangling and torturing its prey until the pathetic little creature just stopped trying to escape and waited dumbly for the end to come.

He'd believed he was numb to all of it, enduring his lot in stoic silence, until she began bringing in johns with . . . special tastes.

It amused her to watch them use him. And then there was the money. She was able to charge a premium for his virginity. After that . . . well, he was still small. Young. As good as a virgin, she told them. She developed a skill for finding those men who enjoyed using him no matter how many had used him before.

Samuel gripped the arms of his chair and forced himself to breathe deeply and evenly.

Memories.

Just memories.

They couldn't hurt him anymore.

Except, of course, that they did. Always. But less and less as time had passed. As if holding a burning coal in his mind, in his soul, and blowing on it from time to time, like this, he could feel layers of himself being seared away. Cauterized.

It was a good thing.

He hadn't been able to do that then. Not in the beginning. Hadn't been able to stop the pain in any way at all. Hadn't been able to stop the mother who abused him or the johns who did even more unspeakable things to him.

Looking back now, in the light of God's pure certainty, he understood what had finally happened to him. He understood that God had tested him. And tested him. He understood that those early years had begun to shape the steel of God's holy sword.

He hadn't seen those miserable, dark, dank motel rooms as a series of crucibles, or those faceless men, brutish and cruel, as anointed by God to destroy the base metal he had been in order to make of it something great.

But he saw now. He understood.

The first destruction of who and what he had been took place in one of those desolate rooms, late one night when it was cold and stormy outside. Maybe it had been winter. Or maybe it had just been one of those perpetually cold cities along his mother's long, wandering life. He couldn't remember.

He remembered only that he'd been vaguely surprised that she had found a john at all on such a night, far less one looking for a boy. But his stoic resignation had turned to quivering terror when a hulk of a man filled the doorway, almost forced to turn sideways in order to come into the room.

Samuel remembered few details of the next few hours, but he remembered a broad, coarse-featured face in which small eyes burned cruelly. And he remembered his mother's glee, her laughing encouragement, as the john held him in one giant paw and literally ripped the worn, too-small clothing from his body.

He could hear her laughter even now, echoing in his mind. Hear the john's hoarse grunts of sadistic pleasure. And he could feel his body ripping, tearing, feel the warm blood and the white-hot shimmering blaze of pure agony that had crackled across every nerve ending his small body possessed.

And then . . . nothing.

A darkness unlike anything he had ever known or imagined surrounded him, enfolded him in warmth. He felt strong. He felt calm. He felt cherished. He felt safe.

Samuel had no idea how long that had lasted, though judging by what he found when he woke up, it was hours at least.

The room was warm when he woke, which surprised him because the sort of motels his mother chose invariably had heaters and air conditioners that hadn't worked in years, and this particular hovel was no exception.

The room was warm, and he was warm, and at some point he must have braved the stained and moldy bathtub, because he was clean and dressed. He wasn't even sore, which surprised him a lot because he was always sore and that john had been so big--

Samuel saw him then. The john. Pinned to one wall of the room like a giant, ugly-ass butterfly in somebody's collection. He was bloody. Very bloody. He looked surprised.

The knife his mother always carried was buried to the hilt in the john's left wrist, and the knife Samuel had stolen for himself months before was likewise buried in the john's right wrist.

Neither would have supported the huge man's weight if not for the thick piece of wood protruding from the center of his chest, clearly driven into the wall behind him. It was a table leg, Samuel realized, from the rickety old table that had sat near the door.

He turned his head just far enough to see that the tabletop lay on the floor, upside down. With all four legs missing.

The room was utterly silent, except for his own suddenly audible breathing.

Slowly, Samuel turned to look at the wall across from where the john hung and saw his mother. Like him, she hung suspended, spread-eagled and pinned in place.

She looked surprised too.

One of the table legs, split neatly in half, pinned each of her wrists to the wall. Another table leg, also halved, had been driven through her legs just above her ankles.

The fourth and final table leg, whole, was driven into her body between her breasts, buried so deeply that only a few inches were visible enough to identify what it had been.

It looked like she had bled a lot; thick reddish stains coated the peeling wallpaper below her wrists and legs, and the short skirt she wore was no longer pale pink.

Samuel stared at her for a long, long time. He thought he should probably feel something, even if only relief, but all he felt was a kind of indifferent curiosity.

It must have taken a lot of strength, he thought, to have pinned the huge john to the wall. And he knew his mother, knew how ferociously she'd fight to defend herself. So it would have taken somebody strong to do that to her. Somebody really strong.

Her eyes were open, he realized.

Open--and white. No color at all.

When he looked at the john, he saw the same. Eyes open. But totally without color.

Weird.

He still didn't feel anything and for a long time just sat there looking back and forth between the two dead bodies. Eventually he got up and dragged his mother's old duffel bag from inside the closet. Since they never unpacked, his few bits of clothing and her things were still in it. He dumped all the contents on the bed, then picked out his own things and put them back in the duffel.

He raided the bathroom of its meager supplies of threadbare towels and tiny shrink-wrapped soaps and put those in his bag. He found on the floor the man's pants and emptied the pockets, finding a big switchblade, a few coins, a couple of crumpled receipts, and a wallet. The wallet had several credit cards and a surprisingly thick wad of cash.

Samuel hadn't spent more than a week at any one time in school, but when it came to money, he could count. Twenty-seven hundred dollars.

It was a fortune. It was enough.

He put the money and the knife in the duffel, then added to it the far-less-princely sum he found in his mother's secret hiding place. Less than two hundred dollars.

He put the last of her cigarettes in the duffel, weighed her lighter in one hand for a moment, then set it aside and zipped the bag closed. It was heavy even with so little in it, but he was strong for his size and lifted it easily. He picked up his mother's lighter and went to the door, pausing only then to look back at the bodies.

He wondered idly what had happened to their eyes, because that was just weird. Really weird.

Then he shrugged it off, life so far having taught him that if the answer wasn't obvious, it was probably best left alone.

The lighter was the kind you didn't throw away, the kind with a lid that opened and a wheel that turned and sparked off a flint. He opened the lid and turned the wheel with his thumb, and for a moment he just watched the small flame. Then he tossed the lighter to land on the floor near the bed, where an ugly, stained bedspread lay crumpled.

Immediately, it began to burn.

Adam Deacon Samuel unlocked the door and left the motel room, closing the door behind him. He turned right, because it seemed as good a direction as any other, and started walking. He never looked back at the burning building.

He was ten years old.

T
essa struggled to breathe.

Pain. Awful, soul-rending pain that wasn't only physical but emotional as well. Pain that washed over her in waves, each one greater than the last.

And darkness. A darkness so black it was almost beyond comprehension, so black it swallowed all the light and reached hungrily for life. Reaching . . . grasping . . .

She could hear herself trying to breathe, hear the jerky little pants, but every other sense was turned inward as she grappled with the pain, tried to dull it.

Hurt . . .

Mute it.

Hurt . . .

Deflect it.

Hurt . . .

She tried to feel her way through the horrible darkness, beyond it.

It seemed impossibly difficult for the longest time, for what seemed eons, until finally, faintly, she became aware of other things besides the continual burning pain.

Sensations. Emotions. Fragmented thoughts.

. . . the poor thing . . .

. . . must get away . . .