Together, they untied her shaking body.
When they lifted her, my heart bottomed out. She was wearing a short white dress; red dripped from the hem of one side, pouring down the empty space.
Her leg was missing.
Thirty
Arippleofreactionsrushedthrough the room, horror, dread, outright disgust and fear. Connor shouted out, barking an indistinctive noise of shock. And even the unfeeling woman who’d birthed us all reacted, putting down her glass of wine and last with a gasp, scrapping back in her chair just a fraction.
I spared her no glance, but the air moved beside me. Good.Fucking suffer, bitch.She didn’t have a single child that hadn’t.
My stomach roiled, the meagre meal I’d taken a few bites of threatening to reappear, hovering, sick and sour, at my throat. The meal… the meat…
Gabe and Rafe slammed Margaret down onto the table, slamming that pressure back, snapping us to the reality. Silence reigned, at the flick of a switch. Her body smashed into our plates, cutlery scattered, and she squirmed and fought them, scratching out with her fingers, screaming through a hoarse throat. But she was no match for two men at peak fitness and health.
My attention shot to a clatter on my lap. A knife. Margaret’s fighting had knocked a fucking knife from the table and onto my thigh.
My freed fist wrapped around the handle as my mind fought to make sense of the evidence before me. Her leg, the unfamiliar meat, Rafael’s keenness for us to eat it? Fuck. Had he really? How much more twisted could this fucker get? I swallowed down the bubbling bile.
“What the fuck did you feed us!” Connor shouted, frantic, fighting against his restraints again. “What was it!?” he roared. Amy only sobbed as he grew more manic.
Rafael laughed and lifted Margaret’s dress to the knee, showing where her leg ended. It was gnarled, shredded and cut ragged, the stump swinging around like she was still trying to use it. Fuck. Poor Margaret. Her beliefs had taken her to the darkest place imaginable.
Connor gagged and vomited all down his front, confirming to me his mind went to the same place as mine. Rafe made us eat Margaret. Forced her to serve us as fully as a person could.
My eyes darted to Violet, needing to see that she was freaking out too, reacting to this horror. She had to be. Had to be in there somewhere.
“I thought the Lewis’s had a taste forlong pig,” Gabe sneered. “Rafe was just helping you out.” Margaret’s hand flung out and slapped him across the cheek. His gaze flickered down to her. “Stop fucking fighting, you waste of fucking space.”
“Let her go!” I shouted, knowing it was futile. She was about to die. Gabe had her pinned to the table by the shoulders, putting his full weight on her as she fought with her single leg, trying to kick out. He held both her hands in one of his and completely immobilized her. If we got out of this, I was going to tell her about the pride I felt for her in that moment. Fighting back like a champ.
“No,” Rafe said, standing behind Violet a specter, a malicious demon. “She’s fulfilling her destiny.” He leaned over the table so he was face to face with Margaret, grabbing her chin and forcing her to look at him, away from me. “Remember what we talked about, Margaret?” he asked her, his voice low and calm. Far too steady for someone in the midst of this chaos.
She whimpered and nodded, her squirming slowing. Relaxing.
“You’ll serve the church however I see fit, and this is how I want you. Sacrificing your body for me. To me. We’ll all consume you, beautiful.” He stroked her cheek like a loving father might.
“But you said…” she muttered, voice hoarse and weak. “You said you were lying, Mr Delucci…”
He shushed her, caressed her hair, patted her head. “No, sweet thing, it’s all real. You’re doing so good. You just heard wrong.”
“I heard wrong?” Her chest slowed as she calmed down, and despite the wicked smile he gave her, she didn’t see through it. She sighed. Broken.
“Margaret, don’t listen to him,” I implored. Connor carried on shouting, Amy whimpered, and Violet stared into the middle distance. I only saw her in glimpses when Gabe and Rafael moved, but she never changed. She was just watching with a vacancy that scared me more than anything Rafael might do. Like she wasn’t even in there anymore. That blankness in her eyes hurt more than Margaret’s pain.
And Margaret didn’t put up a fight when Rafael held his hand out and was handed a large knife by one of his background lackeys, always just appearing from the fog whenever they were needed. She laid there among her family, whimpering but not pushing back. Accepting her fate.
“You fucking cunt, Rafael Delucci,” I growled at him, but he only laughed.
“She’s giving us all of herself like she was so desperate to do,” he told me, the smugness rolling off him in waves. He had her, and he knew it.
And I could only watch as he did as he pleased. No piety in this bastard, no desire to live as his church demanded. He’d twisted it all up, used his gained power to fulfill sick urges. Somehow, this man had been handed the keys to a kingdom, a fucked up one no less, and he’d exploited it for this. Surrounded himself with men who craved the same. Lying and cheating his way into abusing women with a purpose, a mission, breaking them down in the name of a fake belief.
Rafael ignored my yelling as he got to work, making us all watch as he brutalized our sister once more.
Amy cried the entire time, begging and pleading with them to not do it, to let her go, to let Margaret live.
First it was Margaret’s other leg, then her hands and arms. Removed in bloody, gory chops of Rafael’s blade, in sprays of blood over his white shirt and a sneer on his face. We shouted, begged. Mother said nothing. Violet stared, blank. I kept working my knife, sawing through the rope in pointless slides.
