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“You need to shut the fuck up, you noisy sow.”

Malachi is at the bottom of the steps, still in the grip of the other two men, and his eyes go wide. He throws back his head and kicks at them, but despite his valiant efforts, he can’t get free. Not when there are two against one, and one of those is as massive as Cain.

“Get your fucking hands off her,” he growls. “I swear to God, I’ll kill you.”

“Oooh. I’m scared.” The smaller of the two laughs maniacally. “The cutie in the nail varnish and eyeliner is going to kill us. Are you sure you’re not going to get your hair done instead? Soooo scary.”

The big one reaches behind his waistband and pulls out a gun.

I freeze, and everything goes still.

He presses the barrel to Malachi’s head as I desperately try to convey with only my eyes to Malachi to stop fighting. I look up at the man with his hands around my throat and manage to wheeze out one word, “Please.”

He finally lets me go, and I cough and splutter, trying to fill my lungs with air and swallow past my throbbing throat.

“Say that again. I like to hear it.” His voice is oily and rough, as if he swallowed a jug of gasoline before speaking.

“Please,” I beg again.

He laughs and takes a knife out of his pocket, pressing the cold blade to my throat. “Because you asked so nicely, I will stop throttling you. Keep the noise down, though, and stop making a fuss, or else I’ll slit your throat.”

“You can’t have your way with me if you do that,” I point out.

Anything to play for time, for both myself and Mal. The other Preachers will be back, and they will make this a more even fight.

He spins me around and puts one big forearm around my throat, holding me tight, the blade against it in his other hand. “You can fuck a warm corpse just as easily as a living person, doll. I don’t like them once they’re… you know, dead, dead. But still warm? I’ll take that.”

Revulsion skitters through me. My skin erupts in goosebumps and shivers break out all over me. These men really are the most depraved creatures. I can’t allow myself to think of the poor people who came before us, and what they did to them. Their final few hours must have been horrifying.

The men move us away from the office, hauling us across the midway, and any hope I might have been clinging to drains out of me. It finally seemed as if we had the upper hand, but we never did. Once more, my mind goes to the sister, and I wonder if she really was in on all this. But then why would she tell us about the control room and let one of her brothers be sacrificed? Nothing about this night makes sense. But then we’re dealing with psychopaths, and I expect they rarely make any sense at all.

As my heels scramble for purchase in the dirt, the one brother pulling me along, I catch sight of Cain and Roman coming around the corner. They grind to a halt at the scene in front of them.

I knew they’d come for us, and my heart lifts. I glance around, but I don’t think any of the brothers have noticed them.

Cain quickly darts behind a truck and pulls Roman with him. Thank God for that. If the brothers had realized they were here, I imagine they wouldn’t have hesitated in killing either me or Malachi.

“Where the fuck should we take these pieces of shit?” the brother holding me asks.

The big one chuckles. “I think it’s time they joined the freak show, don’t you?”

“Yeah.” The maniacal one gives that hysteria-tinged laugh again. “Freak show. Freak show. Freak show.” His chant is finished by another giggle and then a hiccup, as if he’s so excited by the idea that it’s giving him gas.

I don’t like the sound of the freak show, and I really don’t want to find out what it is, but I have no choice.

15

CAIN

Roman fights against my hold, trying to get out from behind the truck to rush up to the men who have Malachi and Ophelia. He’s not thinking clearly, because he’s letting his guilt at what’s happened cloud his judgment. In the end, even though I hate to do it, I slam him hard against the truck. My elbow and forearm brace across his neck as I hold him in place.

“Fucking stop it.” I shake my head at him, anger rising. “You need to think clearly. We can’t rush out there right now, then they’ll know we are here. Surprise is going to be our best weapon. We need to follow them and see where they’re taking Mal and Ophelia. We can’t make noise, and we can’t let our presence be known.”

At first, he stares at me as if he wants to murder me, but then slowly, over a few seconds, his body sags, the tension going out of him. He blinks once, and when he looks back at me, he nods.

I let him go. We both peer around the truck. The men are dragging Ophelia and Malachi away from the office and through the park. They skirt around the now silent and dark twister chair ride, and the back of the Helter Skelter. I frown. Where are they heading? Round that way, there’s the tarpaulin that leads to the trash cans, and I didn’t think there was much else.

“Come on.” Roman starts to creep out from behind the truck. “If we hang back and keep quiet, they won’t know we’re here. But we can’t lose sight of them.”