Bound by Blood and Brimstone (46 page)

my trump card.

“What about Noah Lunsford?” I demanded. “You have the ring he wanted to give to

Lorrie Beth. He had it the last time it was seen, and it was never recovered. You killed him too,

didn’t you? You killed him that night you were supposed to be at the church. You followed him

and watched while he and Caleb Jacobs argued. After Caleb left, you stabbed him. You went to

Caleb’s cell and convinced him to take the blame. How’d you do it, Reese? You knew Caleb was

a born again Christian. Did you make him believe he was hell bound for lusting after Lorrie

Beth?”

There was a sharp intake of breath behind me before Lorrie Beth shoved me aside and

launched herself at him, aiming for his eyes with her fingernails, clawing, screeching like a she-

cat.

“BASTARD! MURDERER! HOW COULD YOU DO IT? NOAH LOVED ME! HE

REALLY LOVED ME FOR ME, AND YOU TOOK HIM FROM ME!”

Deftly, he caught her by the wrists, honest sorrow shimmering in his eyes, and attempted

to calm her. “Shhh, Hush Honey, don’t. Don’t cry, Baby. I can’t bear to hear you cry,” he said,

practically cooing. She kicked and screamed, yammering the hot air with her broken sobs until

there seemed to be no strength left for another. Finally, she collapsed against the back of the sofa

with her face in her hands.

He drew one shuddering breath and made his confession. “I had no choice, Honey. I had

to do God’s will. That boy ruined you. He put his hands on your innocent flesh and put his

bastard in your belly. He couldn’t go unpunished for his sins. God’s Hammer had to come

down.” The words were soft and hesitant, thick with unshed tears, and they made my skin crawl.

For one second there was complete silence, then, to my horror, Lorrie Beth threw back

her head and began to laugh hysterically. On and on it shrilled, maniacal and unfettered, chilling

me to my marrow.

“Stop! Lorrie Beth, stop it!” I begged. “What’s funny? What are you laughing at?” She

chortled and hiccupped, gasping for air, and when she turned to point her finger at Reese, her

eyes were empty.

“You!” she said, giggling. “I’m laughing at you, Reese. Killing Noah for putting his

hands on me. For putting a baby in my belly.”

She began cackling again, and I grabbed her and shook her until her head flopped. “Stop

that!” I yelled. “Stop it now, or so help me God, I’ll knock some sense into you!”

As though a switch had been flicked, she stopped and looked at me with such naked

sorrow, a lump rose in my throat. “He knows, Ember Mae. He knows everything.”

“What are you talking about? What does he know?” She had me scared, more scared

than I’d ever been. She’d crossed some unseen threshold, and I wondered if I’d have the strength

to pull her back.

“He knows about Sue Lee Jacobs and what happened at the Gorge.”
God in heaven,

Lorrie Beth, what are you doing?

The only thing I could do was feign ignorance. “I don’t know what you mean.” I glanced

at Reese’s sweating face and twisting hands, the blood in my veins turned to ice.

“He knows,” she repeated. “He’s always known. Almost from the beginning. He

wouldn’t let up on me. He kept saying he could see into my heart and that he knew I’d

committed some horrible sin. He kept threatening to go to the sheriff. He told me the sheriff

could beat a confession out of me. He kept telling me what would happen to me in hell. The

nightmares about hell wouldn’t stop, so I finally told him.”

“No,” I whispered, my gorge rising. Hot tears clogged my throat and burned the backs of

my eyelids.

“Then, he told me there was only one way I could cleanse my soul.”

“No! Don’t you dare say another word,” Reese warned, his face reddening again as he

took another step toward us. “Don’t...”

“Don’t what, Reese?” she asked. “What else do I have to be afraid of?” She trained her

eyes on me then, speaking in a hollow monotone as the tears rained down her pale cheeks. “He

told me the only way I could save my soul and go to heaven was through sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice?” I said woodenly.

“Yes. By sacrificing my body for God.” Her voice cracked only once before resuming its

monotone. “I had to sacrifice my body by giving it to Reese.”

“No, stop,” I pled, starting to cry. “I don’t want to hear this.” My insides were quaking,

rattling as though my essence were in danger of shattering.

“It started out every night at first,” she said in that eerie, dead tone. “He’d come into my

room and force himself on top of me. I’d fight, but he was too strong. He was sweaty and vile. It

hurt--
so
much. He’d hold the pillow over my face to smother my screams, and he’d heave and

pant, and afterwards I’d vomit. Every single time I would vomit, then I’d have to clean up my

own mess.”

Bile sluiced up into my neck and I had to breathe deeply through my nose to keep from

being violently ill. I was shivering, shuddering with my own sobs as she continued to expose her

wounds. Reese’s face had turned chalk-white, his flared nostrils and clenched fists betraying the

rage about to erupt. I’d forgotten about leaving. Nothing mattered but this mass of pain leaching

out of my broken sister.

“It went on for years,” she said. “Night after night of living hell. I wanted to die. I

thought so many times of taking my own life, but I was too afraid of being damned, you see.

Once in a while, there’d be weeks when he wouldn’t come, and I was free. Then it would start

again. He kept saying how much he loved me and how Godly his love for me was, how pure, and

how holy I was for sacrificing myself.” She stopped and grimaced, her throat working savagely,

her bleak eyes still on me.

“That’s when I thought you were sick or dying,” I said, barely above a whisper.

“Then Noah came,” she continued, as though she hadn’t heard. “Reese had left me alone

for months before that, and I thought it was finally over. But he couldn’t stand seeing me love

Noah, so he started on me again. Noah was so good and so beautiful and so fine. I wanted to be

his.” She choked up, dropping her face into her hands for a moment before continuing. “I wanted

Noah--to take me. I thought if he were to have me, maybe it would make me clean again, wash

away all the filth, you know?”

“I saw you together,” I said in a small, strangled voice. “Out in the woods the night of the

fall festival. That’s when Joshua was conceived, wasn’t it?”

She darted me an odd look. “You might’ve seen us kiss and touch that night. But you

didn’t see anything that makes a baby. I wanted him to, though. I begged him. He wouldn’t. He

wanted to wait until we were married. He loved me that much. He loved me enough to marry me

even after I told everybody about the baby.”

“Hold it right there, little girl,” Reese burst in, his raspy voice nearing a roar. “You’re

saying that boy didn’t make you pregnant? That means you were with another boy. Who was it?

Who were you with, you little whore?”

She tossed her head and cast him a wicked smile. When she opened her mouth, it was as

though the demons of hell were loosed. “DON’T YOU KNOW, REESE? IT WAS YOU! THAT

LITTLE DEFORMED, DEAF MUTE BASTARD IS YOURS! JOSHUA IS YOUR SON!” I had

one moment of clarity. I realized she was purposely goading him. That was all, then the world

exploded.

What happened next happened so fast I never saw it coming. Reese was on her in a blur,

bellowing his rage, calling her a liar and a harlot. Something flashed dimly.
A knife! Dear God,

he has a knife!
Somehow, he was towering over her, grasping her from behind, her slender neck

exposed and bound in one of his thick arms.

I screamed, a brittle rattling sound, and leapt toward them just as his other arm came up.

“NO!” His free arm jerked upward, and I heard a meaty, slicing sound, followed by a horrid

gurgling. It was the sound of my sister, drowning. A hot glut of blood jetted, splashing the walls,

the floor, my face. I screamed again and wretched, vomiting into the spreading scarlet pool on

the floor. My bladder let go.

Gagging on my grief, I locked away my heart to kill him. I would do it with my bare

hands. I threw myself at him. He spun, his elbow connecting hard with the side of my head. I

staggered, skidded on the blood-slicked floor, and slammed into the mantel with the back of my

head, seeing stars. He was on me, his hands around my throat, squeezing.

The world dimmed, shrouded in gray mist. In a burst of more exploding stars, I

envisioned Lorrie Beth’s anguished face, and it drove me out of the mist. With a mighty heave, I

drove my knee upward into his groin. His hands released my throat, and I heard an agonized

moan.

Suddenly, there was a shriek from far away, and I shook my head to clear my vision.

Momma stood in the doorway, horrified eyes bulging, her purse forgotten on the floor where

she’d dropped it.

“Reese! Merciful God,” she whispered.

“You! Mona! You harlot!” With a warbling yell, he grabbed the knife off the slimy floor

and went after her. She screeched, a hollow eerie sound in that death room, and fled for her life.

I started after them, but the mists kept coming back, and there was a roaring in my head

that wouldn’t stop. I heard footsteps pounding the cellar stairs and more screaming. I half

crawled, half walked to the top of the stairs and descended a couple steps to take a cautious peek

at the bottom.

I could see one of Momma’s stocking clad feet. A lone, blood-spattered shoe lay near it.

She was on her back, her sightless eyes staring at nothing as Reese straddled her, slashing and

hacking with that knife. He didn’t seem to notice her screams were already silenced. I choked

back a sob as her foot twitched one last time.

He heard the tiny sound and jerked his head upward, finding me in the stairwell.
Joshua!

I have to get Joshua
! I began scrabbling upward, unable to stand upright with the roaring in my

head. He was coming. I scrabbled harder.

He had my foot. I kicked, aiming for his nose. He grunted and let go, then grabbed my

calf and pulled hard. I screamed and kicked again. He jerked me down another step. He had me

by the knee. I twisted and gouged at his eyes. He dodged, bringing up the knife. I screamed one

last time before the white heat seared my thigh. I was blinded, falling head over heels, my head

bouncing off the wooden steps, my legs numb. The darkness descended.

I floated in a void where time and space had fled. I have no idea how long I was in that

place, tethered by a thread to this world, wanting desperately to go on to the next. A world not

graced by Lorrie Beth’s emerald eyes and open heart held no appeal for me. I yearned to leave it.

No pain wracked me in the darkness. There was only the anguish of grief, relentless,

hellish. I tried to escape from it and burrow farther into the void, but the voices kept pulling me

back. I didn’t want to listen to them. Persistent, wrenched with sorrow, the voices implored me to

stay.

“You can’t leave me, Ember Mae. You can’t. I need you. What will I do without you?

You’re my only momma now. Come back. Please come back!”

I wanted to tell Sam not to cry for me, to let me go. I
can’t help you
, I thought.
I can’t

help anyone, ever again
. The other voice, older and stronger, made me angry. It refused to let up.

“Now, you listen to me. You must come back. You will not lie in your weakness. I will

not allow it. There is much to do. You are Ember Mae Roberts, great granddaughter to a

medicine woman. You are a healer, and you have the sight. God is not finished with you.” That

voice, weeping, praying, chanting, dragging me out of the darkness, belonged to Wonnie Dean,

of course.

Opening my eyes to a blinding haze of light nearly caused a riot. A petite young woman

in a nurse’s cap started and squealed for a doctor before scurrying away in squishy shoes. A

burly man in hospital scrubs wrestled Sam from my narrow bed where he’d launched himself at

me with a cry of triumph.

Strangers surrounded me, bending over my body, poking, prodding, shining small

pinpoints of light in my eyes. There was a brief whisper of pressure as someone squeezed my

hand, and I darted my eyes around the boiling chaos to find Wonnie standing serenely in a

corner. Reluctantly, I was alive.

When a towering giant of a man in a crisp lab coat entered the room, everyone else was

ordered to leave. His bald head gleamed dully as he reached a freckled hand for mine, peering at

me kindly through Coke-bottle glasses.

“I’m Doctor Wakefield, head of neurology. You’re in Christ Hospital in Hardin, and

you’re quite a celebrity, young lady.” His voice was soft, hesitant, as if he was awed in my

presence. “I’ve been doing this for nearly thirty years, and I must say that you’re the first true

miracle I’ve encountered.”