Fallen-Angels (2 page)
Authors: Ashlynn Monroe
When Justice
burst through the kitchen door, what she saw was nightmarish.
Three men held her sister on the kitchen
table, the table at which they ate and prepared food.
Her habit was gone, her simple frock ripped
from her pale body, her white petticoat yanked up around her hips.
Justice could see blood on her thighs.
A big, mole covered man was brutally ramming
his cock into her screaming sister.
His
greasy hair frantically flew around his face as he moved.
To Justice, he looked like the devil.
There was no decision, no thought.
Justice raised the gun with two hands and
began to crank the gears.
It fired into
the men.
The man who was raping her
sister fell onto her, dead. Grace screamed, breaking Justice’s trance.
She leapt toward her sister and pulled the
heavy dead man away.
His body hit the
wooden floor with a thump.
Both of the
men who had been holding Grace down, waiting for their turns, lay dead on the
floor.
So much blood.
Justice turned, fell to her knees, and began
to vomit as Purity burst through the door.
When she saw Grace, she swiftly hurried to her sister, tears streaming
down her face.
They wept together as
Justice laid curled up in a ball on the floor, feeling the reality of the
situation begin to sink in.
She had
taken lives.
She was a murderer.
God would never forgive her.
Chastity was dead.
Justice wanted to die. She wanted the pain
and fear to end.
The back door
of the kitchen cracked against the wall and the women jumped.
A man rushed in and Justice fumbled for the
gun as Grace screamed.
“No,
Justice, it’s The Family.
We’re safe now,”
Purity shouted.
Justice let
the gun fall and just let her tears escape. Looking at them with embarrassment,
the man mumbled an apology and rushed out, a rifle at his side.
Justice knew that a rifle was no better than
a bow and arrow compared to a hand held Gatling.
Another man, also of The Family, and much
more heavily armed, rushed in behind the first, not even sparing the sisters a
look as he followed his associate.
Justice
was relieved to see the firepower.
At
least some of The Family had better firepower than the attackers had.
Even a nun knew guns. With the mafia fighting
for territory in
Justice somehow
found the strength to stand.
She and
Purity helped Grace back into the remains of her habit as a round of gunfire
signaled the end of the attack.
Silence
burned her ears.
The quiet
was more terrible to Justice than the loudest of shrieks.
Screams would have meant survivors—silence
was the sound of death.
Slowly the
realization that they were the only ones left overcame Justice and she
wept.
The three sisters held each other
for support.
Everywhere they looked
people they cared about lay dead.
Their
habits stained with blood.
After the
gangs had cleared the scene, leaving behind the broken windows and bloody dead,
the townspeople came out to help the three remaining sisters bury their fellow
nuns and their sister.
With the priest also dead from the barrage of
bullets, Justice was left to lead the service over the mass grave.
Between her words she could hear the women
weeping, her surviving sisters, but she managed to hold herself together.
She felt as
if standing before God, committing the many buried saints to him, was blasphemy.
She had killed a man.
God could never forgive her for that.
She had killed a helpless man for
vengeance.
Guilt and grief battled in
her heart, each trying to hurt her more.
Justice let her mind shut down and numbness settled in, finding comfort
in familiar words.
After it
was over, she wobbled to a chair and collapsed.
A woman brought her a glass of water, but she pushed it away, mumbling a
weak apology.
She moved to stand, to go
to her sisters, but as she looked up, the blackness began to envelope her.
Bright blue sky and puffy white clouds were
her last sight before her eyes closed and oblivion took her.
Chapter Two
February 1865-Texas
Justice
calmly chewed her tobacco and watched a burly bearded man pick up his fellow
card player and throw him across the bar in her favorite place to get a drink
in
Sid, the bartender, yelled at the angry man
to take it outside and, with a cascade of curses, the man hauled the cheat off
the bar and carried him out.
Justice
stood and spit her chewing tobacco in a spittoon near a tall man wearing a
confederate uniform who shot her a dirty look through his scraggly hair.
She glared right back at him.
Despite the uniform, she doubted he was
actually enlisted.
The rebels had taken
over
Uniforms were
meaningless.
She moved
toward the bar and Sid immediately poured her a double whiskey.
He was a damn fine bartender.
Justice turned toward the stage as a round of
applause started, trying to sip her drink dispassionately.
The person she had come to see was about to
perform.
As hard as
it was for her, Justice refused to show any emotion or to turn away.
Guilt was a two way street and she could dish
it out as well as she had been taking it for such an insufferably long time.
As Purity
stepped out onto the stage, Justice noticed many of the men seemed exceedingly
more eager for her sister’s performance than for those of the other dancers.
Several men whistled and shouted.
Justice
hated what her sister did.
What the girl
had become had made Justice cry herself to sleep on more than one
occasion.
She couldn’t blame Purity, not
after what had happened, but it was a knife in her heart to know the path her
quiet, studious, and devout sister had taken was because Justice had failed to
protect her.
Before she could focus on
the ugly thoughts, she turned her attention back to her sister.
The piano
player began a lusty tune and Purity shook her pasty covered nipples.
Her little skirt and pasties matched
perfectly.
Justice remembered the
crooked seams of Purity’s habit and wondered if her sister’s abysmal sewing
skills had improved.
Purity spun in time
with the piano music.
The men hooted
loudly as she slowly pulled her skirt down over her hips, exposing her pale
buttocks, covered only by a
hot pink
g-string.
It still amazed Justice, even
after all the dreadfulness she had experienced, that Purity had the courage to
strip.
It was
clear that part of the courage was liquid. Purity weaved as she danced.
Without her skirt, Purity staggered over to
the pole planted in the center of the stage and began to twirl artfully.
Her experience with the maneuver was
obvious.
Even drunk the woman knew how
to move.
Justice
watched sadly as her sister titillated the crowd.
She thumbed the rosary in her pocket in an
unconscious nervous gesture.
Purity
stopped spinning and strutted to the side of the stage, where she bent over, and
whispered to a whiskered old timer at the stage’s edge.
He happily pulled one of her pasties free,
she stood and removed the other, all the men cheered, and as she bent down
again he slipped a Confederate bill in her g-string.
She put his face between her ample breasts and
squeezed.
His expression made Justice
worry that his old heart would stop if her sister didn’t stop first.
When the
music ended Purity
left the stage with a
falsely cheerful wave and Justice took her whiskey and the glass of gin that
Sid had handed her to the backroom, where Purity was sitting on the floor
weeping.
No matter how bad things had
gotten between them, her sister’s pain broke her heart.
Justice handed her the gin and sat down with
her.
Purity downed the whole glass and issued
a sorry little excuse for a hiccup, then looked at Justice for a moment before
she burst into tears again.
Sighing,
Justice put her arm around her sister, but Purity angrily shoved her away.
“I told you
not to come here while I’m working!
Some
people make an honest living, you know.
I hate you wearing those goddamn guns in here!
Why do they always let you keep them on? They
take everyone else’s at the door.”
“Sid wants
to keep his balls attached.
He knows
better than to try to take my little friends away,” Justice answered her sister
lightly before delving into the real issue. “I came here because I have to talk
to you.
I knew I’d have to wait until
you were working to catch you.
I never get
a response when I instant telegraph you.”
“That’s
because I don’t have the computing box any more.
I traded it.”
Justice had
purchased the computing box from the general store in
It was a beautiful machine.
The
large screen was framed with glided scrollwork and the keys sat on nice tray
with golden legs.
The machine’s parts
were worth what most people made in a year.
What could have possessed her deranged, drunken sister to part with
it?
“What did
you need so badly, Purity?” Justice demanded, hiding her hurt with anger. “You could
have just asked me for it!”
“I don’t
want your damn blood money!
You’d never
have given me money for Jimmy anyway.”
Purity’s
boyfriend, Jimmy, was really her pimp.
He ran Martha’s and when the stage show was over, for the right price, a
man could enjoy private entertainment upstairs.
Jimmy made Justice’s skin crawl.
“What in
the hell did Jimmy need money for?
He
makes enough in one night to make the take from my last bank robbery look like
pin money.”
Purity
leaned forward and whispered drunkenly, “Don’t tell anyone this, but he’s been
threatened.
The Family has moved into
the area and they want a cut of Martha’s.
He could buy their protection in a lump sum or give them a cut off the
top.
He wanted to just buy them off.”
“Then he’s
more of an idiot than I thought.
If
they get a large sum, they’ll just know they have a fresh fish.
When they want your money, you pay or you get
fitted for your pine box.
What do you
see in that fool?”
“Don’t talk
‘bout my Jimmy like that.
He saved me
from that man.
I owe him my life.”
“He’s taken
your life again and again, honey.
You
can’t tell me every time he sells your private pleasures for the night, and you
know that he knows what those men are doing to you, that you don’t die a little
bit inside?”
“How do you
know about that?” Purity’s voice cracked as she issued the sharp demand.
“I’m not
your cloistered little sister anymore.”