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“What’s your plan, you’re just going to kill everyone in town?” Vera tried to buy some time to figure out what to do. He was unconscious and naked and entirely at their whim. They both were.
“Those who have earned it, yes,” Lizbeth replied without looking away from him. “I don’t think you’re grasping what’s at stake here. Our lives, our bodies, our very few daughters and sons.”
“That could be at least a hundred people. Will you kill me too to shut me up? Hurt everyone who comes across your path? Anyone who threatens your idea of retribution?” She was heaving, the air felt like it was cooking her throat.
Lizbeth silenced her with her words. “Of course not. Special plans wait for you, Vera.” Her blood turned to ice.
“Wake him, please, Becca.” Elaine requested. The redhead grabbed something from the ground behind her and stepped up to Sheriff Malis’s side. Abruptly, she raised her hand and snapped it down. A long vicious mark formed along his belly where the whip fell.
Sheriff Malis jerked awake with a scream. “Fuck!” Coughing, he tried to sit up, pulling against the ropes. “What…” Another whip across his stomach and his voice broke. His eyes became wild, body trembling from his cheeks to his gut as he registered who stood above him. “Becca, what the hell are you doing?”
Another crack.
Another scream.
Another crack.
“That’s enough, Becca.”
Howling, Sheriff Malis shook against the pain and constraints, red welts rising on the skin of his gut. Vera watched, seated only a few feet away from his right shoulder as he tried to escape, thrashing his head back and forth. It was no use. He was at the mercy of wolves and they were starving.
Vera knew she should say something. Beg them to stop, to tell them this wasn’t over, that they could prevent one more death no matter how many they caused. But as she watched pain turn to wrath on Sheriff Malis’s face, she found herself mute. This was the man who would’ve thrown her cousin in a cellar. The man who dumped the four bodies of his citizens, whom he was tasked to protect and serve, into that cellar. She couldn't conjure the words for what he’d done to his wife. Her tongue may as well have been cut out too.
They were going to slaughter him right before her and she said nothing as she slumped back. The sharp sting at her wounded wrists was forgotten, the stickiness of her clothes clinging to her body, unnoticed. She could do nothing but watch as Elaine came to stand by her husband. Could raise no disagreement as she held a long, gleaming knife above his body.
“Elaine. Elaine! What are you doing? Let me up right this fucking instant!” She remained unmoved, the serrated edge of the six-inch blade glimmering in the light like a captured flame. “Cut these ropes right now, you stupid bitch. I'll kill you. I swear to fucking God I'll kill you with my bare hands. Let me up!”
Elaine was still. Her hand hovering a foot above the bleeding welts on his stomach.
“No. No.”
The knife fell over his groin and severed the soft tissue of his penis.
Chapter 39
Vera
Sheriff Malis’s screams echoed inside the circle as the wall of flames held the sound in. Vera barely breathed as she watched Elaine take her vengeance on her husband. Never speaking a word, never answering his pleas, his wife worked with the steadiness and confidence of a surgeon.
First his penis.
Then his tongue. A bloodied stub thrown into the growing pile at her feet as a worm crawled over it.
No one moved. No one attempted to assist her. No one tried to stop her.
It wasn’t until she brought her steady knife to his eyes that she looked at her sisters. Nora and Danielle moved to hold his head, their faces calm as they each pinched the thin skin of his eyelids open. He wouldn’t remain conscious for much longer, the blood loss from his stolen appendages spilling over his shaking, sweat-slick body, dripping onto the tattooed layers of rock beneath him.
Leaning over his face, Elaine gazed down as he moaned, the tip of her weapon trailing across his trembling jowl. “If you were anyone else, I’d take these,” the thoughtfulness of her voice was barely audible over the sounds trying to escape his once-functioning mouth. “But you’re not just anyone, are you? You led them, you supported them, you told them all that it was ok to beat us and rape us and break us.” A ribbon of red split down his cheek as he was forced to watch her. “So I’m going to give you what you deserve.”
The crunch of something heavy hitting bone silenced his whimpers.
Nora lifted the sledgehammer again, altering the shape of his knee. The bent joint was now angled in two separate places, the bones shattered.
Vera’s eyes had long gone dry. She didn’t blink when his right knee was rearranged. She didn’t move when his left became a matching mangled mess of blood and exposed bone.
It was the gentleness of Lizbeth’s voice that anchored her.
“We could grow a thousand tongues and none of us would speak their language. Violence is the only language these men understand.” She stood above her, watching Nora and Elaine aim for his shoulders with a viciousness that made her mouth feel like ash. “You follow a justice system that is built to be flexible and effective for those that built it. That does not include us.” She met her gaze, one eye hidden in the space between torches, a half-black mask obscured in darkness. “That burning in your eyes gives you away. It did the moment we met. That’s why you were watched. Why you were chosen. You’re just like us but you still fear what you find when you look inside yourself.”
