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“A blanket! A towel! Find something to cover her indecent⁠—”

“The Message reaches all who seek His for⁠—”

Soon, I could hardly make out what the sycophants were saying: muttered prayers and cries of joy blended together into a deafening cacophony. Hands reached out to me from every angle, grasping my arms and my hair and my face, any inch of skin that I failed to wrest away.

As the crush of the crowd grew, my lungs grew tighter and tighter. I could hardly turn my own head, instead having my gaze forced skyward by the reaching hands. I kicked my legs out to defend myself, but if the Witnesses felt pain, they didn’t show it.

I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m⁠—

“Get your fucking hands off of her!”

At the sound of impact, the crowd lurched forward — the Witnesses were a swarm, swaying as one under the oppositional force.

“It is the way!” the man closest to me called out. “Do not interfere with His⁠—”

A tattooed fist connected with his jaw before he could finish. A spray of blood splattered across my face. For a moment, the pressure around me loosened.

Then, the tattooed hands closed around my bicep like a vise. “We’re getting out of here.”

After weeks of avoiding her, the last thing I expected to feel upon seeing Cyrus’s stitched up mask was relief. Still, I didn’t argue as she ripped me from the crowd, holding me tight to her body as we pressed through the crowd.

But the Witnesses weren’t letting me go easily. Even as she tore me away, they clung to my limbs, my clothes, my hair.

“Stop, stop!” I cried, searing pain blistering through my nerve endings. “You’re hurting me!”

My pain didn’t stop them from cleaving onto me, flinging abuse at Cyrus from every angle.

“Corrupter!”

“Lucifer!”

“Dyke!”

As a man buried his fist in my hair, nearly wrenching me off of Cyrus and dropping me to the ground, another shadow appeared from the edge of the crowd. “That’s enough of that.”

Locking a fist around his wrist and elbow, Nash tore the man’s hand down, snapping his arm in half over his knee. As he squealed in pain, she kicked him in the gut, sending him tumbling onto his ass. “Be glad I didn’t take your hand.” She growled through her porcelain, spades mask.

“No promises I won’t,” Blade’s hiss was muffled by her blood-splattered clown mask as she elbowed another one of Rubin’s cronies straight in the teeth.

The resounding crack of bone — as well as the speed with which the Freaks had downed three grown men — was enough to disperse the mob. A pathway opened through the crowd, and Cyrus wasted no time shoving me forward through it, Nash and Blade flanking us on either side.

I didn’t have a second to catch my breath: not as we shoved past the weeping Witnesses, not as we escaped the crush, and not as we strode through out of the town square’s manicured lawn.

Cyrus didn’t slow her steps, she didn’t stop looking over her shoulder, and she didn’t spare me a single glance. Not until we reached the alleyway where the Cadillac idled in front of Nash’s Lamborghini.

Only then did she whip around to face me, pushing me against the rough brick wall with a snarl. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

6

TESS

My chest rose and fell heavily, struggling for air under Cyrus’ weight. Her forearm pressed across my collarbone and her fist tangled in my jacket, forcing me onto the tips of my toes. Her gaze was pure heat: fury that would bore right through me if⁠—

“Are you fucking serious?” Nash came barreling down the alley after us as she pulled off her clown mask, followed closely by Blade. Her brow crumpled and her lip curled into a predatory snarl. It was the most murderous rage I’d ever seen on her face. And to see it aimed at Cyrus?

What the fuck is happening?

In a second, Blade and Nash were on either side of Cyrus, gripping her under the shoulders and ripping her off of me.