Page 37 of Cast Stones
Eternity… An infinite time to harden my outer shell again. To ignore all the sights and smells and touches she awoke in me. A rare breeze sways a branch above my head, and I fist my hands by my sides as the sounds of my own desperate pleas and my father’s steadfast demands seep their way into my mind.
“Please, Father, not her. Anyone but her.”
“This must stop, boy. Disciples have no friends, only offerings.”
I blink, focusing on the damn tree to force the bastard’s voice out of my head. As if sensing the chaos brewing within me, it blows with the breeze, yielding to my command.
Blasphemy, my father would call it. God controls nature, not the reverse. However, until Madi, I never noticed its perfect intricacies. I never found symbolism in anything I couldn’t quote as scripture.
I close my eyes, fighting my father’s voice as it thunders inside my head… “You have no opinions, boy. Free thought is a sin.”
But Madi has opinions. Madi has a lot of them. She’s shared enough with me that I’m starting to see shades of gray instead of strict palates of black and white.
Opening my eyes, I stare at the tree again, my muscles so tense they feel coiled around my bones. Until Madi, I never understood the purpose of this tree. Our tree. The past two years have seen it cultivated into a shelter to our haunted souls. Its branches spill over the cabin roof, keeping the secrets of our sins and indiscretions.
I don’t care what Father says. What’s about to happen today isn’t God’s will. It’s his. The storms that tore through Southern Florida yesterday were a sign. Dark clouds shrouded the skies with His displeasure as the heavens opened, soaking the earth with angelic tears of regret.
Save her.
Stop this.
End them.
A familiar, constant hum vibrates my skin as the black mist swirls faster and faster. It’s been there for a month now, warning, whispering, and growing as the days tick by.
Blackening a heart already charred by betrayal.
Clenching my teeth, I trace the deep, jagged, vertical lines carved into the bark of the tree. Twenty-two in all. One for each month she spent in captivity.
My cara mia.
“Luca? What are you doing?”
“It isn’t right.”
“What isn’t right?”
“Everything. This place. The Church. This motherfucking cabin. It isn’t right, cara mia.” Glory To Thy Father… Anger swells inside my chest as the phantom sound of the familiar chant echoes inside my head. “What’s to happen tonight. It isn’t right.”
Her soft expression falls. “I know. But we’ve done all we can do. We took the virgin rite away from them. It’s yours to keep. I’ll…” Her voice falters as she stumbles over her false bravado. “When those men touch me, I’ll close my eyes and think of you. I’ll survive it.”
“That’s just it, Madi!” She recoils at hearing her given name slither past my lips. A name I haven’t called her in nearly two years. “You won’t survive it.”
“What aren’t you telling me, Luca?”
“I didn’t want to burden you with the final step of the ritual. It’s always better when they don’t know.”
“They?” she screeches, panic rising in her voice. When I don’t respond, she shoves at my chest with both hands. “Answer me!”
“The others who came before you. The other girls.”
She stiffens. “But I haven’t seen any other girls here.”
“Not anymore.”
There are four heartbeats of silence before Madi speaks again, her voice brittle and worn. “What happened to them?”
My gaze shifts toward the open field near the church. The one where a charred black circle stains the center, stamping our evil into the earth and cursing its grounds. The one where monthly bonfires rid the Twelve of the evidence of their sins.
