Getting to her feet, her huge green eyes roved over my brothers, and she said, “She… she is my sister.”
“She ain’t got no sisters in this shithole. Her sisters are out there, away from this fucked-up pedo hell and under Hades’s protection.”
Her eyes grew huge at the mention of Hades, but she quickly pulled her shit together and started shaking her head. “No… I am her blood. I am her sister, Phebe.” She lifted her shaking hand and pointed to the old guy on the floor, drowning in his own blood. “That… he was our father… You killed our father.”
AK pounded forward and gripped her arm, putting the barrel of his gun to her head. “He was a fuckin’ pedo and deserved to meet the boatman. And now you will too. You shouldn’t have come looking, pretty girl. Now you gotta die.”
“No, please!” she cried. “I was coming to help my sister. The things they did to her tonight… my people… Lord! I cannot bear it. Her screams are burnished into my mind. Her blood spatter from the stripes is all I can see…”
My stomach rolled at her words and the shittin’ devastation in her voice. I gripped my woman even tighter in my arms and studied the redhead. She didn’t look like Lilah, nowhere near as gorgeous, but she was kinda pretty, and she clearly cared for my woman.
“You must take her,” she said to me, ignoring AK. “You must take her away and never let them get her again. Protect her…”
AK met my eyes over her head, and I nodded, telling him not to kill her. Christ! I was becoming a * of late.
AK flicked off the safety of his 9mm and put his mouth to Phebe’s ear. “Listen, bitch, we’re gonna tie you up so you can’t go running back to Prophet Dumb-fuck and tell him we were here. Yeah, you getting that through your fucked-up little brain?”
Phebe’s eyes closed, and I could see her hands shaking, but she nodded. “Just… just please get her away and safe. Next time, the elders will not fail to kill her, truly.”
AK, casting a confused glance to me, marched the bitch toward a tree set off to the side of the pyre, halting when the bitch dug her heels in the dirt and politely asked, “Can I say good-bye to her?”
I jerked my chin at AK. He wrenched the redhead toward me, and I saw the tears falling down her pale cheeks. Slowly reaching out, she ran the back of her hand gently over Lilah’s face and said, “Her life has not been easy. I used to pray she had been taken to a better place, but we were always told stories of the Cursed and their schoolings. And when I saw her again, I knew her life had been one of misery and pain.” The bitch welled up with tears and hushed out, “Be at peace, my Rebekah. Be happy. We shall meet again someday, whether in this life or the next.”
As she dropped her hand, I said, “What did you call her?”
Phebe glanced back up at me and nervously said, “R-Rebekah. Her birth name was Rebekah. But they took her from me, from our home, as a young child and they renamed her Delilah, a temptress’s name, a name fit for a Cursed Woman of Eve.” The bitch’s eyes fell on Li and she said, “They said she was evil. They killed her mother by fire for joining with Satan and producing a child of sin with Hades himself. They gave her to the prophet to be schooled and saved… but even then, she was always my little Rebekah.
“I never saw her after that day until she was brought back here. And I could never bring myself to hate her as everyone else did. Although she was shunned and renounced by my mothers and father, I prayed for her to come back.” Phebe’s wary eyes met mine. “Even though you are a breathing demon, you seem to care for her, and maybe that is where she belongs, with the people of darkness… for she is sinful too. I ask you to give her true love. My Rebekah deserves to be loved.”