Her words hit harder than any slap could have. The air fled my lungs, and a roaring silence stretched out as the truth sank in. She said something else, but nothing could get past the shock wave pummeling my system.
They’d tried to kill him. When he was a baby, they’d tried. And I thought what he went through with Earl Walker was unfathomable. What had he gone through with the Fosters? What had they done to him? How had they tried to kill him? And what was it like for him when they failed?
I doubled over in astonishment. True evil. I was in the midst of true evil, and Reyes thought he was dark. He had nothing on the Fosters.
“The scales have been knocked off balance,” Mr. Foster said, but not to me. He was back in full preach mode. Waving his Bible. “It’s all over the news. The end of the world is nearing, so we have to kill. To rid the lands of evil so it can heal. So it can become strong again. So it can nourish us and support us. It is our sacred duty.”
He got a whole lot of amens for his effort.
Mrs. Foster let go of my hair but stayed close. She spoke to me as her nutcase brother-slash-husband spewed his sanctimonious bullshit. “We were quite surprised he survived that horrible man,” she said. “We figured he’d have killed The Dark One while he was still young.”
I was certain he’d tried.
The Diviners were praying and praising God, raising their hands in celebration, asking for His blessing on the blood sacrifice to cleanse the lands. Apparently they hadn’t moved on to the New Testament. Sacrifices were kind of old-school, but whatever floated your boat.
Still, how Jehovah could stand by and let others be killed in His name …
I tried to stop time so I could walk—or probably stumble—to Shawn and check on him. Nothing. I tried again to summon Angel. Osh. Artemis. Nothing again. What the hell had they given me?
Reyes would figure out something was wrong. I just had to stall. To buy us some time. Then again, I’d sent him to Beep. He was watching over her. And that information caused a peaceful sensation to spread through me. At least she was safe from the likes of people like this.
But I’d given Ubie a clue. Maybe he would figure it out and storm the gates. Still, deciphering my whereabouts would be next to impossible if he didn’t get some supernatural help.
“Okay,” I said, swaying upright, “I’ll tell you how to kill him.”
The crowd hushed.
“First, everyone here has to sacrifice themselves at the altar.”
Mr. Foster grabbed my hair that time and dragged me closer to Shawn. At last. “Do you think because you are a woman we won’t do this to you?”
“Shawn,” I said to him, “the cops know everything I do. They won’t get away with this.”
That caught Mr. Foster’s attention. He shook his Bible at me. That’d teach me. Then he said, “You know nothing about us, whore.”
They really had a problem with promiscuity. The most promiscuous often did.
I snorted. “You’re right. I know nothing about what it’s like to have sex with my sibling.”
When absolute, unadulterated surprise flashed across their faces, I knew what it must’ve felt like to win a gold medal at the Olympics. Or at a hot dog–eating contest. Either way. And I had more where that came from.
“How did you—”
“Find out about your incestuous relationship with your sister?” I could only hope he understood me. My words were blurrier than my vision.
“God has ordained our union,” Mrs. Foster said.
“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”
Shawn groaned before I could say anything else. I tried to stand, to get to him, but the blunt object slamming into the back of my skull convinced me to chillax.
So I did. I lay there for a while. Gathered my thoughts. Weighed vacation spots in my mind, arranging them according to where I’d most rather be at that moment in time.
“How do we kill The Dark One?”
“You don’t.”
Fury arced out of Mrs. Foster, then her expression changed. Morphed into one of absolute cruelty. “Bring him out.”
Him? Who him?
I lay there, begging to get off the merry-go-round, when two men dragged out a third man who was tied and gagged. They dropped him a few feet away from me, and my vision darkened around the edges. The image before me had my head spinning even more. This was not real. This was not happening.
It was Reyes. Unconscious. Beaten and bloody and bruised.
Tears sprang to my eyes. It was the picture. The one I’d gotten ahold of a year ago. The one taken by the monster that had raised him.
He was a kid again. Bound with ropes. His hair mussed. His mouth gagged. His face swollen and discolored and bloody. And I lay in stunned silence.