Total pages in book: 161
Estimated words: 146722 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 734(@200wpm)___ 587(@250wpm)___ 489(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 146722 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 734(@200wpm)___ 587(@250wpm)___ 489(@300wpm)
He would die tonight.
Noa cast one more look around the hallway, at the children, one after the other, that her sisters were retrieving from every hidden crevice in the old building. Dinah’s gaze drifted to Noa. Her eyes were filled with tears of despair and disbelief.
And it had been the thing to make Noa break.
Noa broke into a run. With her hood in place and her scarf covering her face, she climbed the stairs, turning right when she hit the landing. She kicked open door after door. Wide, sunken eyes of abused children looked blankly back at her. They had been drained of life, of hope, veritable zombies, existing but not living. That only fueled Noa’s inner fire further. Poured more gasoline onto it until it was an unstoppable bonfire of anger and rage and the need for blood.
Noa left those rooms, knowing the children would be rescued by her sisters soon enough. She had a priest to find. She had a priest to kill.
She couldn’t stop.
She moved from room to room, every step making her burn hotter and hotter, until she reached the attic. The minute she stepped inside the dusty, dark room, she sensed that he was in there, hiding like the piece of shit he was. Noa’s footsteps weren’t silent or subdued. She was as loud as thunder; she wanted the priest to know that she was coming for him. That her footsteps were a countdown to his demise.
Then, Noa heard the sound of clanging metal coming from her right. She swerved, and her eyes fell onto a boy tied to the wall by a chain, a thick, tight metal collar around his neck. Noa’s heart dropped to the pits of hell as she looked at him. His small body was just skin hanging off bone, with bruises covering every inch. He was filthy, hair matted and greasy. But it was his eyes that obliterated her heart completely. They were wide, and brimming with so much pain and hurt that Noa could physically feel it in her chest. But they were also eyes that promised pain and savagery if she even took a step toward him. It was as if he hadn’t any remaining humanity in his soul.
He began to pace on all fours, on his callused palms and soles. Back and forth, again and again, along the tiny patch of floor the short chain allowed him. He growled at Noa as if he didn’t even know how to speak. Cold settled into the marrow of her bones.
He had been raised like this, she realized. Raised without a glimmer of positive attention, raised as a nothing more than an animal, a beast. A monster ripped straight from children’s nightmares.
Noa choked on a sudden and crippling wave of sadness. She held out her hands and took a small step forward, trying her best to be non-threatening. But the boy just paced faster, growled at her again, his pupils dilated, his body poised to strike, to attack, to kill.
Just before she reached him, Noa caught a flash of black out of the corner of her eye. She turned, and the priest froze, instantly captured in Noa’s snare. Anger swept through her like a tidal wave, eliminating anything in its path. And she charged. With a guttural roar, Noa knocked the priest to the floor. She punched and pummeled him with all her strength, over and over again, for what he had done to the children on the lower floors.
Noa absently heard the boy in chains going berserk behind her, noises of distress echoing in the back of her brain, alarm bells trying to break through her fog of hatred, but nothing could. Noa was lost to bloodlust. Years and years of rage for what had been done to her, her sisters, the children, so many fucking children, poured out of her and sought revenge through her blades. So, she stabbed the priest. She stabbed and stabbed and didn’t stop until he was nothing but fragments of bone and flesh underneath her.
Still, it wasn’t enough. She shook, needing to kill again, needing to push all of her pent-up rage into one of the Brethren. She needed to fucking wipe them out so that people who were different would no longer be punished in their fucked-up, sadistic world.
“Noa!” Noa could hear her name being called, but she couldn’t stop stabbing. The darkness controlled her, became the entirety of who she was. “Noa!” The sound of her name off familiar lips tried to penetrate through her blood-spattered shield. But she deflected it. She ignored it until someone wrapped their arms around her and physically yanked her off the priest.
She was pinned to the floor, wrists fixed over her head by firm fingers. Noa jerked her body, trying to throw whoever it was off her, but they held firm. “Noa. Stop!” the voice said, and Noa’s heart began to slow; the rage in her veins began to lessen. She was breathless, sweating, and she could smell the metallic scent of blood all around her—in her hair, on her skin, on her lips.