The Sinners of Saint Amos: The Full 3-book Boxset

by Logan Fox

  What was once terror, transforms into fear. Fear becomes panic. Panic dissolves into anxiety, then unease. The mind cloaks it, knowing it would self-destruct under the constant strain of pure horror.

  Did I ever expect our girl to turn into this…this…machine though?

  I don’t think any of us did.

  “He’s pissed himself,” Trinity says.

  I can’t decide if the shiver in her voice is excitement or alarm. From her deadpan face, it could just be my fucking imagination.

  “Don’t even think of stopping until you smell shit.” Cass is leaning against a wall less than two yards from me, smoking a cigarette, his eyes the color of denim. Smoke puffs from his mouth as he adds, “Fuck that. Make him bleed.”

  Trinity’s eyelids flicker, but that’s the only response she shows to Cass’s demand. That’s how we’ve trained her, how we’ve taught her. Despite the emotion whirlpooling inside your head, when you’re with a Ghost, you don’t show them anything.

  All we saw back in the basement was lust and hedonistic pleasure plastered on grown men’s faces as they played out their sickest, most depraved fantasies with our small, unresisting bodies.

  It was sickening, terrifying, but in its own disturbing way, it was beneficial too. Those faces told a story. How much the Ghost would hurt us that day. How long they’d take with us.

  How much we would bleed.

  Before Trinity came into our lives, we’d spend hours planning our revenge on each and every Ghost. How we’d torture them, what we’d yell at them, whisper in their demonic ears.

  How we’d exorcise them, Apollo used to say. Which was funny, because he was never a religious type. Not like Zachary, who loves the old testament almost as much as he loves taking the bible out of context.

  Definitely not like me.

  Trinity holds up the hunting knife she’s been clasping for over half an hour already and turns it so that the man bound in the chair in front of her can see it clearly. What little light comes from the single lamp in the corner of the room casts most of the room into shadow, except Trinity’s face. Her nose, her chin—a stark relief, an unrelenting silhouette that’s never looked this hard…this clinical before.

  I’m nothing like Zach. I don’t get off on other people’s pain. But even I’m getting a semi watching her work. This girl, this woman is one of us now.

  She was broken, just like us.

  She scarred over, just like us.

  And now she’s out for revenge…just like we are.

  But tonight it all ends. The final chapter in an epic saga that’s taken us five years to complete. Because that man, that disgusting creature of Satan, he’s the last.

  Not the last pedophile in the world, of course. I doubt we could even put a dent in their population. But the last of the Ghosts.

  Our Ghosts.

  Trinity leans forward, pressing the hunting knife’s blade to the outside of the Ghost’s thigh. His legs are already riddled with slashes and oozing cuts, a few of them showing wet bone, but there’s not much blood pooling on the floor under his chair.

  Because Zachary applied a tourniquet to his legs and his arms. And while that might have slightly desensitized his limbs, we didn’t take his sight. More than that—we taped his eyelids up so he can’t even blink if he wanted to. He has no choice but to watch as we slice off pieces of his diseased limbs and toss them into the fireplace.

  Even when Cass and Apollo are both smoking a cigarette—Apollo spending more time watching out the window than watching the Ghost, of course—the stench of burnt flesh hangs thick in the air.

  Once you get over the urge to try and rationalize it, to give it a name, then it’s not so bad anymore. It’s only when you start confusing the smell with too-sweet pork that stomach’s turn.

  Well, mine and Cass anyway. I wouldn’t be surprised if Zachary was craving a fucking BLT right now.

  He’s beside Trinity, skin sheened with joy, eyes ablaze with sadistic enthusiasm. He’s in his fucking element, and it’s never been more apparent. Not from his face, not from the way he watches our girl with obvious pride, chest puffed out and mouth in a smug curl.

  “Tendons,” Zachary grates, his voice rough and quivering with excitement.

  “Now?” Trinity glances up at him, eyes wide and so youthful it makes my heart pang for her loss of innocence.

  And God was she innocent. But that was years ago now. When all she’d experienced was violent death and a man sticking it in her without her consent.

  That was back then.

  She’s nothing close to an innocent little lamb anymore. Her white wool is stained with blood and piss and shit.

  I’d like to think that there was a different future for the five of us. That, maybe once, a few months after we’d buried Keith alive and moved on with our lives, as the reports began to roll in about the hundreds of pedophiles that were facing trials for their depraved acts, that we could become…normal.

  Satan has a sick sense of humor.

  That first year, almost fifty percent of the cases were thrown out for processing errors. But we gritted our teeth, and we tried to find gratitude for the meager few that ended up facing prosecution.

  It’s sickening, how few were actually sentenced. It’s disgusting how little prison time they even served.

  All those children who were abused, tortured, murdered… and the blame all fell on one man.

  Keith motherfucking Malone.

  Everyone else was just an accomplice. A not-so-innocent bystander.

  They were set free, their crimes pinned on a dead man who was already serving an eternity in hell, and probably laughing as he watched each and every trial dissolve into ridiculous “time-served” penalties that wouldn’t give any man a second thought to do what he did again, and again, and—

  The Ghost yells. Tries to jerk his leg away from Trinity’s knife. But there isn’t much give in those ropes Apollo tied.

  If there’s one thing he didn’t have an issue with, it was making sure this fucking Ghost wasn’t going anywhere. They have history—deep and personal—Apollo and this grunting, panting excuse for a man strapped to the wooden chair in the middle of this cabin.

  “Cut all the way through,” Zachary says, crouching beside Trinity as she bends to hack deeper into the back of the Ghost’s ankles. “Until there’s no more tension.”

  A year or two ago I might have expected Trinity to retch, or go pale. But she merely tightens her mouth into a line and starts sawing blade through flesh.

  I’m proud of her too, but not because she hasn’t puked in the corner yet.

  It should be Apollo in her place, sawing that hunting knife through the Ghost’s Achille’s heel, but he’d have passed out after she made the first incision. So he asked her to do what he could only imagine, what he could only dream… and she became his angel.

  He’d peek back over his shoulder every few seconds—too quick to see much but a blur of blood and shadow, I’m sure—and then face the windows again.

  That same pride reflected in his eyes, mirroring Zach’s.

  Even Cass watches over her with a twisted smirk on his face.

  The Ghost’s scream is rough and raw. He’s been in the chair for over an hour already, and we haven’t exactly been good hosts—now or the hours he’s been in our captivity before we arrived at Saint Amos. We drove here in a junker Zachary bought for cash at a used-car dealership one state over—something roomy enough for the five of us and our captive.

  Cass kept him entertained the entire trip over here with a detailed explanation of what we’d be doing to him once we arrived. When the Ghost passed out, he’d rouse him with the tip of a cigarette pressed into the back of his hand, or his ankle, wherever the skin was thin and the nerve endings shallow.

  “Fuck it, I can’t stand watching you tease him like that,” Cass says, pushing away from the wall and making to flick his cigarette into the corner of the cabin. Zach snaps his fingers, and instead Cass hands him the
last two inches of his cigarette.

  Cabin might be too fancy a word for this hovel. It was once a hut used for hunting, if the animal bones we found out back were any indication. It’s basically one room with a crude fireplace, a rickety table, no windows, and a single door with a bar along the inside.

  For when prey becomes predator?

  It suits our purposes just fine, which is why we all agreed it would be our torture chamber when Apollo told us what he’d found out in the woods. Usually, Saint Amos students weren’t allowed past the cleared areas of the school grounds, but Apollo was always good at bunking off.

  But despite what we’d promised each other, this will be our first kill at Saint Amos. It’s been years since we’ve been back here, and seeing the imposing silhouette of the cathedral-like building soaring into the sky as we arrived plucked my heartstrings…in more ways than one.

  My memories of Saint Amos are bittersweet. Everything came to a head in this place. We thought we’d lost Trinity forever, Zachary had betrayed us, and we’d lost all hope of ever finding Gabriel again.

  But it was also the first place we got a solid lead on our lifelong vendetta against the people who’d tortured and abused us for our entire childhood.

  The place where we met Trinity.

  Our first love.

  Our salvation.

  “Move over, my precious little slut.”

  I snap out of my reverie to watch Cass take hold of Trinity’s shoulders and maneuver her out of the way. She gives up the knife grudgingly, but when Cass dips his head and presses his lips to hers, her fingers open.

  Everyone’s looking, even the Ghost. Who wouldn’t? They could be movie stars, Cass and Trinity. Runway models posing for a particularly risqué shoot. Trinity in her form-fitting dress that ends in a stiff skirt just above her knees. Cass with his shapeless clothes that somehow still accentuate his tall frame and toned muscles.

  As he turns back to the Ghost, the knife now in his possession, our eyes meet. He pauses, the corner of his mouth quirking up in a half-smile, and then he faces the Ghost.

  That crooked smile becomes a leering grin that shows too many teeth to be pleasant.

  Adam Fairway is not familiar to me. He didn’t speak much when he was down in the basement, and he only ever used Apollo. In the dark, the damp, features weren’t always visible. An ordinary man could easily turn into a skull with ink bleeding from its sockets.

  Plus, it has been over fifteen years. People change.

  Adam didn’t recognize any of us. Not even Apollo. Not at first, anyway. But when we refused to answer his pleas, refused to let him out of the panel van, he started staring at each and every one of us, eyes narrowed, brow furrowed.

  He worked it out eventually.

  We all change…but our eyes can never lie. Apollo had been avoiding eye contact, but the moment he looked over at Adam, the man gasped, clutched his heart, and passed out.

  Zachary nearly rolled the car. We all thought he’d had a fucking heart attack. That God had robbed us of this—our last vengeful act.

  But he came to when Cass kicked him in the balls, and then it was all just snot and tears.

  Fingers wrap around my wrist, and my gaze snaps to Trinity standing beside me. She stares up at me with round, vacant eyes and parted lips. Then she cocks her head to the side, toward the only door leading out of this place.

  As I turn to follow, Cass’s arm descends in a sharp arc that ends with Adam’s breathless yell and the splatter of blood on the floor.

  Outside, our breathes plume in the icy air. Trinity shivers, and I immediately slide my arm over her shoulders, dragging her against my body. “You’ll freeze out here. Let me get your coat.”

  “You’re my coat,” she murmurs, burrowing her face into my chest and wrapping her arms around my waist. “You can keep me warm.”

  “You okay?” She’s shaking in my hands, but I don’t know if it’s the cold or the fact that she just severely debilitated a man with a hunting knife. I’m not even sure if surgery would ever help him walk again—

  The fuck do I care? It’s not as if he’s leaving the cabin alive. His easy way out came in the van when he almost had a heart attack. It’s too late now. He’s in it for the long haul, as are we.

  “Trinity.”

  “I’m fine,” she says, her voice sharp. “Quit asking.” But as if to make up for the snap in her voice, she tips back her head and stands on tip-toes. If there was ever any hope of us kissing, I’d have to bend down, but I watch her for a few seconds first.

  Her dark eyes still glow with that honey-gold ring. Her lips are still soft and sweet and pink. But she’s changed too. Her face is rounder, her hair longer, her figure fuller. She’s turned into the woman us four men needed.

  But have we turned into the men she needs?

  I duck down and slide my hands under her skirt, grabbing her ass and hoisting her up to my waist. Her legs wrap around me in a flash, hugging me tightly as she slings her arms behind my neck.

  Her kiss is fierce, urgent with need. She bucks against my body, her spine moving like a serpent, knowing I can’t stop myself when she’s this insistent.

  Even though I know I’ll be punished when my brothers find out, I spin around and crush her against the side of the cabin. The wood is rough, unfinished, crude as the grunt she makes when her back slams into the log wall. I rip her underwear to the side with my thumb, wrestling my cock out of my jeans with the other.

  All it took was one kiss to make me this hard, her breath whispering against my neck before I’m aching to be inside her.

  I thrust, groaning deep when her pussy clenches around me. Compared to the handful of snowflakes sifting down in the icy air, Trinity’s cunt scorches. I slam into her, drawing a gasp that makes the hairs on my arms stand to attention.

  It riles me that there was a time when I wasn’t included. Back when I was still healing from the slugs Keith put in me, when I was on the kind of bed rest that excluded everything except actual fucking sleeping.

  There’s an unspoken rule in this family. If one of us wants Trinity, we all have her. I think it’s because we’re all afraid it would feel like being back in that basement. Not knowing where to look when someone you cared for was being fucked. I know it’s different, but that doesn’t always matter in fractured minds like ours.

  Trinity digs nails into my unprotected neck as I fuck her against the side of the cabin. Her gasps and moans aren’t loud enough to block out the screams, though, and that just intensifies my thrusts.

  I’m not a sadist. I don’t experience anything pleasant when I know someone is being hurt—physically or emotionally. Instead, it settles me. It calms the silent storm that’s always been raging inside me, the one that gets out when I’m triggered and my brothers aren’t around to talk me down.

  It’s what happened a few months ago while we were hunting down this last runt of a man. I investigated a lead on my own. Anathema, I know, but I’d had a falling out with Zach again, and this time Trinity had taken his side. I had to clear my head, and my route happened to take me past a church where we believed Adam might have been scouting for boys.

  It was late on a Tuesday night. The place was deserted. I broke in to take a look at their files, thinking it the perfect time for such misdeeds.

  I wasn’t the only one.

  My misdeeds didn’t hold a candle to what I walked into.

  Adam’s friend, one of the men in the congregation, had a little girl with him. At least…she had been. When I arrived, the Lord had already seen fit to take her to heaven.

  Adam’s friend didn’t survive much longer. I took to him with bare fists, knowing my first blow had cracked his skull and done enough damage that he’d probably be eating through a straw for the rest of his life while nursing staff changes his diapers…but I couldn’t stop.

  That’s what my brothers are for.

  They’re the only ones who can make me stop.

  If Apollo hadn’t realized I’
d taken off, hadn’t tracked the SUV to the church and figured out the rest, I’d be in prison right now. Or possibly a psychiatric ward.

  Adam’s friend was unrecognizable. Not just as a man, but as a human being. Which is fine, because he never was one. Apollo and Cass got me away from there while Trinity and Zach cleaned up the scene. They buried the little girl under a cherry tree in the church’s yard, and scraped what was left of Adam’s friend into a tarp and went to go dump him in the desert. Days later, Apollo sent an encrypted message to the family of the little girl telling them what had happened and making it seem as if it came from Adam’s friend.

  It gave them closure, and hopefully it kept the cops off our trail.

  Since then, I haven’t gone anywhere alone.

  Since then, I’ve had to take sleeping pills to stop the nightmares from coming back.

  There’s a sudden manic outburst of laughter from inside the cabin. I’m not sure if it’s a coincidence, but that’s when I empty myself into Trinity. She sighs, her body going limp, although I know she hasn’t come.

  The cabin’s door creaks open, and Zachary steps outside. His shoes crunch on the slushy ground as he takes one step toward us before stopping. It’s dark out here—I’m sure he can’t see more than a silhouette.

  But he stares at us as if he can.

  “It’s time,” is all he says.

  Adam truly looks like a Ghost. His skin is gray, his lips ashen. Sweat-wet hair hangs in ribbons down his forehead, some slicked against his blood-stained skin. That’s the only part of him that has any color.

  The blood.

  He’s naked now, putting his podgy, glistening stomach on display. A flaccid dick that barely peeks out between his skinny legs.

  It’s so much warmer inside than out. Sweat prickles between my shoulder blades as my body struggles to adjust to the heat.

  Cass spins the hunting knife on his bloody palm and then closes his fingers tight around the handle. There’s a hush in the air, as if everyone’s holding their breath—even Adam.