“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ethan said. “I let Courtney go.”
“Sure you did,” he muttered, but Ethan was so high he didn’t react to the subtle challenge in that statement. With his sandals off and his knees pulled in to his chest, he was enjoying the relative cool of the dirt floor and walls that surrounded them. Several wall sconces held torches, which added a touch of the medieval and created a smoky haze that filtered through the cavernlike room, enhancing the effects of the drugs. Digging the pit had been one of his best ideas. Hidden down here beneath the Enlightenment Hall they had real privacy.
“She’s gone. That’s all that matters.”
Wearing a scowl, Harry marshaled the energy to roll over and sit up. “To you, maybe.”
“To all of us,” Ethan said pointedly. “She found out about this place.”
“The pit?”
“Umm-hmm.”
“Are you sure?”
“Are you questioning my word?” Ethan countered.
Harry quickly retreated. “No. ’Course not.”
It was Stan Whitehead’s turn with the pipe. He sat cross-legged while he smoked. “I don’t care if you killed Courtney. God wouldn’t have wanted her to stop the progress of this great church. Far as I’m concerned, as long as you have the Lord’s sanction, you can deal with Martha the same way.”
“I agree,” Grady said. “I’ve never liked her, anyway, ever since she gave me that venereal disease.”
It was more likely that Grady had given chlamydia to Martha. When they were passing through South Dakota, searching for the perfect place to build their commune, half the church had been forced to get antibiotics, and that was just a few weeks after Grady had joined. But Ethan didn’t point that out. Although Grady used to frequent lowlife hookers, he was one of the Guides now, above reproach. What he’d done in his previous life was irrelevant.
“There was a woman who knew her place. She felt it was a blessing to pleasure any of us Guides. She never refused,” Harry said. “Remember the first time we brought her down here?”
Stan nodded. “She loved it.”
“I bet that kid of hers is mine,” Ezra Mooney added.
Peter Marshall nudged him. “Looks more like me.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Harry covered a yawn. “God’s plan has provided for all the children born to this people. Every Covenant member is married, so every child has a mother and a father.”
“How’d you dispose of the body?” This question was directed at Ethan and came from Joshua Cooley, who’d been unusually quiet all evening.
“What body?” Ethan refused to offer details.
Bart cut in before Joshua could answer. “We’re not talking about Courtney. We’re talking about Martha.”
“But you took care of the problem?” Joshua said. “The…evidence won’t resurface and ruin us, will it?”
“Courtney is no longer a concern,” Bartholomew said.
Stan stretched out on his back. “You’re a spiritual giant, Bart, you know that? Maybe God’s deprived you of life’s greatest pleasures, but He’s given you the biggest balls of any man I know.”
Ethan wondered if references to his impotence bothered Bart. They brought it up occasionally, but he never let on whether it upset him.
“We’ve already tried to find Martha and had no luck.” It was Grady who steered them back to the situation at hand. “What makes you think we’ll be able to find her now?”
“Have faith, Brother. As soon as she starts to feel safe, her guard will go down,” Bart said.
“And once we recapture her?” Manuel Fry wanted to know. “What then? She disappears, like Courtney?”
“If that is God’s will,” Bart said. “We’ll leave that up to His anointed.”
“We could always use her for a celebration,” Grady suggested.
Ethan wondered if that would appease them, make them forget about his blunder with Courtney. “What kind of celebration?”
“One that honors the procreative powers God has bestowed on us. Only this one could last for days.”
Ezra Mooney squinted through the smoke. “So…what, Grady, you’re saying we rape her until she’s dead?”
The drugs were making their tongues too loose, but Ethan didn’t chastise anyone. Grady’s gaffe took the spotlight off him.
“Last I heard, raping a woman didn’t kill her,” Grady said. “I say we keep her in a cage and use her indefinitely. She’s been cast out of the kingdom, so she doesn’t count anymore. She’s like garbage…to do with what we will.”
Peter inhaled too deeply from the pipe and had to cough. “Might as well save Bart the trouble of disposing of another corpse,” he said when he could speak.
“So we’d have a woman available whenever we felt the urge?” Harry smiled. “I could go for that. But what if she gets pregnant?”
“Bart will make sure she doesn’t,” Ethan said.
Dominic Studebaker, their resident medic, sat across from Ethan. They’d gone to the same college for a year but hadn’t met until Joshua Cooley had brought Dominic to one of Ethan’s meetings. He’d been listening and smoking but hadn’t contributed. Apparently, the fact that Ethan hadn’t relied on his expertise offended him and he finally broke into the conversation. “With a little surgery, I can make pregnancy impossible.”
Ethan rose to his feet. “So we’ll keep our options open and decide exactly what her punishment will be once she’s back. Have we come to an agreement on that much?”
Everyone shifted as they prepared to vote.
“Will all those in favor of making sure Martha cannot harm the church say aye?” he called out.
Ayes resounded, without a single nay. But Joshua Cooley didn’t seem enthusiastic, and that concerned Ethan. “Do you have something else to say, Joshua?”
All eyes turned on the twenty-eight-year-old father of three.
“Yeah. I say we get rid of her for good, like Courtney. We’ve got wives. And if that isn’t enough to satisfy every itch, we’ve got the Covenant women who participate in the rituals. We get all the sex we need.”
Ethan arched an eyebrow at him. “You think our celebrations are about sex?”
“I think they’re about honoring the procreative power, just like you do.”