I sighed at how hard this caretaker shit was fast becoming. I straightened, freeing her hands, but kept straddling her waist. I needed her to listen and listen good.
“This is why you need me, sweet cheeks. You have no fuckin’ idea how to live out here or be any kind of normal outside of that brainwashing cult you lived in all your damn life, believing you were evil ‘cause you’re the hottest bitch to ever walk the earth.”
Lilah gasped at that; it made me smirk. Her face was all screwed up and pissed. Even then she wasn’t a scrap of ugly.
Damn.
“What… what is brainwashing?” she asked shyly.
I couldn’t help but grin.
Leaning down until our noses almost met, she froze and I laughed. “We’re gonna leave that discussion until later. Baby steps, sweet cheeks, baby steps.”
Her mouth opened to speak again, so I pressed my index finger across her lips to seal them shut. “Shut it. You’re gonna listen. Then you’re gonna comply, and I don’t want any backchat or any freaky Jesus shit from you in response. Yeah? The sooner we get you acting like a good little everyday bitch, the sooner I can get back to drinking Jack and fucking my line of sluts.”
There was no response, so I kept going. “I’m gonna lay it all out for you. You’re stuck here with us, with the Hangmen. The crazy little-hippy-wanna-marry-Jesus-pilgrim shit is done with—”
She tried to speak again, but a firm nod and a hard stare were all that were needed to shut her up. She was compliant, naturally submissive; I’d give her that much.
“Your commune is gone, done with, ground to dust. Do you get that, sweet cheeks? There’s no one left. The women that were spared have all disappeared with their spawn without a trace, the land abandoned. We’ve been back and checked. All the men were killed: the guards, the elders… that fuckin’ crypt keeper fake-ass prophet you all liked to worship so goddamn much. That cunt took a slug right between his eyes, his brain worm food on your sacred commune’s ground.”
Lilah cried out as though in pain, and I watched as tears filled her distant gaze. I shook my head at her in disgust. I had no idea how she could be upset at losing that wrinkle-pricked pedophile.Styx had told me some of the shit that had gone on at The Order. Mae’d shared some things with him in bed, and the brother almost lost his mind knowing his bitch had suffered that level of abuse her whole life. Hell, I’m an immoral outlaw biker and even I was shocked at their level of sadism.
Prophet “kiddie-fiddler” David made Charles Manson look like the fucking tooth fairy.
Crazy damn Jesus freaks. Better to be on Hades’s side, the side of sin. At least then you know where you’re going when you meet the boatman. Don’t need to live striving to be something you’re not. And the best part of it? You can have a shitload of fun living all kinds of fucked-up wrong, but it feels oh so fuckin’ right!
“So this is what’s gonna happen. Me and you, well, we’re gonna be spending a whole lotta time together. And I’ll tell you now, don’t bother fighting against it. You’re in my backyard now, and you’ll do what I say. Yeah?”
Lilah instantly nodded her head, and I could see the intense fear in her eyes, feel her frantic breathing.
“Good. So the first thing that’s happening is you ain’t gonna try and kill yourself no more. I don’t like swimming. It’s too much like hard work. I don’t like getting wet. It fucks with my hair.” I smirked, winked and added, “But I’m more than happy to get you wet in other ways, sugar tits.”
Lilah’s head shook back and forth, a determined expression on her face.
“What now?” I asked in exasperation.
“I… I was not trying to take my own life. I would never do that. Prophet David was very firm about destroying the Lord’s greatest creation, ourselves. It is a path straight to hell. I aim to be at one with the Lord in Zion when he so wishes and not a moment before.”
I rolled my eyes at hearing the name of that meat flap spilling from her lips, but her reply made me as confused as hell. “Then what the fuck were you doing jumping in the river? You held yourself under after having a damn seizure on the bank. You were wailing and crying like you were losing your friggin’ mind, and you expect me to believe you didn’t try and top yourself?”
“A seizure? What is a seizure? I do not understand your words. You are so confusing to me! Why do I continually fail to understand the words that spill from your lips?”
I laughed and raked my hair back with my fingers. “I’m confusing? Sweet cheeks, you may as well be a fuckin’ alien zapped down from Mars for how weird you’re always acting.”