And then I flipped the light open, sparked the flame with my thumb, and tossed it with the wooden tombstone against the doors.
We stood in the light of the flames as they ate up the evidence of so many crimes until the wail of sirens and the whomp, whomp of a helicopter sounded in the lighting dawn.
By the time the police came, all that was left were the survivors and ash.
Priest
Things happened quickly after that.
Bea was rushed to the hospital for her wounds while Bat, Kodiak, Wrath, Billy, and I were escorted to the Entrance Police Department for questioning. An EMT had wrapped my skewered hands and taped gauze over my stab wound, but I wasn’t in critical enough condition to get out of questioning, and I was eager to see this shit through the bitter fucking end.
They held us at the station for almost twenty hours, trying to untangle the mess of people involved in Seth and Tabitha Linley’s web. Officer Moore had been found trying to cross the border into America, and many of the congregation at First Light Church were being questioned by officers as well. Eric was awake and talking. Apparently, he confessed his limited involvement with the “New Church” to the cops from his hospital bed as he was confined there for the foreseeable future with a broken spine.
It was well into the evening the next day when Mr. White walked me out of the building into the cold, bright winter morning on Christmas Eve day.
Zeus was waiting.
He stood leaning against the railing at the foot of the stairs in a black knit cap from Hephaestus Auto. The man didn’t say a word as I stomped down the icy steps to his side, his eyes tracking me the way I might’ve done as a hunter faced with a worthy opponent.
I stood before him, expressionless, ready to receive whatever he felt I was owed for letting Bea get in the path of Seth fucking Linley.
He didn’t give me hell, though.
Instead, he took a forceful step forward, grabbed my hand in his meaty mitt, and tugged me into a back-slapping hug.
This was normal between brothers. Hugging, shaking hands, playful pushing, and shoving. For a group of alpha men, The Fallen were not afraid to be affectionate with each other.
I was not included in that.
It wasn’t something I ever considered doing, touching people in love or laughter, and as a result, they rarely tried to do so with me. I was not the most approachable man at the best of times.
But this?
Zeus Garro, one of the only men I’d ever admired, embracing me hard to his chest like a long-lost brother returned from war?
That moved through me like an earthquake, the tectonic plates of who I was shifting and grinding to accommodate this new sensation.
“Fuckin’ proud to know you, brother,” Zeus grunted as he slapped me on the back again, then released me. “Fuckin’ proud.”
I blinked at him.
A smile cut through his beard. “Why don’t I give ya a ride to the hospital in my cage? Fuckin’ hate the snow for cuttin’ into my ridin’ time, but it gets me from point A to point B.”
I nodded, still working through that tightness in my chest I knew Bea would call feeling.
Bea.
“How is she?” I demanded as I climbed into Z’s black truck.
His eyes skittered my way, then fixed back on the road as he pulled out of the lot. “She’s…doin’ okay.”
“Okay?” I echoed. “What the fuck does that mean?”
Z considered me for a second as we cruised to a stop at a light. “She your old lady now?”
“She’s mine, however you wanna state it.”
“Yeah,” he agreed softly with a little chuckle. “That’s how it happens with the Lafayette women, I’m thinkin’. You gonna marry ’er?”
“What is this?” I asked coldly, not hot on being interrogated about my fucking intentions.
All I cared about was getting to my girl.
“Bea doesn’t have a dad, figured I’d step in as her brother-in-law,” he said with a wide grin, obviously delighting in my discomfort. “So?”
“So, I don’t believe we gotta get hitched to show we’re gonna be together till the breath leaves my fuckin’ body,” I declared churlishly.
The fucking prick laughed at me. “And family, you want kids?”
I glared at him.
He shot me a glance, completely unperturbed.
Through gritted teeth, I said, “Don’t think kids are an option for me. She wants some, then we’ll figure it out. Though not thinkin’ I’m dad material.”
To prove my point, I unzipped the bag of weapons the cops had taken from me when I’d been questioned and started fixing them back on my person.
“Ex-con, killer, and continued criminal sittin’ right here, and I gotta say, I got some’a the best kids ever to grace the goddamn planet,” Z boasted as we pulled into the lot for St. Katherine’s Hospital. “It’s not who you are or what you’ve been through that matters so much, Priest, as it does how you love ’em when they’re born.”