Kent swung the flat side of the blade against Lydia’s bottom.
She cried out in pain as he lashed her. From the corner of his eye, he saw Garrett Ware, one of his newest men, an unproven soldier of The Sword, step closer to the podium, his body tense.
“Be still, Mr. Ware. Do not interfere.”
Ware sent him a glare but stood down, his hands restless at his sides. Garrett Ware could be a problem. Kent was unconvinced of his loyalty to the family.
Lifting the sword again, Kent struck Lydia again. “By my hand, I will strike down The Enemy and cut out the heart of tyranny and deception!”
As he raised the blade for a third strike, a loud crash announced the government’s army had arrived, and the locked door at the back of the meeting hall rattled on its hinges. Once. Twice.
Rachel rushed over to huddle with Lydia, the young girls holding each other, Caleb between them.
Kent grabbed Rachel by the braid and yanked her away from her friend, positioning her in front of him.
The door smashed open under the power of the battering ram the black-clad men wielded. The women gasped, and those who scuttled backward in fear met the resistance of his servants, his army of faithful men who stood ready for battle.
“Kent Pitts, you are surrounded. Surrender peacefully and order your followers to stand down!” The Enemy’s minion called from his bullhorn.
“Better that I sacrifice my followers, my wives and children and release them to The Truth than leave them to be cast into the realm of The Enemy!” Kent shouted. With that, he drove the long blade into Rachel’s lower back and let her slump to the floor. Lydia screamed, and Kent seized her by the arm.
“No!” she cried, clutching her baby to her chest as tears streamed down her face.
Kent nodded to Wayne, who surged forward to meet the swarming ATF and FBI agents, his sword raised for battle.
Gas canisters were lobbed to the front of the sanctuary, and noxious gases spewed forth. Poisons, just like the voices had told him.
Chaos erupted as his faithless followers tried to escape the stinging gas rather than defend their leader. Only Garrett Wade moved against the surge of the family going toward the exits. His newest recruit shoved past the other men and was heading for the podium. Toward Rachel’s fallen body.
Seeing his people scatter, Kent seethed, and he squeezed harder on Lydia’s arm when she tugged against his hold, trying to break free.
He drew back the ceremonial blade, still wet with Rachel’s blood, and plunged it into Lydia’s side, piercing her heart.
“No!” Garrett Wade bellowed, rushing forward to snatch Caleb from Lydia’s arms as she crumpled. His new recruit held the baby close and snarled at Kent over the din of the family’s destruction. “Damn it, you murdering bastard! Why? She was an innocent girl!”
He aimed the tip of the long sword at Wade. “Either turn and fight The Enemy’s soldiers or die by my hand!”
The next instant a tiny dart-like probe hit Kent in the throat and volts of agony flooded his body. Like the hounds of hell, the men in gas masks and flak jackets descended on him and took him captive. As darkness overtook him, the voices spoke one last time in Kent’s ear.
The Enemy may have won this battle, but do not surrender the war. Fight on, mighty leader, fight on!
And fight he would. For his freedom, for his children. But most of all, for vengeance.
“‘Teens slain during raid on compound,’” Lila Greene said, reading the news story headline on her laptop screen, horror twisting through her.
As if answering, her brown-and-black tabby, Chloe, meowed loudly.
“I know! Horrible, right?” Lila said to the cat, her only companion in her parents’ isolated mountain cabin. She’d moved to the family’s remote vacation home for the privacy, for the inspiring views it provided for her work...and for the peacefulness it afforded her broken heart. As an artist, she preferred plenty of uninterrupted time by herself to experiment with different mediums and bring her commissioned oil paintings to life. As a casualty of her ex-fiancé’s cheating, theft and lies, she considered the location an escape as she healed from her deep wounds of betrayal.
She’d been hard at work on an oil painting of the West Virginia landscape near her cabin when she heard the first pings on her window of the predicted ice pellets. She, along with the rest of the populace of Collins Ridge, West Virginia, had been glued to weather forecasts as the wintry mix moved in from the northwest. The headline about the raid on the nearby cult compound had snagged her attention as she’d logged on to the internet to check the current weather update.
Now, sidetracked by the tragic news story, Lila clicked the video associated with the headline and watched the sound bite that included footage of the raid conducted by the FBI and ATF just a handful of miles from her cabin.
“Pitts, the self-proclaimed leader of The Sword, a radical and militaristic cult, stabbed the teenaged girls, whom he claimed were two of his nine wives,” the reporter said while standing in front of a fleet of law enforcement vehicles that flashed red-and-blue emergency lights. “The slain teens are believed to have been kidnapped, and each had borne a child to Pitts.”
Lila gasped, shocked—and, sadly, not so shocked—by the story unfolding in the report. She’d come to expect the worst of people based on personal experience with her ex, Carl, and the all-too-common circumstances that necessitated her second career as a foster mother for the local courts.
“The identity of the murdered girls is being withheld by authorities while their next of kin are located and notified. The girls’ infants will be placed in foster homes during the search for the babies’ families.”
Lila cut a glance to her hall closet, where she kept a stock of baby supplies so she’d be ready at a moment’s notice to receive an infant to care for. “Well, Chloe, we may be getting company soon.”
Chloe hopped up in her lap and butted her head on Lila’s hand, demanding a cheek scratch. Lila complied as she used her free hand to navigate her laptop to the local weather website. The radar showed a significant winter storm making its way toward her cabin. “If they want to bring me one of the babies, they’d better hurry. In a couple hours, the roads up here will be impassable.”
Chloe only purred and continued bumping her hand every time Lila stopped patting the cat’s head, but her landline phone, as if intentionally fulfilling her prediction, rang seconds later. She lifted Chloe from her lap and hurried to answer the call.
“Lila, it’s Miriam Webber,” the coordinator of foster services in her area said. “If you’ve been watching the news, you probably know why I’m calling.”
“Yes,” she said, brushing cat hair from her clothes. “I just saw something about an ATF and FBI raid on a cult, if that’s what you mean. Can I assume this call means you need me to take one of the babies rescued in the raid?”
“You assume correctly. Are you available? We’d like to get Eve placed before the ice and sleet get much worse.”
Lila pulled the sheer curtains back from her front window and peered out at the pale gray sky. Sleet plinked on the dead leaves covering the forest floor, and the first shimmers of icy accumulation glimmered in the muted daylight. “I’m happy to take in one of the babies. How old will my charge be? Will I need formula? What size diapers?”
“We’ll be bringing you Eve. She’s five months old. Almost six months.”
Lila