The cowboy dropped Barron’s leash and he gasped, clawing the cord loose enough to breathe again. Even then, he could hardly catch his breath for the excruciating pain ripping through his gut as a result of his busted hip. He twisted his head around with effort when he heard Olson exclaim, “What the fuck is that?” Barron didn’t have to search for the ‘what’—he couldn’t miss it. Three large crosses nailed to the wall!

Oh, fuck…fuck.

More men were gathered out here in the main room.

“Did you get the spikes?” the cowboy asked.

Spikes?

“Yeah,” one of the men replied. “They’re crudely made but they’ll work.”

Fuck! If the fucker hadn’t smashed his ankles and hip, Barron would’ve made a run for it, even through all these men. But he wasn’t going anywhere. He was about as fucked as he could get. There was no escaping, not now. He could barely think over the pulsating pain clawing up his legs from his ankles to join the unbearable throbbing in his pelvis. Barron couldn’t feel his feet at all.

“The rougher they are,” the cowboy said. “The better. They’ll hurt more going through.”

You’re gonna die—you’re gonna fucking die! Barron didn’t want to die; he had a lot of shit left to do. Fuck, he’d planned to take this place over from Olson and make it a thriving business. Olson didn’t know shit about running this kind of operation. He’d settled for chump change that came with local prostitution and the occasional sale. Barron would’ve taken it to the big times. To look at him, one might think he didn’t have the drive or know-how to get there, but he would have made it.

Now it’s all shit down the toilet—and so are you.

Barron stared up at the high ceiling, terrified but somehow remaining calm, he didn’t know how. The pain was so bad that tears leaked from his eyes in a steady stream. Still, he stared at the ceiling. Soon, he would be screaming, he was sure of it. Positive. Yet the calm remained. It wouldn’t last. Oh no, he could bet his shit on that—it wouldn’t last. Maybe this was the proverbial calm before the storm. Panic being his storm in this scenario, palpable just outside the perimeter of his calm. He could tell himself he wouldn’t scream, he wouldn’t beg for his life…but he would. They would hurt him until he did. They wouldn’t let him die until he did. That was their reward—forcing him to scream, cry, and beg…just as the kids had done. And like the kids, Barron would receive no mercy.

He turned his focus from the ceiling to the cowboy. He wanted to kill the bastard—so fucking bad. One last trophy to take with him to the other side. Barron spied the handgun strapped to the cowboy’s hip. Fuck, he took the whole cowboy image seriously. If he could get his hands on that gun, just for a moment…

 

•♦•

 

“Hey…asshole…”

Clint looked around.

“Yeah, you…fucker…” Barron wheezed, his face a bruised, ugly mess and his eyes bloodshot and leaking. “You assholes gonna stand around all day yanking each other’s dicks or we gonna get this show on the road?”

“Some people don’t know when to shut their cake hole, do they?” Cruz murmured.

Clint walked over and stood above him. “You in that much of a hurry to die, motherfucker?”

“Why not?” Barron rasped. “Might as well get it over with.”

A low chuckle rumbled Clint’s chest. Get it over with? He squatted down and looked the man dead in the eye. “Fucker, it ain’t gonna be over with for quite a while. This little twinge of pain you’re experiencing right now? It’s nothing compared to what you’re about to experience.”

Barron stared back at him. “I might go to hell today…” his words were thick in his throat, laboring to crawl forth. “But I’m gonna take you with me.” He sprang to life suddenly and his hand shot out, grabbing Clint’s handgun.

Clint snapped his wrist before he ever got the gun free of its holster and smashed the man’s head against his knee, dropping him back to the floor in a limp, quivering heap. Clint stood. “I’ll go to hell one day,” he muttered. “But not today, and I sure as fuck ain’t making the trip with a piece of shit like you.”

“Shit,” Cruz snorted. “Did he really think he was going to take out the infamous cowboy that easy?”

With a stiff chuff, Clint instructed the men to set up three chairs. They scattered out and located some metal folding chairs and placed them side by side in the middle of the floor, about two feet apart from each other.

“Sit them down.”

The guests were dumped into the chairs. Barron gagged on his pain as his broken hip didn’t appreciate the new position. His feet folded inward, limp and useless. Vinny the cook wasn’t entirely coherent, but once they got underway, he would be brought to attention.

Sanchez looked closer at the cook and indicated his missing ear. “This your handiwork?” he asked Clint.

Clint nodded.

Stepping back, Sanchez asked, “What else do we get to…remove?”

“We’ll begin with the obvious,” Clint said. “Any man who rapes a child gets sent to hell dickless. Can’t use it properly…it comes off.” He looked at Cochise and the large Egyptian slid his knife from its sheath.

“No…” Olson pressed back against the chair, his working foot pushing against the floor as he tried to shove himself and the chair away from the men.

Barron slumped in his chair, his injured body not allowing him to sit upright. He clung precariously to his bravado. “You’re…you’re fucking bluffing. Don’t listen to them, Olson…they’re just trying to freak us out.”

Olson didn’t look at all convinced that it was a bluff. Only a fucking fool would believe that at this point.

Withdrawing his own knife, Clint sidled up to Barron’s chair. “After busting you up…” He ran his thumb along the edge of the blade. “…and boiling Vinny’s face, taking off his ear, and shooting your buddy here in the leg…you really think I won’t cut off your cocks?” He went to his heels and tapped the tip of the blade on Barron’s knee. “You rape kids. You kill kids.” He dragged the sharp tip along Barron’s inner thigh, scratching the fabric of his pants. The man went rigid when the knife ventured into his crotch and prodded his goods. “I happen to believe that children are special gifts from God. In fact, I’m pretty sure they’re precious in his sight as well.” He added pressure and the very tip of the blade punctured the material.

“Don’t…” Barron’s bravado evaporated the instant cold steel nudge his raw flesh.

“Those children you threw away and left for dead…” Clint’s jaw tightened, the muscles in his face straining. “They’re up there right now, at God’s side, and they have judged you and found you guilty.” He thrust the knife hard, stabbing the man’s genitals. Barron screamed as blood instantly soaked his thighs, saturating his pants. He toppled off the chair, convulsing and wailing, smearing blood all over the cold tiles. Clint stood up and put the knife away. He nodded at a couple of the men. “Put him back in his chair.”

Foamy spit bubbled over Barron’s lips and his eyes rolled back as the men reseated him in the folding chair. Olson stared at his friend in horror.

“What…happened?” Vinny slurred and tried to open his blistered eyelids.

“Don’t worry, fucker,” Cochise told the cook. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

 

•♦•

 

Axel was numb. For a moment, his mind shut down and he couldn’t think as he stood deathly still before Rodriguez.

“Axel?”

Swallowing with effort, Axel blinked, focused, and looked at the young Spanish man. “How was he when you got there?”

Rodriguez hesitated.

“What?”

“He’d nailed full-sized crosses on the wall and…” another anxious pause. “…and there were three…crowns…made out of barbed-wire and nails.”

Axel stared at him. “What…”

“He asked us to find him nine large spikes.” Rodriguez kept his voice low as the detective stood nearby while the kids were being unloaded from the truck. “I think…I think he’s going to crucify them. Like in the Bible.”

Axel frowned, uneasy. “Has he ever done anything like that before? I know he tortures people, but…has he ever crucified anyone?”

“I don’t know,” Rodriguez said. “I don’t think so. Even Cochise looked surprised.”

Axel didn’t know if he should be worried about this or not. When people started implementing religion into torture…that was usually a bad sign. Of course, most of society would think the torture alone was a bad sign. Understandable. But Axel knew Clint and understood why he did what he did. Until now. What was the significance? Why not just kill these men in the typical torturous way? Why bring a religious aspect into it?

“Do you think I should be worried?” Axel voiced his fears to Rodriguez.

Matteo joined them. “I don’t think you have cause for alarm. To Clint, children are angels of God. I think the horror of what he’s gone through has reached to the depths of his soul. It kind of makes sense to me that he would do something like this in this specific situation.”

“I hope you’re right,” Axel whispered. His heart lay in pieces in his chest as the image of Clint holding the dying child haunted Axel’s mind. The despair in the cowboy when he’d called Axel…it made sense now. His pain was real and oh so deep. Axel realized one of the kids had ventured close and he looked down to find a young boy of undeterminable age—surely at least thirteen?—staring at him.

“You were the one with the cowboy,” the kid said quietly. “You took Kelly and Raimi.”

Axel nodded. “Yes, that was me.”

The boy looked at him for a long, silent moment. “Her name was Grace.”

Axel frowned. “Whose name?”

“The girl who died in the cowboy’s arms.” The kid blinked. “She called him daddy. She thought he was her dad…come to save her.”

Oh, God…

“He cried,” the boy whispered with tears in his eyes.

Axel couldn’t deal with this. At a moment when Clint needed him the most, Axel hadn’t been there.

Two other kids who looked healthy and were dressed in normal clothes joined the boy. “He was really sad,” the girl said. She looked like she was in her early to mid-teens. “I read to him from the bible my mom gave me.”

You really are angels, aren’t you? Axel hadn’t been there…but they had. Clint hadn’t gone through it completely alone.

 

•♦•

 

“Jesus took a whip and chased men out of the temple because they had turned his father’s house of worship into a house of merchandise.” Clint strolled back and forth in front of the three guests. He paused and looked at them, eyes narrowed beneath a stiff, heavy brow. “What kind of whip do you think he would have used on men who make merchandise of little children?”

Cochise silently watched the cowboy. He knew where Clint was going with this.

“Maybe a whip like the one that was used on him?” He stared at the three men. None of whom made a reply. “It was called a scourge. A nasty little motherfucker that could reduce a human body to hamburger. You know those paintings you see of Jesus on the cross? A few scratches on his body and a couple trickles of blood on his face? They’re very misleading. After thirty-nine lashes from a scourge, he wouldn’t even look human anymore.”

Moving closer to Cochise, Cruz murmured, “Is he all right?”

The Egyptian nodded. Clint knew what he was doing, and what he had in store for these men was going to be ugly.

“The people of ancient times knew about torture,” Clint went on educating the guests. “Some may not realize it, but death by crucifixion was one of the worst. Jesus suffered through this hellish torture of beatings, scourging, and crucifixion to save mankind because the wages of sin is death, and without a death, the debt of sin could not be paid. But when you start hurting his precious ones…committing vile acts on the innocent…you are shitting on his sacrifice—rejecting it. So, it falls on you to pay for your own sins. And I find it only fitting that you pay for them as he did.”

It falls on you to pay for your own sins. Cochise would pay for his sins one day as well.

 

•♦•

 

Clint gathered up the three barbed-wire crowns and handed two off to Cochise and Cruz.

“You’re fucking crazy.” Olson tried to scramble from his chair, but his injured leg wouldn’t hold him, and he fell back into the seat, nearly toppling it over. “Stay the fuck away from me!” he screamed when the Egyptian advanced on him.

Cochise’s cold gray eyes turned to stone and Clint read his thoughts on his face; did you back off when the kids screamed the same thing?

The three gangsters walked around behind their designated sinner, holding the crowns carefully so as not to stab themselves. Vinny was beginning to regain his wits, though he remained visually impaired.

“What’re you doing?” the cook whimpered, his swollen, blistered tongue muddling his words. He squirmed in his chair and Cruz wielded a knife, touching the blade to the cook’s other ear.

“Hold still or lose this one, too,” Cruz warned.

Cruz and Cochise looked at Clint. Sanchez and the rest of the men stood back a few feet and watched in silence. Clint looked down at Barron; the man didn’t have much fight left in him since the knife to the crotch. The crudely-fashioned crown settled over the crest of Barron’s skull, the tips of the long nails lightly pricking his scalp. The man shuddered. A mewling whine escaped through his nostrils. Clint felt nothing. He added pressure, forcing the crown onto his head. The mewling swelled into a wailing scream as the nails dug in, grinding Barron’s skull and puncturing the bone.

Clint nodded at the other two men. Cruz and Cochise crowned Olson and Vinny. Cruz’s face pinched with disgust when the thick, bulbous blisters on the cook’s head popped and oozed murky pus. Vinny quivered then began to shake as his cries distorted in the swollen caverns of his mouth.

The sharpest, loudest scream burst from Olson. Panic struck, and he fought Cochise, attempting to rip the crown off his head. The Egyptian snarled and grabbed Olson’s left arm, wrenched it back and up hard enough to dislocate it from the socket, tearing a strangled scream from Olson.

“Do it again,” Cochise barked, “and I’ll break the fucking thing off.” In a single forceful thrust, Cochise rammed the crown onto his head, sending the man into shuddered convulsions as blood streamed from the deep puncture wounds and lacquered his face.

“Did you bring the items from the guest room?” Clint asked.

Sanchez answered. “Out in the trunk of the car.”

“The whip that Greco made me…is it in there, too?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Clint left Barron gagging and quivering in the chair. “There’s a pole out in the front yard. Looks like it used to be a flagpole or something. It’ll work.”

“For what?” Sanchez asked.

“A whipping post.” Clint motioned to Cruz and Cochise. “Bring them outside.”

Sanchez helped Cruz with Vinny. Clint instructed a couple of the men to haul Barron out. Cochise had no problem moving Olson despite the man’s injured leg.

They dumped the three men on the frozen ground in a patch of snow. “Strip them down,” Clint told the men. “All the way.” He retrieved the items from the trunk, including a spool of thin wire that he tossed to Sanchez. “We’ll start with the cook. Tie him to the pole.”

Clint watched them while he untangled the leather tails of the whip and shook it out, the embedded nails clanking dully against each other. He had used it only one other time—on his brother.