Righteous04 - The Blessed and the Damned Read Online Free

Clawson did to you or told you. There was no excuse for letting that happen to your children.” He stopped, distracted by the crying children, the sobbing women, and the audible cries for help from the wounded beast, who had dragged himself back to the porch.
    “What are you going to do with us?” Sister Laura asked. She was calmer than the other two women, and comforted a child against her bosom. “Give us to other men?”
    “I don’t know,” he admitted. “The Lord hasn’t told me yet. Maybe send you to Zarahemla for medical examinations. The only thing I know is you’re not staying another night at this house. I’m going to burn it down.”
    “Do we get any say in the matter?” she asked.
    “About the house? No. The other things, yes, of course. Meanwhile, get yourselves cleaned up—you’re all filthy—and ask the Lord for forgiveness for your own weaknesses. Forget about Stanley’s sins. Remember you’re daughters of God.”
    He slid the door shut, then said to Stephen Paul, “Drive them up to your house. Tell your wives to be kind. They’ve gone through all kinds of hell today. I’ll ask the Lord tonight what we should do with them.”
    Stanley let out a long, moaning curse from the front porch, and Abraham gritted his teeth and leaned against the side of the van.
    Stephen Paul put a hand on his shoulder. “You did what had to be done.”
    He met his counselor’s gaze. “Why didn’t anyone tell me? If one of those wives had said something, I could have stopped it. A blessing would have cured Stanley at one time, before it got too late.”
    But all things served the Lord’s purpose. The Lord could have told Abraham Himself if He’d wished. He’d remained silent, and Abraham could only assume that there was a reason.
    Stephen Paul went back inside for his crowbar. When he returned, he stopped midway to the van and waited for Abraham to come to him.
    “I’m glad we didn’t have to kill him,” Stephen Paul said.
    “Me too.”
    “The other time, was it hard?”
    “What, when I killed a man? Worse than hard, it was a mistake. And I was doing someone else’s dirty work. I won’t ask you to do anything I won’t do myself.”
    “I appreciate that.”
    Abraham fixed him with a hard look. “But this was a test for both of us. Brother Stanley targets women and children. His
own
women and children. Is there any greater coward than that? He didn’t fight back, he couldn’t. I’m afraid there’s harder business ahead of us than breaking the bones of a coward.”
    “Meaning we have to kill a man?”
    “Probably several men. Maybe women, too. Once evil has taken root, only drastic measures can tear it up.”
    Stephen Paul turned the crowbar over in his hands as he looked back at the porch where Stanley had finally climbed to his feet andnow staggered inside, hopefully to collect keys and cash before he drove out of Blister Creek forever.
    “I will obey the Lord.” He turned back to Abraham and met his gaze. “And thou art His prophet.”
    Abraham felt something tug his attention east, into the heart of the desert. The edge of the wilderness. A few hours by car, no more. It was time to call Rebecca, to get about destroying the enemies of the Lord.

CHAPTER THREE
     
    Jacob Christianson approached the old woman warily. He couldn’t see yet if she had a gun. Last time she had. He kept Eliza behind him. He’d weighed the risk of abandoning the pretense of his sister’s death—which, to be honest, wasn’t bearing fruit anyway—against using her as added leverage against Charity Kimball.
    Don’t resist, Charity,
he thought.
Make this easy, please.
    She sat in a cheap plastic chair by the back door of the Winnebago. The tires of the motor home had gone flat, and sand rose halfway up the wheel well. She’d constructed a makeshift sunscreen from a blue plastic tarp and two aluminum tent poles. A vast sandstone bluff rose behind the motor home, and a boulder shielded it from the road. There