Thing With Feathers (9781616634704) Read Online Free Page B

as though he’d been wounded. “It begins now! You surely are the temptress, Blair. More so than your mother ever was.”
    “No, Father! I wasn’t tempting anyone. I was…I was minding myself. I didn’t want him to talk to me. I don’t know why he chose to. I ran all the way home,” she added desperately in her defense.
    “And you believe, to be certain, that you did not tempt the young man any more than you have tempted your own father? You know that you are the Genesis seductress, Blair. ‘Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him that we may preserve the seed of our father.’”
    The preacher’s breathing was becoming heavy and his speech husky, with the sing-song quality that made the back of Blair’s neck grow cold. She knew that if she turned, she would see the glassy, faraway look in her father’s eyes. Tears began to well up in her own eyes, and a fluttery fear rose in her stomach. She could not see the potato she was peeling at all clearly, and she cut herself with the paring knife. Quickly, she grabbed a sink cloth and wrapped it around her thumb.
    Without turning, she said softly, “I don’t wish to tempt anyone, Father. I never wanted—”
    “Ha! Never wanted? Do you not remember how you wanted, even when you were but five years old? You would come to me with stories of the devil and demons and ask to come in to my bed. I would hold you like a father, and you would squirm and rub against me like the temptress you are.”
    “I was just a frightened child, Father. You frightened me with stories of the damned and then sent me to sleep in this dark room alone,” Blair protested more to the sink than to her father. She could hear him breathing heavier still, and her legs were growing weak.
    “When I began to understand the will of God, Blair, how He replaced your mother, who was too weak to bear children, with a stronger and younger wife for me, you did not protest!” She could hear him fumble with his belt. “I know what you want, demon child. Lust’s passion will be served. It demands. It militates. It tyrannizes!” He quoted De Sade.
    The first whip of the belt caught her high across the thighs and sent her to the floor on all fours. Tears were streaming down Blair’s face, but she could not cry aloud. The best she could voice in the way of protest was a weak, “No,” as her father pushed her flat to the floor and pulled viciously at her skirt and petticoat.
    He stripped her from the waist down and proceeded to strike at her smooth, soft skin with the leather belt. Each strike revealed an ugly welt. The preacher recited a prayer while he viciously stroked his daughter’s backside. She tried to scramble away, and her father tossed the belt aside and dropped to his knees behind her. Blair fell into a different world where she felt no pain or humiliation. It was like being removed from her ravaged body. Eventually, his voice penetrated her dreamlike state. “Your sobbing will not gain you any pity, Blair.”
    She was not aware that she had been crying.
    “You will not make me feel guilt for implementing God’s will. You might as well stop crying and clean yourself up. You are late with Sunday supper.”
    And then she was alone, curled on the cold kitchen floor with nausea in her stomach. How she wished she would die.

Chapter 5
    R escue Blair. But how? Sean grunted in desperation. His head pounded with the thoughts he’d contemplated during his hours hiking Marshall Mountain behind the homestead, shooting randomly with the treasured Conley but only half conscious of the photography mission on which he’d set out. There must be a way he could rescue Blair. He would not, could not, seek vengeance. Even though that was what he wanted more than anything, his religious doctrine prohibited it. The irony that the doctrine he chose to abide by was taught to him by the very object of his abhorrence did not escape him.
    If God would allow it, Sean prayed, I would like to