Page 64 of House of Sin
I slipped a hand beneath the edge of my skirt and drew a knife from the garter strapped to my upper thigh, the cold steel gleaming under the dim light. The room seemed to grow darker with the anticipation of what was about to happen. The silence was charged with violence, yet before I could make my move, something shifted. I could smell it before I saw it, the biting, acrid scent of smoke creeping into the room.
My eyes snapped to the window, catching the faintest flicker of light in the distance. It grew steadily, spreading slowly at first, then with mounting speed. A fire had started. Flames now licked the sides of the brothel, inching upward.
I muttered under my breath, dread knotting in my chest. “No . . .”
Violet’s voice interrupted me. “What’s going on?”
I said nothing, moving swiftly to the window. The townsfolk surged forward, torches in hand, fueled by the fury Father Frederick had stoked with his sermons. They thought they were doing God’s work; they thought they were purging the evil he hadconvinced them the brothel was. The inferno spread fast, the town’s wrath finally unleashed.
I turned back toward Father Frederick, my eyes narrowing with a mix of anger and frustration; the man had become the very thing he had once condemned. I had planned to end this tonight, to rid myself of the man who had caused so much pain and destruction, but there was no time now. His rabid, frenzied sermons about the sins at my brothel had become the weapon that would destroy him.
“You won’t get away with this,” I hissed, my voice filled with fury. “You’ll burn for your sins, Father, but it won’t be at my hands, it will be at your own. You and your lies, and your so-called purity, hiding the sickness you've spread in this town. You were never the shepherd.”
A shout rang up from the street, unleashing a wave of noise that spilled into the room. The fire raced ahead, too quickly to stop. I could hear the voices of the desperate townsfolk, some shouting in righteous fury, others frantic with panic, all driven by a single purpose. Their eyes were fixed on their target, and nothing would standin their way.
The room now felt suffocating, the smoke thickening as it seeped through the cracks between the bricks and the floorboards. I had no time to linger; the fire was getting closer. There was nothing left for Father Frederick, nothing left for the brothel. It would all burn, consumed by the very hatred and fear he had ignited.
As I quickly made to leave, I stopped at the door, my back to him, voice cold as I glanced back once more. “Father Frederick, I hope you’ve repented, because this is where your story ends.”
Violet and I stepped out into the hallway, the roar of the fire swelling in my ears, drowning out Father Frederick’s desperate cries behind us.
In the parlor, Emil, Nell, Elona, and Maeve had barricaded the front doors, desperate to keep the unpredictable mob from storming the brothel. They assumed the plan was to break in and destroy the place, but they didn’t grasp the true threat until the first wisps of smoke filled the air. Rushing to the windows, they saw the flames already climbing skyward, beginning to swallow the building. Outside, the townsfolk were frantic, throwing themselves at the doors of the brothel, determined to destroy everything inside.
Emil shouted for everyone to evacuate, guiding them out the back, away from the chaos. The heat from thefire was unbearable, but the danger of the growing mob was even worse.
Violet and I were the last to leave, the smoke stinging our lungs as we reached the alleyway. I glanced back at the blazing inferno that had once been my sanctuary, my home, and the source of everything I held dear. The flames roared as the fire devouring everything it touched. The crackle of burning wood mingled with the angry shouts of the townsfolk in the distance. The Oily Cat was reduced now to ash and smoke, but the people were even worse than the fire.
The townsfolk—neighbors, customers, familiar faces—stood in clusters near the brothel and across the street. Some stared with open horror. Others stood gazing at the blazing maelstrom with rapturous smiles pasted on their zealous faces. A few still held torches, their grips unsteady, flames flickering in the wind. The destruction, the violence, it had excited them. Given them purpose.
Emil, who had been checking to make sure everyone had made it out safely and now led us toward the mouth of the alley andaway from the building, suddenly stopped in his tracks. Then, as if in slow motion, I watched him come undone.
His eyes found a man smiling garishly; his expression making it clear he had no regrets about what he had just done. He was a short, paunchy fellow named Harlan Miller, who’d once tipped Nell a coin for pouring him a little more than a thumb’s worth of his favorite whiskey. Harlan’s face was bathed in firelight, his grin wide and sickening.
That was all it took. Emil surged toward him.
“Emil!” Nell shouted, but her voice didn’t reach him.
He grabbed Harlan by the collar and slammed him backward into a hitching post, cracking the wood. Harlan tried to shout, to speak, but Emil’s fist met his mouth, silencing him. Once, twice. By the third strike, blood painted Emil’s knuckles.
“You set it on fire.” He growled, shaking as he continued to beat Harlan in the face. An older man in a vest and spectacles tried to intervene. Emil turned on him with such speed and force that his right hook sent the man reeling and shattered his glasses. Those in thecrowd that were now beginning to watch the violence gasped, but no one moved to stop him.
He grabbed a shovel from a nearby stoop and swung it wide, knocking a younger man off his feet with a sickening thud. People began to scatter, but Emil didn’t chase them. He lashed out at anyone who hadn’t already run, his rage indiscriminate and raw.
From several paces behind him, Maeve watched with wide eyes, her breath coming in quick, sharp bursts. She looked to Elona, then to Nell. Then I saw something visibly shift in her. “They were going to kill us,” Maeve hissed. “They weregladto.” She kicked off her shoes and bolted forward, skirts hiked in her fists.
The first woman she reached tried to shield her face, but Maeve didn’t stop. Her fists landed fast and hard, fueled by weeks,years, of swallowed shame. The woman went down screaming, and Maeve stood over her, panting, shaking, and defiant.
Elona followed without a word. She struck silently with an elbow, a knee, then a brutal slap that sent a man stumbling into a wall. He tried to find his voice to speak, but Elona shoved him hard, headfirst into the corner of the next building on the street. A sharpcracksplit the air, followed by the slow, dark stream of blood tracing down his face before his body crumpled to the ground.
Nell stood frozen for a breath, holding herself aloof from the chaos, but then she saw Emil again. His face was streaked with soot, blood drying at the corner of his mouth where he’d been struck. He’d always been her strength, but night, he was breaking. She clenched her fists, turned slowly, and found the woman who had once spit on her dress outside the church. That woman stood at the edge of the fray, eyes wide. “You called me filth.” Nell whispered, glaring directly at her face.
Then she lunged. The two of them hit the ground, Nell landing on top. Her fists flew, untrained, furious, and wild. The woman’s screams turned to gurgles before someone tried to pull Nell off of her, but Nell snarled and swung, catching the would-be rescuer hard in the temple with her elbow.
Violet stood beside me, her face, chest, and arms covered in soot, and her left sleeve had been burned from the embers of the fire. But her eyes were eerily calm. I’d seen her like this only once before,full of quiet, building fury. She caught a glimpse of movement down the alley, a man trying to slink off unnoticed, hoping the fire and noise would cover his retreat. But Violet knew him. So did I. He used to leave coins wrapped in torn hymnal pages on our nightstand after we gave him what he wanted, like he could pay for his sins and still sleep beside his wife at night.
Violet moved without a word. She darted down the alley and caught up to him before he’d taken three steps. He turned, startled, stammering something that might’ve been her name, but it was too late. She slammed him into the wall hard enough to shake soot from the bricks. The torch dropped from his hand and fizzled in the dirt. She got close to his ear, close enough to whisper, and whatever she said, it drained the color from his face. Then she drove her knee into his ribs.
He collapsed with a grunt and didn’t get back up. Violet didn’t look back. She just wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and walked back toward me. That was when I moved, no longer paralyzed byshock, the adrenaline coursing through my body pushing me into the melee.
