Book 7: Sinner
Excerpt: Chapter One
A whip cracked in the warm breeze. The sound sliced the air, tore across my flesh with its reverberation. The sound rippled and hummed through my bones, scraped across my soul and the whole of me trembled from the currents of dark hatred stirring the wind while its foregone conclusion cut through the light and the condemned man's flesh.
Laughter, gales and gales of it, followed the piteous, repressed moan of pain. The merriment continued as if it were a party. Perhaps it was. A party marked for death. Mankind's destruction. Only mankind was too self-absorbed to notice. Too filled with their personal need for depravity to care. One man's duty is another man's sin.
Crimson filled the deep lines of the cobbled stones at my feet. The veins of life and death emptied from one to fill the other. The man's blood glistened in the high, flat sun, and still the crowd that had gathered chortled. The whip cracked again and I caught the gleam of silver at its ends; curved, sharpened, still clinging with flesh.
The leather cords rippled in the air, and my breath seized. I knew what was coming. We all did. Everyone who had gathered to watch the soldier's bedlam knew what was coming next. Everyone bearing witness to this macabre dance of madness zigzagging in the bright, blue sky before the darkness was to follow, knew what was coming.
Or did we?
The whip struck, flesh tore and blood flowed. I felt the tears begin to fall from my eyes. My throat seized. Vomit burned the back of it, against the thickness of my tongue. I wanted to scream, but there was no breath within me. No voice to holler from. Misery had stolen it. Pain had washed it away.
I now knew where I'd been taken. Knew the scene that lay before me. Knew who lay condemned before me. I knew, and my soul mourned.
"Would you die for him?" asked the dark, seething voice like an echo in the night. I turned my head to the left, then the right, searching for its bearer. But the question was not for me.
The whip struck again. "Would you die for him?" the voice growled in anger. Still there was no response, and the whip struck again. "Would you die for him?" it questioned with a snarl.
Again no response. Nothing but the suffering. Nothing but the pain.
Soldiers laughed and blood flowed. It splashed the whip bearer, and he wiped his face. "Where is your God now, Christian?" he laughed, striking the man again.
An Angel knelt beside the condemned man. The Angel trembled. The Angel wept. And the whip struck again.
"Would you die for him?" the dark voice asked again, but the Angel didn't answer and the whip struck again.
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