Pompeii's Ghosts (A James Acton Thriller, #9) by J Robert Kennedy Page A

“They’ll kill him.”
    Father
Solomon shook his head. “No, they will kill him anyway. We must get you out of
here before it’s too late.”
    A man
screamed in agony and Abrihet made a run for the door, almost slipping from
Father Solomon’s hands. Another scream of agony and he wrapped his arms around
her, holding her tight, trying to cover her ears with his chest and forearm,
but he knew it was no use. The distinctive thud preceding each scream was
something he had heard before, when he was a child, and it threatened to tear
him from this place and thrust him back to a childhood he had blacked out, a
day he should never forget, but had forced himself to.
    The day
his own father had been hacked to death by Muslim extremists, in the center of
the village, for the egregious sin of converting to Christianity.
    And
right now, on the other side of the doors of this hallowed place, he knew the
same thing was happening. A man, a guilty man, a man who had committed the
ultimate sin, was being murdered in revenge, rather than justice, and he knew
what the next phase of the revenge would be.
    The same
as it had been for his mother and sister.
    And he
made a decision that he would die before he would let what happened to them
happen to this poor girl now trembling in his arms as she listened to her
father being hacked to pieces mere feet away.
    “You
must remain quiet,” he whispered in her ear as he led her to the rear of the
church. He placed his ear to the rear door that led from his rectory and heard
nothing. Opening it a crack he gasped as a hand reached in and grabbed him by
his robes, pulling him outside as a group of men surged into the church,
Abrihet screaming as they grabbed her. He struggled against those holding him,
but they pushed him inside, holding his head, forcing him to watch as the poor
girl was stripped naked then bent over the very desk he had just written the
letter requesting help on.
    And as
the first man took her, she screamed in pain, in agony and in fear, her
innocence torn apart by a tradition too vile to acknowledge, too unfathomable
by civilized standards to understand, and too common to deny.
    He tried
to tear himself lose, to throw himself at those assaulting the poor girl, to
stop the vicious attack as it began, but the grips on his arms were viselike,
and as the first man finished, a look on his face not of self-satisfaction that
he had just delivered justice to a guilty party, but one of sexual
gratification and lust, Father Solomon prayed for the strength to help this
poor innocent.
    He glared
at the first man, his name Abdal Jabbar, a man he had thought of as decent
until this very moment, a man who had shown his true colors by the
unforgiveable act he had just committed. And there would be no forgiveness for
this sin, no room for him to forget. He felt hatred fill his heart, swelling
his chest with a rage he had never felt, as the second man took the tiny Abrihet,
another on the opposite side of the desk, pulling her arms, urging the man on.
    And with
a strength he didn’t know he possessed, as if Samson himself were now sharing
his body, Father Solomon broke away and charged toward the table, and just as
his eyes met those of Abrihet, her face having gone slack, her body entering
shock, her once bright eyes now dim, he felt something hit him across the back
of the head and he collapsed to the floor, blacking out to the sounds of the
desk creaking with each thrust, and innocent Abrihet whimpering with each violation
of her broken body, now no more than a piece of meat for the carnal pleasures
of the gathered men, their excuse of punishment for the entire family a
pathetic justification for their sexual urges.
    And as a
third man stepped over him to take his turn, Father Solomon pictured his own
mother, so many years ago, forced to endure her repeated punishment dozens and
dozens of times, while her son watched, too young to understand what was truly
happening, too young to understand why