JACOB
My foot was planted firmly against the gas pedal of the truck, the tires screeching along the asphalt as we peeled off onto roads that wound their way through the Appalachians. Eve was as compliant as ever, her eyes filled with hopeless adoration for the brother she thought I was. Every so often, Elijah’s name would roll off her lips like a reverent prayer as she wrapped her arms around mine and tried to pull it from the steering will.
I’d expected the man who was walking with her across the field to put up more of a fight, but instead, he’d taken one look at me and nodded his head, wordlessly following me into the woods without complaining that I’d just stuck a fucking gun to his head. I’d recognized him as he led Eve from the building, knew he was one of the assholes who had stood in the room staring at my naked cock while Elijah carried on about how I’d killed a member of their family. Obviously, that shit wasn’t true and I was still in shock for having a woman sitting beside me that for months I’d believed was dead.
As we wound our way along the road, I thought about how convenient this entire abduction (that I’d never actually planned) had been. After Mass had ended and the parishioners filed out of the building, I’d moved quickly to hide in the tree line hoping for the opportunity to have a moment with Elijah alone. But then Eve stumbled out on the arm of this guy and it was like he was leading her right to me. I couldn’t help the way I’d stared, couldn’t stop the way my heart had clenched in my chest only to pick up its pace as they approached. I felt something for this woman that I couldn’t name, and the something that eluded me every time I tried to identify it had come to life to see her face, to know that she wasn’t just another one of my victims.
“What’s your name,” I asked the guy sitting quietly by the passenger window, Eve settled in place between us on the bench seat.
She turned to look at me with confusion lining her face, answering for the man before he could get a word out. “What are you talking about, Elijah? You know my brother, Joshua.” A nervous laugh filtered over her lips, her green eyes staring up at me like I’d lost my fucking mind.
Breathing out, I clenched my fingers over the steering wheel so tight that the blood drained from the knuckles leaving the skin white. “I’m not Elijah.” I wouldn’t play the same games with her that I’d played when she first arrived at the parish. The poor girl was sick in the head and I hadn’t helped her by playing along. I knew that now, knew that in order to save her from my twin who had lost his fucking mind, I had to burst the bubble that had been built around her. Sheltering her from the truth wasn’t the way to free her from the bullshit lies that had created her.
“Not this again,” she breathed out. “Have I done something?”
Dragging my eyes from the road for only long enough to stare down her brother, I jutted my chin in his direction and said, “You know who I am. Why don’t you do the right thing for your sister for once and tell her the truth?”
I would have sworn the asshole would argue, but instead, he sighed heavily and turned to his sister. “Eve…” his voice trailed off, the flicker of anger obvious behind his eyes. “Sedra, I mean.”
“No!” Eve’s body stilled at the mention of her real name. “You won’t call me that. I haven’t been Sedra since the day I married Elijah. Sedra was a stupid girl. A faithless brat that was full of sin. Elijah freed me of that-“
Joshua surprised me when he reached out to take his sister’s cheeks between his hands and turned her face toward him. “Sedra,” he repeated, his deep voice calm, yet authoritative. “I need you to listen to me without arguing for once. I need you to really listen, okay? There’s something you don’t know. A lot you don’t know, actually, and it’s time you found out before it’s too late. Please. You have to trust me when I tell you that Elijah has been lying to you for a long time. He’s not as holy as he says. He’s been hurting you, Sedra-“
“No!” she screamed, her arms flailing and damn near hitting me in the face. “I won’t listen to this! Not again! You won’t do this to me again!”
The truck swerved as her arm knocked against mine, and as I corrected it to keep up from driving off a fucking mountain, I raised my voice to grab both of their attention. “Get your sister under control now before I kill all three of us by wrecking!”
On one hand, I was still in shock to see Sedra alive. On the other, I was in shock that this son of a bitch seemed to agree with me about his sister and was going along with what I wanted. And if I’d had a third hand on which I could balance some emotion, it would be gratitude to discover that I wasn’t alone in the realization that Elijah had become a fucking monster.
Poor Joshua had to practically pull his sister onto his lap to keep her from knocking me out with her flailing hands, but eventually he got her under control and was holding her in place with his arms wrapped around her.
“Listen to me, Sedra. Elijah is not who you think he is. That man over there, the one driving the truck is not Elijah. His name is Jacob Hayle. He was the priest for the parish before Elijah made him believe you were dead and chased him off. Elijah let his own brother fuck you just to get what he wanted, so I’m sorry, sister, but you’re not as pure as you think you are. This entire thing has been a game so that Elijah could take over control of the parish without the townspeople knowing.”
Sedra’s eyes flicked to me, the green orbs rounding with recognition before the brainwashing and lies slipped in to make her scream again. It wouldn’t be easy to convince her of the truth, but that couldn’t be my problem. I was here for one reason only and that was to stop whatever games my brother was playing from ruining the town and destroying the lives of the parishioners I’d spent years trying to help.
I knew my brother was insane, and after learning about what happened to him when we were young, I understood why. But that didn’t mean I could feel pity for him and allow him to destroy other innocent lives. Hating the thought of having to harm him in order to get him the help he needed, I was willing to do whatever it took to ensure more people weren’t hurt because of whatever end it was he was trying to achieve. There were better ways to handle what happened. And going on killing people and making them believe in evil wasn’t one of them.
“We need to get off the road,” Joshua screamed just to be heard over the voice of his sister. “She’s not going to stop flailing. We have to get her somewhere we can calm her down so she’ll listen.”
Well, fuck. I hadn’t intended on taking anybody captive, so I hadn’t thought of finding a place where I could hide and wouldn’t be found. “We can go to the police,” I suggested. “We could tell them what we know and send them to that damn compound so they can raid the place.”
Joshua shook his head, still struggling to hold on to his sister. “That won’t work. The sheriff is working with Elijah now. They’ve been killing people at the compound because Elijah has them convinced that those people were possessed by demons.”
“What the fuck? Are you shitting me?”
Shaking his head again, Joshua looked grim when he answered, “I wish I was, but they’ve been crucifying people on the large crosses Elijah has at the back of the sanctuary. Two people were up there dying this morning when I left for the parish.”
My eyes closed, but I forced them open again. I didn’t have time to fall victim to my feelings while driving at high speeds over winding roads. “So where can we take her? We’re too far out into the county for me to know where the hell I am.”
“I know of a hunting cabin that’s been abandoned for years now. I don’t think Elijah knows about it or that I know about it. I’ve been sneaking off over the past few months looking for somewhere I could take my sister to escape. I figured out Elijah was a fraud a few weeks after he chased you off.”
“Well, thank God for that,” I muttered.
Joshua made me laugh when he answered, “I’ve been thanking Him for a while. Turn around and when you hit county road five, take a right. It’s a distance away, but I’m sure nobody will find us. We can hide the truck in the woods and walk the rest of the way.”
Unsure whether I could trust the guy, I turned to look him in the eye. All I found there was determination to get his sister to safety. Nodding my head in agreement, I turned my attention back to the road and followed the directions he barked out at me. Within an hour, we were pulling Sedra out of the truck even though she was still kicking and screaming.
It took both of us to drag her through the woods while trying to avoid roots that were tripping our feet and low lying branches that hadn’t been cleared away by hunters or forest animals in their search for food. The sun was beginning to climb into the center of the sky letting me know it was midday. The heat had sweat sliding down my skin, but I wouldn’t allow it to slow me down, and eventually, despite the way Sedra had struggled, the cabin came into view. Joshua and I both breathed out a sigh of relief.
The door banged open as we plodded through, the interior nothing but some broken furniture and dust covering every surface. Joshua wrestled his sister down to the floor with minimal effort. Thankfully, the small girl was running out of steam. While he knelt down softly speaking to her, I checked out the broken windows ensuring that I hadn’t just been led to a place where Elijah wouldn’t come riding up on his imaginary white horse to take back his bride. Nothing moved around the boundary of the cabin, and I relaxed a little to discover we were alone.
“We’re going to need supplies,” I said. “Food, water, toiletries. I didn’t bring anything with me because I was pretty sure it would become a gun battle as soon as my brother saw me.”
Joshua laughed softly. “If you’d gone to the compound instead of the parish, it would have. He told the sheriff about you and the order was to kill on sight. He claimed that you were just another evil entity hell bent on destroying the town.”
Curiosity filled me. “Why are you helping me out? Aren’t you part of the family?”
Peering up at me with eyes the same color as his sister’s, he smiled sadly. “I was part of the family. But then Elijah started letting me in on some of his secrets. At the same time, I’d stolen a copy of a Bible from the Farmer’s Market and was secretly reading it without him knowing. I realized quickly that all the stuff he says in his sermons isn’t what’s written in that book.”
While we spoke, Sedra sat quietly on the floor, her eyes glistening with tears and her face red and ruddy from having been crying for so long. Her energy was tapped out, however, which was a damn good thing because I couldn’t think clearly with all the screaming.
“So, when you took her outside the parish today?”
Joshua darted a glance between his sister and me. Finally turning back, he admitted, “I was planning on walking her all the way here, if need be. I couldn’t let Elijah poison her anymore. He would have killed her eventually.”
“He wasn’t poisoning me,” Sedra argued, tears still spilling from her eyes. Joshua turned to look at her with pure remorse written into the expression on his face.
“Yes, sister, he was. Those teas he was giving you weren’t to make you better. They were meant to mess up your head. He didn’t want you to remember what happened at the parish when you were with Jacob. You were beginning to understand that there were two different men that looked the same and Elijah couldn’t have that. I knew about it. I was there when Elijah gave you the herbs to make you appear dead. He did that on purpose so that Jacob would run off and think you weren’t alive. I was the one that carried you back to the compound. You have to try and remember.”
Shaking her head, she bit her bottom lip, anger spilling across her features as she tilted her head up at me. “Elijah. Please tell me what he’s talking about. Why are you letting him lie like this right in front of you?”
I dropped down on one knee so I could look directly in her face. “Joshua’s not lying to you, Sedra. My name isn’t Elijah. It’s Jacob. Hell, even Elijah’s name isn’t Elijah. When we were young, he went by the name Jericho.”
She spit in my direction. “I haven’t done anything to deserve this! Why are you lying to me again! I’ve done everything you asked. You freed me of the last demon. Why are you doing this to me?”
Shaking my head, I knew there was nothing either one of us could say or do to convince her. She had to see it for herself. Had to see that there were two of us. The only way to accomplish that would be to have her present while I confronted by brother, but I didn’t like the thought of taking her along. Perhaps the benefits would outweigh the danger, because until she saw it, Sedra would always believe the lies he’d fed her while creating the perfect submissive.
“I’m sorry, Sedra. I really am. Not only for what my brother has done to you but for what I did to you myself. I took advantage and I lost control by being with you when you believed I was someone else. But I’m not taking advantage of you now. I’m ending this entire thing, once and for all. You’ll understand some day. Or, at least I hope you will.”
“She will,” Joshua responded. “If I have to spend the rest of my life convincing her that she’s been lied to, than that’s what I’ll do. I won’t let her continue loving a man who only hurt her and used her.”
In truth, he could have been talking about both Elijah and me. It had been wrong of me to have sex with her. It was wrong of me now to still want her despite everything that happened. But I couldn’t help it. There was just something about her that called out to the darkness inside me that begged to devour her.
“I’m sorry,” I said again before forcing myself to my feet.
Pacing the floor of the cabin, I thought about the stash of guns and ammo I had stored in the truck. It would have been enough for the bastards at the compound, but now that I knew the Sherriff was under Elijah’s thumb, how the fuck was I going to compete against that? After they discovered that Sedra was missing, he’d have every deputy out looking for me with the specific instruction to gun me down on sight. I had to take some time to think of a plan that would not only bring an end to my brother’s cult, but also keep Sedra and her brother out of harm’s way. I couldn’t blame the guy for having been fooled by Elijah for such a long time and I was thankful to God and everything holy that he’d seen the truth before I’d arrived.
“We need to figure out what to do,” I finally said. “We can’t just take off and leave the town to Elijah. After seeing what he did to those children today, I know he’ll end up killing them all.”
Joshua nodded his head in understanding. “But how? He has everybody believing that they’re fighting some holy war against demons. The entire town, Jacob. There’s no way the two of us can take that on and hope to win. The compound alone has a small arsenal and every one of the men know how to use those guns. I say we just take off and hope for the best.”
My teeth ground together as I thought up a plan of attack. Elijah may have the county sheriff on his side, but that didn’t mean he had influence over the state police or the federal authorities. I could call in the fucking Army if that’s what it would take to bring the son of bitch down.
On my way into town, I’d bought a cheap cell phone just in case I needed to get in touch with anybody outside of the state. Thankful for having thought to do so, I realized there was one person I could call for help, somebody with enough influence to make people in power realize they had one hell of a problem on their hands.
Stepping toward the door, I turned back to Joshua before running outside. “Do me a favor and keep Sedra inside. I think I know who I can call to help.”
Stepping outside, I closed the door behind me and marched to my truck to retrieve the phone. I also grabbed a business card that was given to me before leaving the city.
Nobody would believe me if I went to the cops and told them about a town that had turned into a cult, but I knew that if the right person called with enough influence and money, the state authorities would be sent out to raid the compound.
Dialing the number, I brought the phone to my ear and prayed someone would answer. When it stopped ringing and a familiar voice spoke, I felt some of the tension drain from my body.
“Father Timothy. This is Jacob Hayle. We need to talk.”