JACOB
And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee. Ezekiel 25:17
I was so angry when I pulled up on the scene that I didn't give a damn about damaging my truck just to get that son of a bitch off her. I sent a prayer to God that she wasn't hurt and that he'd forgive my rash behavior.
Feeling better after asking forgiveness before committing the sin, I jumped out of my truck and raced to where they'd landed, taking only a second to look over Sedra and make sure she wasn't injured before turning my attention on the asshole who had his disgusting hands all over her.
My fingers fisted into his greasy hair as I dragged him back. He could kick and scream all he wanted, but there was no seeing past the red haze of anger consuming me.
Eve sat up in the dirt to our side, sobs tearing through her body as she crawled toward where her clothes lay in a pile. Knowing she was physically okay made it easier for me to keep my attention on the bastard struggling beneath me.
"What the fuck? You hit my car! Let me the fuck go, asshole!"
He screamed up at me as I continued dragging him off the road. Slamming my fist into his face, I laughed when he spit out a tooth. I didn't give him a chance to yell again before my fist struck him four more times.
"You like to force yourself on crying women, you sick son of a bitch? Is that what you do for kicks?"
"She wanted it!" he screamed, blood gurgling in his throat from where his mouth was busted open.
Still holding him by his hair, I lifted my head to look at Sedra. "Did you want this guy shoving himself on you?"
She shook her head, tears spilling from her eyes as she clutched her shirt to her chest. "No," she answered, the one word cracked and broken from how hard she cried.
My gaze locked to the guy's face. "She just told me you're a liar." My fist hit his nose. “It’s a sin to lie.” Another punch. "You want to tell me the truth now?"
"Fuck man! Stop!" he cried out, opening his eyes to look at me. "What the fuck? Are you a priest?"
My fist caught his jaw and his head snapped back. I'd completely forgotten I was wearing my clerical collar. I hoped nobody happened to drive along to see a priest beating a man down along the side the road.
"Yes," I said, my voice eerily calm. "I am a priest and I'm here to tell you that you should have gone to church-" I hit him again before dropping him down to punt my boot into his side." "-a little more often-" Another kick, his body curling over itself as I hit him again. "-because it's a son of a bitch like you that needs to learn that raping women on the side of the road is not something God wants." Another punt. Another punch.
He was whimpering at that point, struggling to push himself up while I kept beating him back down. Every ounce of the violence I'd restrained inside myself was pouring out. Every drop raining down on him as a punch to the head or a kick to the spine. I knew I should stop. I knew I should leave him to wallow in his own blood now that Sedra was safe, but I lost control.
Just like every time this girl was around, I slipped away from the life I'd built for myself and found myself sliding towards temptation.
"Stop! You're a priest, please stop!"
Standing over him, my chest heaved with labored breath, my hand stung where I'd split my knuckles open on his teeth. And all I wanted to do was beat him down again.
"Elijah! Please! Stop!"
Sedra screamed from where she was seated by his car, her eyes locked to me, wide open to my violence. She was terrified not only because of what this asshole had done, but because of the violence she could plainly see bleeding out of me.
Huffing out a few more breaths just to force myself to speak evenly, I stared down at the pathetic excuse for a human being and struggled to remember my place. I was a priest, not some insane vigilante whose job it was to eradicate evil. I was supposed to spread love and the word of God, not brawl on the side of deserted roads.
I glanced over at Sedra one more time and remembered I was supposed to be the shepherd for my flock and not one of the wolves salivating to take down the weakest among them.
Shit!
This wasn't supposed to be my life.
My eyes focused on the man bleeding and crying at my feet. "The next time you want to think about God, you should remember what was written in His Holy Book. My God is a vengeful God toward all those who would dare destroy the righteous.”
The weak, beaten man kept crying as I marched to my truck. He was still crying when I opened the door and slammed open the glove box to grab a Bible I kept for distribution. He was just pushing himself up to his hands and knees when I marched back to him, kicked him beneath the ribs until he was flat on the ground again, and slammed the Bible down on his head.
"Here's the Lord's book you pathetic piece of shit. I suggest you read it!"
I wanted to kick him one more time - just one more time - but I didn't. I fought to gain control of myself in that moment no matter how badly I wanted to end this guy and toss him out to whatever animals would eat him.
But I didn't.
Instead, I stormed over to where Sedra was sitting and helped her to her feet. She hadn't bothered to put her clothes back on, she only clutched them to her chest. She was trembling so hard she couldn't walk and I picked her up to carry her to my truck. Once I had her tucked into the passenger seat, I rounded the back to climb in the other side. Casting one glance at the man still struggling over the dirt where I'd left him, I reversed my truck and peeled off down the road.
Sedra sobbed beside me as I drove silently along the dark road. I willed myself to calm down and help the woman who had made a mess of my life.
What I did to that man wasn't my best work, it wasn't even a proper sermon, but it felt so good to strike down the type of person that embodied the very thing I was working against in my calling. He was the demon wallowing in corruption. He was the wolf that would see a stranded woman on the side of the road and rape her just to make his life better.
He was exactly what I was supposed to be fighting against, but actually fighting him hadn't been the right answer. The ultimate judge is God. It was his vengeance that mankind had to fear. It wasn't our place to throw stones or condemn our brothers, but I was struggling with the forgiveness and love I was supposed to portray in my life as a devout man.
I didn't regret hurting that man so badly, but I still felt guilty about it. And there wasn't a confessional within a hundred miles for me to crawl into and admit all my recent sins.
Resisting the urge to reach out in comfort to touch Sedra's shoulder, I kept my eyes trained on the road, driving without speaking the entire ride back to the church.
I pulled up behind the rectory, happy for the cover of dark night and moved around the truck to open Sedra's door. She flinched in her seat when I touched her to help her down.
"Hey, it's fine. It's just me. I won't hurt you."
She didn’t respond, just balled up tighter over the bench seat.
“Sedra-“
“It’s Eve,” she whispered, her voice growing louder when she spoke again. “Not Sedra. You named me Eve and that’s my name.”
At that point I was willing to call her whatever she wanted just to get her out of the truck and into a bath. She was filthy, she was freezing, and she was trembling so hard, the edge of the truck was knocking against my knees.
“Okay, Eve. I’m going to carry you inside and get you into a bath. You need to wash the dirt off and get clean-“
“I’d be clean if you hadn’t left me outside the compound. I wouldn’t have been forced to do the things I did with that man, if you hadn’t-“
Her voice cut off abruptly, violent sobs racking the poor woman’s body until it seemed like she couldn’t breathe.
“Eve,” I whispered, “Come on, let me help you.”
Slipping my arms behind her back and under her knees, I pulled her out of the seat and cradled her against my chest. I didn’t even bother closing the door to my truck. She was too fractured, too in need of warmth and peace that the details didn’t matter.
I was responsible for this. Not Jericho. Not Sedra. Not the two men at the compound who refused to let her inside.
Me.
I’m the one who decided to take her back knowing all the horrible things my brother was doing to her. I was the one who left her on the side of the road when they refused to accept her back.
It might as well have been me on the road forcing my body on her, because if it hadn’t been for my selfishness, my cowardice and my disregard for what it truly meant to be a priest, she wouldn’t have been in that situation in the first place.
Even though I was the person responsible for every horrible thing that happened to her tonight, it didn’t mean I couldn’t remember who I was, who I’d been for the past twelve years, and give everything I had just to put her back together.
Watching her break down in my arms was my flagellation. Suffering to refuse temptation while I put her back together would be my penance.
Entering the rectory, I took her straight back to my room, kicked the door open and walked her through into the bathroom. I sat her down on the floor while I hurried to fill the tub. Steam billowed off the surface of the water, a gossamer shroud that would conceal us in the nightmare she needed to wash away.
Sedra was so splintered, so regretfully innocent that she had neither the knowledge nor the ability to protect herself in the world around us. She was the perfect prey, the bait that tastes the sweetest because she only wants to see the good in people.
She only wanted to be good herself.
Giving everything to a man she believed loved her. Sacrificing her own identity to fulfill whatever sick delusions he had of her. They were all symptoms of the good inside her.
When she first appeared in my life, I couldn’t move fast enough to get away from her. Her body was the perfect temptation, her submission the poison that could drag a godly man into Hell itself. She was everything evil we’re warned about in the world just by merely existing.
But yet, she wasn’t evil.
She was the illusion of evil.
Purity wrapped in the sinful cage of a woman who didn’t know any better.
Tempting me had never been her intention. That was a problem with me, with my weaknesses and my deviant darkness.
Sedra had the essence of a fallen angel, and when she opened her eyes to look up at me from the floor, all I saw behind them was tragedy.
Swallowing down the acrid taste of guilt that coated my tongue, I spoke softly. “Do you need help getting in the bath?”
Her eyes darted from my face down to my collar and back up again, a shiver coursing down her spine immediately after.
Turning to look in the mirror, I saw the blood splatter that had stained my white clerical collar black. Ripping it off my neck, I tossed in the trash next to the sink and sunk down onto my knees to look Sedra in the eye.
“Can I help you, Eve? Please.”
She shook her head, opening and closing her mouth several times before finally saying what was on her mind.
“You shouldn’t say please. It’s beneath you, Elijah. You’re stronger than that.”
On a softer voice, she added, “Stronger than me.”
If she’d used a knife to slice at my soul, it would have been less painful than her words. All her life, this woman had been led astray, misguided, made to believe that her entire existence was meant for one man. She’d been cast out into the woods in the dead of night. Made to run miles just to land at the doorstep of a priest who should have helped her.
And what did I do? I threw her back to the monsters who’d used her, who’d abused her, who’d stripped her of her entire identity and replaced it with everything they wanted her to be.
All because I couldn’t handle my own desires. All because I didn’t want to deal with whatever games my brother had in store for me.
Sedra shouldn’t call me the strong one, at least not the man I’d been up until this moment.
It wasn’t until I’d had it shoved in my face in the last few days that I realized I hadn’t become a priest out of some desperation to know and love God. I’d become a priest to hide from life, to seclude myself in an existence that kept me safe from the mistakes of my past, and especially a life that kept people safe from me.
If I wasn’t strong enough to control myself, who was I to believe I could save another person’s soul?
“I’m not stronger than you.”
She laughed, the sound sad and distressed. “You have the might of God at your hand, and I have nothing. Not now that you’ve abandoned me.”
Picking her up, I pushed to my feet and crossed the room to lower her into the water. She hissed as the heat met her skin, but within minutes she stopped shaking. Her head fell back against the tub and she released a sigh full of every terrible emotion. Water splashed around her, the sound soothing in the silence of the small room.
Settling down next to her, I handed her a bar of soap and a washrag. She took them from my hands, but her attempt at bathing herself was shaky at best. Sedra wasn’t with me in the room. She was still stuck out there on that deserted road.
“Why did you walk away from the compound?” I asked. “I told you to stay there, that they’d let you in.”
Lifting her foot out of the water, she jut her chin at a large cut on her big toe. “They shot at me. If I stayed there, they would have killed me.”
Her head twisted to the right until her green eyes locked with mine. “But you already know that, don’t you? It’s why you made me wear pants. So the rocks and birdshot wouldn’t cut my skin when it sprayed up.”
My head shook in denial. “No, Eve. That’s not why I gave you the pants.”
A tear slipped from her eye, her lips pulling tightly together as she struggled not to cry. “So, all of this wasn’t part of your test? Part of my punishment for having run?”
“This isn’t punishment, Eve.”
There was no excuse for me continuing the charade that I was Elijah, but I feared telling her that this wasn't a game - at least on my part - would only upset her more.
When it came to Eve, there was only one reality. There was the cult she called her family, and there was Elijah. Her existence was intended for him only. She became Eve on the night he warped her mind and showed her the pleasure that comes from pain.
There wasn't a world outside the walls of the compound. There was nothing in this life for her but the man she believed she'd married.
To her, I was that man, and there was nothing I could say or do to prove otherwise. My brother and I were identical. In appearance, in DNA, in blood and all that mattered. The only thing that told us apart was our fingerprints.
I highly doubted Eve would take what I could offer as proof, without accusing me of lying again.
She was that far gone.
"I'm sorry I left you. It was a bad decision, and everything that happened to you was my fault. I won't do that to you again."
The corner of her lip curled; shy, resolute, and so full of sorrow that her expression was a palpable pulse across my bones.
"It's my fault for running in the first place," she finally said, her eyes averted as if she couldn't look at me and admit what she believed was the truth. "And what happened on the road is my fault as well." Her eyes met mine. "You know that."
"I don't know that."
She laughed, a short burst of sound that shook her shoulders once. Water splashed in the tub at her feet, and then everything went so quiet you could hear the small drops of water slide off her chin to fall to the bath below.
"I'm full of sin, Elijah. You told me that in the cabin by the compound. You showed me how-" Her lips pulled together, her eyes blinking once before she looked away. "You showed me how bad I want it. How easy it is for me to give in. How my body craves it. That makes what happened out there tonight my fault. I am temptation. It's why we keep our eyes down. It's why the only man I'm willing to truly look at is you."
Her eyes lifted, the green dull with uncertainty. "I didn't want that man tonight. He was disgusting and evil and not you, but-"
It drove me to the edge of madness each time her voice trailed off. Somewhere inside that head of hers, there was Sedra, the girl she'd been before my brother groomed her. Before he'd twisted her thoughts so thoroughly that she couldn't see beyond what he'd taught her.
I knew members of cults, and other individuals who had been brainwashed or deceived for years, needed help beyond what I could provide Sedra. I knew they needed therapy and rehabilitation, and that sometimes it took years for them to finally open their eyes and see the truth staring them directly in the face. I also knew that forcing that help on them was practically impossible, especially if they were adults and weren't in obvious danger.
As far as I knew, Jericho hadn't done anything that was a verifiable crime. And if I knew my twin well enough, he would have covered his tracks if he had.
Taking Sedra some place for the help she needed would be the same as what I did tonight. It would be handing her back over to her manipulator because she would always return to him and there was nobody who could stop her.
Even now, even after being abandoned on the side of the road and almost raped as a result of it, she still looked at me like I was her world. She looked at me exactly as she would look at Jericho.
To her, my brother and I were one in the same. He wanted her to believe I was him. It's why he had ordered she not be allowed back in the compound and refused to show his face next to mine. But what I didn't know was whether the men who came to the gate were in on Jericho's schemes, or if they also believed I was him.
The worst of the problem, for me at least, wasn't the game being played against Sedra, it was the fact that I hated the way she looked at me, only because there was a part of me that wanted to take full advantage.
There was still darkness inside me that not even God's light had been able to touch.
"But," I prodded softly in an effort to continue pulling out the thoughts she kept secret, if for nothing more than to piece together the puzzle and find a way to break her of Jericho's hold, to find a way to rid myself of the situation before I was ensnared in temptation's web to become a fallen man.
"I need to confess," she breathed out, the words barely loud enough to cross the little distance between us.
Remaining silent, I thought she'd speak her confession once she'd found the strength to do so. Instead, she looked to me for help.
"What do you need to confess?"
"Pain," she whispered. "Just like in the cabin. Just like what you taught me."
A tremor coursed across my bones, my skin prickling with warning. I couldn't be the person who gave her that pain, only because I worried I would lose control.
"Haven't you had enough pain tonight?"
Tears burst from her eyes, a sound escaping her chest that was so full of mourning it hurt just to hear it.
"Please. I need the pain that purifies when I speak my confession. It's the only way to purge the sin."
Damn it, Jericho. You son of a bitch.
The more I was learning of what he'd taught Sedra, the more I wanted to end him simply to wipe his type of insanity from existence.
"That's not how confession works, Eve."
"I need it," she whispered between clenched teeth. "Please, Elijah, please don't make me carry this. I'm not strong enough, I'm not-"
She panicked as she spoke, her anxiety building until water was splashing out of the tub, her body moving in my direction to grab on to me while I moved back. When her hand landed on my arm, her fingers gripped down, devastation building behind her eyes until I thought she'd break under the pressure.
"I need this," she breathed out, her tears a steady stream from eyes swollen and red. "I can't get rid of this myself."
There was no doubt she truly needed what she asked for. Instinct told me to get away from her as quickly as possible, but compassion told me to give her what she thought she needed.
It wasn't entirely without reason that she believed pain would purify her of the emotions teeming inside her. For many - even those who haven't been warped by a manipulator like Jericho - physical pain was their only escape from the storm of emotional pain inside. Some people become self-harmers. They cut themselves or seek solace in substances that destroy their minds and bodies. Some seek the release through violence against others. And some seek release through sex. The physical pain, the exertion of their body, is a means to an end, a valve through which they can relieve the pressure threatening them on the inside.
Jericho had found Sedra's means of relief, and he'd apparently twisted it and groomed it, until it was the only means for her to cope and survive.
Had I not felt so guilty for what happened to her on the road, I may have been strong enough to deny her what she thought she needed, but there was a small voice inside me that told me the emotional pain she suffered now was entirely my fault.
I owed this to her.
Didn't I?
"Okay, Eve. I'll help you."
Her body relaxed, a breath of pure relief flowing over her parted lips that drew my eye. So full, those lips were the gateway to my brand of sin, the rounded, soft perfection that reminded me of the man I'd once been - of the woman who had been my undoing.
My eyes closed as I threw up a silent prayer, as I begged and pleaded for the strength only God could give me to remain true to the vows I'd made to him in atonement for my crimes.
"Let's get you out of the bath," I said, opening my eyes to find her looking at me in a way that no woman had looked at me since Cassandra.
A shiver coursed through my body, a thread of darkness coming alive to weave itself around my self-control.
Happy to stand up from the side of the tub and move away from her into the bedroom, I pulled a towel from the closet, shut the door, and pressed my forehead against the cool surface of the wood.
Could I do this without losing myself to it? Was I strong enough to find a way to help her that didn't drag me back down into the depths of ultimate sin?
I didn't know, and that lack of knowing is what terrified me the most.
By the time I forced myself back into the bathroom, Eve was standing up in the water, the drops slipping over her naked body begging to be chased by my tongue. But remembering what I'd seen done to her tonight, remembering the way that beast of a human being had hurt her, was enough to snap me out of the desire I didn't want to admit or face.
I needed to confess, but given everything that kept happening, I didn't think God was listening. Either that or this wasn’t Eve’s test of faith. It was mine.
Approaching her, I wrapped the towel around her and pulled her from the tub. After helping her dry off completely, I was filled with dread for what was about to occur. I didn't speak because I couldn't trust my voice not to crack under the strain of my internal battle, so I just motioned with my hand for her to walk into my bedroom.
So perfectly obedient, she dutifully crossed into the next room, planted herself against the wall and waited for me to punish her for whatever it was she felt she did wrong.
My jaw ached from how hard I clenched my teeth, but I walked over to her regardless. I felt my body responding to temptation. That part of me filling and lengthening until my pants were uncomfortable and I wanted them off. The collar of my shirt was too tight, the pressure only relieved when I pulled the top two buttons loose.
Sedra's eyes immediately tracked down to the small amount of skin those open buttons revealed. But it wasn't the direction of her gaze that killed me, it was the absolute need I saw behind it.
Taking a steadying breath, I reached out to take her wrists in my hands, pull them above her head, and hold them to the wall. Her body quivered, forcing a pang of bitter torment through mine. I stepped forward and pressed myself to her. Moving so that her wrists were trapped beneath only one of my hands, I trailed my fingertips down her arm, along her side, finally placing it on her hip as my forehead pressed to hers.
"What is your confession, child?"
My question came out breathless, revealing the pain she was causing me.
The warmth of her breath fanned over my face, my eyes closing against a sensation I hadn’t felt since the day I promised God I would never give in to my desires again.
“I asked for it,” she whispered. “For that man to scare me. For him to want me.”
If Sedra had been a sex addict, or some other person who just needed the act regardless of who they committed it with, I would have worried that I’d beaten down an innocent man. But I knew that couldn’t be possible. Sedra was fully devoted to only one man.
Her eyes only saw Elijah, even when it was me staring back at her.
I despised how much that blatant truth hurt.
Whereas I was trapped in her web without her even realizing it, she would never see me.