Fear the Wicked (Illusions Series Book 2)(14)

My lips tipped up to think that this man believed giving me information about my father would ease me into a sense of trust. That's what priests do: open you up and calm you down so you can dump out all your sin for their naked eyes to inspect. Too bad for Timothy my father was one of the worst demons of all. Nothing about him would soothe me into trusting this conversation.

"Our Lady of Serenity. Not that it matters. And I didn't come to talk about my father."

"Maybe you should," he answered, pinning me with his brown gaze, the flecks of gold in his stare highlighted by flickering candles. "You never returned to see him before he died. Didn't even bother showing up for his funeral. You or your brother."

This is not how I envisioned our conversation going. I was losing control - wondering if I'd ever had it in the first place. "I'm came to talk about Jericho."

His expression softened, his eyes glimmering with knowledge. "Ah. Well, then I was right to say we should discuss your father. It was through him that I learned of Jericho's failings."

Failings? I scoured my thoughts for what little information Jericho had told me during the days he'd played and won his game. There was no failing during our small battle and I highly doubted he'd failed against my father before running out of town. Curiosity sat up to slap me across the face and I found myself asking a question that should have been left alone.

"What did my father tell you?"

"Too much, I'm afraid." He looked away, his round face sharpening as he mulled over what to say. I could see the indecision popping out in the tic of his jaw, the furrow of his brow. "You're a priest-"

"Was a priest," I corrected before he could finish whatever thought he wanted to voice.

"Why did you leave the Church again, Jacob?" his voice softened to a whisper, "After finding your way back?"

His question smacked me across the face. What was I supposed to tell him? That my brother was a cult leader? That I'd killed a woman while fucking her in the ass? That I'd berated a grieving father by telling him his daughter was a whore? There were too many things to say, so I chose a blanket statement to cover them all. "I figured out that no matter how hard I prayed, God wasn't listening."

His eyes darted to mine, pinning me in a gaze that was as intense as it was angry. “You know better than that.”

“Do I?” It was a bad idea coming to this parish, returning to a place where they would berate me as thoroughly as my father had. He had been the reason for my departure as a young adult, and this priest was reminding me of the hours I’d spent repenting for every sin my father believed I’d committed. I wouldn’t regret the dark side of me, wouldn’t spend the next twenty years doubting whether I could be redeemed. There was nothing left to redeem, nothing left to do but give in to the creature God had created in His image – if any of that could be believed.

“You attended seminary. You grew up under the watchful eyes of God, and now you sit here questioning Him. A man like you should know better.”

Laughing, I settled back against the pew, my eyes scanning the altar and pulpit in front of us. So much glitter and gold infected this place, the cost must have been astronomical. How many starving people could be fed if these treasures were given to God’s creatures rather than being hoarded by the very place that should have been an example of God’s love for His people?

If I’d been ordained and assigned to a parish such as this one, I would have left the service within the first year. Something didn’t sit right with telling a person to pray for God’s assistance when that very assistance could be given by the Church. How many had been denied the help they needed? How many had sat in prayer, starving while they spoke to a being that cared little to help?

“I’m not here to discuss God, Timothy. I’m here for answers regarding Jericho.” My voice was rough was anger, gritty with the truth I carried inside. The organized religion to which I’d once been devoted was nothing more than a farce – a lie told to appease the masses while their livelihoods were sacrificed to men using God as a power play and tool of building their own wealth.

It wasn’t the Faith I condemned, it was what had been done with it when left in the hands of man.

Timothy settled back, taking the same relaxed posture as me. Neither of us looked at each other, our eyes trained to the symbolism arranged before us in the candles and stained glass, the relics and glimmering gold.

“Your father,” he stated, his voice careful, hesitant, “he told me that between the two of you, Jericho had always been the most faithful. Often he described a set of twins standing on opposite sides – one light, one dark. He was the hardest on you, was he not?”

A grunt escaped me, my lips curling with disgust to remember just how hard my father had been on me. Although, it wasn’t me alone. Often, though, I was blamed for the sins committed by Jericho. Our father assumed it was by my influence that Jericho partook in any act considered unclean or foolish. That may have been true when we were young, but by the time we were teenagers, Jericho was just as culpable as me.

“What do you know of my father?”

The parish priest when I lived in this town was an older man with silver hair. Father John Clarke was short of stature and had one foot in the grave the entire time I attended the parish. I’d always hated confessing to him because I could never tell whether he understood the issues and problems faced by youth. He was too old – too far on the side of the past that the present I experienced in the Church was lost to him.