Fear the Wicked (Illusions Series Book 2)(69)

Eve’s scream tore through the sanctuary ripping at the silence, the volume of her cry like music to my ears as I stared up at that symbol to witness it brought to life.

Oh, yes, those Romans were masters of inflicting the worst of pain.

So absorbed by the sight of a man nailed to a cross, his chest shredded and bruised, his blood still dripping slowly from where he’d been attached to that thick wood, I’d failed to notice how Eve sank to her knees, her body withering at my feet as her forehead was pressed to the floor.

I was mesmerized by the image, my eyes glimmering with the same soft dance of light the candles had given the room. There he hanged in all his brilliance, suffering the same guilt, defeat and humiliation that I’d been forced to suffer for believing his lies in the first place. It didn’t matter that the poor bastard hanging wasn’t sent by Heaven itself, it meant nothing that nobody had believed him the actual Son of the Almighty, what mattered was that he represented the absolute truth about what the world was about.

Don’t believe that lies that good men exist, not in family, in politics or religion. Because, in reality, there is no such thing as a good man or father, just an interloper whispering beautiful lies while dragging you into their Hell.

There was no good in this world, only the wicked, and they were the most beautiful, the most charming, the most deceiving where they sat in their thrones of absolute power.

While staring up at a condemned man who represented everything in this world that I hated, I laughed out loud to realize that it had been me who destroyed him – that it would be me who unveiled the lie and brought His Church to the ground.

My body thrummed with excitement as I stood there staring, my eyes darting between the man slowly dying and the woman kneeling at my feet. Lifting my head so that all I could see was the dying man on his wooden cross, I pursed my lips and whistled so loudly that he could no longer ignore me.

His eyes blinked open, the life in his eyes fading until hazy, but there was still some shred of him left that would enjoy the last experience I had for him.

“Do you remember this woman on the floor in front of me? Do you remember my wife?”

He couldn’t answer back, I knew that, but still, it was fun to throw questions out. I wondered if the bastard could even see with the blood dripping down his face, the crown of nails that we manufactured since we didn’t have thorns readily available.

Eve was whimpering still, her poor little mind shocked to oblivion by the sight hanging before us. Stripped down to nothing, this man had been positioned over the cross, a white towel draped over his waist as if I gave a damn about modesty. His hair was long and he was missing the beard, but I had to ignore that slight mistake in the image.

Candlelight lit the majority of the sanctuary, but at the base of his particular cross, I’d positioned floodlights pointing up at his body to highlight every bruise, every lash mark, every cut. It was so glorious as to be holy, so implicitly wrong, but I admired my work regardless. He was the symbol of what I’d known about the men pretending to be Godly, the bastards who drag you in to their safe little webs and devour you while shredding you with sharp claws.

I grew hard just at the sight, ready and able to render my beautiful girl pure by removing this bastard’s power from her body and filling it with mine.

“Stand up, Eve. Don’t cower in the face of evil when you are strong enough to face it. This son of a bitch has no power over you. Only me. Only the one true God.”

The man’s eyes blinked, his head lulling to the side as he attempted to understand what was happening below him. I was sure he found it difficult to breathe due to the position of his body, that he was consumed by the pain of the nails hammered through his feet, and of his shoulders slowly dislocating. His weight would eventually kill him, his body sagging ever lower with each hour that passed. And here I stood, staring up at a symbol that had once held all the power, to show the world that I was stronger and smarter than their precious God.

Whimpering and sobbing, Eve attempted several times to push to her feet. Once she stood at her full height that was inches shorter than me, she faced the monstrosity I created as the symbol of the Faith she believed I belonged to, like her.

Leaning over, I pressed my mouth to her ear. “Tell me again what this monster has done to you.”

Her words tumbled over themselves without making sense. She was in too much shock to complete a simple sentence, the fear coursing through seeping out in a sticky sweat along her temple and jaw. Wrapping my hands over her shoulders I felt the way she trembled when faced with the image of a liar, rapist and thief that I created for her.

“H – He tried – tried to rape me.”

Managing to blurt out that pathetic statement, she failed to deliver the details I wanted. Leaning over, my voice was firm when I instructed her, “Tell me from the beginning, Eve, from the moment you met him to the moment I saved you from his sin.”

Still shaking like a leaf beneath my hands, she dragged in a deep breath, releasing it slowly as she attempted to look away from the condemned man where he hung from his cross. Gently pushing her face back to where she couldn’t look away from the man staring down at us as he was dying, I held it there with my palm against her cheek waiting for her to speak.

“This is wrong, Elijah. He shouldn’t be hanging there like the Savior. You shouldn’t have done this in God’s house.”

God’s house. My house. Same difference. All I knew by the words she’d spoken was that she didn’t appreciate the symbolism, didn’t understand that by hanging a criminal on that cross, I was making a statement of what I thought of her Savior.