Fear the Wicked (Illusions Series Book 2)(74)

Slowly, the boy raised the knife that looked far too large for his small hand, and with a sweeping motion that was clumsy at best, he brought the blade down to run it over Molly’s body. It wasn’t enough pressure to kill her, just enough to slice the skin, and Molly’s mouth opened as that blade ran over her body, the scream tearing from her throat filling the entire parish.

After a few seconds, Jericho took the knife from Jeremiah and whispered something in his ear. The boy smiled up at him before turning back to the parishioners with pride shining behind his eyes. Everybody clapped and began praying again while Jeremiah returned to his seat. Jericho took a cloth to clean the blood from Molly’s wound and also to clean the blade.

“This is just the beginning of her purging of the sin in her body. As many of you know, it will take a week at least to rid her of all of it. She’s made the first necessary steps by stepping up and confessing the evil thoughts in her head. She’s exposed herself to our scrutiny and begged for our forgiveness as a body of the faithful so that she may again be right with the Almighty. After today, I’ll take her to the compound to continue her path to the light. But I want to thank you all for your strong faith and the help you are giving me in freeing this town from the evil that has plagued us for far too long.”

People applauded his words and began shuffling around to get up from their pews. I watched and identified many of the townspeople, but also recognized the uniforms worn by Jericho’s cult family. Knowing I had to leave before anybody walked outside and saw me, I began to turn around when one particular face caught my attention.

It was the face of an angel.

The face of a woman who couldn’t possibly be standing among the living.

And as shock burst inside me, weakening my knees as recognition took hold, I understood for the first time the game that had been played against me.

Anger rushed in to replace the shock, my hand reaching for my gun only because the feel of the cold metal against my fingers comforted me.

There, standing among the parishioners and members of Jericho’s cult, was a truth that shouldn’t have been possible.

My heart constricted to the point where it felt like it wasn’t beating, my breath held in my lungs until they burned and forced the air out. My head swam and reality shifted again when my mind finally caught up to what my eyes were seeing and I recognized Eve was still alive.





JOSHUA


I was so tired of that arrogant prick who thought what he was doing was God’s way. For so many years, he’d led the family to believe that he was holy. I hate to admit that even I’d been fooled by his smooth, proud voice and promises of salvation at Heaven’s gates. My parents still believed it, as did the rest of the family, but I wouldn’t be fooled any longer.

How he’d convinced us all of his power was simple enough, only because he kept us weak, kept us blind and kept us separate from the world around us. He drove fear into the hearts of every person who lived in that compound and had convinced them all that the only way to God was through him. And even during all the small excursions into town that he’d allowed, he wouldn’t allow us to stray far, wouldn’t allow us to pick up a book or watch a television claiming that all the knowledge thrown out in the world around us was placed there by the Devil to deceive us.

I’d gone against his rules on the day I swiped a bible from a vendor’s table at the market. Elijah had been too focused on Eve to notice what I’d done. After stuffing the book into the bag I carried, I’d smiled and pretended like business was the same as usual. We were there to pick up a few items we couldn’t produce on our own and within an hour we were walking back to the compound.

Always with the walking regardless of how exhausted we all were. It seemed like we were starving more than we were fed, but he’d told us to ignore the way our stomachs grumbled.

It’s the demons making you believe God hasn’t provided, he’d claimed. But if you place your faith in the power of the Almighty, you will see the truth of their deceptions.

Lies, lies and more lies, yet the family sucked them up and truly believed that everything Elijah did was for their own good. I was tired of the lies, tired of being tired and hungry, tired of wearing the same thing day in and day out while I sweated to work the gardens and train the dogs that were intentionally kept starving just like us so that they were bloodthirsty.

I wasn’t an avid reader, I’d only been taught how to read until my parents had dragged me to the compound, so it took me a long time to work my way through the pages of the Bible I’d stolen. Elijah would have claimed my desire to read was prideful, and maybe it was. I noticed that he was the only one who knew what the book said, and I figured that’s what made him so holy and powerful. I wanted to be as loved by God as him, and I’d wanted some of that power for myself. But after struggling at night when nobody was looking, reading against the glow of candlelight, I realized that many of the lessons Elijah was teaching were just plain wrong.

God loved every human equally, we were all his children on this Earth and not one person was placed above the other when it came to his love for us. The savior wasn’t the man leading us to his version of the light, it was the one who died on the cross for all our sins, promising that if we would just love each other as much as him, we too could receive God’s favor.

So, why was it that Elijah was teaching us to judge every person who wasn’t like us? Why was he filling us with so much hate? And why did he think it was right to use the words written in the Good Lord’s book to commit evil in God’s name?