Fear the Wicked (Illusions Series Book 2)(88)

“I love you, brother.”

“Shut up!” he screamed, bringing the hammer down one more time. The nail embedded the wood.

Blood leaked from the side of my mouth where my teeth had cut into my tongue. It dripped down my skin as quickly as the blood dripping from my feet. I was swimming in pure suffering, lost to the cruelty of a man gone mad. Even then, I wouldn’t stop trying to make him hear me.

“I love you,” I whispered, knowing full well they would be the last words to ever leave my tongue.

The words meant nothing to my twin. He brought the hammer down several more times until the nail was firmly embedded into the wood, my feet splitting apart as the bones were crushed. I couldn’t speak anymore, couldn’t think past the pain that consumed me. Realizing that I wouldn’t tell him where his wife was hidden, Jericho lost his patience.

“His hands,” he said, although, to me, the words sounded like they were coming from a deep tunnel. I felt my left wrist grabbed by the man holding me down, felt it pressed to the crossbeam. Jericho positioned the nail where he intended to drive it through, but then light flashed so brightly that it drew their attention away from me.

I existed inside that light for a moment, not understanding what it was, but believing that perhaps it was the beginning of death. My spirit soared as I felt warmth spread over me stealing the pain away and replacing it with comforting numbness. There was peace in the loss of sensation, peace that was lost as soon as I was returned to the present.

Voices shouted around me, a team of bodies moving through the room. So blinded by the pain inside me, I couldn’t make out one voice from another, didn’t understand that the compound was being raided around me.

“Jericho Hayle,” a voice called out, drawing my attention to the right. Blinking my eyes I attempted to bring the men into focus. “Put up your hands and surrender now.”

My brother looked at the men with their guns trained on his chest and head before darting his gaze to me. There was nothing left inside him, no soul that gazed out from behind his blue eyes. Even still, I wanted him to surrender, to live despite all the horrible things that had been done to him, and that he had done to others.

But his hatred was too much.

He lunged for me at that second, his mouth opening on a scream as gunshots rang through the air, the bullets striking him in the back as his body fell on top of me. I felt the bullets, too, felt them pierce my arm, my hand, my shoulder.

As my twin brother lay motionless on top of me, I fought to keep the room in focus, fought against the pull of death that dragged me from consciousness. It was too strong, that pull, the light returning with serenity and warmth beckoning for me to release the spirit.

And for the first time in my life, I decided to do what I should have done all along:

Rather than walking away from my brother and failing him, I put my own life aside to join him.





EPILOGUE


SEDRA



“Are you sure you can do this, Sedra? It’s only been a few weeks since you left the hospital. You should take some time before –“

Placing a hand over my older brother’s mouth, I smiled. Just as when we were kids, he still tried to protect me, still attempted to shelter me from the world that only wanted to devour me whole. But I was done being the helpless victim. Done being the scared little girl who couldn’t walk out on her own to find the path that life had always intended for her.

I was a woman now, one who wasn’t confused, wasn’t scared and wasn’t weak like Elijah had made me. I was healed finally, all because of a man who had pulled me from the clutches of evil and delivered me into the arms of safety.

“I’m sure about this, Joshua. It’s what mom and dad would have wanted if they weren’t killed at the compound. They would have been standing right beside me if they had been given the chance to learn the truth about the man they’d followed blindly. I need to do this. If not for me, than for others like me.”

It has been a year since I was taken from the parish by my brother, a year since I was rescued by a man who had failed in his vows as a priest and had fallen for the temptation that Elijah had molded me to become. After being dragged from the small hunting cabin on the final day I saw Jacob Hayle, I was taken to a hospital because I’d refused to believe that I’d been lied to. The first nights had been terrible and reminded me of Elijah’s anger. They’d drugged me and strapped me to my bed, restrained me so that I would stop fighting against them. I remember believing that the demons had finally found me again, believing that my brother had forced me from the light into which my husband had led me.

But as the weeks wore on and I was force fed and given other medications so that my body would heal, eventually I succumbed to the treatment and began the therapy I’d so desperately needed to overcome the lies that had been forced inside my head.

Day after day, I fought against the truth that Elijah had lied to me, but now, sitting here after being discharged from the hospital and proclaimed a healthy woman, I found it difficult to look back and believe that I had so easily been misled.

Joshua had been the only one to visit me in the hospital, and it wasn’t until he’d heard from the doctors that I was healing that he finally admitted to me what had happened to not only our family, but to the priest that had sacrificed himself in order to save me.

He told me about the fire that destroyed the compound, about the people who were trapped inside. He told me about the arrest of the town sheriff and the townspeople who had taken part in Elijah’s cruelty. He explained that in the wake of Elijah’s games, the news had spread like fire across the United States, the Church having to answer for all the evil committed by a mad man in its name.