Chapter 22

ChapterTwenty-Two

EDEN

“Please don’t touch me,” I whisper as Iblis bends to lift me from the ground.

He holds his hands in the air, but his eyes are wounded. I don’t mean to hurt him, but I need space, and these three men crowd my mind, clutter my thoughts and confuse me.

I fumble and fall back when I try to get up.

Iblis is right there with his arm around my waist, steadying me. “Sorry. Didn’t want you to fall.”

Iblis fists his hands in his pockets and looks at the ground. I can see how hard it is for him not to throw me over his shoulders like a caveman and carry me to his cave.

We walk silently through the cemetery, unsure what to say or do. He glances at me at the church’s steps and offers a small smile before opening the door and gesturing for me to walk in before him.

“And they say chivalry is dead,” I joke to ease the situation we’ve found ourselves in.

“You hungry?”

“I could eat.”

He timidly offers his hand, and I take it. I don’t want him to close off because I’m going to bombard him with questions, and I’d like him to feel comfortable enough to answer.

“You ever heard the song ‘One of These Things Doesn’t Belong Here?’” I ask as I take in the state-of-the-art kitchen in the decrepit church.

Iblis chuckles. “Yes.”

“You obviously have money. Why not get a big property or penthouse instead of living in a decrepit church?”

“It’s not our house,” Iblis says as he pulls various vegetables and ground beef from the fridge. “It’s a safe house. Which reminds me, we need a new location if the Cinders know about it. We own about one hundred acres of woods.” He turns to me, rubbing the back of his neck. “As you can see, the trees provide the perfect venue for all our, um, extra-curricular activities.”

“Murder and mischief. But why a church? You could have gotten that with a plain old cabin.”

“Religion is embedded in the three of us. It’s a tug of war. We were forged through religion. It molded us in ways that changed our hard wiring. I don’t think we know how to function without it.”

His words shock me. He’s talking about religion as if it’s a good thing, but everything I’ve seen from them appears to be a brutal, blasphemous display of how dangerous and delusional it all is. “You express your love of God oddly.”

“It’s not love. It’s fear,” he whispers as he chops up carrots, celery, and onions before adding them to the butter.

It’s not love, it’s fear. His words remind me of a passage from the Bible.

If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed than with two hands to go to hell.

Hell, the perfect motivator to get someone to do as you wish. Manipulation goes hand in hand with the cruelest form of coercion. A notion constructed not out of love but fear. A concept used to keep members of a religion in line and maintain a firm grip on their minds to limit free thinking and a search for truth.

The fear of eternal damnation forces humanity to be a slave on Earth.

“They say the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. I say his greatest trick was showing you the true face of God. Famine, plagues, disease, and sacrifices to prove devotion. All acts of God. Wouldn’t shock me if the devil was a PR stunt, so people would shout, ‘Oh, look! We have to be team God cause this other guy is much worse.’”

Iblis hunches over the sink, head down, knuckles white from gripping the counter. The muscles in his back are taut, and his chest rises and falls with each shallow breath. Nervous anxiety at the idea of offending him floods my every thought. I’m not sure what to do or what to say because the truth is there’s no taking back my words.

I think I’m about to go mad from the silence when he finally speaks. “How did you stop breaking yourself by begging for his forgiveness?”

His words, mixed with the sorrow of his voice, cut me to the bone. “If God only knows, he’s already chosen your path. Set it in stone. You can only play the hand he gives you, and if he does you dirty, it’s on him. God, with all his power, could end hunger, pain, corruption, war, and greed. But he doesn’t because there is no God. If God were this benevolent, powerful entity, he wouldn’t have gotten a sixteen-year-old girl raped so badly that she can never have the thing she’s always wanted—a family.”

“You have a family,” Iblis whispers so softly that I’m unsure I heard him right. “We’re your family now.”

“Why do you let the twins hurt you?” I ask, desperate to change the subject. “When we were kids, they were so sweet, kind, and generous. How they treat you is nothing like the boys I once knew.”

“We were in a fucked-up situation. I did some shit I can never take back. The violence, humiliation, and harm are for me more than them. I’ll never forgive myself for who I was and what I did. I’ve loved them since I was ten, but I traded them for the poison I injected in my veins.”

I shrug as I take in the aromatic pasta dish Iblis places before me. “You were sick, and now you’re better.”

“Doesn’t change what I did to them.”

“Iblis, you were a child. A child who was drugged to be controlled. At some point, you need to forgive yourself. If you want to get off by being dominated in bed, that’s great. I mean, I think it’s pretty hot. But you have to drop the weight you’re holding with your heart before it takes you under and drowns you. Blessed are those who let go of their past and embrace the people they’ve fought to become. If we allow our past to determine our choices now or in the future, we never stop being victims, and that’s not what we are. We’ve all seen horrific things, been party to them, harmed by them, but we made it through. We survived.”

I take a bite of pasta. “Holy shit. This is great. Like good good. Where did you learn to make sauce like this?”

“The cooking network. When I was detoxing, I replaced dope with cooking and lollipops.”

“Lollipops?”

“Yes, a lot of addicts get hooked on sugar.”

“Sugar, huh?”

Iblis smiles as he gets up and heads over to the counter, opening a drawer and presenting me with a Chupa Chup lollipop. “Yup, lollipops.” He unwraps the sweet and pops it in his mouth. The contrast between the black mask and the children’s treat is startling.

He leans over as he takes the sweet out of his mouth and rubs it against my lips like lipstick before pressing his mouth to mine. The kiss is sweet, chaste even. “When I kiss you, I’m okay with never entering heaven because I’ve tasted paradise on your lips.”

“What are we going to do, Iblis? All four of us are so broken.”

“Are we broken, Eden, or are we bent?”

“Is there a difference?”

“When you’re broken, there’s hope. So you tell me, Eden. Do the four of us have hope?”

“As long as you’re breathing, there’s always hope.”