I gently nudged her shoulder with my boot, watching in growing rage as she flipped to her back easily, without resistance, like there was nothing left in her to fight. Blood stained the front of her white dress, her skin covered in goosebumps where it was left bare. Her bottom lip was split, the skin surrounding it bruised. With her eyes closed, she looked like a battered angel. Slinging my rifle over my shoulder, I knelt at her side and reached out a hand to touch her cheek, feeling satisfied when her eyelashes fluttered slightly.
She was alive.
She whimpered, moving her arm tighter to her chest in her slumber, and it was in that moment that I saw the deep purple fingerprints on her skin. The odd angle of her wrist. I shoved my flashlight into my pocket, then, standing once again, I leaned over and pulled her into my arms as gently as I could. She gave another whimper, tucking her face tighter into my shoulder as she let out a ragged breath.
“Shhh,” I soothed, taking extra care not to trip on my journey home. I couldn’t afford to fall with her in my arms. “You’re safe now.”
I didn’t even know her name, but I already knew I’d never let anything hurt her again.
Four
Deliverance
I woke to a throbbing in my head and an ache all over, but the surface I lay on was soft and warm. Unfamiliarly so. I remembered my wrist injury only after trying to push to a sitting position with it. Crying out, I whimpered as I cradled it in my good hand. The moment my eyes landed on the water bottle sitting on the nightstand, I snatched it up and swallowed the liquid greedily.
“You’re awake,” a deep voice murmured from the doorway to the room. I sat up quickly, using my left arm, and clutched the blankets to my chest. “We should get you cleaned up and fed.” The gruff and rugged tenor of his voice suited him. Over six feet of tall, bulky muscle wrapped in a tee-shirt and athletic shorts. He seemed enormous compared to the slighter men of the compound; more masculine, he made them look like boys.
With his hazel eyes intense on me, even from across the room, I flinched back. Pressing into the wooden headboard, I stared at him with a trembling lip. “I won’t hurt you, Baby,” he tried to assure me, but my attention darted around the room. The clearly masculine bedroom with his clothes exploding from the dresser and an overflowing laundry basket in the corner.
“Where am I?” I asked, eyeing him warily as he took a step toward me.
“My home,” he returned, approaching and sitting at the foot of the bed, keeping some distance for my comfort. There was no malice in his eyes or harshness to his features. I’d seen true evil on my husband’s face before he struck, for that fleeting moment before fear blinded me. “I found you unconscious in the woods and brought you back here.”
Reality crashed in and I glanced around for a clock, but there was none in the room. “I have to go.” Throwing the blankets off me, I stood on wobbly feet that stung with blisters and cuts from my moonlit run through the woods. Glancing down, it comforted me to see that my feet were still caked in mud. That my dress was torn and filthy, and the same one I’d fled the compound in.
“No,” he said simply, standing and crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m not about to let you run through the woods. Especially not in your condition. We’re going to get you cleaned up, in fresh clothes, and then you’re going to tell me all about your troubles while I make you some lunch.”
“Lunch?” I asked, casting a glance at the windows. It was quite sunny.
He tilted his head curiously. “You slept damn near two days. You woke up once enough to use the bathroom, but not enough to remember.”
My voice came out as a whimper, and I glanced back at the door. “No,” I gasped. How long could I expect to evade Jonathan and the Disciples when I’d lost my head start?
“You’re safe here,” he reiterated, seeming to follow the path of my thoughts.
“They’ll find me. I didn’t make it far enough,” I whispered. “I don’t want to go back.”
“And I repeat, you’re safe here. Nobody is going to hurt you on my watch.” He took a step to the side, positioning himself more directly between me and the door and blocking my only escape.
I shook my head. “I can’t ask you to—”
“You didn’t. I’m telling you I will protect you. I do not take kindly to hurt women running themselves dead tired through these woods. Teaching whoever did this a lesson will be a pleasure.” He paused, studying me when I didn’t make another move for the door. “Why don’t we start with your name?”
I hesitated. Jonathan hammered it into our heads that outsiders hated the Disciples. That they didn’t understand our purpose and our commitment to God. Would he throw me out when he knew the truth?
Despite my desire to run only moments before, something about having him look at me differently didn’t sit well with me. “Deliverance,” I mumbled, watching his eyes go round with shock.
“You from that religious compound?” he whispered, his eyes narrowing on where I picked flakes of dirt off the fingers of my injured hand. Nodding back at him, I watched him through my lashes, waiting for his inevitable judgement. Jonathan’s purpose had never been mine. My parent’s beliefs had never been mine, but I’d been condemned to the life they chose for me, regardless.
A life in the world I knew existed outside our convent, compound, I guess, in the clearing in the woods, was impossible for me. I had no support network. No one to help me.
I couldn’t even read.
“Right. My name is Anderson. You mind if I call you Del?” he asked, making my head snap up to look at him fully.
I shook my head. A nickname meant he wouldn’t kick me out just yet.
Didn’t it?
“Bathroom is through that door. I’d leave you to it, but I highly suspect you’re gonna need help again. Your wrist is fractured. I had a friend bring a splint by, and we’ll get you set with that as soon as you get out of the shower."
He stepped into the room he’d said was the bathroom, running the water in the massive claw-foot tub. I watched through the open doorway, apprehension locking my feet to the spot. I couldn’t force them to move, couldn’t step into the bathroom with him.
Somehow, some way, I thought it might break me more if he hurt me the way Jonathan had tried to. To escape the clutches of one man only to run straight to another who would be cruel.
What was the point?
“I can handle it myself,” I objected, keeping my voice kind. I’d never refused an order when they were given, never tried to defy my elders, and there was no question that he was older than me. Not nearly as old as Jonathan, but the faintest traces of wrinkles crinkled at the corners of his eyes when he smiled at me, in a way an eighteen-year-old boy’s did not.
When I still didn’t move, he crossed his arms over his chest and that smile faded into a smirk. “Is that so?”
I nodded hesitantly, finally making my way awkwardly into the bathroom. I kept my distance from him, clinging to the opposite wall of the small room. While the bedroom and bathroom weren’t overly large, they were fitted with quality fixtures the likes of which I’d never seen. The compound had whatever we could get for free or cheap. His home was something he’d clearly put love into. Or maybe his wife had.
The thought bothered me more than it should.
“Let’s see you get that dress off then,” he challenged, holding his ground and watching me where I eyed the shower head.
“Could I have some privacy?” I asked, looking at the floor.
I drew in a ragged breath when he closed the distance between us. His fingers touched the sensitive skin underneath my chin, tipping my face until our eyes met. I couldn’t breathe under the intensity of that piercing stare, but as his chest hovered only a breath from mine, I realized it never came for him either. His lungs never filled or expelled the air in him, as the moment hovered between us like something tangible was happening.
“Baby, there ain’t no point to me leaving. We both know you got no shot of getti
ng that dress off without my help.” I glanced down at it, eying the torn hem with distaste. I’d have to bend in half just to reach the bottom, and the pain ripping through my torso made me wince at just the thought. “I promise I won’t touch you in any way I don’t absolutely need to, but let me help you.” His voice was soft, and with a quiet sob I nodded as tears pool in my eyes. “Shh,” he soothed, bunching the dress up my thighs and nudging me to lift my arms.
I swallowed and did, letting him carefully help me get my bad arm out of the fabric before he pulled it over my head. Wrapping my arms around my nude chest, I flushed all the way to my forehead. He kindly averted his eyes, checking the water temperature before he turned back to me. With a reassuring deep breath, he glanced down my body to where my underwear covered the most intimate part of me. His eyes caught on the blood encrusting the top of my thigh and the mark that could barely be seen beneath it. His body stilled in place with an eerie tension. I stood quietly, trying to make myself small and averting my gaze when his eyes blazed into mine. His jaw tensed as though he was biting something, and my eyes went all the way to his feet in submission.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Don’t you dare, Baby.” His voice was soft, though laced with an edge of rage. His hands cupped my cheeks and startled me, drawing my gaze up to his. “I won’t ever hurt you. I promise you that, but whoever did that to you? I’ll kill him with my bare hands.”
My fingers drifted down to touch the surface of my thigh, to the marks carved into my skin in the shape of a cross. I sniffled back my tears when I felt the crunch of clotted blood. “A mark for every disobedience,” I whispered, thinking back to the callous words my husband spoke to me when I didn’t want to fulfill my wifely duty on our wedding night. The vulgar words he’d spoken, the transformation in the man my parents followed happened as soon as we were safely closed inside the privacy of his home.
I didn’t think most of the Disciples knew that the Devil lurked inside their leader, but my parents? I didn’t know how my father could not know. Not with how long he’d been friends with Jonathan.
With his eyes still on the distinctive mark, he growled. “Is that one of their rules in the cult?”
I tilted my head in confusion, staring at him despite my discomfort with my nudity. He never looked away from my eyes as he waited for me to answer. “Cult?” I asked.
He sank his straight white teeth into his tense bottom lip, seeming to consider his words. “That’s what most people call that community. A cult is a group who have extreme religious beliefs that are strange to the rest of us. They usually follow a man. His word is law.”
“God’s word is law,” I corrected automatically. “Jonathan is just his messenger.” There was no judgement in Anderson’s eyes as I thought over the words and the way they’d come so naturally. “I don’t believe that,” I admitted out loud, the first time I’d ever dared to voice my true thoughts. Jonathan was nothing but a man who took advantage of people who needed something to believe in so desperately that they clung to the illusion of faith he painted.
Sacrificing their daughters to his Tenets. Laboring while he enjoyed luxuries the rest of us could never dream to have.
“That’s a good start.” Anderson smiled, his fingers touching the edge of my underwear where they clung to my hips. He knelt at my feet, slowly and carefully peeling them down my legs. He took special care over the cross on my thigh, making sure not to let the fabric touch it. When he stood, he sighed and helped me step into the clawfoot tub. I let the hot water run over me, enjoyed the way it seared my skin and cleansed me of all the filth from my run through the woods. Anderson handed me a soapy cloth, and I used my good arm to scrub my skin clean. “I have to ask, even though I think I’ll hate the answer. Did he rape you, Del?” I froze, glancing back over my shoulder at him.
The fact that I didn’t understand one of his words, that it seemed like another language but wasn’t, only highlighted just how isolated we were in our community. Education he didn’t approve of didn’t exist. “What is rape?”
He swallowed, clenching his fists at his side. “When a man forces himself on you. Has sex with you without your permission.”
I studied those rage-filled hazel eyes, somehow knowing that the only answer I could give would change everything. “He’s my husband,” I admitted in a whisper. “My body is his to do with as he pleases.”
“Your body is yours and yours alone,” Anderson growled, making me flinch back. “Nobody has the right to touch you without your permission.”
I nodded my head, thinking the world outside the Children of Awe was far more different than I could have expected. “He didn’t rape me. I’m still intact.”
He stilled at my side, his mouth opening and closing briefly before he decided what to say. “But you said he is your husband?”
“We were married the day I ran. I couldn’t go through with it. I didn’t want him to touch me. He was furious, and he hit me.” I touched my lip, feeling the scab where the flesh had split under the ring he always wore. “When I didn’t concede immediately, he grabbed me and then marked me for the disobedience. I think he would have taken me to our marriage bed, but one of his other wives stepped in. She distracted him and told me to run away and never look back,” I whispered, dropping my eyes to the floor in shame. “I left her.”
“We’ll help her. I’ll send someone to help any who want to leave. I promise, Baby.” He took the cloth from me when I finally finished scrubbing my body, tossing it into the sink on the other side of the room. Pulling the shower head off the hook, he encouraged me to tip my head back and used it to thoroughly wet my hair. The pressure felt like a heavenly massage, and for the first time I understood a bit of the pleasure my father must have felt when my mother rubbed his shoulders after he got home at night.
After he washed and rinsed my hair, I almost mourned the loss when he turned the water off, but the bliss of a soft towel wrapping around my body was enough to distract me from it. He disappeared into the bedroom, returning with a pair of underwear on top of a folded dress in a soft, golden fabric with little white flowers all over it. I reached out to touch the fabric slowly, the colors and pattern so striking compared to the bland whites I’d worn all my life.
“You like it?” he asked, and I turned my eyes up with a flush to my cheeks.
“It’s beautiful.”
“My buddy Coleman had a friend leave it at his place once. She won’t miss it. We’ll go into town to get you some new clothes once you’ve rested up.” I resisted the urge to tell him I needed to get into town today. The conversation could wait until I wasn’t naked. When I could just walk out the door when he wasn’t paying attention.
A goodbye with him would hurt. Already, somehow, I knew leaving him would hurt more than leaving my entire community behind.
It was one more reason I needed to do it quickly. I couldn’t bring my problems down on him. He helped me into the underwear and slipped the dress over my head, the fabric settling on my shoulders with only thin straps and stopping mid-thigh. I tugged at the lack of length, feeling inappropriate. I wore more fabric to sleep.
He turned, tugging open a drawer of the sink vanity and pulling out a tube of something. “Let me see that cut,” he said, kneeling in front of me once again. With a nervous swallow, I lifted the dress slowly until the mark stood out like a beacon. Having been scrubbed clean, the angry red mark oozed blood slowly. Anderson dabbed it away with a new washcloth, applying the white cream from the tube to the wound. The touch of his rough fingers should have been a reminder of the pain, but instead an odd heat buzzed from my leg to my stomach. A big square bandage followed shortly after, and Anderson applied it to the area firmly before he nodded in satisfaction and stood.
“Let’s get you fed,” he announced, turning and striding for the bedroom. I settled the dress back down over the tops of my thighs, pulling at the lack of fabric again. He was oblivious to my plight, and I supposed beggars couldn’t
be choosers.
It would attract less attention than a torn and bloodstained dress.
∞∞∞
He made me a sandwich, piled high with some kind of thin-sliced meat and cheese and lettuce and tomato on the top. I devoured every bite, unable to control the raging hunger I felt since the moment I first saw the food. I hadn’t realized just how starving I’d been, and the water he gave me to wash it all down made me feel more human. More capable of functioning.
I’d be able to run again. Logically, I knew asking Anderson for a ride would be my quickest way off the mountain, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask for his help. Not with how pathetic I must have looked when he stumbled upon me in the woods.
The problem quickly became that he was attentive to me. He never turned his back, and waited on me hand and foot. How could I sneak out without a moment to myself?
I watched as he loaded the dishes into something he called a dishwasher, shutting the lid and cranking the dial until the sound of rushing water filled the small kitchen.
“You don’t have to wash them at all?” I asked, studying the device as he guided me up out of my chair at the kitchen table and to the back door.
“No. All I have to do is put them away,” he laughed as I stepped out the door and into his backyard sanctuary. Some kind of wood flooring continued, giving a place to sit and enjoy the view of the sun rising in the morning. He had a fire pit too, but what caught my eye was the sight of his extensive gardens toward the forest edge.
“You garden?” I asked, excitement in my tone as I hurried down the steps and off the wooden structure.
“Not well, but I try,” he said, following behind me. I spun back to smile at him, finding him staring at me with a little grin and his hands shoved into his pockets. The grass beneath my feet was thick and lush, undisturbed, unlike the heavily trodden ground I’d grown used to at the compound, where too many people walked on it daily for it to ever truly thrive.
Deliver Me from Evil (The Men of Mount Awe Book 1) Page 2