“OhLord,Stormy…” he shouted again. She scrambled to sit up, fighting to cover his mouth as he laughed and twisted his head around to avoid her fingers. She shushed him, but Lucas only smiled wider, then shouted as if hurt. “Ow, Stormystop, please! Ah,ahhhh!Don’t be so rough. Oh my God, you gon’ break it!”
“Really, Luc?” Merlee shouted from the other room.
Stormy froze in mortification.
“It’s okay, have your fun, Lucas,” Garret countered. “Me and Merleena Jean’ll just have to get busy and show y’all how it’s really done.”
Lucas’s heart stopped. Shocked and appalled, he looked up at Stormy, then rolled to his side, knocking Stormy off of him as he banged against the shared wall. “Motherfucker, I hear anything besides snoring and cows jumping over the goddamn moon in that bitch, I’ll castrate you. Hear me?”
The laughter on the other side of the wall was galling, but he was serious; he’d better not hear…
He was diverted by Stormy’s laugher as she worked her way free of him and got beneath the bedcovers. “You are such anidiot,” she said, shaking her head as she reached over and turned off the bedside lamp. He stared in her direction until his eyes adjusted to the dark, then he slid under the covers, turning to bang his fist against the wall one more time for good measure before settling along Stormy’s backside.
Draping his arm over her abdomen, he rested his cheek against the back of her head and settled as Stormy folded her arm over his and interlaced their fingers.
She was asleep within seconds.
Closing his eyes, Lucas tried to stay vigilant to any sex sounds in the other room, but then he remembered that this was the last night he’d get to hold his sienna-red woman, and he tightened his arm around her, breathing her in, imprinting her scent, the feel of her skin, the contour of her body, unable to imagine letting her go.
It burned. The alcohol burned like hellfire.
Cornelius coughed, trying to breathe, to lessen the throat-swelling effect of the alcohol. Gasping, he closed his eyes and reached for the ornate cross that hung from his neck, praying until his body settled.
When he opened his eyes, the demons seemed closer, but he hadn’t heard them move. Mama still sat at the far end of the bar, she was looking in her lap, her expression hidden by the ropy locks of hair that obscured it.
“Why are you here, Cornelius? What sins do you need to confess to me?” Terry asked again.
Although he’d received none of the nurturing at Shepherd’s Keep that the demons received here, he knew the child would not be safe among them. Her eternal soul would not be safe.
Confess, Cornelius, fulfill your purpose, it’s the only way that remains for you to enter the gates of heaven from this dark place.
He pushed the shot glass around with his finger, then shared the Shepherd’s edict.
“All members of the order must ascend,” he told Terry. “This is my test of ascension. It was to be the antecedent to my awakening or the evidence of my unworthiness.” He looked over at the female fallen. “This morning I awakened and believed I had finally discovered God’s purpose for me, to live among you and apply God’s word and will…but the child, Terry, she’s innocent. A home among the fallen would corrupt an innocent, her mind, body, then her soul. I can’t let that happen. It’s my time to be courageous.”
“You’re right, of course Cornelius, children must be protected, but—and I don’t mean to deride—you don’t have the means to protectyourself. If I take you off the mountain, I have to know you can keep the girl safe and from what I’ve deduced from your own words, there is very little safety for an innocent child within your Shepherd’s Keep.”
He was unable to look Terry in the eye. In good conscious he could never take a female innocent to live among the Shepherd’s order, even if femaleswereallowed. One had to be broken into the order’s ways, and for the ones like him, the breaking never made them stronger, just more at risk for the others’ attempts at breaking them. He could not recommend the child be taken there.
The Shepherdssin—she could take the child to the Patron. Cornelius was certain the little one was the child of the consort and the Patron’s dead son. In his gratitude, the Patron was sure to allow Cornelius to live with their family and watch over the child’s soul.
“I need to contact the Shepherdssin,” he informed Terry. “She will help me fulfill my purpose so that I can ascend.”
“Thing is, son, Delilah hasn’t come back to get your reports or bring you food or anything since we brought you here. For all intents and purposes, she left you there to die, and if you can’t contact her, you can’t help the child.”
Cornelius avoided Terry’s gaze again and grazed his thumb over the circular center of the cross. It wasn’t that he had no way of contacting her, he simply wasn’t supposed to unless his sojourn was completed. He hadn’t been honest with them about this; however, one was not obligated to be truthful to those aligned with the world’s first and greatest deceiver.
“There is a number I can call,” he said to Terry, unable to reconcile the shame he felt at his deception.
Mama stood and walked the length of the bar and squatted down beside him, offering him her phone. “Go ahead and call her, Cornelius,” she stated flatly. “Your time for ascension has begun.”
He nodded. “And so it has.”
He closed his eyes, afraid and confused by Mama’s lack of warmth. Why did he still crave it? Because if not for the child, he could have made a home here. He could have…
But in all things, God’s will must prevail. Cornelius gave her the number. Terry motioned for the laptop the consort had used to communicate with the child, flipped it back open, and began to type rapidly as Mama dialed Delilah’s phone number. Cornelius listened with the others as it rang.
“Cornelius.”
