The Blood We Spill: Suspense with a Dash of Humor (The Letty Whittaker 12 Step Mysteries) (19 page)

“Plus, he’s unattached,” I said.

A shadow passed over her smiling face, and I felt
bad for killing the mood. She almost turned away, then changed her mind.

“I guess you’ve heard the rumors.” Talking about
my own sexuality embarrasses me; other people’s I can handle. Sensing my
willingness to listen, she went on. “It’s not what people think. We weren’t…
improper.” Her turn to blush.

“But he was married.” 

She sighed. “Father felt the that Spirit had led
Enoch to Maliah. He made Enoch seek her out, and of course, Maliah jumped at
the chance. There’s no woman higher in standing than the woman married to the
second-ranked man. I think that’s why he ran away. He was so confused.”

“So, Father arranges marriages?”

That explained a lot.

“Technically, the Spirit arranges the marriages.
Father just relays the Word to those who, for whatever reason, don’t understand
the calling.”

I gave Priella a “who is he trying to kid?”
eyebrow flip. She smiled and shrugged.

“But if you two never actually did anything,
why…?”

“Because ‘whosoever looketh on a woman to lust
after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.’ Wanting is
just as bad as actually doing it. That’s why I haven’t bothered to defend
myself. Sometimes I wish I could run away, too.” The color that had pinked her
cheeks, receded, leaving her pale and ethereal-looking.

“Has anyone ever left the church?”

“Of course. Nobody as highly ranked as Enoch, though.
He’d been with Father from the start. I’ve never seen Father so distraught.”
Priella smiled ruefully. “He wasn’t the only one.”

“Why don’t you leave then?”

“Because my commitment to the King is forever.”

“You’re not talking about Abraham, are you?”

“No. Definitely not.” Shades of darkness flitted
over her wan features like shadows on a moonlit lake. “This community has
brought me to a closer fellowship with the Lord than I’ve found anywhere else.
There are issues, of course. That’s true of any church.”

“Not every church has arranged marriages,” I
pointed out. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if she would answer.

She plucked at the bedspread, absentmindedly
pulling a thread. Coming to a decision, she said: “People come here for
different reasons; they have different backgrounds. Some are completely new to
a relationship with Christ. Others have more experience, more knowledge of what
it means to be a Christian.”

“You know,” I said, “except for Jala, you’re one
of the few people who have even mentioned Christ or Christianity. I was
starting to wonder what the Elect really stands for.”

Still wondering.

Priella sighed. “Sometimes I’m afraid the leaders
aren’t as careful as they should be in teaching the fundamentals. I think they
assume people know more than they really do. Things get taken out of context.”

A sweet smile lit her face. “I’m probably being
too picky. My old church called me a Bible-thumper, because I spent so much
time in scripture study.”

I thought about the warnings Tracy had given me
about cults twisting the Bible for their own purpose and didn’t believe Priella
was being too picky.

“Did Enoch leave because he disagreed with the
teachings?”

“I don’t know. He was beginning to delve deeper
into scripture, learning for himself what the Word actually says. But I don’t
think it was philosophical differences that plagued him. It was just plain,
old-fashioned guilt.” Priella darted a look at my face, checking my reaction.
Seeing none, she went on. “I don’t feel that way, but maybe I should. We were wrong
to allow it to continue, but we couldn’t help that it started in the first
place. And the Lord I know forgives. I just… I don’t understand why he hasn’t
tried to contact me.”

I felt horribly guilty, knowing her lover was
probably dead and not just missing. I decided to steer the conversation in a
different direction.

“I believe in forgiveness too,” I said.
“Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem as if Maliah does. Is she capable of making
life difficult for you?”

“Oh, very much so. I think Father will rein her in
if she gets too out of hand, but mostly he’ll expect us to handle it. And… I
think he’s angry at me too. At least, she can’t affect my work. I’m an
out-worker.”

“What do you do?”

“Nurse at the clinic. I’m able to witness at times,
and I make okay money, so Father let me remain in the outside.”

“But no makeup like Maliah or Tirza?”

Not that the double standard still rankled.

“Well, nurses don’t really need to adorn
themselves for their job. Cleanliness is more appreciated in that community.
And Maliah doesn’t really wear makeup.”

“Everyone keeps saying that, but, believe me, I’ve
seen her up close. That’s makeup.”

“Not exactly,” she laughed. “It’s tattoos.”

I was stunned. “I thought they only did that in
California or New York or somewhere like that.”

“Maybe that’s where she got it done. Who knows?
She’s only been with the Elect since they moved from Mexico.”

“Mexico?”

“And Texas before that. But if you want the
history, you’ll have to ask Moses. With Enoch gone, he’s been around the
longest.”

“No, thank you. He creeps me out. He’s always
watching me.”

“Well, if you’re going to stand in windows and
make out with Elijah, you better expect that.”

Startled at her playfulness, I laughed. Her next
words were more restrained.

“Be careful, Letty. It’s not hard to fall out of
favor here.”

I
couldn’t face
him. His large brown eyes gazed deeply into my own, expressing all the love he
couldn’t verbalize. All I felt was revulsion. After all, you eat a putrefying
hand, you’re gonna gross people out.

Gunner was happily unaware of losing my regard. His
appetite was completely unaffected, though I couldn’t say the same for myself.
Face to muzzle with the man-eater revived grotesque images of the horror I
witnessed; I dry-heaved my way through my chore. About the only thing the fast
had been good for was in limiting the ammo for projectile vomiting.

Grateful to be finished, I wedged the tops back on
the dog food bins and turned to the path. Moses stood silently in the dappled
shadows of the trees next to the barn, watching me. By some trick of light, the
shadows rendered him deceptively attractive, framing his chilly eyes while
shading his weirdly constructed jawline. How long had he been standing there?
Goosebumps having nothing to do with the nippy morning air mottled my arms; my
heart pumped heavily, pushing blood through my constricted veins.

He stepped out from the weeds, walking over to me.
Blocking the path, if that was his intention. Behind me, Domino growled and
paced his kennel.

“What do you want?” I unintentionally echoed Eli
from the night before.

“I came to warn you,” he finally said. Not an
auspicious beginning.

My throat made a strange clacking sound as it
tried to swallow without spit. “Warn me?”

Still staring, he said, “I believe that you desire
to be a woman of virtue. You must understand that it’s God’s will that we
abstain from sexual immorality, that each of us should ‘possess our vessel in
sanctification and honor, not in passion or lust, like those who do not know
God. The Lord is the avenger of those who take advantage of this.’”

“The avenger?” In my experience, avengers could be
worrisome things.

He didn’t respond to that. His misshapen face,
luminous with sweat, twisted with purpose and he leaned over me at such an
angle I was afraid he would fall over. In contrast to the stillness of his
staring eyes, his lips spoke so fast his words blurred. “‘If a young woman lies
with a man in the city, they shall be stoned to death, because she did not cry
out and the evil will be put away from among us. But if the woman is found in
the desert and the man forces her and lies with her, then only the man who lay
with her shall die. There is in the woman no sin deserving of death, for he
found her in the desert, and she cried out, but there was no one to save her.’”

Was he suggesting Eli had forced me?

“That’s in the Bible?”

“The book of Deuteronomy,” he said. “Evil
must
be put aside. ‘The lips of an immoral woman drip honey, but are as bitter as
wormwood.”

So, now it was my fault again.

“‘An adulteress will prey upon a man’s precious
life.’ You haven’t been with Father long enough to understand that our work
here is about purity. You have to be prepared all the time. You have to be
pure. The King could come at any moment, and if you are sinfully entangled with
lusts of the flesh,” his face reddened again, “you will be cast into the pit of
Sheol forever, instead of feasting at the banquet table of the Elect. The
burning fires of hell… They will lick at your body. I know you don’t want that.”

“No,” I agreed. “I don’t want that.”

“You are getting ready to make a commitment to the
Elect. You
must
be pure. You have to resist fleshly temptations.”

“I will.”

“There’s more than one after you. I’ve seen them.
They flock to you like honeybees to blossoms.”

Now we were quoting from the book of
The King
and I
?

“I got it,” I said, nodding like a bobblehead. “I
do.”

With my assurances, he seemed to calm down a bit.
“We have to make sacrifices if we’re to be ready. We have to give up… sensual
delights. They will lead us astray.”

Apparently he was already being led astray,
because his pants had tented over his crotch. Without warning, he made a fist,
slamming it into his upper thigh.

We both cried out.

“It’s okay,” he said, looking at me. “Blows and
wounds clean away evil, and beatings purge the inmost being. I beat my body and
make it my slave.”

“Oh.” Well, sure.

Turning, he walked back up the path leaving me
trembling in the wake of his storm.

O
nce again, I
was left wishing I had a Bible. Tracy’s warning to check for scriptural
accuracy and context never seemed more important than it did regarding Moses’s
diatribe. Some of his comments felt like he was quoting, but I couldn’t say for
sure. Luckily, I knew someone who might.

Chapter Eighteen

T
he dining hall
was hopping when I got there and the kitchen even more so. The atmosphere had a
festive spirit at the return of ordinarily mundane oatmeal and dry toast. Jala
would be too busy for a scriptural pop quiz, so I joined the crowd at the end
of the food line. After facing a flesh-eating dog and a flesh-hating man, I
hadn’t thought that I’d be hungry, but my stomach rumbled in anticipation. Even
without white sugar or butter, a happy hum of oatmeal-induced praise bounced
off the cinder-block walls. Brown sugar and raisins helped, too.

After scraping up the last of the gray goo, I added
the bowl to the growing pile of dirty dishes. Peering through the serving
hatch, I spied Jala darting back and forth in front of the stove. Priella stood
with her back to the dining hall, making a horrible racket as she loaded the
industrial dishwasher. Talitha, manning the toaster, caught my eye and tossed a
finger-wiggling wave in my direction. I finger-wiggled back and then stood
confused as she pointed at me.

What?

Jabbing her finger back and forth, she added a
pair of raised eyebrows and several grinning nods to the mimed message. I
looked over my shoulder.

Justus stood so close behind me I’m surprised my
skin didn’t singe from his body heat. He was grinning, too, although unlike
Talitha, his fell heavily into the seductive, flirtatious range.

“How’s your legs?”

“Fine. Thank you. For asking, I mean. Not for…
well, I appreciate the massage, too but…” I was babbling like a high school
chess-club member dallying with the varsity football captain. His clear-sky
eyes crinkled in amusement, and I felt the heat of being stared at as both the
kitchen and dining room took in the action. Most of the audience were delighted
with the spectacle. Two notable exceptions zeroed in on us from opposite sides
of the hall.

Maliah’s irritation—balm to my wicked soul—was
only marginally less heated and considerably more satisfying than the pair of
flashing amber eyes trained on our little soap opera. Justus tossed a mocking
smirk over his shoulder as if daring Eli to make a scene.

“Letty?” A soft voice came from the kitchen.
“Could you give me a hand back here?” Priella reached through the hatch and
pushed a filled bus pan in my direction. She could just as easily have gotten
it herself—that was the purpose of the hatch after all—but I picked it up with
more gratitude for slimy dishes than I ever felt in my life.

“Yes, of course. Happy to.” Apparently I hadn’t
yet reached my dithering quota for the day. Unable to resist, I looked over at
Eli. Assuming a nonchalant pose, he had turned to gaze out the window. Would
have been more convincing if the windows hadn’t been five feet to his left, but
hey, A for effort.

How do ya like that, bud?

The mood in the back could only be described as
rampantly mirthful. I kept busy at the dishwasher until the hall cleared. The
women fought a mighty battle and managed to restrain themselves until the last
diner had left before starting in on me. Not surprisingly, Talitha leaped in
first.

“Looks like somebody’s on her way to being sought
out.”

“Oh, my! I haven’t seen that boy so smitten in a
long time. Of course, with his good looks, he’s used to all the women running
after him. Probably a little bashfulness is refreshing to him. Men are hunters,
ya know.” Jala’s contribution to the ribbing was wrong on so many levels, I
wasn’t sure where to begin.