Chapter 8 Daylan
eight
Daylan
The door bangs shut as Lazarus leaves, my heart rocketing into my throat as my entire body lets loose.
I try to settle down, telling myself I should take a good look around at this place while he’d gone so I can get my bearings, but I am woozy and fearful.
All I catalogue is the blurry outline of some kind of barrel beside the front door before I lose all sense of myself.
I shake, trembling on the cold wooden floor, teeth clacking together as every bit of the fear I’ve pushed down inside since he took me from my bedroom seeps from my every pore.
Tears stream down my face, and it is taking everything inside me to keep from screaming out loud into the silence of this rotting cabin.
He is going to kill me.
I am going to die.
Even if I try to escape, death awaits me in the woods. If not Lazarus with his axe, then the damned souls with their claws and gnashing teeth.
I will either die as Angelo did or as Timothy did, and I am not sure which one scares me more. I can only hope that Bright Haven sends people out looking for me, but even then I’m not sure they will find me before the devil takes my life.
I reach up with my bound hands to wipe tears off my cheeks, but more quickly replace them.
My head aches with every beat of my heart, stomach pitching and rolling with nausea where I lie on the floor.
I must calm down or I will throw up, and if I am to die this day, I would rather not meet my end in a robe soiled with vomit and filth.
I should meet it with faith. Though I am not at Bright Haven, I must remember who I am.
What I mean to this world and the promise of my blood to God’s flock.
If Lazarus ever speaks of my death, I wish for him to say that I went with dignity and the grace becoming of the Blessed Lamb of God.
That is how I must die. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, blowing it out slowly through my pursed lips as I remind myself of this.
“Faith,” I whisper, taking a few more breaths of the cool morning air that surrounds me before opening my eyes again.
Looking down towards my feet, I take stock of how much rope I have available and decide that I should try to sit up.
I won’t be able to stand at an angle that does not bend me over at the waist because the rope is tied low to the beam of the cabin’s frame, but I should be able to get to my knees and ask the Lord for his protection in this Godless space.
It takes me a few moments, but with great effort I am finally able to get my legs beneath me and push myself upright into a seated position.
My nausea reaches a fever pitch as I do so though, and I come very close to depositing whatever is contained within my stomach onto my lap.
I sit still, allowing it to settle down inside my gut before moving to my knees and folding my hands in prayer.
“Dear Lord,” I murmur, wobbling a bit where I kneel as my head spins.
“See me here, your faithful servant, and deliver me from this evil that has taken me. If that deliverance is death and I am truly meant to die here, then I ask that it be quick. Though it be your will, I ask for clemency. Please don’t let me die like Angelo. ”
“Angelo got what he deserved.”
I open my eyes, heart squeezing inside my chest as I meet Lazarus’ eyes.
I did not hear him come back inside, and while I am surprised to see him seated upon the chair he sat on last night, it makes sense that I didn’t notice him coming.
His ability to creep in and out of spaces without drawing attention is how he’s plagued Bright Haven these last few weeks, after all.
Lazarus leans forward, elbows propped on his knees and fingers tented in front of his lips.
Water drips down from his short, curly hair, and he wears no shirt, but a pair of jeans that somehow clip at the front, covering his chest like a bib.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen such clothing before, not even when I lived with my parents as travelers, and I hate that I like the way it looks on his body.
I hate that a tiny piece of me wonders at his beauty.
I had imagined that Lazarus would be ugly, bearing his sins on his body and marked somehow to show his true nature.
The way people spoke of him in whispers, like he was a vicious monster made of pure malice and evil, created a picture in my mind of him that does not match what he is truly like.
In the light of day, with a clearer mind, Lazarus is a creature of angles and edges, but in that I can see he is wonderfully made.
He is lithe and tall, yet not broad. Whatever muscles his strange jeans don’t cover have clearly been built for hunting and catching prey, and as I stare up at him from my knees, I know which one I am in this equation.
In his presence, with sinful thoughts plaguing my mind, I go silent, finishing my prayer to God inside my head by asking for forgiveness for my errant thoughts about Lazarus.
“You really believe that stuff, huh?” Lazarus whispers, his golden brown eyes shadowing with what looks a bit like confusion.
“I do,” I whisper back.
He stares at me for a few more moments before leaning back in his chair and turning to grab a bundle of darkened cloth from the floor.
I tense as he unfolds it, revealing a small knife.
My heart stutters in my chest as he lifts it up to the scant traces of sunlight streaming in through the windows of the cabin, looking it over carefully as he turns it this way and that.
Then he reaches for me, fingers coming close to grabbing my bound hands before I have the wherewithal to scramble backwards to press myself against the corner of the cabin beneath the hole in the roof.
He barks out a laugh, the horrid sound falling from his mouth and echoing around me.
Lazarus stands, moving to stand over me with the blade in his hand, and I clasp my hands in prayer again, sending silent messages to God in hopes that he is listening.
In hopes that He will save me.
Lazarus reaches for my hands, and I try to pull away from him, kicking my feet wildly in his direction because they are all I have.
He laughs softly again, placing the blade between his teeth and gripping both of my knees in his hands, digging his fingers into the joints and forcing my legs flat on the ground in front of me.
Before I can even comprehend what he is doing, he has scrambled on top of me, straddling my thighs and pinning me in place between the floor and the cabin wall behind me.
I swallow hard, fear creeping up inside me as I try to remind myself of faith and grace and everything else I know about who I am and what I mean.
Lazarus takes the blade from between his teeth with one hand, then reaches for my hands with the other.
I close my eyes, anticipating the slide of it against my throat, but instead feel naught but a prick against the meaty part of my skin below my thumb.
The same place I slip the needle in to draw blood for Father’s approval.
The blade stings, but is quickly removed before Lazarus drops it to the floor. He grips my hands tight, lifting them up and leaning back to allow the sunlight to fall over my skin.
“Huh,” he breathes as he stares at the bright red, pure blood seeping from the cut he made. “You really are immune.”
“I am the Blessed Lamb,” I whisper, quoting scripture from the Book of the Father.
“So it seems. Remind me, what do you believe that means?”
I hesitate before quoting the scripture from the Book of the Father. “It is through my blood that Bright Haven will receive salvation.”
“That’s still what you are taught, hey? You do not know what a precious commodity you have inside you, Lambchop.
I should bleed you dry and bottle it all.
There are labs with scientists that would pay me whatever I want for even a small vial of what you are made of.
” Lazarus squeezes my skin, drawing more blood out of me and watching as a tiny stream slips down my wrist. He looks past my hands, meeting my eyes and holding the connection to me as if it is important to him.
Slowly, he leans forward and licks at my skin, capturing the blood that seeps out of me with his tongue as I try to jerk my hands away in horror.
He grips me tight, lapping at the wound he created and staring right into my eyes.
When finally stops, he lets my hands go and I pull them to my chest.
“What do you think, Lamb? Am I saved now that I’ve taken your most precious gift into my body?” he whispers, lips twitching into a horrid grin.
“That’s not how it works.”
“How does it work then, precious Lamb?”
“I don’t…” I let that sentence trail off because I can’t find a good answer. I just know in my heart what the scripture tells me. How it guides what we do in Bright Haven and why God guided my path to Bright Haven when I was just a child.
“Yeah, you sure don’t,” Lazarus laughs, his joy at my inability to answer his question blatantly obvious.
Slowly though, he sobers, and his eyes grow hard and cold.
“Ezekiel didn’t either. You Lambs just think you’re untouchable because someone told you that you are above sin, so you do whatever the fuck you want to whoever the fuck you want, not caring about consequences.
Why would there be consequences when God deemed you to be infallible? ”
“I do not carry sin,” I whisper, for I know this to be true.
“You carry more sin than anyone else, Lambchop. The difference is that you aren’t made to pay for it like the rest of us.” He pauses, then smiles. “But you will. If Father won’t make you pay for what you have done, I will.”
“I have done nothing.”
“That’s what Ezekiel said too, on the night I tore his gut open and bathed in his blood.
” Lazarus crawls off my thighs and then moves to stand over me.
I believe he is about to leave me alone, but instead he crouches down and grips my chin in one of his hands, fingers splayed upwards over my cheeks.
He stoops to grab the knife from the floor, and I flinch as he raises it.
He snickers as he tucks it into his pocket instead of slashing at me. “So jumpy, little Lamb.”
“I rebuke you in the name of the Lord, Lazarus The Devil,” I snap, unable to contain the anger that rises from me at how he is playing with me. “I would ask the Lord to take mercy upon you, but you have forsaken the gift that was once given unto you.”
“Yeah? Well, I rebuke you right back in my own damn name, Blessed Lamb, for I am the only God I see here, and it is my mercy you should be begging for.”
He rises and turns around, stretching his arms up to the sky. As he walks away, my blood runs cold in my veins, for burned into his shoulder blade is a mark I know all too well.
A half-sun brand.
The mark of a Bright Haven Elder.