Shade(25)

“Praise God.” The man pried the snake’s teeth from her arm and then she fell to the floor, crying as the parishioners circled around the whimpering child. Suddenly, the tape ended, as if the machine taping it had fallen to the floor.

“I remember that day. I tried to get to her and knocked the camera over,” Cash explained.

Shade and Cash had shared several horrific missions together in the service, but Shade had not once seen the tortured expression in Cash’s eyes that he saw at that point.

“What the hell was that?” Jewell said in shock.

“Snake handling. Her bastard of a father would take us into the mountains once a year to a sister church. Every year, I watched the same scene. Didn’t Beth tell you when you saw the scars on her arms?” Cash asked Razer.

“No.”

“Did they take her to the hospital? Why didn’t someone call social services?” Bliss questioned.

“No, they never took her to the hospital. The proof of faith is when she doesn’t die. So no medical treatment, no one reported it to social services, and the sheriff back then was a member of the congregation who couldn’t have given a shit. The congregation prayed over her all night while her little body was wracked with pain till morning. It was the last time I ever prayed.” Cash’s hands clenched the back of the couch.#p#分页标题#e#

“The next year they went, they didn’t make her do it again, did they?” Viper asked.

“As far as I know, from what my grandmother told me, yes. A couple of times, it was a close call, but she survived. The members took it as a sign of their faith, but I would say it was more likely that she built up an immunity to the venom. I wouldn’t know; I left town the next day and enlisted in the Navy. I never went back to that church.”

Razer went to the next box and picked a tape from a couple years later. Beth was older in that tape, looking age eleven or so. It was more of the same, except the beatings became worse. She continuously begged for God’s forgiveness, never her crazy-assed father, no matter how many times the leather struck her back.

The next tape had Lily in it. Shade sucked in a deep breath at the first appearance of the small, underweight girl with those haunted shadows already in her eyes. Shade wanted to kill someone for whatever had made Lily the way she was before she had been adopted.

In the video, she was brought forward as they explained the charity they’d had to give to a child in desperate need of a home. No mention was made of where she had come from, though.

Several tapes were gone through before the minister ordered Lily forward for a punishment. When she would have stepped forward, Beth pulled her back, explaining it was her fault Lily had committed what had been deemed as a sin. The pastor, thwarted in his desire for new prey, took it out on a blank-faced Beth. This continued on until a tape where the pastor once again ordered Lily forward and Beth was denied when she would have stepped forward.

“You will sit, Beth. Lily will take the punishment for letting you influence her, and then I will punish you for your part in it. It is time that Lily learned not to let you force her from the path of righteousness.”

Shade easily recognized the signs that Lily had been beaten on a regular basis. She didn’t look frightened. Instead, a look of peace came over her as she clasped her hands in front of her. Her silky, black hair fell forward as she repented in a strong voice. When the leather struck her, she didn’t flinch or move and her voice remained the same monotone as before.

“I am going to throw up,” Natasha warned.

Fury exploded inside of Shade. He walked forward and jerked the tape out of the VCR, throwing it at the television, which burst with sparks flying. However, not one member chastised him for doing so.

Shade had seen a lot of sick shit in his life, but seeing Lily in a submissive pose she had obviously done many times in her young life was possibly the sickest. It churned his gut that such a beautiful young girl hadn’t been protected by those who were supposed to keep her safe.

“Did that shit continue until the bastard got killed?” Razer asked Cash.

“No, by then the new sheriff was in town, and from what my grandmother wrote me, he had heard of what was going on, but no one would talk. Beth and Lily were home-schooled, so he couldn’t get the girls alone to talk to them, either. It wasn’t long after he was appointed that Beth disappeared for an afternoon. When her parents searched for her, they found her at the restaurant across from the sheriff’s office where she was sitting, eating a sundae. Granny wrote she was frightened for Beth that following Sunday until the new sheriff showed up before church and had a talk with Pastor Saul. After that, the sheriff was there every church meeting, rain or shine. The girls both entered school the next school year, too.”