Dark Side of the Cloth by Brooklyn Cross

Yasmine had no idea how she’d gotten so lost and turned around. She’d stayed on Dean like a fly on shit, more determined with each mile that she wanted to know what he was doing when suddenly he just disappeared. One moment he was in front of her, and then the next, he was gone. She’d watched enough police shows to know she needed to keep a fair distance back not to be discovered, but still.

This was the last possible road that he could have turned down, and she’d missed it the last million times she drove past it. There was no sign marking its entrance, and even with the snow and ice, the surrounding trees were so overgrown they practically covered the entrance. Why people created roads and then didn’t mark them was beyond her.

Yasmine slowly pulled the car onto the unmaintained road and almost immediately regretted it. Her teeth rattled in her head as she tried to hold the violently vibrating car on the road. The car lurched to her right and then back left, and she unceremoniously smacked her head against the glass.

“Ouch!” She rubbed her head and the spot she was sure she was going to have a bruise. “What the hell am I doing?” she mumbled.

She should turn around and go home. She had a funeral later this week, and she should be making the necessary preparations, but no. Instead, she was out here traipsing around looking for Dean or someone she thought was Dean. For all she knew, it wasn’t him, and he was back at the church or had come to see her, and she wasn’t home.

Yasmine sighed.

The sun was almost gone, and the dark forest on either side was not doing anything to calm the nerves. There was a small gap in the trees, and she slowly pulled into it to turn around and go home, but as her beams shone into the forest, there it was, the shiny black Hummer. She clung onto the steering wheel, eyes glued to the impressive vehicle. What the hell was she even going to say to Dean if it was indeed Dean?

Hey, I saw you this morning and decided to stalk you? Hope you don’t mind me chasing you down into the middle of butt-fuck nowhere. What do you say we grab a coffee since I already drank the thermos I brought for us?

“I’m ridiculous.”

She put the car in reverse to do as she intended and go the hell home…but she just couldn’t.

“Shit!”

Slamming the car into park, she killed the engine and suddenly realized just how dark it had become. She bundled up and tentatively stepped out of her very warm car to stand in the darkening forest. Yasmine’s eyes scanned the area as a shiver raced down her spine, and she zipped her coat up tight.

What would he even be doing out here? A retreat may be—a time alone in the woods type thing? Rough it with the wilderness? Did he need to refocus and ask for forgiveness for what the two of them had done last night?

The thought of Dean asking God for forgiveness for liking her, hurt. It was stupid, but she wanted a life with him. She wanted him to throw the collar to the ground and claim she was more important.

Yasmine closed her door, and her feet crunched on the icy surface as she neared the black vehicle. She hadn’t made it a dozen strides when a scream reached her ears—the terror-filled noise freezing her in place.

Oh God, what if Dean was hurt out here?

The pain-filled scream came again, and going against her instincts, she turned toward the sound and moved as quick as she dared. Each yell filled her with more dread. She didn’t even have a weapon. Besides, what could she do that Dean couldn’t? Pulling out her phone, her hand shook, and she cursed as her phone showed no service and that her battery was almost dead.

Brilliant.

The scream was much louder when it came this time, and she picked up her pace to a slow jog. Please let her be in time to save him from… she had no idea what, but that didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to let him die after she’d had the revelation of her feelings for him.

Yasmine pulled up to a halt as the scream sounded, and she realized she was heading the wrong way. She was in shape, but she wasn’t one to work out all the time, and her lungs burned with the physical exertion in the cold air.

A soft glow barely able to be seen was off to her left, and like a-moth-to-a-flame, she turned and resumed her pace. The shrill sound that reached her ears made her blood run cold. Yasmine paused as she neared what looked to be a break in the trees. She scanned the snowy ground. Only finding a stick, she gripped it in her hand, took a deep breath, and ran full speed toward the light.

She burst through the forest and skidded to a stop. Her mind couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing. A man that she didn’t recognize was strung up between two trees. His limbs pulled so tight that he made an X as he hovered a couple of feet off the ground. He’d been stripped naked, and his blood ran in long streams down his body that looked bright against his pale skin, even in the darkness. She blinked a few times, taking a moment for her brain to register that the man’s left side was void of skin. It lay in a pile on the ground like a miniature mountain of discarded flesh.

Oh, my God, he’s being flayed alive.

She shook involuntarily as her body caught up to what her brain was screaming in her head. Muscle and bone were exposed haphazardly across his body. She knew her anatomy, and nothing had been done that would kill him yet, but she couldn’t begin to imagine the pain. A hysterical bubble of laughter stuck in the back of her throat. This was insane!

The man holding the intimidating blade turned toward her, and she dropped the stick, hands going to her mouth as her mind became void of any further thought.

Dean was dressed in all black, his face streaked with paint like she’d only ever seen in movies. Weapons adorned his body like jewelry. The hands that had shown her so much pleasure the night before squeezed the knife tighter, showing off the ripple of muscle in his forearm. A flash of his hand around her neck raced through her mind, and bile hit the back of her throat.

“Yasmine?”

Her name on Dean’s lips had her eyes finally meeting his, the eyes of the man she thought of as a kind and generous man. Flawed yes, they’d proven that last night, but this? The man that she loved was—no, this couldn’t be happening. There was some mistake. Dean took a step toward her, and as he did, the blade glinted in the swinging lantern light. She could see the fresh blood dripping off the end…Run! She turned and sprinted back the way she’d come.

She had no idea where she was going. She’d been so consumed with fear for Dean’s safety that she hadn’t stopped to mark a trail. Stupidly, she looked over her shoulder, slammed into a tree, and yelped as the impact stopped her cold. He was coming for her. She could hear him getting closer. Clamping a hand over her mouth, she spun in a circle, trying to remember where her car was. Grabbing her car keys, she frantically pushed the button for the alarm, but nothing sounded, nothing flashed.

“Yasmine, stop!” Dean yelled.

He was closer. She took off in a sprint, preferring to put space between them rather than stand still and surely die. Her breathing was loud in her ears as she rounded a bend in the overgrown path she’d found herself on—Dean’s yelling to stop loud in her ears.

“Stop! There are traps!”

She had only a moment to wonder what he meant when something flew past her face and scraped her cheek. She screamed and grabbed her face as a warm liquid traveled down her cheek. Hands shaking, she pulled it away, and what could only be blood had stained her mitten.

“Are you okay? Yasmine, I’m coming, don’t move! There are traps all around you!”

Under any other circumstances, she would’ve listened, but fear overrode any common sense. She ran to the side, away from Dean, and she heard him swear in the darkness. She hadn’t gone very far when she let out a screech as she was sent flying over a downed log. She landed hard and cried out, then screamed louder as metal teeth leapt out from under the leaves and snow right beside her. That had almost been her face.

Her heart was pounding so hard now she thought she might pass out. She stared at the deadly piece of metal, her mind envisioning the worst if it had clamped down around her neck.

She could taste blood and knew she’d bitten her tongue, and she couldn’t move. Her ankle or maybe foot felt broken or torn. She wasn’t certain. She drew the injured limb toward her and knew she’d sprained it badly, or it was broken. Her assumption was proven correct when she couldn’t put weight on it and whimpered, falling once more onto the cold ground into a heap.

“Yasmine, please stop running,” Dean said softly as if he was trying to soothe her. Like a predator of the night, he stepped out from behind a tree. His black boots crunched a little closer.

Oddly, he didn’t rush her. He held his hands up and took small steps, but hot tears ran down her cheeks as panic set in. She was going to die out here in the woods just like her sister had. Lower lip trembling, she tried to back away from him, but he easily tracked her movements. Soon she was panting, her shaking arms now wiped of all her strength. Her body shook as she closed her eyes and turned her head away as he knelt beside her.

Yasmine couldn’t help thinking about her sister. Maybe this was karma for escaping that night. No one would tell her what was done to her sister, no one would give her the details, but when she took over the funeral home, she searched for the records. The gruesome details were there in black and white, pages upon pages of violence that she didn’t even know was possible for one human to do to another.

Now, here she was in the woods with a killer, and it felt like life had finally come full circle. Like this was what the last seventeen years of torture had been teaching her.

Her time had come. It was time to pay the piper.

Dean’s hand grabbed her chin, and she yelped with the contact, terrified and mortified that she was so scared. She should fight back like she should’ve done the night her sister was taken. She clenched her fist.

“Don’t fight Yasmine, I’m not going to hurt you,” Dean said as if reading her thoughts. His other hand landed on her fist, and she shook a little harder. “Look at me!”

Dean used the same commanding voice he had in the bedroom, but now it only made her want to whimper and crawl in a hole. She swallowed a dry scratchiness in her throat and opened her eyes. There was still no sign of the knife.

“I told you, I’m not going to hurt you.” Dean’s voice was softer as his thumb ran across her chin. “You are so lucky. That trap would’ve taken your head. Hell, that arrow almost did.” He tilted her head from side to side. “This is going to bruise, but the cut doesn’t look deep enough for stitches.”

She pulled away from his touch.

“Forgive me, but it’s a little hard to believe that you don’t plan on killing me right now. You have traps set everywhere, not to mention what you were doing.” She crossed her arms over her chest, giving him as much of glare as she was able to muster.

“There’s the Yasmine, I know.” Dean smiled.

Her traitorous heart skipped a beat. How could his smile give her any pleasure after what she just saw him doing?

“Those traps aren’t mine. Now, I’m going to help you stand.”

“Don’t. I don’t want your help.”

Dean looked around the forest.

“This is a really bad time to be stubborn, considering you can’t stand on your own, you don’t have cell service, and even if you did, you wouldn’t know how to navigate the other traps still out here.”

Yasmine opened her mouth to argue and then closed it.

Was there no other choice than to trust him? Fine. There wasn’t. Maybe she could figure out how to escape?

Dean placed an arm around her waist, and in one swift movement, she was on her feet and immediately sucked in a sharp breath as a stabbing pain lanced up her leg. Dean didn’t bother to ask. He just scooped her up into his arms and walked the way he’d come. She figured he was taking her back to where that other man was, probably planning to string them up together to die. But if she was going to die, she wanted to know why.

“Are you going to kill me?” She shivered as she asked, not wanting to know the answer.

“No, I already told you I wouldn’t hurt you.” He stopped walked and stared at her, his eyes softer. “I’d never hurt you, Yasmine. I’m not my father.”

She had no idea what that meant, but she could ask on that another time. She also noticed he had some sort of contraption over his left eye. It was like something she’d see in an Army movie. She’d known he was in the Army, but she’d never inquired what he’d done. It had seemed inappropriate to ask, but now she very much wished she had.

“Then…what? Why?” Yasmine paused, collecting her thoughts. “You were cutting that guy up like some slab of meat hanging at the butchers.”

“That man is not a good man. I don’t kill innocents, Yasmine. My mission is to find and provide the appropriate punishment to sinners of all kinds, but I mostly target abusers, rapists, and serial killers. Especially those that target the vulnerable: children, women, and elderly. They are the worst kind of predator.”

She stared at the side of his face, the hard set of his jaw, and knew he was serious.

A priest that hunted people?

Her mind was reeling.

“Mission for who? Are you still in the service?”

“No and yes. It’s complicated. The organization I’m part of has a mission that I follow.”

Yasmine’s mind was racing as she thought about all their interactions over the last year, especially their recent intimacy, when a thought suddenly occurred to her.

“Wait a minute, are you even a priest?”

For the briefest of moments, she saw guilt in his eyes, but then it was gone, masked by a blank stare. “No, I’m not.”

“Oh, my God!” She smacked her hand to her forehead. “I’m a fool. I’m such an idiot. How did I not see this?” She covered her eyes as humiliation took the place of fear.

“Yasmine, you saw what I wanted you to see, just how the rest of the town sees what I want them to see.”

“All those people that come to you for advice and to bare their souls, you take advantage of them. How is that not a sin?”

“I give them exactly what they need and exactly what any real priest can offer. Comfort for those mourning, forgiveness when they ask, answers in time of need, and punishment when it’s deserved. What more can a priest offer?”

“It’s not the same thing!”

“Why not? Because I didn’t have some other man in a long robe say I’m worthy? I have seen more death, tasted true forgiveness, and understand the pain of loss better than any one of those so-called representations of God. Something that doesn’t even exist. Trust me, Yasmine, if there was a God, I should’ve seen him by now.”

When he looked at her this time, all she saw was pain. Something terrible had happened to him. His pain mirrored her own, and although she didn’t want to be affected by it, it gripped her heart in a vice.

She sighed softly. “Was Father O’Sullivan ever a real person?”

“Yes, but I killed him.”

Yasmine gasped, her mouth falling open at his easy admission.

“He wasn’t a good man.” Dean stopped her objection before it started. “He was committing fraud, cheating innocent people out of thousands, and that was before he forced impressionable young people in the church to perform sexual acts, Yasmine. I told you I don’t kill the innocent. That’s not my mission.”

“Aren’t I considered a sinner?” she asked quietly. “I mean, after all, I thought I was actively corrupting a priest.”

Yasmine crossed her arms. There were too many emotions to wade through. She didn’t even know where to start—fear at what he would do to her when he was done with this man, humiliation for not seeing what was so plain before her eyes, anger over being so easily duped, and betrayal. The last one hurt the most. It felt like he’d taken advantage of her feelings. She’d felt so terrible for loving him, for taking advantage of him, and all the while, it was he taking advantage of her.

Dean stopped walking, and her pulse thumped loudly in her ears as she waited to hear her verdict.

“I’m pretty sure I was a huge participant in your fall from grace, or did I imagine that?” Yasmine averted his gaze. “And who did our sin hurt? A fictional God? No, our sin gave us comfort and pleasure in a moment that we both needed.”

“Was any of last night real?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Was last night just part of a larger plan, or did you simply get too horny pretending to be something you’re not?” she mumbled. Her heart ironically hurt with the idea that his feelings could be fake. “Did you use me, Dean?”

“Yasmine.” He said her name with authority, just as he had last night. She felt powerless not to obey. She looked into those hazel orbs that looked so dark in the forest. “My plan was never to be found out, to continue pretending to be a priest and do my sworn duty. Sleeping with you most certainly was not the plan and is a major complication.”

Her eyebrow raised. “I’m a complication?”

“Yes, you are. I had one mission, and I blew it. My cover is blown. You can call the police when you’re out of here and tell them everything, and I’ll have to go on the run. I would call that a serious complication.”

“So why not just kill me then?”

“I would think the answer to that was obvious.” Her body warmed with his words and shivered under his intense stare that said more than any words could.

Dean continued walking, and she thought for a few moments. Remaining quiet, she let the information sink in.

“So the man back there is who?”

Dean didn’t say anything, and she stared at his face trying to gauge why he didn’t want to tell her.

“Dean, if you want me to trust you with any of this craziness, you need to tell me who that man is and why you feel he needs to die.” She waved her hand toward the general direction of the man in question. “I mean, death is one thing, but what I saw…”

She stopped talking, unable to finish her sentence as Dean halted just inside the small clearing with the tableau of horror strung up before her. The man was no longer screaming, but she didn’t know what was worse. The limp limbs and blood-soaked body making him look like he was already dead or the screaming. She was fine with the sight of the dead. That wasn’t the problem. It was how this man was dying and who was doing it.

“Can you stand if you hold onto a tree?”

“Maybe.”

“Keep your weight on your good leg.”

Dean placed her on her feet before he stepped back. She looked him over as if seeing him for the very first time, and in a way, she was, wasn’t she? He wasn’t who she thought he was at all. He had the clothes of a killer, the tattoos of a killer, and the eyes of a killer. He was the predator in sheep’s clothing she now knew she’d seen moments of—felt in her heart that the priest persona didn’t quite fit, but she allowed herself to believe it.

“Answer me, please. Who is this man?” Yasmine nodded toward…the situation hanging there. The only sign he was still alive was the soft rise and fall of his chest.

Dean gave her a look that she couldn’t decipher and then sighed.

“This is the man that murdered your sister,” Dean said too calmly.

Yasmine’s head whipped in the direction of the man and then back to Dean.

“You’re lying. How did you even know about what happened?”

“Yasmine, think about what I just told you. I do this for a living. I hunt the hunters that no one else can catch.” Dean stood and stared at her, the weight of his words plainly written in his eyes.

“You’re saying…”

“Yes, I found the man that tried to take you and who abducted Raquel. That man is still alive, but he wishes he wasn’t. This is his brother, and he is the man that tortured, raped, and murdered your sister as he has done to over a dozen other women. Before you arrived, I’d managed to learn where those that had not been discovered had been discarded.”

Dean crossed his arms over his large chest.

“I’ll be able to bring closure to the families left behind and those that were still mourning their missing loved ones. To me, this is a Godly act.”

The bit of strength she was using to hold herself up drained from her body. Dean grabbed her before she could hit the ground and eased her to a sitting position.

This couldn’t be happening.