Page 1 of Unholy Obsession

ONE

FATHER BLACKWOOD

I’m a monster,but as so often happens with monsters, I’ve got everyone snowed into thinking I’m a good man from the outside.

The priest’s collar around my neck helps.

No one knows about the shattered glass and spilled blood. No one knows about the floggers and leather and the countless women I’ve put on their knees and ordered to call me Lord—just like my father always said they ought to.

I’m an Episcopal priest, not a Catholic one, so I’ve made no vow of celibacy. But that doesn’t mean my bishop would approve of me going to a club like the one I did on Friday, putting a woman in chains and making her beg, cry, and take everything I gave her until I came home with a Bible soaked in her juices from spanking her pussy with it.

I am a sinner of the worst order.

The kind who wears the cloth of a saint.

I stand at the altar, arms raised for the opening prayer, eyes cast downward in hypocrisy.

A half-full church full of elderly faithful sits before me. A congregation that believes in me. Trusts me.

I might never have meant to betray them, but depravity is my birthright.

My mouth shapes the familiar words of prayer, each syllable smooth and practiced. But my mind? My mind is still trapped withher.

I smell her phantom scent—cinnamon, vanilla, and sweat. I feel the silk of her hair as I twisted it around my fist. Taste the salt of her skin and hear the rasp of her broken moans as she took what I gave her. As shecravedit.

My hands tremble with the memory.

It only took walking three blocks to throw away everything I’ve built.

A priest never should have set foot in a place like that.Carnal.But the sign was a beacon to my profane soul. A glowing, blood-red promise that I could indulge—just once—before snapping myself back in line.

I could blame it on the letter from my father. But a weak man can always find something or someone else to blame, can’t he?

Three years of silence, and now this, him summoning me like the errant heir he always knew I’d be. The Blackwolf family crest stared up at me from the letterhead—a seal I swore I’d never look upon again. I should have burned it.

Instead, I read every word.

You can run, but you’re still a Blackwolf. You can’t escape what you are.

The echo of my father’s voice coils around my chest like barbed wire. I thought the vows, the collar, and the church—all of it—could change me.Redeemme.

But last Friday, I felt the truth in my bones.

I am my father’s son, and I always will be.

I fought for years—years—to strip myself of Bane, the monster I was raised to be. And yet, in a single night, I let him loose again. I hid my face behind a black cloth skull mask, concealing the priest and letting the sinner run free. I thought it was protection. But that wasn’t the truth. It waspermission.

I bow my head and whisper, “Amen,” keeping my voice steady. The congregation responds in kind, and their unwavering trust cinches the barbed wire tighter.

The opening hymn begins. Off-key voices fill the high, arched ceilings, but the sound barely registers. The air is thick with candle wax, the age-old scent of polished wood, and the bite of Mrs. Blanchard’s whiskey-laced coffee that she thinks no one notices. My vestments feel heavier today, a noose instead of a yoke.

“Now, for a moment of contemplation and silence as we gather our hearts for worship,” I say, my voice calm despite the storm inside me. I roll the mallet around the singing bowl, the low hum filling the silence.

I begin the count in my head. Sixty seconds to hold on to the calm. Sixty seconds to convince myself that I am still in control.

I am Father Blackwood, I chant inwardly.Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. I have dedicated my life to serving others.Thirty-nine, forty, forty-one. To bring hope to the hopeless.

Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty.

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