Terror at the Gates (Blood of Lilith, #1)

by Scarlett St. Clair

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world… Ephesians 6:12

Forgiveness was an invitation to sin. I witnessed it every week, which was why I’d decided a long time ago that I did not care to be forgiven. I’d rather be a sinner than a hypocrite.

We were not responsible for lust in men. We existed, and they desired.

Sometimes that desire was mutual. Sometimes it wasn’t, but men had a hard time wrapping their dicks around the word no, and since our world valued them more, we were the ones who suffered.

You act like this has to mean something. Fucking brat. She meant everything.

“If you ever feel like you don’t want to do this anymore…tell me. Give me the chance to bring you back.”

Through the glass, I could see shelves of candles, crystals, and cards, things forbidden by the church—things that made me curious. I wondered if people came here seeking something to believe in because religion had hurt them too.

It didn’t matter how much I had changed or how brave I felt. In my parents’ home, I was a child again, hurt and desperate for love.

She was quiet for a moment and then asked, “Is it not possible that they all made it? That instead of only one, there are multiple roads to paradise?”

“Nothing’s ever wrong when it’s love.”

I’d never been the center of anyone’s world before, always more of an inconvenience.

It isn’t until the appearance of kabbalah that Lilith becomes the seductress, responsible for leading men astray (because obviously men cannot be responsible for their own temptation; they HAVE to be led there by a woman).

She states, “What is intrinsic to Lilith, what is the most central aspect of her character is her struggle for independence, her courage in taking risks, her commitment to the equality of woman and man based on their creation as equals by God.”

Lilith Leviathan is a woman who wants autonomy over her life and control of her future. She rejects social standards and the expectations placed upon her by the church and in doing so, becomes the other. She is a victim of her pastor and her congregation, turned upon because she refuses to fit the mold.