“Fuck that.” Brother Rowland puts a cigarette between his lips and strikes a match. “We should just cut off her legs and be done with it. Let her try and run like that.”
How dare he. That language in a holy place! “That is not how you treat a warrior of God!”
“That bitch took everything!” Brother Rowland’s voice cracks through the atrium. Sister Kipling stares at nothing and does not say a word. “I’m not going to burn just because you can’t put a heretic in her place!”
BANG.
Something hits the remnants of the door.
Brother Rowland drops his cigarette. Theo could choke on his heart climbing into his throat. The sound echoes, bang-bang-bang, bouncing off the rafters and deep into the cavity of Theo’s chest.
A person steps into the sanctuary. Backlit by the sun. Hair turned copper, a halo.
Theo recognizes him immediately, and when his name comes to him like a prayer, it is the first that has tasted sweet in days.
He whispers, “Benji?”
Benji crumples to the floor.
Theo is out of his seat, stumbling over his legs, catching himself on the pews. Benji. What happened to him? His face looks like it was put through a shredder. His clothes are torn. His arms are blistered and flayed.
Theo falls to his knees in front of him. “Benji,” he says, “Benji, look at me.” He pulls the tiny boy into his lap, gathering him against his chest, pressing his face to the ruined flesh of his cheek. “I’m right here. What happened? Are you okay?”
“They—” Benji chokes. The word sounds awful. Theo can’t believe what the Flood has done to him, what Seraph has done. Sister Kipling will be so proud, Mother Woodside will be so proud, his father will be so proud.
Benji has come back to him.
“They found out.” Benji is sobbing without tears, a painful hitch in his words. The nest howls. “They found out about Seraph, and they hate me.”
“Oh, Ben,” Theo murmurs. He had known they would eventually, but he doesn’t say that. In a good relationship, there’s no need for petty shit like, I could have told you so. Benji would realize Theo was right on his own, and they could talk about it then.
Weakly, his voice so small Theo can barely hear it, Benji says, “I want to go home.”
Theo would hold him here forever if he could. The Angels are saved, and everyone in Reformation Faith Evangelical Church can feel it.
“I do too,” Theo says. Thank God, thank God, thank God. “Let’s go home.”
And so will I go in unto the king…
and if I perish, I perish.
—Esther 4:16
Before I left for Reformation Faith Evangelical Church, Nick told me that 99 percent of lying is just figuring out what the other person wants to hear. He said it’s what the Angels have always done, and I laughed because otherwise it would have hurt too much to acknowledge. The other 1 percent is keeping your story straight, and if you read the Bible cover to cover, it’s clear the Angels don’t care about that, so feed them a steady diet of their own bullshit until they choke on it.
If Theo wants to hear I’ve been driven from my friends, then that’s what I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him I want to go back to New Nazareth. I’ll tell him anything.
But I can’t call this home anymore.
It’s been a month since I last saw New Nazareth, and it is the mouth of Hell. Death-squad soldiers stand at attention by the gate, their Graces wheezing and coughing. Snipers lurk behind curls of barbed wire at the top of the wall, some keeping an eye on the road from the shade of the stairs. Bodies of nonbelievers hang in various stages of rot. Between them, giant letters scream GOD LOVES YOU, REPENT SINNERS, THE TIME HAS COME. TRUST IN THE LORD AND YOU WILL BE SAVED. Flies buzz in an incessant cloud, and when the wind hits right, I smell it.