Theo holds a pistol to my eye. His arm tightens around my giant neck and crushes our faces together, my whole body his shield from the Watch snipers, even as his broken Grace-hand squirms in every way it shouldn’t.
My head is the only thing between a bullet and his skull.
My concentration shatters. The Flood escapes me. People scream, Graces howl, soldiers struggle through the pain of the virus to raise their rifles—but I am still.
“You told them,” Theo wheezes. “You brought them here.”
My voice catches in my throat. I can’t speak.
“And she helped you, didn’t she?” He pushes the gun closer. “I heard what the techs said about her. That you got into her head, made her weak. You did this to her, didn’t you?”
The way he says didn’t you, the way he trembles. He doesn’t want to believe it. It’s in the quiver of his hand, the way his eyes keep flicking to Ward’s fallen body. There’s a gold ring in the reverend’s palm. Our engagement ring. What was supposed to be our wedding ring.
“Theo,” I say. “Put that down.”
“You’re not saying you didn’t.”
My hesitation must be all he needs.
He takes a thick, ugly syringe from his pocket and plunges it through the tense muscle of his thigh, through robes and layers of white cloth. The gun trembles but doesn’t drop as he slams down the plunger and the strange milky liquid inside pushes into his body.
The label on the syringe reads HOST 12—DOMINION.
He stole it from the lab.
“You know I’m smarter than that, babe.” He pulls the syringe out of his leg and drops it, where it glints menacingly in the grass. “You think I wouldn’t have a backup plan? You thought I wouldn’t be careful with a heretic like you?”
Host 12—Dominion, a failed version of Seraph, moves like a breathing thing.
Theo’s skin begins to boil, folding over on itself and expanding. His robes shred as twisted wings erupt in a spray of blood. An Angel stumbles too close and Theo grabs them by the arm and pulls them against him.
Into him.
His flesh melts into something else, consuming the body whole, bones snapping out from the skin and overflowing with tumors, eyes, and teeth. He grabs another Angel, slams them into himself, and explodes with organs and broken limbs.
He smiles, a mouthful of fangs, Flood rot weeping from open wounds.
Dominion is nothing like Seraph. Put together from spare parts, fingers reaching out from the skull, eyes opening across his neck and shoulders. His six wings melt into one another with shifting ropes of tissue, excess arms and legs dripping from his sides. Blond hair sticks out from bulging tumors and spikes of bone erupting from his jaw.
“You thought I’d let you mess this up?” Theo rasps. That’s not his voice. It’s nothing like it. “I believed in you, Benji, but there are consequences for your actions. I had to be careful. I had to be sure.”
I grab for the Flood to stop him, but it slips through my fingers.
No, not slipped.
Pulled.
“Did you really think I was going to let you ruin this?”
With a scream like metal on metal, or maybe someone being torn apart, Dominion seizes me by the skull and drags me down into the culling fields.
* * *
Floating. Drowning.
My lungs burn. I can’t open my eyes. I claw my way up toward air, but my body is so small, and my limbs are so weak. I kick and struggle, and when my lungs are about to collapse, I burst through the surface.