The Graces. Oh God, the Graces.
One stands with their handler, their head a mass of skulls lashed together with Flood and sinew. Mouths open and close in a gurgling gospel. And there is the nest behind the altar—a beast made of every soul trapped here on Judgment Day, dragged into the body of this one creature. Hands reach out, torsos press against thin veils of flesh, eyes peeking between bones, lungs, and scraps of jewelry trapped on the wrists of the not-quite dead. Their muscles spread in a quilt across the carpet, up the carved stone walls, under the pews and between the beams of the ceiling.
Soldiers stand by the front doors, watching the boys waiting for the rite to begin. Among the boys, I see Brother Abels, who had such a soft smile and volunteered to stack the chairs after Sunday school. I see Brother Davis, who cried when he scraped his knee the first day at New Nazareth. And I see Sister Davis, his mother, swaying as Reverend Brother Morrison speaks, desperate to drink in his words and save her son. I know every face. If I don’t know their names, I know them. I’ve seen them, I’ve broken bread with them, I know them, I know them, I know them.
Theo told me the nest’s flesh tasted sweet, sweet the way vomit does for just a second after it comes up. It killed someone from his pilgrimage. The boy didn’t make it a day. A soldier dragged him to the culling fields before night fell, the Flood devouring him whole as his skull swelled and one of his eyes popped from its socket, dangling by a nerve.
If the Watch weren’t here, how many people in this pilgrimage would die? How many would survive the rite? How many would go back to families who hailed me as their savior? Who put their hands on me and prayed?
Stop, stop thinking about home. This is for the Watch—for the ALC, for the Vanguard, the way it should be.
The Grace by the door whines, and the handler tugs on a bone jutting out of their jaw. I whisper, “Hush.” They quiet, trembling, all their dozens of eyes searching for me in the darkness. The Flood hisses and burns like fat falling into a fire. I whisper, “I’m here.” The nest quiets too.
And when Reverend Brother Morrison pauses for breath, I swear I hear my own lungs echo.
There is a sudden, intense calm. Like something terrible being held back.
I’m here. It’s okay.
Reverend Brother Morrison says, “Let us pray.” Every hand clasps; every eye closes. Even the handler, even the soldiers.
I brace my back against the railing and aim the pistol at a beautiful window above me. Blue and gold and red and green dances on white robes like sun streaming through the leaves of a forest.
The Flood burns.
I pull the trigger.
CRACK.
The pistol jerks back painfully in my hand. Glass shatters. I whisper, and the nest shrieks. I whisper, and the Grace lunges forward to tear their handler’s arm from its socket. The sanctuary shatters into gunshots and hellfire.
And I’m not in Reformation Faith Evangelical Church anymore.
I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is a thirst of the fountain of the water of life freely… But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake, which burneth with fire and brimstone.
—Revelation 21:6–8
It’s quiet on the culling fields. It’s always quiet on the culling fields, sure, this little grove at the back of campus where a tiny stream cuts through the woods. But this is the quiet of the dead. The kind of quiet colored by the creaking of rope and the rush of water and wind—all the things that aren’t the quiet that make the quiet so loud it hurts.
Sunlight sinks its teeth into the back of my neck. Trees rustle their dying leaves. The dry grass hisses at my presence, and the stream runs red.