The shadow of Seraph digs its claws into the side of a building and hauls itself up to the roof. I follow.
I’ve never chased anything like this, not really. Theo chased me, and I let him, both now and when we first fell in love. Dad chased freedom for both of us in Acresfield County, and I just held on to his sleeve. I barely even chased the idea that I might be a boy. I didn’t want to think about why I never felt at home in my skin, why my name never felt like mine, why I was so apathetic about everything the Angels said a girl should be. I thought I was tired of an Angel’s womanhood, of loyalty and purity, of all the terrible things they tried to cram into our heads. But that was never enough, all the excuses were never enough, and dysphoria had to wrap its hands around my neck and hold me down, baptism in drowning, before I faced the fact that living as a girl would kill me long before the Angels did.
My boyhood threatened to destroy me unless I looked it in the eye. I’m not going to let Seraph do that to me too.
I follow Seraph into the heart of campus, where towering buildings encircle the student union. I throw open the glass doors and step through the mess of chairs in the old food court, up the spiral steps to the fourth floor and through a hidden staircase to the roof.
Up here, Seraph sits on the other side of the skylight, a towering shadow backlit by the sun. A massive creature of wings and sharp edges. Diseased flesh and exposed muscle.
How close do I have to get? What do I have to do to face it? Whisper across the roof, hold its warped face in my hands, look into its eyes and bare my own teeth?
I pause, watching. A long tail made of sinew and bone wraps around its hunched body. I squint against the sun, and I can’t make out any of its features, except the hissing of breath and the flutter of so many wings.
I say, “I’m here, you son of a bitch. What do you want?”
Seraph lunges across the skylight and smashes us both through the glass.
* * *
I wake up with a piece of glass in my mouth.
I roll off the mattress and hit the cold, waxed floor, kicking my sheets and trying to spit out blood. Nothing comes out. Nothing? I stare at the ground, but it’s night, it’s dark, and I can’t see anything.
There’s glass stuck in my mouth.
I run my tongue over my teeth, and it snags on my top left canine. It wasn’t always this big. It’s scraped my upper lip raw. I didn’t think I had another smaller, normal tooth smashed backward to make room for it, and I didn’t think it was as sharp as—
As sharp as shattered glass.
For the word of God—it is sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow.
I bolt from my room. I trip over the sheets spilling out from the little apartments and almost run into the gym doors trying to open them. I grab a box of tools from the supply closet, I’ll need tools for this, and the only place to hide is the bathroom at the back of the building. Nobody uses it since there’s no water. It’ll be safe there.
I paw open the door and slam the lock into place behind me. The only light comes in from a small slit window just above the toilet, the moon trickling in lazily. Good. I sit on the floor and squeeze my eyes shut.
It’s Seraph. It’s the Flood pushing outward. A tooth, like my nails and gums and the red rims around my eyes. Like the one Nick pried out of the Grace.
Let all the earth fear the Lord. I tear open the tool bag and dump out everything. Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him.
There. Pliers.
Breathe. Okay. Knee up, elbow propped against it, put the pliers against the jagged Grace-tooth sticking out from my gums, destroying my lips and mouth. People pulled teeth all the time before anesthesia was invented. It can’t be that hard, can it? I clamp the pliers around the tooth. Don’t be a bitch, get it over with, bury the tooth in the courtyard, and deal with it. Breathe. Just do it.