Just like the choirboys were harmless.
They had weapons. We did what we had to do.
“Cormac,” Faith says, voice trembling. “What are you doing?”
Cormac doesn’t look at her. “Don’t play stupid.”
He’s going to shoot her. Her foot catches on a rock, she stumbles, and sludge falls from her mouth to the grass. She makes an awful keening noise, barely human. Nick winces. The fingers on his right hand stretch so much, he’s going to shatter something.
I whisper, so quietly I’m barely speaking, “Please go.”
Go. They’re going to hurt you.
I remember when the Grace stood over me and a pile of Angel bodies. When the Grace at the café stared into my eyes, recognizing me for what I am. When the Grace in the rescue mission threw Nick to the ground to protect me. When the Grace broke down a door to flee the Angels, when the nest of the not-quite dead in Reformation cried for me. I’ll be good, I’ll be good, I promise.
I don’t want them to hurt you too. Please, go.
Nothing happens. The girl hits the gravel path. The cracks in her skin are visible now, breaking open like a bloated corpse.
“God,” the woman in the Vanguard whispers. “What the hell?”
“I’m gonna need you to back up,” Cormac calls out, sharp and commanding, everything that Joey is trying and failing to be. The members of the Vanguard look at one another warily. Cormac’s gaze does not falter. “We will fire.”
GET AWAY.
Nothing’s happening. It’s not working. Her eyes are too bright, she’s still too alive, the Flood is devouring her, but it hasn’t devoured enough. My words mean nothing. She’s not a Grace; she’s just a scared little girl. The same kind of little girl I was when Mom took me to New Nazareth, when she became more of a monster than the heathens, the people lost to the Devil, who would be sacrificed to the Lord to save our souls and theirs in turn. Or maybe she’d always been that way. I can’t remember these days.
“I said back up!” Cormac snaps.
“No.” I say it before I can stop myself, grabbing his sleeve. “Put that down.”
“What?”
“Just trust me.”
Cormac coughs out a sick-sounding noise. “Trust you?”
Joey says, “What the hell are you talking about?”
“She’s not a monster,” I say. “She’s a kid.” I could have said the same for the choirboys. I could always say the same for something else. “If you won’t talk to her, I will.”
Joey says, “Talk to her?”
Faith says, “Benji, don’t.”
Cormac says, “Don’t you dare.”
Nick says nothing.
Nick is the only person whose opinion I give a shit about.
I step off the concrete foundation and into the grass. The sun soaks into my black clothes, turns what should be winter into near summer, burning the earth like God’s wrath setting fire to the grasses and trees.
We meet between the pavilion and the pond, on the edge of the path. Her head lolls, and her eyes whirl like a scared animal. Her breathing is wet and labored, her lungs full of fluid. Dissolving from the inside, turning into something else, the same thing that’s happening to me.
Oh God, this is me. This is me.
“Hey,” I murmur. Soft nonsense, anything to calm her, to keep her from screaming. This is me, this is me. “Hey, there.”