With that, Nick pushes me away and rests his rifle on the counter, trying to find a decent angle. It’s no use. His field of vision will be garbage no matter where he sets up. There’s no way he can get a good look at the street with the sedan and the cluttered windows.
He couldn’t have chosen this spot. I’m the pampered child of a church leader, and even I know you don’t hold a position alone. Especially not a bad position.
“Uh,” I say, “I’m Benji.”
He doesn’t say, Is that a girl’s name? Or, Like the dog from that old movie? His finger just taps on the trigger guard. Tp tp tp. A heartbeat.
“How many are there?” he asks.
I do some quick subtraction: Brother Hutch, Steven, the rookie, the wedding band. “There are three now. Plus the Grace.”
“Three,” Nick says. What’s going on out there? All the sounds blur into a roar. “Only Angels call them Graces.”
Oh. For by grace you have been saved through faith; but by the grace of God; His grace is a gift, grace upon grace.
Shakily, I manage, “They do?”
Tp tp tp. “They do.”
“I…” I swallow hard. “I didn’t know that.”
That’s it. I’m dead. He’s going to take that gun and—
He says, “Get up.”
“What?”
He pulls me up beside him. I drop the napkins. The counter comes to my nose, and I can’t see anything but dead bodies and the sedan. Maybe a sliver of the office building.
“Do you know where anybody is?” Nick asks. Tp tp tp. “I need you to tell me.”
“There’s, uh, some in the store next door. And by the pickup truck, but that’s, you know.” I gesture weakly to the side. “All the way over there.”
“Would we be able to see them from the window seat?”
The window seat, all the way across the café. “I guess? I don’t know—”
I don’t get to finish. With the screaming of metal and glass, the Grace slams out from the office building, contorting its body spiderlike through the doors.
There’s a person in its mouth. A boy. It’s pulling him, thrashing, down the front stairs.
Nick’s tapping stops.
This is nothing I haven’t seen before. This is nothing I haven’t done before. I’ve whispered against a Grace’s neck and turned the Flood against the Angels, but sick still wells in the back of my throat. This is what my power looks like. This is why the Angels made me a monster.
Bullets slam into the Grace’s back, blowing apart what’s left of its face, but it keeps moving. It drags the boy into the street, lifts him high like it’s showing off a kill, and bites all the way down.
The sound is thick and wet. Like a soggy branch snapping underfoot. Pieces of bone glint in the sun. The boy does not make any noise at all as he drops to the ground, his severed leg dangling from the Grace’s mouth.
An Angel cries, “The Lord is good!” and Nick says, “Cover your ears.”
I don’t hesitate. I clamp my hands tight, but it’s still so loud. A burst of three bullets: one hits the sedan, the other nicks the Grace’s shoulder, and the other hits it right in what once had been the jaw. None do anything. Gore splatters the road, but the Grace just brings its giant, clawed foot down.
Onto the boy’s chest.
His body gives instantly. Dozens of bones crack at once. There’s a chorus beyond the ringing in my ears—the death squad howling praise and holy words like dogs.