The memory of Leon lying there, bloodied on the ground, haunted me. He was by far the strongest being I knew, but how could even a demon heal from that? Even at the end, even with no strength left, he’d still tried to fight them off me.
I curled up a little tighter into the seat, biting back the tears. If he lived, would he come for me? Or did Jeremiah have him bound somewhere too, enslaved again, back in that awful concrete room he hated so much? Or had Jeremiah left him there, to die slowly and alone, without the strength to get up again?
The thoughts knotted up my empty stomach, and despite my efforts, tears slipped down my face, dampening the cloth over my head.
We drove for so long that I nearly dozed off, weak with hunger and shaking. The rain was pouring now, pattering against the outside of the vehicle when we finally came to a halt. The engine turned off, and panic flooded me again. I was already struggling when the doors began to open, and someone dragged me out across the street to throw me over their shoulder again.
I screamed as loudly as I could. I yelled, thrashing, struggling until the metal on my wrists and ankles cut into my skin — all of it was useless. I was carried through the rain, the scent of pine and damp earth heavy in the air. Then came the scent of smoke, like a woodfire, and then the sound of a door scraping, wood on wood.
There had been a murmur of voices, but they abruptly fell silent. For a moment I thought I was falling, instead I was set gently on the ground, my legs folded beneath me, and the bag covering my head was pulled off.
I blinked rapidly as my eyes adjusted, taking in the dusty wooden floor beneath me, the leaves scattered around, the dim light — this place was familiar. I raised my head, and my heart felt as if it was clenched by a fist. I was kneeling at the end of a church nave, staring down at two long lines of white cloaked figures in stag skull masks. At the end of the two rows, standing between them, was Jeremiah in his white suit. He stood before a pulpit covered in lit white candles, their wax piled up in dripping heaps around them, adorned with those familiar little trinkets made of fishbones and twigs.
They’d brought me back to St. Thaddeus. The rain poured down through the broken ceiling above, pooling behind the row of silent onlookers. I tried to get up, tried to scramble backward — only to run straight into the legs of the person who’d brought me. He was hooded and cloaked like the rest: faceless, utterly uncaring as I began to scream again. I struggled against him as he forced me to walk between the rows of figures toward Jeremiah. He watched over it all serenely, the one smiling face among so many skulls, somehow the eeriest of all of them.
“You can’t do this!” I was forced to my knees at his feet, my guard holding me down and then wrenching my head back, so I was forced to look up at Jeremiah’s face. The calm expression, the utter disconnect from any emotion — he may as well have been looking at a bug struggling at his feet. My mouth was too dry, or I would have spit in his face.
“Let me go, Jeremiah.” I was breathless, my voice hoarse from the struggle and lack of water.
He just shook his head. “It’s almost over,” he said softly. Then, louder, “Brothers and Sisters, it’s almost at an end! Our long struggle, the culmination of our devotion — before an eternity of faithful devotion to our God. The end of the Age of Man is here. With this, our final sacrifice, we give Earth back to God.”
“Back to God,” the crowd murmured in unison. Jeremiah turned toward the waxy altar behind him, and when he faced me again, he had a slim knife in his hands. He crouched down, and pressed the tip of the knife up under my chin.
“Now, there’s no need for me to hurt you unnecessarily, Raelynn,” he said softly, so softly only I could hear. “But if you struggle, if you fuss, this knife might slip, and this will all be a lot worse than it needs to be.”
“Fuck you,” I hissed, then yelled. “Fuck you! Fuck all of you!”
Jeremiah smiled patiently, then roughly grabbed my shirt, slicing through it with the knife so quickly that the sharp tip nicked my flesh, leaving a long thin line of welling blood down my chest. My guard’s grip on me tightened as I began to squirm, protesting as Jeremiah grabbed my bra and sliced through that too, leaving my chest bare and my ruined clothes hanging off my shoulders.
Goosebumps spread over my skin. I glared at him as he smirked at me, and tried to flinch away as he reached out and flicked one of my tender nipple piercings. “How cute,” he mocked. “I knew there was a freak in you. It really is too bad, Rae. We could have had so much fun, but…” He shrugged. “You’re promised to another. It’s a shame I can’t keep you.”