The Year of the Witching(101)

At this, the survivors of the slaughter murmured among themselves. A few stumbled back toward the walls; others cowered behind broken pews and heaps of rubble. All of them seemed to fear whatever curses Immanuelle would conjure next.

“Look at what this girl has wrought,” continued the Prophet, gesturing to the carnage about them. “Look at the ruin she’s brought upon us.”

“Why don’t you bite your lying tongue?” Ezra snapped, stepping forward. “Can’t you see she’s mourning?”

“That girl mourns nothing but her own demise. She’s a witch.”

“Maybe,” said Ezra, and he looked ready to rip the gutting blade from Lilith’s skull and turn it on his father. “But while you were cowering behind the altar, pleading for your miserable life, Immanuelle fought for Bethel. She mastered the plagues and the Mother’s darkness, which is more than any prophet or saint has been able to do. She saved us all.”

“She didn’t save us,” spat the Prophet. “She brought this evil here in the first place. She confessed as much to me days ago: These plagues were born of her flesh and blood. All of this is because of her.”

He was right. Immanuelle couldn’t deny it. Everything—the blood and the blight, the darkness and the slaughter, Leah’s death and Abram’s—all of it had come to pass because of her. Miriam had died to give her the power to fight back, but all she’d managed to do was hurt the very people she’d wanted to save.

Immanuelle peered down again at her grandfather, choking back a sob. She started to reach for him, then stopped herself, folding her hands into fists so tight her nails cut into her palms. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, not to the Prophet, or to the flock, but to Abram. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.” Ezra dropped to her side. “You saved us, Immanuelle. All of us are here because of you.”

“Not all of us,” she said, her gaze sweeping across the ruins of the cathedral. The Moores weren’t the only ones in mourning. There were more dead among the debris and rubble. A guardsman lay slumped over a broken pew, surrounded by the corpses of fallen beasts. The body of an old man she recognized as the candle peddler lay pinned beneath a fallen rafter. A few feet from the peddler, one of the Prophet’s brides sat amidst the wreckage, softly singing a lullaby to the lifeless child cradled in her arms.

These were the casualties of a war that could never be won. Immanuelle knew this now. The violence would continue. A new man would claim the title of Prophet. The cathedral would be rebuilt, and the covens of the dead would one day rise again. The war between witch and Prophet, Church and coven, darkness and light, would wage on and on until the day there would be nothing and no one left to mourn.

Was that the fate the Father wanted? Was that what the Mother ordained? Did They send Their children willingly to the slaughter? Could this be Their will?

No.

Gazing around the cathedral—at the corpses crowding the aisles, at Glory sobbing on Abram’s chest, at all the suffering and the senselessness—Immanuelle was certain of one thing: There was no divinity in this violence. No justice. No sanctity. All that ruin and pain had been wrought not from the Mother’s darkness or the Father’s light, but from the sins of man.

They had brought this fate upon themselves. They were complicit in their own damnation.

They did this.

Not the Mother. Not the Father.

Them.

“You ought to burn for this,” said the Prophet, whispering now though it was so quiet in the church that everyone could hear him. “Take her to the pyre.”

At his command, what was left of the Prophet’s Guard broke forward, their rifles raised. But Immanuelle and Ezra were ready. As the Prophet’s men backed them toward the altar, Immanuelle sprang for Lilith’s corpse and ripped the gutting blade from her skull. Ezra snatched one of the fallen guardsmen’s rifles and raised it—peering down the barrel with one eye shut, his finger curled over the trigger.

“Don’t make us do this,” said Immanuelle, raising the gutting blade. “There’s been enough bloodshed today.”

There was a chorus of jeers and shouts. A crowd of the survivors pressed into the center aisle. Immanuelle took a step closer to Ezra, the gutting blade raised and readied. She would hack her way to the cathedral doors if she had to. She hadn’t come this far just to die at the hands of a mob. But as the throng pressed closer, Immanuelle realized they weren’t shouting at her and Ezra.

No. Their eyes were on their Prophet.

Vera was the first to push past the Prophet’s Guard, limping between them and Immanuelle. She’d been wounded in the attack; her leg looked broken, there was a deep gash at her hairline, and the left side of her face was slick with blood. But despite the severity of her injuries, her stance was that of a soldier’s. “To get to her, you’ll have to strike me down first.”

More women followed, almost all of them from the Outskirts, placing themselves as shields between Immanuelle and the Prophet’s Guard. Glory joined them, elbowing to Immanuelle’s side with a fierce cry, and Anna followed after with Honor on her hip.

Martha stepped forward next, much to Immanuelle’s shock. “I stand with them.”

Esther staggered toward her son and, emboldened by their matriarch, a few of the Prophet’s brides followed suit. More joined the ranks. Men of the Outskirts. Leah’s mother and older sisters, then other women of the Church after them—little girls no older than Glory, matriarchs who could scarcely walk without the help of their canes. All of them moved forward in unison, flooding the aisle, forcing themselves between Immanuelle and the Prophet.