Hell Followed with Us(11)

“So you are Seraph, then,” Nick says.

Erin looks away from us both.

I stammer. “You weren’t sure?”

“I wasn’t,” Nick says. “You could’ve been a failed trial who escaped. You could’ve been a sick kid who just got lucky.”

Tricky bastard.

“Hey.” Erin leans forward a bit to catch my eye. I lean away in turn. “We’re not going to hurt you. The ALC was built to help queer teenagers, and that’s what it’s always done. It’s just that the specifics have changed in the past few years.” She folds the document closed in my hands. “We want to help you escape.”

What? No. That can’t be—that can’t—

“But we need to figure out how to do it,” she says. “We have two ideas, and all you have to do is tell us which one you like best. Okay?”

Nothing is ever this easy. There has to be a catch.

But what if they’re telling the truth? Not everyone is as cruel as the Angels. Dad wasn’t. Theo wasn’t, for a time. Kind people exist. I know that.

I can take a chance on this.

“Tell me.”

Erin lights up—a switch is flipped, her face beaming despite the fog of death hanging over her. “The first option is that Nick and the others will get you out of Acheson and into Acresfield County. The path will suck, and you’ll have to stick it out on your own at the end, but we know a place where you can cross in the suburbs outside the city.” I stare at her, awestruck. “You get out of the city, and we won’t have to worry about a giant monster stalking around in a few weeks. It’s a win for everybody.”

I imagine the weight taken off her shoulders, knowing Seraph is far away from her and the ALC. That the Angels will never get their hands on me, and her friends can go back to preparing for the deadly heat and droughts of the upcoming summer instead of worrying about monsters like me.

And it’s what Dad wanted. I could just do it. Take their help and meet up with his memory in the farmland like I promised.

But could I really manage the whole world alone?

Without him?

Quietly, I ask, “And option two?”

Erin’s brows pull up, just a little, into something like worry, and Nick says, “What have the Angels done to you?”

“What?”

The truth is, the real question is, what haven’t they done? Mom snarling in the living room when I was little, threatening to press kidnapping charges if Dad tried to take me away again. Glittering wounds gouged into Theo’s back, shallow like tide pools, as his father held up Angel wings he’d been deemed unworthy of. The smell of mass graves and shit. Watching the world wink out of existence, community by community, family by family, when no one on Earth deserved a fate that cruel and lonely.

Nick reaches into his jacket again, and this time, he takes out a folded knife as black as his uniform, as black as rich earth.

He presses a small lever, and the blade springs out with a snap. An Angel knife, the same kind Steven held to my throat. Just like, I realize, the ALC’s guns are Angel guns. Stolen from their dead bodies and turned against them.

He says, “Because you could join us.”

The Angel killers.

I’ll be good, I’ll be good, I’ll be good.

“Take their greatest weapon,” Nick says, “and make them pay. You’ll escape by making sure there’s no one left to chase you. You’ll make them suffer for what they did to you.”

Make them suffer.

On the surface, there’s no way to do that and be good. They’re commandments at each other’s throats. But I found more good in helping Nick—in whispering to the Grace—than I ever could if I kept Seraph hidden.

Maybe, if I join the ALC, I can do both.

Nick holds the knife out to me, the blade between his dirty, bruised fingers. He trusts me. Even after seeing the letter, even knowing what I’ll become.

I take the handle.

It feels like there’s something writhing in my gut and erupting into screaming fury. Six wings outstretched and crying HOLY, HOLY, HOLY.

It feels like a chance to be anything but what the Angels made me.





Today we learned what God has asked his followers to do. We learned the truth of the righteous path. Will you follow it too, as your parents have done? Will you find love and eternal life? Or will you rot on the wall and in the fields with the rest of the sinners?

—Sister Mackenzie’s Sunday school lesson



Erin offers to show me around the ALC, and Nick gives a half-assed excuse for why he can’t come along and disappears.

“He’s…,” Erin offers, the scrunched expression under her floral mask telling me she’s stepping carefully. “He’s got a lot on his plate right now. Stay here, okay? I’ll get you some water and a change of clothes.”

She asks what underclothes I use, and I turn red as I ask for boxers and a sports bra.

In exchange, I get a bucket of murky water, a rag, and an outfit a size too big.

“The water’s safe,” she assures me. “Just used a little, is all.”

By the time I’m done washing myself, the water is disgusting. I stare at it for too long, because now that all Dad’s blood is gone, I’m realizing I no longer have anything to remember him by.