Hell Followed with Us(31)
I blink at myself in surprise. I like the black bloc anarchist look. It’s soothing to smother everything that could clock me as a girl under black cloth. I’m formless, able to blend in with the rest of the Watch like we’re all shades of the same person.
“No,” I say. “It’s good.” I adjust the gloves and try pulling up the hood. “Do you do this for everyone?”
“I insist on it,” she says. “I need a little bit of control over something.”
After Aisha can’t justify fussing over my outfit anymore, we go downstairs. Everybody is waiting for us, and like the white cheeks and too-long teeth, that makes it real. Erin twists the ends of her hair while Salvador opens and closes the blade of xyr knife over and over: click, tp, click, tp. Nick hands a rifle to Cormac, reciting the plan as he goes. It’s the closest thing I’ve heard to a prayer in days. Beside them, Faith checks her own gun, movements fluid and perfect the way the coast guard would have taught her.
“Morning,” Aisha says, taking a firearm for herself. Nick nods. There are notches on the grip, etched with a knife. I don’t count them. The city has been devouring Angels lately. An ear every now and then isn’t enough for the Vanguard.
Nick hands me a small pistol, still warm from his body heat. He asks, quietly, “Ready?”
It’s okay to be scared, he said.
“Ready.”
Behind us, Alex stands by the radio, staring as if they might find Trevor hiding between us. When I make eye contact, they huddle deeper into their patchwork coat and avert their gaze.
Only one person comes up to wish us good luck. It’s Sadaf, who plants a gentle through-the-mask kiss on Aisha’s cheek before slipping away again. Aisha puts a hand where her lips had been, the cracks in her expression etching deeper.
The rest of us just get curious eyes from the gym. Girls, boys, people who are both or neither, they all stare, wanting the details but knowing not to ask. I picture Cormac indulging an innocent question with a vicious smile, gory details making his victim turn green.
“Let’s not waste the morning,” Nick says. He looks better than he did yesterday, like everything has finally settled into place, like he’s right where he’s meant to be while swaddled in black cloth and carrying a gun. “Come on.”
“Be careful out there,” Erin whispers. “Please.”
This is happening.
I’m part of the Watch.
After Sister Kipling took the needle out of my spine, Mom said I would be venerated as a true instrument of God’s will, just as holy as the cherubim, thrones, dominions, and virtues. Dad begged me to tamp it down, to be quiet, to be better than what the Angels had done to me. Theo told me my power would be as terrifying as the Devil and twice as righteous.
I will be good. I will make them suffer. And I will take the Angel’s greatest weapon and turn it against them.
But I’m still terrified.
* * *
It’s an hour’s walk to Reformation, Salvador tells us, and we’ll get there before noon. The heat of the February sun clings to our black clothes. Sweat beads under my arms. Roads stretch out in an endless maze of traffic.
The last time I saw Reformation Faith Evangelical Church was when I walked the pilgrimage with Theo.
He was so excited on the way there, transfixed on the squad escorting us through the city because his father wasn’t there and that was the next best thing. On the way back, he was so sick, he could hardly walk. As soon as we were back within the New Nazareth walls, I brought him water as his guts revolted the way mine are now, pieces of his insides dangling from his lips. The only difference is that he got better, because he’d only taken a little bit. He’d taken one step closer to God, but only one. He was strong enough to fight off the infection, so he was strong enough to become a soldier. Proof of God’s favor.
Theo’s future squadmates laughed when I wiped his face, asking when we planned to put a ring on it. I’d touched his bare shoulders, hadn’t I? Kissed him, even? And the reverend mother’s daughter, no less. What a whore. Theo should’ve done the right thing and proposed already, before word got out and I made a disgrace of myself.
A few months later, he did. Not that we had a choice. Mom caught us having sex, and it was either get engaged or be cast from the family. Mom never would have actually disowned me—she had plans for me—but she said it anyway, spitting it in between scriptures, demanding I have more respect for my body than this. What if I had gotten pregnant? Would I have the strength to drown my newborn the way I should? She dragged me out of bed by the hair, threw Theo’s clothes at him, and said we had to make a choice.
The choice was obvious. Theo proposed the next day. We were fifteen. And despite everything, he loved me. He loved me through the Seraph trials, through my sobs that I was a boy, through the realization that I would become a monster and slaughter the world. I loved him through the death squads, through the carving of skin from his back, through him slamming me against the wall and squeezing my wrists so tight, I thought they would break.
I raise a hand to keep my hair out of my face as the wind blows, to block out the sun and its searing glare. When Nick isn’t looking, I try to put in the bobby pins, but they slide out and hang limply by my ear.
I’m still in love, aren’t I?