Hell Followed with Us(50)

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Theo is in the sanctuary, praying. In the front pew, hands clasped, head hung and eyes closed. He’s so perfectly still, he could be a statue or a corpse.

The sight doesn’t sit well with me. All I can think of is him whimpering for forgiveness at the foot of the altar in New Nazareth, the wounds on his back weeping blood, so lost he wouldn’t answer even when I laid my hands on him and said his name.

Here, now, I stop in the threshold and gently call, “Theo?”

He doesn’t open his eyes, but he says, “Back already? My supplies will last me another few days at least.”

I shuffle my feet. No, they won’t. I hate that he thinks I’d only come back to keep him from going hungry.

“Bad day,” I explain. “I just wanted to see you.”

He pats the spot next to him. Still not looking. Every eye of the nest turns to me instead, mouths opening and closing as if beckoning. I do as they ask, sitting beside Theo on the pew, and Theo settles a hand on my leg and goes right back to praying.

I managed to find solace in prayer. I found respite in it, even if I had to force it. It’s a chance to step away from everything for a little bit, in a way I couldn’t get even when I was with Theo. I could follow along with the reverend’s chant, my own silent words, or the prayers I memorized down to their bones, and forget everything else. It was just me, the words, and the air in my lungs.

The problem is, I always felt like I was talking to myself.

All the other Angels talked about their personal relationship with God and Jesus. How prayer was a conversation with their savior. How they took the spirit inside themselves and knew the Lord was listening. Even when I was little, before New Nazareth and the Angels, Mom would take me to church and say, Can you feel it, baby girl? Isn’t it glorious?

I tried to feel it. I did, I swear. I reached for it, squeezed my eyes shut as tight as I could and begged for it. I pretended I was stretching my hands out into the darkness behind my eyelids, fingers splayed wide, trying to find even the barest touch of something out there in the abyss. To feel the warmth Mom always assured me was waiting once I accepted God into my heart.

There was nothing. Always nothing.

Maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be. Maybe you’re not supposed to feel that touch—maybe it’s always been a metaphor. God is an absent parent who demands loyalty despite never coming around, and I just have to keep throwing my prayers into nothing and trust He gets them. Or maybe I am just too broken to feel Him in the first place.

So instead of prayer being a conversation, it became something else. A time to myself. A time to relax, to center, to set things right.

Do I think He exists? Heaven, Hell, all of it?

I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.

So I sit beside Theo and pray too. I pray for everything I can think of. For this world to hold together for as long as it can. For the Angels to stay away. For all the survivors to make it another day. For everything to turn out okay this time. O Lord, we need You today and every day. Please lend us Your strength, lead and guide us— “Amen,” Theo says out loud, startling me.

“Amen,” I say in turn, even though I wasn’t done.

His eyes flutter open, and he looks at me, jerks back, and says, “What the hell.”

There it is. I offer a smile, but Lord knows how it looks on my face. “Told you, I had a bad day.”

“I—” Theo stammers, mouth uselessly flapping as he scrambles for words.

“To fear and to keep,” I remind him.

“I know. God, I know.” Finally, he collects himself. He blinks, slowly. Wrangles his breathing into something even. “Does it hurt?”

“Not really. Not anymore.” I run my tongue over my exposed teeth. “But my pain scale is screwed, considering everything.”

He pulls me closer, hands lingering on my hips, shoulders, arms, cheeks, the way they always have.

“Look at you,” he says. It’s so soft it almost scares me. “It’s still you.”

“You don’t have to say that.”

“I mean it,” he insists. “It’s still you. I’ll prove it.”

He takes off his mask and kisses me.

He what?

I push him away. “Theo. Theo, what are you doing?”

“Kissing you?”

There’s a smear on his cheek. Flood rot. Infected blood.

Seraph isn’t contagious. Sister Kipling made sure it couldn’t be transferred through any of the usual paths—spit, blood, nothing. The way Mom put it, Seraph was always meant to bear the weight of salvation alone. It wouldn’t do to have the gift of God’s strength be diluted through the unworthy. It wouldn’t do, she said, for an army to be half generals. Just like there is one God, one king, one leader, there shall be one Seraph.

The point of Seraph has always been control.

“That’s not—you can’t seriously—”

His face falls. “Do you not want me to kiss you?”

I don’t know if the idea disgusts me or intrigues me. Both, probably. I don’t want to find out. “You don’t have to.”

“But I want to. And I want to do other things too.” The way his voice dips, his hands tighten, oh God, he’s talking about sex. I want to hide my festering face in my hands. “This is you, this is still you, and I missed you.” He cradles my jaw and despite myself, despite everything, I lean into him. “I don’t care about this. It’s still you.”