Hell Followed with Us(76)

I stand on the riverbank and steady my breathing to keep from collapsing to the stones. I pray, but nothing comes up except Revelation 13:1—And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.

Hide from the wrath of the Lamb.

Today is the day New Nazareth ends.

The ritual is a private one, meant only for those close to the one seeking absolution. Mom and Theo stand by me while Sister Kipling lingers under the shade of a towering oak. Reverend Brother Ward flips through his Bible, clustered with two other members of the clergy—Brother Tipton and Brother Abrams. I want to hold Theo’s hand, and I hate myself for it.

My bare feet are already in the water, the current eddying around my ankles, and I’m watching where the New Nazareth wall meets the river. Past the wall lies Acheson’s downtown district, with abandoned family shops, boutiques, and all sorts of little things. If you keep following the river downstream, eventually you’ll find the only bridge leading out of the city. From there, Dad’s body. Probably festered and eaten away by now.

Right across the street is the most important. Because Nick promised he’d be there, waiting, watching from the roof of a shop nearby. The Watch promised. That’s the only thing that matters.

The plan is simple. I whisper to the Graces, I rip New Nazareth apart with their claws, and the Watch keeps me safe until they can pull me out into Acheson. Back to them. Back to Nick.

But not yet.

I told Nick I would go along with the ritual until the very end, that we’d have to wait until I was pulled from the water because I’d be too scared to concentrate on calling the Graces until my absolution was over. Nick agreed. He’d been through it before. He understood.

I also told him to wait—though I didn’t say it—because I want to do this.

I throw up into the river. Vomiting what’s left of my organs is just a hassle now.

“Oh, baby,” Mom murmurs, brushing my hair back from my forehead as I spit strings of black and red into the water. “It’s all right. It won’t take long.”

Theo helps me upright, and Reverend Brother Ward reaches out a hand for me to follow him deeper into the river.

He’s traded his Bible for a knife.

“Sister Woodside,” he says, “come forward.”

I don’t have to pretend I want this. I wade farther into the water until it hits my shins, my knees, my thighs. It’s cold. The current pulls at me, and I brace a foot in the smooth rocks to keep my balance. My dress hovers around my legs, pulled by the water as if trying to sweep me away from here.

“This is not baptism,” Reverend Brother Ward says. “For you have already been baptized, and the heretical world beyond our walls cannot change that.” The water has a dark tinge, brown and blue and gray and green and red. There shouldn’t be blood yet, but there it is, appearing for just a moment every time the water whispers the right way. “This is absolution. You have left your original sin in the watery grave, but now these new sins must follow.”

I am a man, and I fought for it, and nobody can take that from me. If these sons of bitches want to get their hands on me, I will make them suffer for it. And I will be good, I will be good, I will be good.

Seraph is a monster of fangs, feathers, and flesh. I have believed liars and brought suffering upon my people. I will absolve what I have done wrong in this river, I will wash away my past as an Angel and the future they planned for me, and then I will bring this cult down with all the fury of a wrathful God.

I won’t be okay, but I will be better.

Reverend Brother Ward holds up the knife. “These sins must be purged from you.”

Mom nods, hair twisting in the wind. Theo sees me watching him and smiles. Sister Kipling stares out across the riverbank, silent, her hands clasped as if trying to tear out her own fingers. Behind them all, Kincaid Chapel stands sentry, and New Nazareth spreads out like a feast.

Is Nick watching me now, the way I’m watching them? My heart, what’s left of it, thrums pitifully in my chest. My knees threaten to give out. Please let him be. I can’t spend any longer here.

That’s when I see it.

Above the wall, a bit of light winking from a roof. And again. The glimmer of a scope.

Nick is there. The Watch. Oh God.

“Are you ready to be purged, Sister Woodside?”

I say, “Yes.”

The first time this happened to me, I was eleven. I had been swept away from my home, from everything I had ever known, and dragged through the New Nazareth gate. Mom had been given absolution by the Angels long before we arrived, so I was forced to watch as a reverend did it to Dad. I don’t know how he stayed quiet, but I do know that when Mom tried to bring me into the river after him, I started to scream.

I submit willingly now.

I undo the dress’s button at my neck, and it comes apart in my hands, white cloth fluttering down to my waist. The early morning air is crisp against my bare spine. I hold the dress up at my chest to keep from being exposed.

I will be good, I will be good, I will be good, and I will feel far worse things than this.

The first cuts are on my back. The blade is sharp enough that it doesn’t hurt when it slices through my skin, not at first. The pain waits for me to take a breath. That’s when the wounds split further and hot blood rushes down my sides, right where my wings would go if I were a soldier. It pools in the fabric of my dress, wet and hot and dragging me down. Ward is talking. I barely hear it.