He doesn’t know much about people, but he knows a hell of a lot about anger. He knows what anger will make people do.

God, he knows that much.

The monster Nick finds halfway between the ALC and Reformation Faith Evangelical Church does not look much like Benji at all.

Consciously, Nick—hiding in the shadow of a pickup truck and digging his nails into the corner of his eye to calm down, just calm down—knows this thing is Benji. This thing has Benji’s hair, Benji’s tiny body, Benji’s clothes. This thing looks like Sister Kipling took out all of Benji’s insides and sewed a wolf under his skin, and it’s only now that Nick is seeing it for the first time.

It’s not him, but it is, and Nick is transfixed.

Benji’s eyes are locked on the death squad just yards from him, ghosts with blood on their robes praying to God. Their guns are down. Their eyes are closed in the shining glory of the Lord, the invisible light beaming in their chests in the darkness of night. Nick knows the type. Their job is to flush out survivors like vermin. They’re soldiers who can’t be trusted with anything else, the ones too bloodthirsty to guard caravans, the gates, or the bridge. The ones New Nazareth can afford to lose, the ones they unleash like rabid dogs to clean up what the Flood, mass shootings, executions, and suicide attacks missed on Judgment Day and every day after.

No matter how expendable these Angels are, Benji can’t take six full-grown men on his own, he can’t—

As soon as the thought crosses Nick’s mind, Benji lunges from the shadows and sinks his teeth into a soldier’s throat.

Everything else turns off like a switch.

Nick lifts his pistol. At least the Angels taught him something.

CRACK. He drops the Angel closest to him—aiming between the shoulders, right above where the spine emerges from the Kevlar vest under the robe. The bullet casing spits from the gun and hits the ground with a distinctive clink.

Nick counts his rounds. One.

The man with teeth in his neck gurgles, and Benji rears back with a mouthful of flesh, a spray of red following in an arc through the space between them.

This is the easy part. This is what Nick is good at.

CRACK. Clink. Two. The bullet hits a thigh and distracts the soldier just enough for Benji to grab him by the face and smash him into the brick storefront. Nick counts the shells and not the bodies because it’s what the general taught him, saying the number should be the same anyway.