“You thought I’d let you mess this up?” Theo rasps. That’s not his voice. It’s nothing like it. “I believed in you, Benji, but there are consequences for your actions. I had to be careful. I had to be sure.”

I grab for the Flood to stop him, but it slips through my fingers.

No, not slipped.

Pulled.

“Did you really think I was going to let you ruin this?”

With a scream like metal on metal, or maybe someone being torn apart, Dominion seizes me by the skull and drags me down into the culling fields.

Floating. Drowning.

My lungs burn. I can’t open my eyes. I claw my way up toward air, but my body is so small, and my limbs are so weak. I kick and struggle, and when my lungs are about to collapse, I burst through the surface.

A warm wind blows through the trees, sending whirls of autumn leaves flying off twisted branches. I’ve surfaced in the red stream. It’s so freakishly deep, it’s flooded so much that the world is a flat plane of blood water. Trees and buildings jut out of the surface like the bones of the boy smeared into the road. Dozens of bodies hang from the trees. I recognize every single one. Sister Kipling, her face gray and bloated; Dad, a bloody mess; every single member of Squad Calvary. But how do I know their faces? I don’t, I can’t—

I struggle to shore, or what I think is shore, and find ground under my feet. My skin is stained, water dripping off my fingers and chin.

My hands are human. Not Seraph’s. Not mine.

Behind me, a cough.

I turn. Theo drags himself onto shore, struggling for air on his hands and knees. He’s just a boy. No Dominion, no Flood. Just a pale boy with pink lips and bright blue eyes.

Eventually, he gets his breath.

“You lied,” he whimpers, and stands—Leviticus 20:27, They shall be stoned with stones; their blood shall be upon them—clutching a jagged rock.

Nicholas

Chapter 34

There is not much to say about the tragedy of Squad Calvary, except that we should have seen the sin in that boy from the start, and that it was an unfortunate failure that my son will not repeat again.

—The general of New Nazareth

“What the hell is that?”

Faith’s elbow strikes Nick’s ribs, and if she keeps moving like this, he’s going to have to tie her down to get her off the wall. She’s completely red with blood; head wounds bleed like a motherfucker, but the pain hasn’t hit her yet. She’s on the walkway with wild eyes, demanding, “What the hell, what the hell.”