He looks like hell. He’s sitting up on the mattress, supported by the wall, surrounded by stained bandages and shreds of clothing. Part of his pants leg has been cut away to reveal jagged wounds packed with gauze. His mask is down, but he’s holding the same ruined cloth to his face, and I realize with growing horror that he’s just as much of a death-squad soldier as the Angels who were torn to shreds by the Flood at New Nazareth.

He takes the cloth down.

A fault line has opened across his face, from the left side of his forehead down across his eye all the way to his chin. Teeth sprout from odd parts of his cheek. The affected eye sits low in its socket, the bone holding it up shattered.

“I could—” I could fix that. I know I could. But before I can finish the thought, Nick squeezes his eyes shut.

Too loud.

Okay. He’s here, and he’s alive. That’s what matters.

I lie down beside him, the only way to get down to his level, and my head settles against his knee. Not touching it, no, but close enough. His gaze sweeps over the broad forest of spikes, exposed bone, and feathers of my back and shoulders; the kink in my wing; the wounds, welts, and cracks in my skin.

We can talk about it all later. We don’t have to speak right now. We promised we’d speak after I came back from New Nazareth, and now we have all the time in the world.

Nick reaches for me. His fingers press against my weird, broken excuse for a nose, the ridge of my brows, the soft spot under my eye, the edge of my jaw. The rough skin smothering my skull, the sores on my neck, all the things the Flood has done to me.

And he grabs the back of my head and pulls me up, arms trembling with the strain. I scramble up to follow him. He pulls me in until our foreheads are pressed together again, and I don’t realize how much I’m shaking until he holds me tighter just to keep me still.

This is home. I am alive, these are my friends, this is my family.

Wherever the Watch is, I’m home.

Acknowledgments

Hell Followed with Us began life as a fit of rage. It was written by a bitter, terrified boy barely out of his teens and came into the world an unrecognizable mess of viscera. I am forever grateful to the people who saw the beautiful thing inside and helped coax it into the open.