Theo’s future squadmates laughed when I wiped his face, asking when we planned to put a ring on it. I’d touched his bare shoulders, hadn’t I? Kissed him, even? And the reverend mother’s daughter, no less. What a whore. Theo should’ve done the right thing and proposed already, before word got out and I made a disgrace of myself.

A few months later, he did. Not that we had a choice. Mom caught us having sex, and it was either get engaged or be cast from the family. Mom never would have actually disowned me—she had plans for me—but she said it anyway, spitting it in between scriptures, demanding I have more respect for my body than this. What if I had gotten pregnant? Would I have the strength to drown my newborn the way I should? She dragged me out of bed by the hair, threw Theo’s clothes at him, and said we had to make a choice.

The choice was obvious. Theo proposed the next day. We were fifteen. And despite everything, he loved me. He loved me through the Seraph trials, through my sobs that I was a boy, through the realization that I would become a monster and slaughter the world. I loved him through the death squads, through the carving of skin from his back, through him slamming me against the wall and squeezing my wrists so tight, I thought they would break.

I raise a hand to keep my hair out of my face as the wind blows, to block out the sun and its searing glare. When Nick isn’t looking, I try to put in the bobby pins, but they slide out and hang limply by my ear.

I’m still in love, aren’t I?

Reformation Faith Evangelical Church is a time machine made of stone and stained glass—a towering, Gothic-style monster cradled by brutalist ten-story offices and parking garages. It used to be a Presbyterian church, but the Angels consumed it like they did everything else. They invited all kinds of people into their flock, teaching them the purpose of Evangelicalism and tradition and the way of the Angels, and then the martyr masquerading as a preacher smashed a vial of the Flood on the altar and barred the doors shut. An eye for an eye, a plague for a plague.

We don’t get within two blocks until Cormac climbs the parking garage and snipes the soldiers standing at the front stairs, Faith going with him to watch his back. There’s a pair, one leaning against a broken streetlight and the other smoking by the door. Aisha stares at the road so she doesn’t have to see it. I watch them fall and wonder who they are. If I’d recognize them if I lifted up their heads.

Who am I kidding? Of course I would.

Cormac and Faith come back through an alleyway, thumbs up in reassurance. We’re in the clear.

As we get closer, the ground itself seems to hum, reverberating through my throat and behind my eyes. The church drips with flesh: arteries the size of arms breaking through stained glass windows, root veins spreading out between the stonework. Fingers grow from cracks in the masonry. Bodies hang from the architecture, the mark of wings painted on every door in the same shade of red as blood, like the blood on the doors of the Israelites to spare their firstborn sons. Scrawled messages cry, GOD LOVES YOU, GOD LOVES YOU, GOD LOVES YOU.