PREPARE TO DIE. HIS KINGDOM IS NEAR.

The closer we get, the clearer the hum becomes—cries of the Graces, calling to Heaven, the children’s choir singing about washing clothes with the blood of the Lamb. It’s the same hum I felt when Theo cut his hands and pressed them to the flesh of the church, when he leaned down to kiss it, his blood becoming Jesus’s blood, the same way as wine. It sounds like New Nazareth. It sounds like home.

When I step down from the curb and into the street, I almost stop. I don’t want to go any closer. This is where Brother Hutch was going to take me. This is where I watched Theo fall apart into something other than the boy I grew up with. The Angels always had their claws in him, but this is where they hooked into his insides so deep he could not pull them out without bleeding to death.

But Nick looks back at me, and I follow like I’ve been doing this all my life.

“Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?” the choir asks in a warbling, childish soprano before fading into a holy echo. We walk around to the back, where a delivery entrance pushes up against a graveyard meant for the bodies of the church’s elders. The door is unlocked; the Watch contains the only people brave enough or stupid enough to come this close.

Nick wrenches it open. We’re greeted by a distant sermon, crying loud to the faithful.

“We have gathered here today,” comes the faint voice of Reverend Brother Morrison, “to celebrate the achievements of our children.” It’s a voice that shakes under the weight of its words, the voice of the man who promised to wed Theo and me by the river when we were ready, when God had made me perfect with the Flood. Nick freezes against the door, eyes squeezed shut. My left hand shakes so badly, I have to shove it into my pocket. “To put the worthy through trial. To help them take their places one step closer to the Lord’s side.”

Nick lets me through first. The room is dark and musty, piled full of boxes and discarded pews. I didn’t need the map of the church we studied; I know this building. Theo and I snuck away while the presiding reverend readied himself for the ceremony, creeping through the halls to find a place all to ourselves. He stopped by a hidden staircase and kissed me, and when we got back my braid was a mess, so everyone knew what we did. I look up to see the same tendrils on the ceiling, a fingernail digging into the beams. We all come in, and Nick closes the door tightly. The room plunges into darkness.

I can do this.

“Brothers, take pleasure in your struggle,” Reverend Brother Morrison commands. “Learn to love the pain. It is a cleansing pain. It is a glorious pain. Love it the way Jesus loved the nails through His palms, the thorns upon His brow. It is not a soft love; it is not a gentle love, but it is a perfect one.”