He steps away and lets his sleeves go. His right hand shakes for a second, like he’s trying to get something off it. “Ridged side goes against the skin,” he says and drops back into his chair.

I barely remember to reply, “Right. Thanks.”

“You did good at the church,” Nick says.

“I don’t feel like I did.” Dad’s meaning of the word or Nick’s, it doesn’t matter. I know I technically did, but I still ache in my chest. Like I did something wrong instead.

“We lost nobody to abominations. You did your job.”

“They didn’t want to hurt us.”

His throat bobs. His gaze focuses on a squirrel balancing on a phone pole, tail twitching as it surveys the rusting traffic jam.

He says, “How much longer do you have?”

“I don’t know. A few weeks at most.” The skin underneath my fingernails is a bit too pale, verging on gray. Nothing too wrong. But just wrong enough. “I’m throwing up all the time, and it’s getting worse.” I don’t mention the vision, or whatever it was, at Reformation. He might think I’m losing it and shove me over the side of the building. “But I’m all right for now.”

“It’s okay to be scared,” he says.

I say, “I’m scared all the time. I’m tired of it.”

“Then do something about it.”

Like what? What else is there to do but split open my skull, beg Theo to take out the rotten parts, peel Seraph out of me cell by cell? All I can do is run away. I ran from New Nazareth, I ran from the Angels and Theo and Mom, and I’m running from this too, as if closing my eyes against it will stop it from devouring me whole.

Maybe I have to run toward something for once.

Toward Theo. Toward the beast in the trees.

I say, “This was supposed to be me getting you to talk.”

Nick says, “Good fucking luck.”

I laugh.

Chapter 14

The hospitals are full. We have patients on the floor, in the halls. They’re dying there. And the ones that don’t die…Look. My advice? As soon as you start vomiting black, or feel your organs moving inside you, the only thing I can recommend is euthanasia.

—Anonymous nurse at West Acheson Medical Center

Six wings. Death on his pale horse. The monster of the sea and blasphemy.

The wrath of the Lamb.

I chase Seraph.