A faith healer. I’d have to have some first. She hadn’t told him, but she’d given up believing in God. Every night, when he held her hands and they said their prayers, she recited empty words. She was too angry to speak with the Lord or the Virgin Mother. It was considered holy to share Christ’s pain, but on the worst days, when the cancer seemed to be dissolving her very bones with acid claws, she envied him. Christ had only suffered for two days. And it was too cruel to venerate the Blessed Mary. What praise did she deserve? She may have endured the pain of losing a child, but Marianne had lived through that hell five times, and she’d never been able to hold her children. They’d gone to their Golgotha inside of her and ascended into heaven on a rush of blood. The fruit of her own womb was less than holy, the disease that now destroyed her from the inside out.

Nolen believed, though, that God would send them a miracle, that the future hadn’t been denied, only delayed. To ease his mind, she acted the part of the pious wretch.

The doors before them opened. Marianne had assumed they’d be meeting with Jacob, Simon and Simon’s beautiful young wife, Elsbeth, as they had the two times they’d both been invited to dine at the mansion. Oh, Nolen had been invited far more often than she. Jacob had taken an almost fatherly interest in him, sending invitations that called Nolen away in the evenings, entreating him to leave his diseased wife at home to rest. She did not know what had transpired those nights, but the group assembled around the table now, bored-looking and beautiful, surprised her. Their gazes all held a strange hunger as every pair of eyes examined her. With a sudden, crashing clarity, she realized something was terribly wrong.

There wasn’t enough time to bend her intuition into action. Those guests who’d seemed so impressive and imposing a moment before transformed into demons before her eyes. They moved faster than Nolen could and tore her away from him as he tried to shield her.

Marianne’s world narrowed to a void of claws and fangs. They cut and tore her flesh, but she welcomed the pain. It felt different than the slow burn of the disease devouring her body. Faster. It would be better this way.