Soon, other voices joined in the growing chorus of recognition. Steven ignored them, held his gun even tighter, and walked ever faster toward the factory.

As people watched him pass with a mixture of fear and awe, he looked up from the ground and drew strength from the only thing he had left.

“Then I lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and beheld a certain man clothed in linen, whose loins were girded with fine gold of Uphaz,” he said, quoting from the book of Daniel.

The voices of fearful neighbors grew louder, and Steven grew bolder, loudly reciting the words he’d come to know intimately over the past four months.

“His body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in color to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude. And I Daniel alone saw the vision: for the men that were with me saw not the vision; but a great quaking fell upon them, so that they fled to hide themselves.”

As he shouted those words the neighbors took flight. Some ran blocks away, scrambling toward the high-rises of the Blumberg housing projects. Some ran to cars, driving as far from him as they could get. All of them ran to safety, because no one could convince them that the man in black was anything less than a demon from the depths of hell.

The streets were deserted now, but the power Steven had gained with his initial push toward the factory was beginning to wane. The sleepless nights and heroin, the murders and the hiding, all of it was coming down on him at once. Still, he continued to shout the words he had committed to memory, clinging to them as he moved toward his final destiny.

“Therefore I was left alone, and saw this great vision, and there remained no strength in me: for my comeliness was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength.”

The sound of sirens rose in the distance, and as the hum of powerful engines hurtled toward him from every direction, Steven pulled the sawed-off from his jacket and held it at his side. There was nothing left for him to do but stand.

When the police rolled to a stop all around him, jumping from their cars and pulling guns, the man who had done the bidding of the angel of death looked around slowly.

“Drop the gun!” one of the officers said.

Steven wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Not if he wanted his power. He threw his head back and shouted the words he remembered to the heavens, knowing that those words would be his last.