Chapter 23 #2
Cultists line the cobbled stone path outside the building, dozens of pairs of eyes watching me from beneath golden masks.
Many of them reach out to touch me as I pass, and I flinch away from the strangers’ hands, skin itching at the invasion of my personal space.
Some of them are weeping. Some of them are chanting prayers beneath their breath.
Others just watch with bated breath as I am dragged toward my destination.
They seem different from the sect I remember as a child.
Madder, more zealous. Maybe I didn’t see the worst of it as a child, maybe my father improved his brainwashing techniques the second time around.
Or maybe they’re just drunk on power, salivating at the nearness of the day they’ve awaited for so long.
My throat is tight as I see what awaits me at the end of the path. A wooden altar already stained dark with blood. My legs turn to jelly beneath me, strength draining from my limbs—not that it matters. The cultists drag me along just the same.
With every forced step closer, my stomach drops lower. My heart beats a panicked rhythm in my ears.
I want to live.
And as I catch a glimpse of a familiar, panicked face waiting on the other side of the altar, another fear rises to match that: I don’t want Cain to see me die.
And I don’t want the world to suffer the consequences if he does.
Cain is dressed only in a loose white bedsheet around his waist, chains binding his neck and wrists and ankles.
The same way he was often bound at the MRF, but without as much care.
Metal chafes against skin already red and raw from his struggles.
When he sees me, he fights harder, straining against his bindings.
The extra eyes scattered over him are wide open and burning red, all fixed on me.
He tries to shout something, but it’s muffled by his gag.
I’m surprised the cultists can stand the growing tension in the air around him.
But perhaps it helps that they are half mad already.
Some of those closest to him are on their knees, hands held toward the sky, eyes rolling back in their heads as they pray.
One is face-down on the dirt, convulsing, but the others pay him no mind.
It all contributes to the general cacophony, which swells toward a crescendo as I’m forced onto the altar.
“Sixteen!” I shout, because I won’t use his real name in front of these people; I won’t give them that power over him. “You need to stay calm. Please, whatever happens, I—”
A fist slams into my stomach, and my words cut off in a choked sound of pain. The blow knocks the wind out of me, until it’s all I can do to force air into my lungs.
Cain screams through his gag. Even muffled, the sound swells above the clamor all around us; it sounds as if he shrieks with two voices, one a low, thunderous shout and the other a high-pitched wail.
The sheer volume makes me wince, and one of the cultists holding me down drops to the ground, covering his ears.
Blood trickles out between his fingers, and his eyes roll as he drops in a dead faint.
But another soon rushes from the surrounding crowd to replace the fallen man. They hold me down by my shoulders, forcing me prone as I struggle.
When I manage to glance at Cain he looks wild, and—bigger, the chains on his wrists cutting into his skin. He lunges forward, and metal groans as the chains fight to contain him.
Rough hands force my head down onto the altar. My vision tunnels overhead as my father takes his place standing above me. He’s the only one not wearing a mask.
“Shh,” he says, brushing my hair out of my face.
“Soon you will be free, my girl.” He looks out at the crowd, raising his voice.
“Soon we will all be free! For we will be the ones to usher in a new era. The sinners of this world will die in hellfire and blood, but we, who brought about the word of the Lord, shall ascend. Do not be afraid of what is to come, my brothers and sisters. ‘Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.’ We will be rewarded for our devotion in the next life. ”
My vision goes white around the edges as panic swallows any coherent thoughts.
I’m still fighting, trying to bite the cultists holding me, legs flailing.
Useless struggles. There’s a high-pitched whine in my ears that renders all other sounds distant.
I can still hear the wailing, chanting, shouting of the cultists, Cain’s screams that are becoming more beastlike with every cry, but it all sounds very far away.
Muffled, as if I’m hearing it through water.
All I can focus on is the knife as it rises above me. My father’s hand gripping it, my father’s eyes full of triumph. My own heartbeat in my ears. I cannot believe I survived once only to end up here again. I cannot believe my life is going to end when I am finally so close to happiness.
My eyes slide shut, and I see: Barnes’s hand on my shoulder, a quiet morning sipping coffee in front of my window, Cain smiling at me for the first time.
“Cain,” I scream, letting his name pass my lips for the first time in front of others. It’s pure desperation. I want to live. Damn the consequences. “Help me!”
There is a bright burst of pain in my chest. I wait for more pain, for darkness to take my thoughts.
But… The pressure of the knife disappears. There is a warm trickle of blood, the sting of a cut. But only a sting.
My heart beats. Beats again. And I am still alive.
My eyes fly open, and there is only empty sky above me—but as I watch, darkness spills over it until it consumes the sunset. Until the entire sky is dark as the dead of night, with the exception of the sun, turned bloody red.
My hearing rushes back, the chaos of my surroundings filling my ears once again—just in time to hear a roar. The altar shakes beneath me. The earth itself trembles.
My father is gone. So is one of the men who was holding my wrists. The other is still there, but his grip has gone slack, and he’s staring, slack-jawed, toward where Cain was bound.
I yank my hand free of his fingers, and he doesn’t seem to notice. Scrambling on hands and knees, I topple off the altar. My head is still spinning from my near-death, a hand pressed to the center of my chest where blood is dripping from a shallow wound. I turn to the cultists—
Or at least what’s left of them.
My eyes dart around, trying to process what I’m seeing. Bodies slumped face-down in pools of blood. Pieces strewn over the red-soaked sand. Cultists cowering, running, screaming.
My head spins. I press myself back against the side of the altar, trying to ground myself, as my eyes skitter and finally stop as they find the monster responsible.
The monster who was once Cain.
I recognize him only by his wings. Dark feathers spread wide, huge enough to blot out the red sun, with two more pairs of smaller wings spread beneath the first. The form they are attached to can no longer be called a man.
He is eight feet tall, his limbs gangly and stretched.
His skin is entirely black, covered in tufts of feathers and dozens of roving red eyes.
His face is skull-like, huge, his jaw hanging open to reveal a mouth crammed with gigantic, sharp teeth.
They don’t seem to fit properly, forcing his jaw to remain slightly open, strings of drool and blood leaking out the sides of his mouth.
His fingers curve into jagged claws, his huge hands soaked in gore up to the elbows.
His eyes are red and terrible, blank of anything but animal rage, bloody tears streaming down his face.
He’s holding my father in one huge fist. As I watch, he lifts him toward his face, opens his gigantic maw, and bites him in half. Gore spills down his chin as he chews, open-mouthed, and tosses the remaining half of the man into the nearby crowd of cultists.
Cain throws back his head and roars again, and the earth trembles.
One gigantic hand slams flat-palmed into the ground beside him, and a fissure rips through it, the earth yawning wide, revealing a dark pit beneath.
Several cultists fall into it, screaming.
One dangles on the edge, straining to hold on.
The monster that was once Cain reaches down to grab him, pulling him up—but a moment after saving him, he rips the man in two.
I am trembling, slack-jawed. So are many of the cultists surrounding me. Is this the monster they hoped to summon? I wonder. Is this how they thought the end of the world would look? My father was always sparing with the details.
A few of the cultists still seem pious, groveling before Cain, palms pressed together and heads bowed in supplication. Others try to flee or hide.
None of them are spared Cain’s wrath. He rips apart his worshippers and those who fear him just the same.
With each kill he seems bigger, stranger, angrier.
Soon he is crouched on all fours, his arms overly long and disjointed and his back legs bent backward at the knee.
His claws dig into the earth as he crawls like a beast among the ritual grounds, howling and grabbing anyone within reach, leaving blood and destruction in his path.
His eyes sweep over me without stopping. There is no recognition in his gaze. Even if he broke free intending to save me, right now he seems to know nothing but rage and hunger.
He’s gone.
This is what the cult wanted; this is the final, monstrous form they wanted to draw forth. And as I turn my eyes from the rifts opening in the earth to the red sun above us, I fear they’ve done it. The end of the world is here.
Even through the panic and the pain of the wound in my chest, I remember my promise. I told Cain that if this day came, I would be the one to kill him.
My legs are too shaky to support me, so I crawl across the bloodied ground in search of a weapon. The air is thick with the stink of blood and smoke and something stomach-churning—sulfur.
I scan the bodies around me as I crawl, searching desperately for something to defend myself with. But of course none of the cultists have weapons. They’re nothing but sheep. If any of them were to have something, it would be—
There. Ahead. My father. Or the bottom half of him, at least.
I rise to my knees beside him, swallowing back bile as I search through the pockets of his robes—and there, tucked into one of the pockets, is a gun. My gun. I open the chamber with trembling hands and find that a single bullet remains.