Epilogue
They would become martyrs. She could see that now. The dead were rising from their graves, just as the scriptures said would happen in the End Times. She would not leave this room alive, but she trusted that God would raise her up to His bosom.
She closed her eyes, waiting. She knew that the others would continue the work. Their brothers and sisters they had never met from other congregations, in other places. They would see what had happened here, and they would rise up.
They would continue the purge.
Starting with the senator who kept trying to bring the monsters into society. Who kept trying to pretend that they were anything other than demons.
He would have to die, she knew that.
She knew, too, that his soul would not trouble hers. That the only place he was going was full of fire and the screams of the damned.
She would be among the blessed.
They all would.
I set the cross, the chain broken, back down on the paper towel Raj had put on the table.
I’d stayed silent as I’d read the thoughts in the cross, uncertain of what I would find.
Now I looked up at him. “This is part of a larger movement,” I said softly, and he nodded.
“Do you know who’s behind it?” I asked him.
“I wish we knew,” he replied, his voice low and serious. “What we do know is that whoever was bankrolling the Church of Holy Judgment is also tied up with the MFM.”
I looked down at the cross, the small stones set into heavy platinum. “Where did this come from?” I asked him, even though I was pretty sure I knew the answer.
“One of the Church members who died in the raid.”
One of the Church members I killed.
I nodded, trying to ignore the slight churning feeling in my gut. “She thought about how they were going to stop Senator Adams,” I whispered, and Raj went very still.
Too still.
“You’re telling me this is connected to what happened last spring?” he asked, and I could hear the worry in his voice.
“I don’t like it any more than you do,” I said, then told him everything I’d read from the cross.
“Fucking hell,” he snarled, then grabbed his phone and walked out of the room.
“How sure are you?” Hart asked me, his eyes too bright.
I swallowed. “Pretty sure,” I answered. “She thought about the senator who kept trying to bring the monsters into society, and I think he’s the only one pushing pro-Arcanid legislation.”
“Fucking hell, indeed,” Hart echoed, but his expression looked… less angry and more hopeless. I didn’t much like the idea of Hart being hopeless.
Hart, for all his bluster, was a nearly endless optimist. And if he was about ready to give up, that didn’t seem to bode well for the rest of us.
I was sitting in Raj’s spot on the couch—the recliner on the end—a plate with a still uneaten slice of pizza on the end table beside me and Raj’s head resting on one thigh.
I ran my fingers through his thick, dark hair, and he made a soft sound that that might have been a hum or might have been something like a purr.
He’d eaten his pizza, and his empty plate was on the floor.
I offered him my plate. “Want one more?”
He tilted his head back a little to look at me, studying my face. “You sure you don’t want it?”
“I’m sure,” I answered.
He picked up the pizza, taking a big bite off the end, and I returned the plate to the side table. I kept stroking his hair as he finished the pizza.
“You okay?” he asked me.
“Yes?” I wasn’t sure why he was asking.
“After today, I mean,” he clarified. “Finding out that—” He cut off whatever he’d been about to say.
“That the Church of Holy Judgment”—Even the name left a kind of sour taste in my mouth, and I suddenly understood that the saying wasn’t just a saying.—“is part of a larger network of organizations set on eliminating all Arcanids and Arc-humans.”
Raj grimaced. “Yeah,” he replied darkly. “That.”
I let out a soft sigh. “I’m okay,” I told him. “I don’t like it, but if you think about it, something like this couldn’t just have come from nowhere. And neither could some of the protests.”
He sat up, looking at me. “What do you mean?” he asked.
I shrugged. “The protests are too big and too coordinated not to be connected to some sort of larger organization or network,” I replied. “At least, it seems that way to me,” I added, feeling my cheeks flush. It wasn’t my job to pay attention to those things.
Raj grunted, his expression thoughtful. “It’d be nice if Anti-Terrorism would think about that,” he muttered.
“Do they focus on hate groups?” I asked.
Raj’s expression grew darker. “No, not really,” he answered.
“That’s technically Civil Rights’s job, but once they cross the line into acts of terrorism, like driving a car into a crowd, then they become Anti-Terrorism’s problem.
” He sighed—a heavier one than mine—and flopped back into my lap.
“So they should have taken that up after Halloween.”
“And they didn’t?” I asked.
I felt him shrug. “No idea. They don’t really talk to us.”
“Why not?”
The laugh that escaped his lips sounded bitter. “Because we’re A-Branch.”
“Why does that matter?” I asked, confused.
Raj grunted, clearly unhappy. “Because we’re a gesture in the direction of diversity,” he replied, anger making the words acrid.
“Nobody wants to give us the resources we need, the fucking backup we need, or the information we need. We’re either seen as incompetent or too dangerous to be trusted.
” He sighed again. “Every single thing we do gets scrutinized and questioned far more than any other team, and we’re held to standards that nobody else is just to keep going. ”
“I’m sorry,” I murmured.
“Yeah,” he grumbled. “Me, too.” He sighed again, reaching over his head to grab my hand. He brought my fingers to his lips. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore,” he said into the skin of my knuckles.
“What do you want to talk about?” I asked him, although I had the feeling I already knew the answer.
I was right.
“I don’t want to talk,” he answered, sitting up and pulling my lips to his, kissing me deeply enough to make me dizzy.
And then his phone buzzed.
He broke away, glaring over at the phone screen. “Son of a fucking bitch,” he grumbled, but leaned over and picked it up. “Parikh,” he snapped.
Then he went pale.
“On my way,” he said, his voice clipped. He hung up, then looked at me. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “There was a shooting at Broad Street Vet.” I knew why that mattered—they’d taken care of Taavi when he’d been stuck as a dog, and the vets there were Arc-human and Arcanid-friendly.
I kissed Raj again, meaning for it to be quick, he kissed me back, holding the back of my head for a few seconds longer than he probably should have. “I love you,” he said softly.
“I love you, too,” I told him. “I’ll be here when you get done.”