We piled onto the bikes, me behind Axel, my arms wrapped tight around his battered ribs. The engine’s rumble was a lullaby, drowning out the panic and the sirens in the distance. We sped off, away from the playground, away from the mess.
I knew it wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
14
Reverend
The Fable Christian Church swelled with a hundred bodies—more, if you counted the screaming infants and the ghosts of those I’d outlasted, every one of them packed shoulder-to-shoulder in pinewood pews that I’d overseen the varnishing of myself. In the final moments of worship, voices rose like the tide, washed over by the wheeze of the antique organ as Mrs. Katherine Bowers punished the battered keys with the same arthritic knuckles she’d used to discipline my daughter in Sunday School. Summer had stripped the sanctuary of all air; the sweat ran rivers down the backs of the faithful, blurring the line between mortification of the flesh and simple heat exhaustion. Every window gaped wide, inviting the thick soup of bluegrass pollen and humidity, but not a soul dared fan themselves, lest they miss a beat of the performance I was about to deliver.
I adjusted my blood-red tie in the glass of the baptismal as I waited behind the altar, admiring how the color glowed against my black suit—a calculated bit of stagecraft. You didn’t shepherd a flock this size by being subtle. You had to look more like a prophet than a man. The memory of my own face—perfectly shaved, every line in my hair symmetrical, my jaw squared by genetics and careful dental work—was as much a part of the liturgy as the Lord’s Prayer.
The closing hymn wound down and a hush fell, expectant, the kind of hush that only comes from shared conviction and fear of missing something vital. Time to give them what they’d come for. I emerged from behind the curtain, hit the old oak steps of the altar, and the crowd parted in their seats like the Red Sea. For a moment I basked in their silent awe, taking in every familiar face: the rural bankers, the livestock haulers, the frightened parents clutching snot-faced children who would one day sit where I stood if they survived the world I was about to describe.
I found Darla in the front row. My only child. She sat with the posture of a debutante—prim, unmoving, floral dress crisp as a pressed lily. The blond hair was down today, and her face was a porcelain mask of attention, but her eyes were hard as stones and her grip on the hymnal suggested a stress position developed by the CIA. I caught the nervous tic in her thumb as she worried the silk ribbon, and I wondered if she’d even slept. It was an old game between us, this contest of masks.
The microphone crackled as I palmed the pulpit, planting my hands wide, so every vein and sinew bulged. You want to look like you could wring the Devil’s neck if he materialized in the back row.
“Beloved!” I let the opening word boom, not with anger but a fullness that swelled into every corner of the building. “We gather today, not just as witnesses to the Lord’s promise, butas His soldiers—His advance guard, right here in the heart of Lexington.”
Several voices called out, “Amen!” and “Preach, Pastor!” The scent of adrenaline mixed with deodorant and old wood polish.
I leaned in, letting my voice drop. “There is rot among us, friends. It creeps in at the edges of our fine city, a cancer of immorality and violence. Some would have you believe that the age of evil is past—that sin wears a suit and tie now, hides behind tax codes and courtrooms.” I paused to let the tension rise, watched the congregation bristle and exchange nervous glances. “But I am here to tell you that evil does not change its nature. It only changes its uniform.”
The older women tsked into their lace handkerchiefs, squeezing the hands of grandkids beside them. In the back, a cluster of teenagers slouched together, but their eyes were glued to me. Even the babies seemed to hush, as if the very spirit of God had cupped a giant hand around the sanctuary.
“Last night,” I said, “a good man was robbed outside of Parker’s gas station. Beaten. Left in the street, his wallet gone, his dignity trampled.” I let that hang. “It wasn’t a random act. It was the work of outlaws—degenerates, who spit in the face of law and order. I’m talking about the motorcycle clubs that infest our city like Satan’s foot soldiers.”
A ripple of outrage surged through the crowd. I saw fists clench, a few men in the center pew nod with murder in their eyes. My gaze flicked to Darla. For just a second, her lips parted, as if to say something, but she bit it back.
“Now, some folks might say, ‘Pastor, isn’t it un-Christian to judge?’” I raised my hands in mock surrender, provoking a gentle laugh. “I say, it is our duty to name the enemy. To stand in the breach for our children, our neighbors—our daughters.” I didn’t look directly at Darla, but I knew she felt the crosshairs.Her knuckles whitened around the hymnal, and a drop of sweat rolled from her brow to her cheek.
“They call themselves the Royal Bastards,” I spat, letting the words roll out slow, savoring the crowd’s gasp. “Leather-clad heathens, racing through the night, peddling drugs, seducing the young with promises of freedom and power. But freedom without morality is just another word for damnation.”
A chorus of “Yes, Pastor!” and “Preach it!” battered the rafters. I saw tears streaming down Sister Carmichael’s cheeks. Next to her, old man Rowe pounded the pew so hard the whole row shuddered. This was the moment to press in. You had to squeeze until they all saw it your way.
“They say they want nothing to do with us, that the Church is obsolete. That the old ways are dead.” My voice rose to a shout. “But the truth is, they’re afraid. Afraid of a people united by righteousness, a people who will not stand by and let their homes, their schools, their daughters be defiled.”
By now, the room was boiling. Even Mrs. Bowers, halfway to senile, was sobbing behind her hymnal. I felt the heat of their fervor, the charge in the air that said if I told them to pick up torches and pitchforks, they’d do it and never look back.
“We do not answer violence with violence,” I said, shifting my tone to gentle warning, the Shepherd reining in his most rabid sheep. “But neither do we cower. We pray. We prepare. We push back against the tide—because God put us here to be the wall against the flood.”
I lowered my voice to a whisper, knowing that the softer the words, the harder they hit. “He’s given me a vision. Not a dream, friends, a vision. That this city can be a beacon again, but it starts with us. It starts right here.”
I closed the Bible with a thunderclap of old paper and wood, lifted it high above my head. “Today, we dedicate ourselves anew. Today, we draw a line in the sand. We will be vigilant.We will be unyielding. And by the grace of Almighty God—” I paused, scanning the room for effect, letting my eyes rest on Darla just long enough for her to flinch. “—we will drive the devil out of Lexington, once and for all!”
The congregation erupted. People shot to their feet, some shouting, some weeping, some gripping their neighbors in near-violent embraces. Hands shot upward like an army pledging fealty; I saw three different people collapse to their knees in the aisle, faces streaming with mascara and mucous, and in that moment, I felt as close to omnipotent as any man alive.
Darla, my daughter, did not join the clamor. She stood, straight-backed, watching me with those calculating blue eyes, lips pressed into a bloodless line. I wondered, for the thousandth time, how much of me lived in her, and whether that would be enough to save her from the fire I’d just stoked.
I released the congregation with a final benediction—words they’d heard a thousand times, but never with this much urgency—and watched as the sheep filed out, high on collective outrage and the illusion of holiness. My work, for the moment, was done.
But there was always more to do.
***
My office wasn’t technically a sanctum, but I’d engineered it to feel like one. The walls were paneled with Kentucky walnut, each square cut perfect as the face of a chessboard, and lined with mementos of my lifelong crusade—signed Bibles from old seminary friends, a shadowbox with a shiv confiscated at a prison outreach, my framed honorary degree from Liberty University. Behind the desk—a monstrous thing of raw oak and intimidating width—I’d hung a triptych: the central image was Christ with eyes upturned in agony, but if you looked left or right, you got the crucifixion in all its unfiltered, arterial mess.I’d watched more than one visiting philanthropist blanch at the realism, and that was the idea. The phone on my desk was an old rotary model, but every line went through to my cell. Security in redundancy.
The halls outside were still buzzing from the service, a river of whispers and excited conjecture, but in here the air was hushed, thickened by aftershave and old paper. I poured a splash of bourbon into my coffee and let the first burn of alcohol cut through the post-sermon jitters. From my window, I could see the parking lot already choked with pickups and minivans, families herding themselves out like sheep after a wolf scare.
