Suddenly, I watch Noah lift his chin. His nostrils flare, as though he’s scenting the air. A frown marks his brow. He takes a couple of steps closer to the Prophet and leans in. They’re both so close, I hear what he says, even though he’s doing his best to keep his voice down.
“My Prophet, I can smell smoke.”
The Prophet freezes, every muscle in his body turning rigid. His head snaps in my direction, and the look in his ice-blue eyes shoots terror into me. He’s really mad. He’sreallyfucking mad.
Now Noah has mentioned it, I realize I can smell smoke, too, and it’s getting stronger with each passing second.
Someone in the congregation leans in and whispers something to his neighbor. He has the same reaction as Noah,lifting his chin and sniffing. The whispers of smoke are like a wildfire in itself, catching flames to spread to the next person and then the next. The whispers become murmurs and the volume in the church increases.
Even though, technically, the residents of this place should no longer care about earthly belongings, it seems the threat of their homes, and food stores, and even their church, being burned to the ground is enough to get them worried. A handful of people leave their places and hurry to the main doors of the church.
“It’s the western barn!” one of the men shouts. “It’s up in flames.”
Several people cross themselves. Someone murmurs about the animals, but what did they think would happen to them after they’d all supposedly ascended?
Others run out of the church, their instinct to stop the fire overriding all else.
“Stop!” the Prophet yells at them. “I command you to stop!”
But, for once, people aren’t listening. The fire seems to have lit a panic in them, as if it’s forced them back to some sense of reality. It has broken the strange, dreamlike fog they were inhabiting.
One woman screams. “It’s going to reach the church, and we’ll all burn.”
I can’t help the stab of awareness that people are more likely to be spurred into action to save physical property, or stop themselves from feeling pain, than they are by the death of a young girl.
The anger and hatred that’s been building up inside me all this time spills over, and I lift my face and scream until my throat burns. I scream and yank at my bonds and kick out my feet. I’ve gone through too much to die like this. I want to see my men again, and my parents. I want to tell my mom I love her,and I want to find some place inside me to forgive my dad. Then I remember how someone set me up with the Prophet when I was just a child, and that person might have been my own father, and I want to cry all over again.
The church is emptying out. It’s instinct to put out a fire. I’ve been here before when we’ve had fires start because of a lightning strike, or even because someone has done something stupid like knock over a kerosene lamp, and it’s times like this that the whole community comes together to put it out. Because if they don’t, they know what will happen. The whole town will burn to the ground. There’s no fire department here, no one else they can call. They will haul water from the wells and set up a line to pass it between them in buckets until the fire is out.
None of them want to burn, and there’s nothing the Prophet can likely do to override that instinctive fear of the force of the flames.
I yank on my bonds again, and I’d swear the rope around my wrist has loosened. It’s a tiny fragment of hope, but I cling to it. The Prophet is distracted now, trying to stop his followers from fleeing the church.
“You will miss your moment of ascension,” he practically screams at them. “You stupid people.”
If his plan has always been to flee this place after the so-called ascension, he won’t care that the buildings burn. In fact, that was probably his plan all along—to have everyone here kill themselves and then for him to burn the evidence. Then he’d flee and start over somewhere else, using that strange magnetic power he has over other people to build a new following from scratch.
I keep working the rope and feel a surge of triumph as my wrist slips free.
CHAPTER 21
Cain
People floodfrom the church like rats off a sinking ship. They’re running in different directions, some of them shouting, and interestingly, a couple of them break from the group and start to run across the fields for the boundary.
It’s as if the fire has done something to break that madman’s spell.
Our plan to empty the place out has worked, beyond what we could have hoped, but there’s no sign of Ophelia or the Prophet.
They must still be inside.
I send a silent prayer up for her safety. I don’t know what we’ll do if we discover we’re too late.
We have silencers on our guns, but even with those additions the gunshots might still be heard. The moment someone hears it, they’ll be alerted to our presence, and we don’t want bullets flying in all directions. The chaos of the fire might hide the noise, but we can’t rely on it.
“Let’s move,” I command.
The man standing guard at the rear door is made of sterner stuff than many of the other villagers, as he hasn’t left his post. But he’s also distracted by the mayhem, listening to the noise and glancing wildly around, so he doesn’t notice us coming untilthe last moment. He swings his gun in my direction, but he doesn’t stand a chance. I squeeze the trigger—once, twice—the bullets finding their home in his chest and forehead. He drops to the ground, dead.
