Seven and I match each other’s limp as we hobble away from the wreckage, finding a place in the grassjust off the side of the road to take a quick rest. I grab a fresh pack of cigarettes from my bag and a lighter. Seven is too dazed to notice as I tear off the plastic wrapping, grab a cigarette with a blood-soaked hand, and place it between dry lips. I toss the rest of the pack into the woods behind us, and that grabs Seven’s attention.
“Noah—”
“Not a fucking word.” I flick the lighter and inhale as the flame connects with the end of the cigarette. Hot smoke hits the back of my throat. Cutting, scratching, burning. I drop my hand to the side and exhale, watching as a cloud of smoke dances from my mouth.
“Fuck it.” He steals the cigarette from me and raises it to his mouth.
“The fuck is wrong with you?” I smack him in the back of the head and steal it back. Give him a death glare. “If I ever catch you smoking, I swear I’ll beat your ass.”
He moves his mouth to speak but instead chooses peace. He really is a changed man. This is the second time today he’s refrained from saying something stupid when all I want is silence.
I inhale another long drag, finding great pleasure in the way the chemicals relieve the throbbing in my head. Mama and Kevin might have been onto something with these cancer sticks. Fucking magical.
Another scream from the wreckage shatters any sense of peace.
It’s the same tired threats, over and over again. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”
Yeah, says the man who is clearly paralyzed or some shit because he hasn’t moved a muscle. The only hope he has at killing me is to keep screaming loud and long enough until my fucking head explodes.
I look at Seven with a wry smirk. “I’ve always loved to play with fire.”
And with a flick of my wrist, I burn it all to the fucking ground.
The cigarette embers ignite the gasoline-soaked path, ripping across the road, wild and free. The blaze travels in both directions, racing towards an inevitable explosion. There’s something cathartic about watching it all gokaboom.
As we sit in the grass, spectators to our world going up in smoke, I find myself confused at how the fuck I got here. Somewhere along the way, I became a murderer with three souls to my name. Three bodies to Seven’s two. When I left New York in a manic frenzy, I never could have predicted this was how my life would go. Always believed I’d go out in my quiet way, not in a battlefield littered with cops, cultists, and dead twinks.
CHAPTER 16
SEVEN
If I still believed ingod, I would have no choice but to rationalize the fury of the sudden storm as his way of washing the sin from our bodies. To put out the flames of the fires we stoked. No sin is unworthy of forgiveness when repented for. So when we stumble across a church in the middle of nowhere, I can’t help but to feel as if my non-existent faith is being tested.
Magnus once said a church was nothing more than four walls and a roof. I took it to mean there was nothing special about a church, that the only thing that separated a house from a church was the people inside it. It turns out that’s exactly what Magnus meant. Three walls, four walls, or a hundred walls. A wide-open field, a cinema, a prison. Church is an idea, not something to be physically defined. A church, as the rest of the world calls it, is nothing more thana material thing. When the day of Ascension comes, earthly possessions will be left behind.
It seems that day has finally arrived. I always believed it to be decades away, but I can’t help but to think killing Magnus has expedited the timeline.
Noah pushes open the double wooden doors of the old church. A real church, parked somewhere between the wreckage and civilization. It’s an older structure, the paint chipped by the passing of time.
A single lit chandelier suspends from the arched ceiling. Half of the bulbs are burnt out and the other half are dim, casting a dull light over the sea of wooden pews.
We leave a trail of muddy shoe prints down the narrow aisle as rainwater drips from our clothing. As we pass each row of pews, I think about all the ghosts of people past sitting on the wooden benches. Eyes full of judgement and deranged glee as they watch two sinners about to combust in a fire lit by their own vices.
Sunlight breaks through the storm outside, passing through the stained glass windows and painting the floor of the chancel with visions of Mary and the Three Wise Men. My legs give out and I drop to the ground, wincing in pain as one leg collides with the wooden floor.
“Let me see your leg,” Noah grabs the bottle of bourbon from the bag and tosses the duffel onto the floor. He takes a seat onthe edge of the platform, twists the cap off the bottle, and washes the blood and dirt from his hands with the alcohol.
When he leans over me, I swear I can still smell the smoke from the cigarette. The cramping pain in my leg makes me not care so much. It makes me want to take a long drag and pray the nicotine will soothe me.
He scoots forward and lifts my shirt by the hem. I raise my arms as he pulls the fabric gently over my head, disposing of the wet shirt behind him. He runs a hand over the length of my chest, examining my naked torso. There are scrapes and bruises but nothing too severe. His touch soothes the dull ache in my chest, and when he reaches the button of my jeans, I let out a gasp.
His eyes meet mine as he pulls my jeans down my legs, just as gentle as when he removed my shirt. I’ve never seen him like this. Never seen him so soft. Each touch feels like silk, like I’m fragile. Like if he uses any force at all, I might shatter.
He examines my leg, tracing his fingers around the outline of a purpled contusion on my right calf. I grit my teeth and he stops. Looks to me with heavy eyes. “There might be internal bleeding, but I don’t think it’s broken.”
“You’re full of interesting trivia. I didn’t know you studied medicine.”
“I didn’t.” He shakes his head. “I wasn’t allowed to go to college. Kevin liked his property to be dumb. He liked his property to need to rely on him.”
