And then there was one. I turn slowly to face the preacher.
He stumbles backward, falling to his knees, staring at the bodies and at me. With the lenses on my goggles, I can see his heart pounding with fear inside his chest.
He holds up his hands, shaking all over. “Please…,” he says, his voice not much more than a strained, desperate whisper.
I don’t respond. Mostly because I’m trying to catch my breath after so much phasing. I only took a scant second or two between jumps, and it’s left me a little lightheaded and shaky, my mouth dry, the heat from all the energy I just used up burning in my muscles. I can risk a moment or two here to steady myself. It’s not like this one solitary preacher can do much to me.
“You’re supposed to be an instrument of the Heralds…” There’s something heartbreaking about the way he says it. Andthe look on his face—like he’s just watched me singlehandedly murder his gods. Which, maybe I have, in a way. Because saints are revered, among the holiest figures in Trinity. We’re meant to graciously give our gifts back to the Heralds who made us. Not linger and become…
Whatever it is that I’ve become. A butcher instead of a blessing. A sinner instead of a saint.
The preacher’s eyes cut anxiously to the knives in my hands. “You can let me go. I haven’t seen your face. I w-won’t tell anyone what you are.”
True. He hasn’t. And somewhere in the deepest parts of myself where I’ve locked Val away, I want to tell him yes. That he can go. That he can live and breathe and sweat out another day in this world. I’ve already stolen his faith; I could let him keep his life, couldn’t I?
“I can pay you,” he adds, inching backward. “Real paper. A lot of it. And I’ll take your secret to the Depths!”
Dammit. The panic and desperation in his tone settle like a weight on my shoulders, deciding everything for me. A rich preacher is a dirty preacher, and dirty preachers twist whichever way the wind blows. Maybe it won’t be today, maybe it won’t be tomorrow, but at some point, he’s going to tell someone that there’s a lost saint living in Covenant. And then, face or no face, the Archangels will come, and they won’t stop until they flush me out.
“Sorry,” I tell him, and I almost mean it. “It’s nothing personal.”
He lets out a whimper, and then I’m on him, Reason and Mercy flashing in the dim, cool lights of the cargo space. I do himthe courtesy of making it quick, driving both blades into his heart and then across his throat, so he’s dead within seconds.
The preacher collapses at my feet. And I’m left standing in the middle of the biggest goddamn mess of my entire life.
I’ve never had a job go south before. And this went really, really south.
Grabbing my canteen, I swallow down a recklessly big gulp, savoring it even though the water inside is lukewarm and gritty. I turn in a slow circle in the middle of the room, trying to settle down the thoughts spinning in my brain as I take one more, smaller sip. Something glints silver-bright in the naphtha lights, catching my eye, and I pause, re-stoppering the canteen. It’s the guns, the ones the big red-robed figure had been starting to pull out when I dropped him. Crouching down, I pick one up from his now-limp grasp, studying it. I’d taken them for just regular, silver-barreled pulse pistols, but now that I’m looking more closely, I can see the metal isn’t silver.
It’s platinum.
Shock squeezes my chest, and my next breath is a struggle.
There’s only one bastard in Covenant known for having platinum-barreled pistols.
My hands are the ones trembling now as I reach down and pull the mask off the big guy in red, revealing a hard, lined face and graying hair, tattoos covering his neck, and shrewd blue eyes now glazed with death.
It’s Bloody Bill Kilpatrick.
THEN
The first time I phase, I’m six years old.
A scrap of a kid with big eyes and quick feet, still young enough to believe that the streets of Covenant are full of possibilities. Running down alleys, climbing fire escapes, crisscrossing rooftops, pretending to be a shadow while Papa picks up shifts on the docks and Mama works down by the naphtha aqueducts. Trinity comes alive under my bare feet, humming underneath my skin, and singing. Always singing. My first memory is that song.
It happens on a market day. A cluster of bigger, older kids—greenhorns fixing to get recruited by the Gold Town Gang—come after me. Just to bully. Just to take their anger out on someone smaller than themselves.
I hide in a dark corner of an alley, trembling, expecting at any second to feel rough fingers grab my hair or my arms and drag me into the open. I want to disappear and become a shadow again. I stare at the rooftop and wish andwishI could be up there instead.
Everything goes dead silent. The sounds of Covenant disappear. The world around me becomes a smear of color and light and shadow.
And then I’m there, crouching on the rooftop in the exact spot I’d been staring at, my breath coming in short gasps, my skin crawling with a buzzing, prickling sensation. Like I’m made from air and lightning. And maybe I am. It feels possible in this moment. Anything feels possible in this moment.
The first thing I do is run and tell Orion.
I find him stretched out on the roof of our rickety boardinghouse, eyes closed as he soaks up the warm sunshine. I tell him everything that happened, show him what I can do, and I’m so proud, so excited to be special—really special.
But Orion isn’t excited. His face collapses like a falling star, dragged down by shock and worry.
