“Come on. We’ll go around,” Khalil suggests.
We skirt the fire and hug the dark, killing as many disciples as we can without detection until one unknowingly puts himselfin our path. We see his eyes widen with recognition through the mask, but then Thorin reaches out and snaps his neck before he has a chance to call out.
Hearing the body fall, another disciple nearby whirls around. “What was that?”
Khalil is already circling his position, getting behind him and closing in until he’s able to wrap a thick arm around the disciple’s neck and squeeze hard until the man slumps in his hold. Khalil lets his lifeless body fall to the ground.
When we left the cabin hours earlier, we only expected to make a quick run to the hardware store, so we went unarmed, something weneverdo. It figures the one time we let our guard down in ten years, this happens. I still have the deputy’s gun, the only weapon between the three of us, but there aren’t enough bullets for all of Isaac’s men, so I won’t use it until there’s no other choice.
I only need one for Isaac.
We’re still searching for Aurelia among the flames consuming the forest when we’re suddenly surrounded by twelve hooded figures.
“Ezekiel,” the sole masked disciple greets with his eyes locked on me. There’s something about him that’s familiar but before I can poke at the memory, a massive branch engulfed in flames breaks off from a bent tree behind him. The tree with its trunk aflame had been split in half from the fire and propped up by another tree with a burning crown. The branch falls to the ground with aboom, but the masked disciple doesn’t flinch because he doesn’t fear death. “The Savior is eager to meet again. Please. Come.”
There’s nothing we can do with their weapons trained on us, so we don’t fight them as we’re led out of the trees and into the clearing. Our home is little more than flames now, with only some of the structure remaining.
Gone.
The cabin isfucking gone.
“Savior, we have located the sacrifice,” the masked disciple announces. “We’ve found Ezekiel.”
Isaac turns and tilts his head, his gaze too discerning even behind the mask. “But that isn’t Ezekiel at all, is it?” The disciples surrounding him immediately tense as they look to each other in confusion and worry that they’ve failed him.
“Savior?”
“This is Seth. I remember him well. There’s a certain wildness to his eyes that can’t be hidden. Zeke begged me to stop. Seth laughed through the pain.”
“Yeah,” I say with a sneer, “but you screamed. Like a bitch if I recall. How’s your face, little bitch?”
Isaac reaches up and removes his mask. The charred skin around his lower jaw and cheekbone seems to split apart when he smiles. “Just fine, thank you. You’ve helped me more than you know. Because of your…intransigenceI was able to show all of Death’s children that he will not forsake his most devout if we believe.”
Great.I blowtorched his face and made him a goddamn living martyr. And I’m sure that’s when the masks became a part of the uniform. To protect Isaac’s vanity at being a fugly piece of shit now.
“You mean if your sheep convince someone who loved and trusted them to kill themselves so your followers can live forever. I’m just curious. What happens if one of you does die?”
“They’ll rise again of course.”
“And let me guess, if they don’t, you just tell your sheep they must not have been a true believer. Kind of a convenient pile of horseshit, don’t you think? Your retention rate of followers must bethrough the floor.”
Isaac’s smile wavers a little as he holds out a hand rather than answers my question. “Come with us, Seth.Quietly, and we’ll let these nonbelievers flee unharmed. You were so close the last time I had you on my table. I’m sure it will all be over soon.”
“Well, that would be a mistake,” Thorin says. “Since he isn’t going anywhere, we don’tflee, and we have every intention of harmingyou.”
Isaac turns toward one of the unmasked disciples and gives a short order. “Convince him.”
Thorin immediately shifts into a fighting stance as the disciple moves to obey, but he isn’t the only one. Two of them grab Khalil before he can react. They throw him to the ground and pin him there with knees on his back and feet on his arms while six others descend on Thorin and proceed to beat the shit out of him. Of course, Thorin fights back and even gets the best of a couple, so more of the unmasked disciples join until there are so many I can’t see Thorin anymore.
I run forward to help, only managing to pull one of them out of adozenoff Thorin before I’m yanked back and shoved away. The disciples don’t restrain me though, and that’s a mistake. Instead, they create a wall between Thorin and me.
“Interfere again and that one will get the same treatment.” He points to Khalil, who is struggling and screaming obscenities and threats into the dirt. “Your friend is strong, but he isn’t one of us,” Isaac taunts. “He isn’t an Undying. He’s another lost soul for Thanatos.”
A disciple kicks Thorin in his jaw. The blow snaps his head to the side, and blood spews and hits the ground in a wet splatter. He doesn’t move after that.
“Stop! Stop! Stooop!” Feeling helpless, I crumble to my knees as I’m forced to watch Zeke’s friend—myfriend—brutally beaten to death.
But Isaac doesn’t call them off, and he doesn’t lift a finger to end it. He watches me with that unwavering smile as Thorin is beaten long after his grunts of pain end and he falls quiet and then deathly still. Over the sound of my blood rushing, I think I hear Thorin’s ribs shatter and Khalil crying for him to get up.
