Too late. Emma darts forward and shoves Youth Pastorwith both hands. His arms go pinwheeling. He falls backward into the lanterns in a cacophony of breaking glass and wet choking. Sparks like orange lightning bugs explode from the shattered lanterns. The smell of kerosene fills the air.
There’s a second, just one, where the god stands still, and Ellis is frozen in uncomprehending fear.
And then it’s carnage.
The god moves like a striking snake—headfirst and fast as hell. It hits the first person—a middle-aged white woman in the closest chair—and sends her sprawling to the ground. Her strangled scream is cut short by the god slashing her jaw off with its clawed hand. The god falls on another person. This one makes a horrible wet sound when those claws are plunged into their back. Its frenzied elation grows stronger with each kill.
Ellis blows the dog whistle again and again, but it doesn’t work. He’s shouting about the lanterns and crosshair symbols, about staying calm, about remaining where they are, but the cultists are scattering and screaming and falling over themselves to get away. The fear on his face feels good. It makes me want to laugh.
Ellis remembers the forgotten knife still gripped in his hand. He raises it once more and shouts, “Stop!”
The god’s eyeless face turns on him. Meat dangles from its mouth—red and raw and dripping.
A pot full of calendula cracks against the back of Ellis’s head.
He drops the knife. I flinch, certain I’m about to beimpaled, only for it to embed itself in the dark wood of the altar an inch from my skin. Ellis clutches his head and disappears out of my view, though I can hear him groaning.
Emma’s eyes are wild. She picks up the knife, still handcuffed, and saws at the rope holding my wrists above my head.
Fire from the broken lanterns has spread across the brittle summer grass. Shapes move inside the smoke. A man shrieks, “No! No!” and then says nothing at all. Another shouts, and then something squelches. I follow the god through the smoke by the sound of a person realizing they’re about to die and then the wet sound of their body being pulled apart.
The rope comes loose. I sit up and work on unknotting one ankle while she cuts at the other.
Suddenly, Emma gasps and looks down.
Greg lies on the ground with Emma’s leg clenched in his fist. There’s so much blood on him. That can’t all be from his nose, can it? Then I see the wound on his shoulder. Yellow fat and white bone stand out from the red mess of muscle and tendon.
Greg starts to say something. He stops, looks down at his feet, and then he’s ripped away. There isn’t time for him to scream before the sound of his bones breaking fills the air.
Frantically, we get back to work on my ankle ropes.
“The rope! The rope! Cut it!”
“Shit, shit, shit—”
I slide off the altar as soon as the ropes come loose, then immediately lose my balance to numb feet. Emma grabsmy arm and helps me stand. We careen through the patio doors, clipping the frame as we go.
I yank the doors closed. They’re the French kind with too many windows and billowy sheer curtains. The spot where Ellis was kneeling on the deck is empty. I didn’t see where he went. Didn’t see him get pulled away by the god either.
Plumes of smoke choke the yard. There are no more moving shadows. No sounds of death—there’s just the dead and the smoke and the god hidden somewhere within.
Feasting.
The greatest gift is surrender. What you surrender to, you become.
Ascent Discovery Weekend, seminar on victimhood
CHAPTER 19
The living room is filled with furniture that people with money and poor taste call Scandinavian. Every single lightbulb in this place is red. Everything is cast with a sickly, bloody glow.
“Come on,” Emma says. “My car’s—”
A maroon shadow with platinum blonde hair rushes out of the kitchen. There’s a long kitchen knife in Arden’s hand and a snarl on her face. She’s panting hard. The slicked-down ponytail she had for the ritual is now a tangled mess falling in her eyes.
“Arden—”
“Shut up! You don’t get to talk. You get eaten! You’re the one it wants.”
