Elias did not fall.
The second slammed into the ground at his feet, spraying rock and dirt.
Callie Gibson disappeared. Ammunition was low, rationed out. Most of it was on the roof with Willa, who had finally denied her antiquity and took up a rifle that wasn’t a two-time war relic.
An explosion rocked the east side of town and gunfire popped down the street.
Ridgewater’s crossing.
Decker was the last stronghold between Elias and the chapel. He rested his arms on the railing. The scars wrapping his wrists tightened, but the tobacco buzz in his lungs dampened it. “Come back to die a second time?”
Elias’s lips twisted in a semblance of a smile. “You’re a fool if you think I’d let this town go so easily.”
“How’d you come back? Six feet under, a thousand pounds of dirt crushing you…should’ve treated you like you treated us and torched you. Maybe then you would’ve stayed dead,” Decker said.
Elias lived for the theatrics and grandeur of it all—the stained glass windows and his penchant for burning at the stake were testament to it.
Indulge me, Elias.
His ever-gloating frame of mind might be their saving grace.
Pale eyes narrowed. He said nothing.
“You don’t know.” Decker let out a disbelieving laugh. “All the things you learned, knowledge youstole, in your short time here, and now you don’t even know how you came back.”
“I am the prophet,” Elias said, steadying both hands on his staff. The wood crawled under his palms. “I awoke, swallowing sand and rock until I could speak the words to create.”
“This time I’ll put a brick in your mouth.” Decker smiled a nasty smile and straightened. “Your old doctor friend is dead; eaten by your eighth plague.”
“He taught me useful things, but he was too close—he wanted to help,” he said.
“You wanted to help, once,” Decker said softly. “I could have helped, if you would have told me.”
“We were never close enough for me to tell you about my wife, Mr. Belmont.”
“She killed herself, Elias. Drove her heart into the iron spikes of the fence in front of your home.”
Elias stiffened, his lips pressing into a thin line. “If you hadn’t killed me, perhaps I could have returned to her.”
“If I let you live,Iwould have no one to return to.”
“Your sham of a wife?”
“The same one that let me in the chapel to take care of you.”
I hope you’re close to finishing, Safine. Do the damn ritual.
Elias’s staff writhed around his hand and up his arm, coiling and stretching and flickering into scales.
I hate snakes.Anything but the snake again.
The edge of Elias’s lip curled. “Enough.” He flicked his hand and the serpent hissed, mouth gaping as it stretched, growing, towering.
Cut off the head and the body will follow. This time your head’s coming off, Elias.
