Please, I need more time.
Decker didn’t struggle.
Laurie put his hands on him as if in a trance, running down his face, pulling him closer. His fangs sank in like hot coals and a strangled sound escaped Decker.
Laurie knelt next to him, fingers buried in his skull and fangs lost in his throat.
Elias stroked his hand over Laurie’s head. He leaned closer, face coming into focus. “You will die and Ender’s Ridge will be forgotten, finally.”
His muffled voice faded in and out of Decker’s mind. He only wanted to rest. A nap in sun-warmed furrows of a freshly plowed field, the call for supper, racing the cattle home—
No.
India hadn’t been his home for a long time. His home was beside him, fangs in his neck, blood dripping away instead of being consumed.
Not drinking. Staying there, unmoving.
Distraction.
Decker forced air in his lungs.
The flames rushed higher, catching on the walls, and heat blistered at his legs.
Laurie’s hand brushed his cheek, gentle and trembling, and Decker was too far gone to do anything but let out the faintestsound as Elias clutched his crucifix, the sharp points glinting above Laurie’s bowed spine.
Fangs slowly slipped from his neck, replaced with the gentle press of blunt, human, teeth. Sunlight prickled through the holes in the roof.
The tenth plague. They were out of time.
Humanity had caught them, and Death would soon collect them.
Laurie whirled, catching Elias’s wrist as he slashed towards him, struggling. “Your curse isour curse,” he ground out. “All of us.”
Including you, Elias Lane.
The old reverend was now as vulnerable as the rest of them.
He washumanwith the rest of them.
Soft footsteps and gentle hands, and then Safine’s lips were to his ear, her voice thick, wavering. “I’ve got it. Give me a few more minutes, darling. ‘Til death do us part.” Deep-set pain replaced dimness when she clasped a makeshift bandage around his neck.
Slipping her arm around him, she hauled him up; Decker staggered to his feet, leg dangling, spasming. Dizziness flooded him and his knuckles turned ashen on the edge of the pew as Safine disappeared into the parsonage.
“‘But the prophet, which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, even that prophet shall die’.” Laurie cornered him by the pulpit, flames on three sides and his nephew before him, and through the haze Decker thought he saw fear flicker across Elias’s gaunt face.
“I tried to helpher—”
“You tried to fix a problem that doesn’t exist, while she died alone.” Laurie’s voice cut with rage at his lost family, the only one who understood him, dead.
Keep stalling.
Decker rasped, “I could have helped if you hadn’t taken Safine.” Black spots clouded his eyes and he dropped the soaked cloth to catch his balance. Warmth streamed down his neck.
They looked to him, as if both remembering they weren’t the only souls in the chapel.
A sneer curled Elias’s lip. “You wouldn’t have helped me.”
“If you weren’t a lying son of a bitch I would have.” Decker smiled faintly. “But it was too late for her, and it’s too late for you, Elias.”
