Chapter 25
Act of God
Decker dropped to his knees at Laurie’s side. His legs lay at unnatural angles.
He clasped his hand, as gentle as he’d ever been, cradling Laurie’s bloodless face with his other. Shallow breaths wheezed from Laurie’s caved chest, as though there was nothing holding him up inside.
“Safine!” Decker’s cry echoed through the chapel and the pigeons startled with a rush of wings. “Safi—” His voice died in his throat, choked out like the serpent now coiled around him.
She would be taking care of the doctor’s body at the river. Laurie’s eyelids twitched and fluttered until they opened to bloodshot eyes that reflected his own.
Safine. I have to get her, I have to find her, she can—
Knit together his broken bones? Cleanse his veins of the venom coursing through them? Or reform his chest so he could breathe, or—
Nothing.
No healer alive could fix him.
Laurie’s trembling lips formed and Decker leaned over him, clinging to strangledwords. “My notes—”
“I don’t care about the notes,” Decker whispered. His eyes burned.
Scarlet stained Laurie’s lips and he dragged in another labored breath, shallower than the last. He tried to speak again and Decker coaxed him on with a soft brush of his thumb over the pulsing veins of his limp hand.
“You’re good—you’re a good man. I’ve seen God in you.”
Laurie said something once and now it seemed so long ago, time so insignificant, Decker struggled to bring the passage to mind.
The God who saved you from death in a fallen world, no matter the cost.
His God was gone, now. Abandoned the servant who gave his all.
There was only Decker and Laurie, and the sun streaming through the broken stained-glass window above them. Wayward hail shattered it, broke the cross from Christ’s back and left only the son of God bent under an unseen burden.
Sun reached Decker’s skin, warmth washing over him and soothing the blisters from the venom.
Is this what it is to be human again?
If they failed, if Laurie died here, was this what it would be like, basking in the warmth while he rotted with guilt he could no longer stomach?
He wanted the sun.
He wanted to live.
He wanted Laurie.
Laurie’s breath was wet. “I’m not afraid.” His voice strengthened, cleared, and his bloody eyes drifted as if seeing something invisible.
“I am,” Decker whispered. Fear had become long-lost family to him, rarely seen and never heard.
Now fear wormed into his life until he was consumed by it, could taste it like tainted blood on his tongue and hear it like the cursed calling of a life he’d long rejected. Masquerading as human, staying out of trouble, keeping up appearances so he wouldn’t tarnish the reputation of others of his kind.
All to come to this.
“Laurie, I am afraid,” Decker whispered to his form that grew colder with each labored breath.
His entire life was built upon hatred and fear of what he could become.
