Until me. I could save it. I could be the scalpel that cut Jack away. It wouldn’t be clean but clean was overrated as long as you got to live.
The double doors weren’t locked. Why would they be? Jack loved all the company he could get. As Robin had said, who among the city would Jack consider truly innocent? Not many and trespassing would be equal to thou shall not kill in his warped mind. Jack had his own commandments and ten didn’t come close to numbering them.
Inside with the doors shut behind me I could still see well enough though the light was gray and dim. There was some clutter, but not as much as the other empty churches had. Jack had cleaned up. Why not? Who wanted to skin people in an untidy work area? Nik would applaud his work ethic. I swallowed with difficulty. Surprised something that automatic would be that hard to do. I swallowed again and although there was no blood in my mouth I thought I could taste it . . . because I could smell it.
The air was saturated with the scent of blood. Old, recent, fresh. I’d thought Junior’s house had smelled—I’d had no idea what bad truly was. I’d fought enough over the years that the coppery tang of fresh blood had long stopped bothering me, but this wasn’t the same. Old blood was a horror I couldn’t explain to someone who couldn’t experience it. It was something I wouldn’t be rid of for at least a week. And here . . . there was an ocean of rotting blood. Jack had more victims than the police had ever found. I couldn’t smell anything over what they had spilled here. I couldn’t smell Nik.
“Nik!” I shouted as I limped forward. The ribs were beyond codeine now. “Niko!” I shouted again. I wasn’t trying to be subtle. I wasn’t looking to hide. I wanted Jack to find me. I couldn’t lead him away if he didn’t know I was there. I also couldn’t forget how fast he was. I wasn’t that fast, but for Jack I’d have to be. Whipping my head back and forth, I scanned the church and saw nothing. The basement then. I’d go . . . wait. Up. There was a paler glimmer . . . blond hair, Nik’s hair in the balcony above. Through the ornate carved wood rail I could see him, a shadowed fall crowned with that rare recessive blond Leandros hair.
Above, like Junior’s attic. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Junior had said his master liked to watch from the sky. That could be true or it might be that Jack wanted to be either closer to what he remembered of Heaven or just free of Earth when he did his work. Angels must have wings for a reason.
Niko’s form didn’t move and I instantly ran to the back where the stairs would lead up because he was not dead. I could smell nothing but what soaked this place inside and out, not even Nik’s normal scent, but my brother’s freshly spilt blood, that I would know . . . over anything at all. Jack hadn’t shown up, but he had to be here and I’d be ready for him. I reached for the handle of the door that should lead to the stairs when the blot of gloom under the balcony became something else. Knit out of the shadows, the reaped souls, and the desertion of faith that now filled this place, Jack became.
The killing gate I had planned for him took only a thought. I didn’t have time for even that. A grip of ice sank into both of my temples, through flesh and bone, and I was the storm. I was the lightning that passed through my brain. The floor disappeared beneath me as I hung in midair, arms and legs splayed as I convulsed. Jack’s incandescent glow of white-blue eyes gazed into mine. “We both come and we both go, you said.” Thick with clots of flesh and blood, the phantom of them if not the actual things themselves, the words fought through. “Now I think you, Wolf-in-the-Flock, Auphe-in-the-Flock, you will go nowhere.” He must have dropped me as I was now looking up at the ceiling, unable to move, unable to understand what he said next although I could hear it.
“Pray for deliverance. Pray for mercy. But they will be prayers unheard for I will not let them pass, half a soul or not.”
He hovered over me, but I couldn’t distinguish between the lightning-shot blackness and the electricity misfiring in the darkness of my brain. Was there a difference? I couldn’t . . . think. There was the smell of freshly mown grass, the taste of metal and butterscotch, the warm sensation of Delilah’s skin under my hands. I floated on it all. It seemed strange. It seemed right. It seemed . . .
I was tired.
A wolf among the sheep. Half wolf, half sheep.
There was something I needed. . . . It was on the tip of my . . . what? What was . . . now there was the smell of Oreos. Mrs. Spoonmaker’s Oreos. I smiled and closed my eyes. I was so tired.
With the taste of burned butterscotch in my mouth, I slept.
*
DIY electroshock therapy is not an Auphe’s best friend.