It wasn’t a pendant or a book or any other object keeping John Hobbes alive. It was a place. A room. This room.
The Book of the Brethren lay on the altar, opened to the page for the eleventh offering. Evie stared at the drawing of the beautiful girl dressed in a shimmering gown of gold, an all-seeing eye painted on her forehead and outstretched palms. Her chest was open and her heart was in the hands of the Beast.
This was his true lair, then. The reason he’d had Mary White keep the house ready for him. And now she had walked right into it, into the belly of the Beast. She had to get out of there at once. If she had to, she’d throw a match and send Naughty John back to whatever hell would have him.
From deep in the cellar, she heard him singing, “Naughty John, Naughty John, does his work with his apron on.”
Evie’s fingers fumbled for the matches in her pocket. Yes, she’d throw the match and run. Panic made her thoughts cloudy. Desperate. She sank to her haunches like an animal who knows it’s cornered by the wolf.
Don’t faint, don’t faint, don’t faint, whatever you do, don’t faint, old girl….
The wolf was at the door. His shadow spilled into the room, taking it over. With shaking fingers, Evie lit a match and tossed it against shadow and air, watching the flame fizzle into smoke. She lit another and another, all reason lost now, the whole book of matches reduced to nubs. And despite her warnings, Evie’s mind did not cooperate. Her eyes rolled back in their sockets and she slipped to the ground, unconscious.
THE WOMAN CLOTHED IN THE SUN
Stars. That’s what Evie saw first. Above her, the inky sky twinkled with the false hope of stars. Her head ached where she’d hit it on the floor. Her mouth tasted of blood.
“Ah. You’re awake,” the voice said. “Good.”
Her vision blurred for a second, then focused on the sight of John Hobbes. He was a big man with a thick mustache. He’d removed his shirt, and she saw the brands covering his chest, back, and arms, his body a nightmarish tapestry. Anoint thy flesh….
The eyes were the same ones she’d seen before: cold and blue.
“Very kind of you to come to me. Saved me the trouble of coming for you.” He shimmered before her like candle wax, an unstable thing, but still with the capacity to burn.
“Jericho!” Evie shouted. “Jericho!”
Naughty John smiled. “Your companion is not well at present,” he said, and Evie was afraid to ask what that meant.
Evie sat up and was surprised to see that she could do so freely.
“What would be the point in restraints?” he said, as if he could read her thoughts.
Evie was numb with fear. “Why?” she asked. It was all she could manage; the terror had reduced her words.
“Why?” John Hobbes repeated, as if she were an insolent child and he her annoyed but patient teacher. “Why should I let this world go on? It is filled with sin and vice and all manner of corruption. It requires a new god to lead it, Lady Sun.”
“I’m n-not your Lady Sun,” she whispered.
John Hobbes pulled out the small square of cloth from her gold brocade coat. “The Woman Clothed in the Sun.”
He smiled, making Evie’s blood throb in her head. Her eyes darted about the room, looking for some means of escape, taking in what might be used to her advantage. Her heart began to race again as she realized that the door was slightly ajar. She darted forward, and as if it sensed her plan, the door shut before she reached it. She beat on it with her fists.
“ ‘And the Lord said, let the Beast be joined with the Woman Clothed in the Sun. Anoint her flesh as your flesh.’ ”
John Hobbes walked calmly toward the lit brazier. Several branding irons now protruded from it, their symbols growing hot on the coals.
“I… I…” Fear choked Evie’s words in her throat.
Think, Evie, old girl. She had meant to burn down the house, and Naughty John with it, but that plan was gone. She needed a new plan. Will had said they needed to bind his spirit to a holy object like the pendant, then speak the words and destroy that object. But what was at her disposal? Her eyes darted frantically around the room again, searching out something, any object that could be used.
“This room is your strength, isn’t it? ‘Prepare ye the walls of your houses.’ Isn’t that what it says? What will happen if I destroy these walls? How will you manifest then?” she asked, stalling.
“Too late for that. The comet’s almost overhead. Three minutes more. You will be my bride, and your heart will assure my immortality. And you will live on, like the faithful. It is time, my Brethren.”
Beside Evie, the glistening walls breathed. They bowed out like a membrane, and she could see faces and hands pressed against them. Evie stumbled backward toward the altar as bodies pushed through and the room was filled with the hollow dead of Brethren—living corpses with skin weeping red, burned down to bone in places. Skeletal faces without eyes. Mouths torn away. The faithful. The damned. Ready for the final sacrifice, the last offering. They wouldn’t stop until her heart was ripped from her chest and the Beast was made whole.
“They are here with me. The chosen of Brethren, sacrificed for the first of the eleven offerings. May it please the Lord!”
It sounded like the wind whipping over Brethren as the faithful replied, “Amen, amen, amen…”
“They demand tribute for their sacrifice. And they shall have it.”
The dead of Brethren were coming toward her. Coming for her. Evie raced ahead of John Hobbes and grabbed a branding iron from the coals. It burned her hand and she dropped it, crying out in pain. She wrapped the hem of her skirt around the iron handle and picked the iron up again, holding it out in front of her. Her hand shook wildly.
“Into this vessel, I b-bind your spirit. Into the f-fire, I… I…”
She couldn’t remember the words.
John Hobbes’s laugh bubbled up with all the cruelty of a child delighted by the power of bringing his boot down upon an insect.
“It must be a holy relic! Only a blessed object can contain the spirit.”
“Jericho!” Evie screamed again, though she knew it was no use. She flung the branding iron at the walls and it skittered across the floor.
“No matter. I can anoint your flesh when you are dead.”
Evie laid a hand across her chest, as if this would be enough to keep the Beast and his faithful from tearing out her heart. Her fingers grazed the edge of her half-dollar pendant and she grabbed it and held fast to it like a frightened child.
Mute no more, the dead of Brethren opened their mouths in a collective din that crawled up Evie’s spine. Their jaws unhinged and they vomited out an oily black substance, which fell to the floor like a river of snakes. It crawled up the legs of John Hobbes, where it coalesced with the brands on his skin. It covered him like armor and then was absorbed into him.
“Look upon my form and be amazed!” He stretched out his arms, threw back his head, and cried out in what could have been either agony or ecstasy. His flesh rippled, as if something were trying to break out from within. Evie watched in horror as John Hobbes’s face contorted. His mouth curved into a cruel sneer. His teeth grew long and razor-sharp, and his fingertips sprouted claws. From his back, two enormous wings sprouted, white as the down of a lamb. The room was filled with light. He was manifesting into a thing of terrifying beauty right before her. Her eyes hurt to behold him. To be fully complete, he needed only to take her heart.
“The Lord will brook no weakness in his chosen!” The Beast said. His voice was like a thousand voices speaking at once, a demonic symphony.
For a moment, Evie lost all desire to fight. There was no fighting an evil this grand, this perfect. All one could do was submit. Let it happen and be done with it. The night sky seen through the small opening began to brighten: Solomon’s Comet on its prophecied return to the skies. The futility of the fight weighed on Evie like stones on a grave.