For behold, the day is coming, burning like an oven
when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble.
The day that is coming shall set them ablaze, says the Lord of hosts,
so that it will leave them neither root nor branch
Malachi 4:1
Her breath burned in her chest.
Her clothes clung to her body, sweat-drenched and shivery. The dark landscape of the Burning City tumbled rocks and ledges to make her stumble, glass exploding from windows and brick blasted from their foundations. Her hands bled freely as she climbed a tilted slab of concrete that jerked once beneath her feet, groaning like a thing living. She watched pebbles roll off its edge, heard them clink over cracked plumbing, then splash somewhere in the darkness. She vaulted to a more solid stretch, the stone's fractures mortared with dried blood, like rust. Twisted rebars clutched at her clothes as she hurried past, sure she would fall at any second.
Then the Shadow would catch her.
"Monsters, monsters, big and small," she muttered. "They're gonna come and eat you all."
She chased after a promise of safety like a mad person in search of a reflection of light. She barely suppressed a groan as a spike of pain lanced through her sternum, her heart thundering a frantic staccato.
Something reared up ahead of her, a shape shrouded in darkness. She found she couldn't stop in time, careening full tilt into its muscled surface, cracking her head and letting out a shriek. At first she didn't quite understand what she was seeing. The Shadow –– there was no other thing she could think to call it –– churned and boiled as it loomed over her, over the whole Burning City, the bodies of animals and people appearing briefly in its flesh before they submerged beneath a roiling, fetid mass of millipedes and beetles.
And then there were the bones.
For a moment she thought they were pieces of bleached driftwood –– limbs of trees picked up by the undulating Shadow –– but when she saw the skulls, their jaws hanging open in a silent scream, she understood the horror of what it was. The remains of victims were a part of its body, flowing within the multitudes that made up its form.
A shiver ran through her. "Hound, hound, tooth and claw, shadow and bone will eat you raw."
She turned and sprinted in the opposite direction, towards a dark crag, the only promise of shelter, rising up from the stony ground. She caught a flash of smoky luminescence inside it, like a flame reflected in dark glass. There was an opening in the rock –– a thick metal panel had been reduced to slag by the heat of the fires. She forced her way through it and into a narrow tunnel, plunging down into the earth. Behind her, she heard the Shadow doing the same. She didn't dare look back, running so hard the bones of her feet felt as though they would crumble inside her flesh. Her head was throbbing. Her body was streaming incandescent as she flew through the darkness, melting away like a comet nearing the sun. She flew faster and faster. Her eyes could see only darkness. The black walls opened up like arms to pull her inside, to hold her fast...
"Vampire, vampire, sharp and sly, smile and bite and drink you dry."
Then she felt the Shadow –– its limbs too long, too bony –– wind around her and crush her tight, trapping her arms against its chest.
She screamed as it began to squeeze her to death. The Shadow dropped its head forward, into the hollow under her habit where her shoulder met her neck.
"Voivode, Voivode, eyes like coal, sing you a song and steal your soul."
"Sunt dărâmat de tot trăitul ăsta..." it purred against her ear.
The Shadow's voice resonated in her skull, pressuring a reply.
The Burning City bent and twisted out of shape, the pressure of the Shadow's embrace turning the space behind her eyes to a dune of snow, bringing the night sky, with its diamond-sized stars, so close to her mouth that she could kiss them, and taste the empty spaces beyond the world...
Elsewhere
Before Armageddon, Saint Peter's Basilica had served as the terminating vista of the Via della Conciliazione, which connected Saint Peter's Square to the Castel Sant'Angelo on the western bank of the Tiber River. Following the ascension of the Naia Sancta and the great war between Terran and Methuselah kind, the Papal Enclave had moved east, to the Rione Monti, where the resurrected basilica, designed to imitate the original della Porta design in every detail, lay cornered by the new Palazzo Apostolico and the Tiber.
Rome, the heart of the Vatican Papal State, was a humble city, tiered and tiled with red terra-cotta, wholly unremarkable save for Saint Peter's; its enormous cross hung over the city like an artificial satellite scaffolded into the sky. The seat of the Vatican was both an architectural chimera and a form of cultish worship - amusing, if the Catholic Church were one to pay any mind to life's crueler ironies. The monstrous towers of narrow, slitted windows, mysterious crenellations, rising spires surmounted by saints that at night glowed gold, and dizzying steeples rose high into the clouds, set to skewer fallen angels. Saint Peter's Basilica was at home neither on the land nor in the air: a mysterious, levitating place, contravening the materiality of both earth and sky.
Some way along the wide thoroughfare of the Corso Vittorio, hidden between the confounding roundabouts, broad arches of ruin, terraced gardens, gleaming white villas, marble statues, Doric columns and cornices of the Papal Enclave was the Palazzo Spada.
And in the large corner office on the third floor, poised at a window open to the courtyard below, distant from the muted growl of buses and taxis on the Corso Vittorio, sheltered from the rain drumming on the roof, like a stream of fine pebbles striking the shingles, her hands knitted and her gaze fixed on the dome of the basilica, stood Cardinal Caterina Sforza.
"I am the Head of the AX, sworn to protect and defend the Vatican's interests abroad," she murmured, sounding pressed for patience. "And yet Cardinal di Medici insists on making my job as extraordinarily difficult as possible."
"That young man needs a hobby," agreed Caterina's companion. "Scrapbooking, perhaps. Or coin collecting. Something to lower the blood pressure."
Caterina allowed herself a tight little smile. "Young man? You're only four years his senior, William."
Dr. William Walter Wordsworth grunted to himself in the way people only tended to do if they believed themselves unobserved. Having just returned from the University of Rome, he had shed his black cassock and mantle for a tweedish, threadbare jacket with patches on the elbows, strung with a large fob watch and damp from the rain. He smelled of cloves and pipe tobacco and had a faraway look about him as though he were at any moment about to toast muffins or read a particularly good story. He grinned to himself, showing his crooked teeth. His smile brightened his face to a ruddy gleam, pale eyes glittering with guile, though the effect was mitigated somewhat by the chalk that dusted the Professor's untidy dark hair and the sopping state of his trouser cuffs.
"It takes a great many more muscles to frown than it does to smile," noted William, going to work on his pipe, lighting and coaxing it. "Give it fifteen years: Cardinal di Medici will be one great wrinkle."
William Wordsworth was a hard-worked rationalist, always trying at framing the world in metrics and ratios, attempting to explain and justify human behavior with logical, plausible reasons –– it was little wonder Tres had taken such a shine to the man. During his good times this was not difficult, but, noted Caterina, when William was in one of his whimsical moods, the bright shards on the floor of the world had a trick of turning into shining pools of the hyperbolic and the fantastic.
"What am I to do with him, Professor?" she asked, not really expecting an answer. "Francesco communicates nothing to the Holy See save the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggression, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means. How does someone so intelligent, so passionate, see so much and yet remain so blind?"
"The man lacks some essential qualities in his daily repertoire, Caterina."
"Such as?"
"Empathy. Compassion. A moral compass aligned to true north."
The corner of Cardinal Sforza's cheek pinched into a dimple. "Oh, is that all?"
William's glacial green eyes - incisive and clear - twinkled. "He feels disjointed, disgruntled, because he is continually, though I suppose unconsciously, struggling to find out a kind of strategy to understand and deconstruct the cruelties of the world."
"Insensible to the fact that his own faults have sown and reaped the very same cruelties."
"Confining him in woeful unawareness," agreed William, speaking around the stem of his pipe. "I almost pity the man."
"A priest, William, pity a cardinal?"
"He has pity on the weak and the needy..." quoted William solemnly.
"I can always count on you to be ready with some biblical platitude, my friend."
"I can't take all the credit. A habit of Abel's."
"Abel..." Her gaze flickered between the courtyard below the balcony, the regiments of Roman pines and the soft, damp carpet of needles beneath their branches, and the veins in the travertine marble walls. The distraction of talking to the Professor, clearly, had not been enough for her.
"Ah." William may not have been able to intuit every one of her thoughts, disciplined as she was at keeping her expressions and emotions in check, but he had an eye for the ripples of reaction spreading from Caterina's deeper anxieties. "You're worried about Krusnik. It must be difficult for him, I imagine, hearing Cardinal di Medici's disdain for Methuselah, sitting around a table in an affirmation your half-brother's crusade, only to realize that the antagonist in Francesco's story is none other than Abel himself, and no one present thinks he's a very likable character."
A deep sigh was snatched from the Cardinal's lips by the rainy breeze from the window. "The mere fact that Father Nightroad hasn't yet landed himself in one of Brother's dungeons is a small miracle. The Chief of the Inquisition saw... things in Carthage. If Petros Orsini were so inclined, he could pen an incident report documenting in detail the Krusnik's powers and abilities and place it front and center on Francesco's desk in the Palazzo Riccardi. The AX would be in ruins by Noël matins."
"Paranoia, Caterina? That doesn't sound like the Duchess of Milan I know."
"Caution keeps me sensible, William. It's the way of things: any number of small mistakes and little accidents, a general absence of care, and somewhere, somewhen, a tipping point will be passed and things will begin to go terribly wrong. The history of the Church brims with tragedies built out of incremental blunders. Besides," Caterina removed her monocle and polished the glass between the thumb and forefinger of her pristine white gloves, "I read through Dr. Lauricella's inquest last night, and the details of her autopsy all point towards the very likely possibility of an attack by a creature Francesco would call a "vampire". In light of this, knowledge of Abel's abilities would be a flame to a powder keg."
"And you suppose Petros Orsini is the man holding the proverbial matchstick."
"I don't suppose anything, Father. The Chief Inquisitor saw Abel operating at eighty percent output in Carthage. He witnessed a priest, a man of the Church, transform into one of the very monsters the Inquisition have fought and tortured and killed for hundreds of years. And though he fought alongside Ion Fortuna during the Iblis crisis, Brother Petros was very nearly killed by the efreeti, Radu Barvon, in the process. He knows... a lot. Too much, perhaps, to ensure the safety of the AX and the secrecy of diplomatic talks with the Empire. Fate has flipped a coin of opposing sides, the AX and the Inquisition, and Petros Orsini has yet to call the toss. However, simply standing aside and allowing the coin to fall as it will might very well jeopardize any chance the Holy See has of achieving peaceful resolutions with the Methuselah. The risk is too great, and the cost too steep."
The Professor took a long, inward breath, as if preparing to field a counterargument, then stopped. Finally, he frowned. "I'm sure I don't really know the man, Your Grace. That being said, I value Father Nightroad's counsel to no small degree, and he speaks highly of Orsini's discipline, his honesty. High praise coming from the man whom Brother Petros dropped off a cliff. I believe the Chief Inquisitor is a principled person."
Caterina harrumped. "If one holds to principle so passionately, so inflexibly, indifferent to the full range of human flaws and foibles might create, a man runs the risk of enthroning principle above rationality. I am not sure I am willing to leave the future of the AX and the Empire both in the hands of Francesco's puppet, one who has abdicated the responsibilities of a thinking person in favor of his ideals."
But who was she to bemoan a man for his principles? Caterina had gone so far as to have Alec intervene on her behalf, to ensure the continuity of her own agenda in Florence, no-doubt enraging Francesco in the process. Each and every one of them, thought Caterina with a sudden bitterness, moved towards faiths they could not possibly know. Each of them struggled against the pain of the world even as they were doomed to join it, to compound it, even. Was she so different from Petros?
From Francesco?
William looked troubled. "What would you have us do, Caterina? I doubt slapping Brother Petros with a gag order will solve more problems than it will invariably create."
Caterina said nothing for a while. The rain, which was snow further north, bore down mercilessly upon the heart of the city, pounding on the tiled rooftops and turning the streets of the Rione Monti into a warren of slick stone and muddy water. Roman winters had a tendency to average their rainy months into long, cold seasons of relentless fog and little color. At such times, Caterina felt, looking out across the spattered balcony, as though the clouds would cry until the very hills dissolved.
"In a perfect world," she said quietly, "Francesco and his lackeys would allow Abel and León to get on with the investigation unencumbered. Cardinal di Medici would return to Rome along with the Chief of the Inquisition, where ecclestiastical concerns would keep the latter from whispering the wrong words in his master's ear."
"In a perfect world," parroted the Professor around his pipe, "young women wouldn't wind up in refrigerated rooms drained of blood."
"But the world is not perfect, and the child is still dead," conceded Caterina. She remembered Dr. Lauricella's images, projected to her monitor from Florence: the dead woman's face, pale and bloodless. The fierce white light of the morgue had showed every detail mercilessly, every last pore and pockmark revealed –– the history of a life, reduced to a mere handful of scars. "So... I have elected to recall Father Garcia to Rome."
"May I ask why?"
"León is a good soldier, but he is impetuous, hot-headed. Prone to acting on impulse and instinct. Moreover, following the incident involving my uncle, the Archbishop of Cologne, León's relationship with the Inquisition and my Brother is testy. I will be sending a more mature, more experienced agent to Florence in his stead."
"Oh?"
"I trust you have an overnight bag ready, William."
"Naturally." A broad grin spread across the Professor's face. Usually, Caterina found it quite infectious, but the rain and recent circumstances had dampened her mood.
At that moment a dazzling claw of lightning streaked down the length of the sky. The hedge and the distant trees seemed to leap forward in the brilliance of the flash. Her chest thrummed with the thunder.
"For all his faults," she said, "Brother is justified in his concern for the security of the Vatican Papal State. We must apprehend whomever is attacking people in Florence. Diplomatic negotiations cannot continue so long as a rogue Methuselah is murdering citizens of the Holy See."
William raised an inquiring eyebrow. "Something tells me my responsibilities might be a tad more involved than simple detective work."
"You assume correctly. I want you to keep an eye on Petros Orsini. I need to know if the man can be trusted."
"And Cardinal di Medici?"
"Follow the usual precautions. Abel is under orders to operate with the utmost discretion where his abilities are concerned, but if Brother shows any signs of suspicion, Father Nightroad is to be recalled to Rome at once. I cannot protect him so long as he is in Florence."
"Understood. I trust Abel and Sister Esther know to expect me?"
William took a contemplative puff of his pipe, not noticing –– or, more likely, pretending not to notice –– the way Caterina's eyes had narrowed suddenly in defiance. A damp coldness clung to the air around her, the inclemency seeping through vestments and skin, right to her bones.
Speak of the devil...
"There is another matter we have yet to discuss," she murmured. "Regarding Miss Blanchett."
William's face creased in concern. "Nothing bad, I hope?"
"That remains to be seen."
Caterina hated the taste of the words in her mouth. She had always been able to press on with her duty in the teeth of Esther Blanchett's interference –– invading Ion Fortuna's residence in Carthage, disobeying orders to follow Abel into the Iblis, very nearly allowing Alec to come to harm in István –– on account of the fact that there was nothing truly momentous one frail slip of a girl could do to unravel Caterina's plans. It was a glib, comforting bitterness, the protection of knowing that Esther, for all her powers of persuasion, in spite of the crowd of fawning sycophants she surrounded herself with, was quite helpless in the face of the AX's control and influence.
But at that moment, Sister Esther's vulnerability was, to Caterina, a horror rather than a balm. Because she knew, in her heart, that there was one particular sycophant willing to put the girl's welfare and safety before the Vatican's own.
Damnation, he had done it once before already!
"I received a call from Father Nightroad very early this morning," admitted Caterina, her chest tight, every muscle in her body stiff. "An addendum, of sorts, to the coroner's inquest, as well as a private message Abel did not want included in his official report."
"Cardinal di Medici isn't giving the young lady a difficult time again, is he?" asked William, faintly alarmed. "I remember he wasn't very impressed with all that Lady Saint business in István..."
Neither was I, thought Caterina tartly. Less due to Esther's unorthodox canonization, and more due to the fact that Abel had never quite forgiven the Duchess of Milan for placing his novice in such a difficult position. The ground between Cardinal Sforza and her oldest, and closest, friend had been irredeemably soured.
"This matter is not Francesco's doing. The girl hasn't... been well. Behaving strangely, murmuring nonsense in her sleep, getting lost in her own head at inopportune times. Abel was cryptic in the details."
"Is she sick?"
"Enough to warrant my concern, evidently. William... you are well-versed in Pre-Armageddon languages, are you not?"
Nonplussed by the apparent change in subject, William nodded slowly. The pipe smoke trailed behind his head like the tail of a sullen comet. "Some," he provided warily.
"The word voivode. Abel mentioned it. Would Sister Esther have any reason to know it?"
"Voivode... interesting." There was, to Caterina's surprise, a slight smile on William's lips. The Cardinal found she had no idea what he was thinking in that moment, what he was feeling, or whether his words were meant as dispassionate, musing, accusing, even playful. Normally, the tweeness was part of Father Wordsworth's charm. Now, it rattled her.
William admitted, after a pause, "It's entirely possible our mutual friend the Earl of Memphis introduced the term to her. Dynastic hierarchies in Methuselan society are hard to ascribe, given the loose traditional definitions of the ruling family, although if I'm remembering correctly, it's a rather archaic title, used by Moldavian rulers in ancient times, well before Armageddon."
"That does little to explain why it should catch Abel's attention, or why the girl has taken to muttering it in the middle of the night," said Caterina resignedly, irritably. "What does the word mean, exactly?" Her eyes stared thoughtfully the city beyond the Palazzo Spada. For a moment, she tapped a finger nervously on the table, drawing William's attention –– it seemed to be the first sign of her uncertainty Father Wordsworth had noticed.
"Well... I suppose the closest linguistic equivalent would be the word Hospodar in the Methuselah Cyrillic script."
"And in the Roman common tongue?"
Following Caterina's example, William raised his pale green eyes above the drenched and dreary city, climbing the heights that only angels had scaled. Caterina realized she didn't feel very well herself, and as she waited for her friend to parse through the indexes of his memory, she took three rough breaths, with stomach-clenched silences in between.
"Count, I think," said Father Wordsworth, a strange look on his face that Cardinal Sforza couldn't quite place. The Professor regarded his burning pipe tobacco, which seemed bent, like Caterina's heart, on consuming itself as quickly as possible. "Yes, I believe I've got it right.
"Voivode means 'Count'."
Elsewhere
"Out here in the dark and cold, freezin' my ass off when I should be on my Noël holiday in Sevilla. Man, I hate that guy."
Father Nightroad looked positively scandalized, his mouth pursed into a shocked little 'o'. "Shame on you, León! The Lord does not condone hatred!"
"Yeah, and the Lord don't condone being an asshole either, 'cept someone forget to tell Cardinal di Medici that back at the seminary."
"From Matthew: 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.'"
Abel's little smile froze as he saw the scowl flicker across León's features. "From Colossians," quoted Father Garcia scornfully: "For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done... because he's an asshole."
"It's snowing again," murmured Esther into her scarf, sick and tired of the pair of them and trying desperately to change the subject.
The alley was dark, save for the gaunt, purple-cloud light peeking in between the cracks in the buildings. There was no wind and the crust on the snow held in the cold, crunching easily under Abel and León's booted feet but putting up a little more resistance under Esther's own. It had been cold and gray the night before, on the long walk back to the motel from the Ospedale degli Innocenti, and Esther had been in a daze for most of the journey –– tired, headachy, feverish, as though she'd been drinking. She hadn't slept at all well... tossing and turning all night, her head full of frets and nightmares, but she had woken to Abel sprawled in an armchair beside her bed, drooling and his glasses askew, with a snow as fine and grainy as sugar covering the windows and sifting off the rooftops towards the street. The relief at having woken up wouldn't last much more than a couple of hours, she knew, but for some small space of time, Esther had forgotten about the nightmares. She had thought only about how amazing it was, the way snow managed to transform things: children scraping a half-inch from walls and bins to compact into snowballs; Noël market shoppers suddenly watching their footing; hovercars leaving a discarded flurry of white in the air. Florence all spires and pinnacles, pale palaces of pearl and opal, the snow softening the crumbled pavements and turning rust-colored rooftops white, cutting silhouettes on buildings and bridges and bushes.
Even in the middle of the night, investigating a murder and condemned to enduring Abel and León's bickering in the meanwhile, Esther couldn't deny the fact that the sight of snow still created a childish glow inside of her. Noël was a season of peace and goodwill; an oasis of calm in the chaos of life. Maybe that was why snow felt so right; cloaking the world in stillness, matching the season's pace and mood, even if –– just like the snow itself –– the change was only temporary, and spoke of both soft powder giving way underfoot and the creeping chill of ice in her bones, turning her lips blue and her fingertips black. Of delirious joy and terrible pain both.
The three AX agents reached a junction in the small sidestreet; the open spaces between the unplastered pietra forte seemed to bend away crazily like tunnels dug by some huge and drunken rat. Further along the alley, snagging Esther's attention, something large crunched through the snow. The thin film of ice splintered under the weight, the sound like a bone snapping in half, and Esther's head shot up. The crack was blinding, mineral, shattering the silence of the street –– not that León and Abel, still hurling verses at each other, took any notice.
She froze, eyes straining until they began to water. The quiet that followed as Esther peered into the darkness was implacable, lacquered... like transparent death.
Esther blinked.
Something in the shadows blinked back.
A stir of motion, like a swirl of mud in water, disturbed the curtain of falling snow. Esther swallowed down the acidic bile of fear, resisting the subconscious urge to flee. She struggled to rationalize just what, exactly, she was seeing...
The massive creature, wolfish and unnaturally lanky, had known better days. His pitch-black fur was thin and clung to his frame like a windbreaker in a gale. Even from several meters away, Esther could count his ribs. His movements were faltering as if each step pained him, his head sunk low to the ground. Crimson eyes that ought to have been scanning for danger or opportunities to eat never rose from the snowy cobbles. His tongue lolled out of his mouth, lapping forlornly at the occasional slick mirror of ice.
"Still with us, Miss Esther?"
Abel was looking away from her as he asked it, but not before Esther caught the slight flush on his cheekbones. He was so pale, he could never hide even the least blush.
But Esther didn't move.
"Father..." she breathed, fingers brushing the sleeve of his cassock. "Father..."
The dog –– the creature was a dog in the same way Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome was a church –– cocked his head, pointed ears tuned to Esther and the priest, though the latter had yet to take notice.
Esther felt a fast, shivery chill of horror. In an instant, the night and the cold swept around her like a dark cloak, eclipsing the memory of the bright sanctuary of the snow with all its light and beauty. "Father Abel..." she whined.
The dog fixated on the sound of her voice, its hackles standing on end, bristling along its back. Esther expected him to growl, to snarl in fear and hunger. But the massive creature appeared instead to smile broadly –– violent red, like blood on ice, flashing his ivory-white teeth, the sheer length of the grin tugging at his gristly lips. A musky, damp scent, tinctured with the lather of rancid breath and the coppery sting of an abattoir floor, blasted Esther's face, causing her breath to catch in her throat.
"Miss Esther? Miss Esther!" A white, spidery hand appeared –– seemingly out of nowhere –– and grabbed hold of Esther's arm. She didn't feel Abel's grip, numb from shock...
"Holy shit," came the plummy, distorted sound of Leon's voice, as though his words were drifting through deep water. "What the hell is that thing!?"
"Help me..." Terror paralyzed Esther's tongue. Her shoulders stiffened until her chest bowed, tight and agonizing, while her knees threatened to give out.
Warm arms gathered her close. "Shh," Abel whispered against Esther's temple. He stayed right where he was, shielding her with his body, accepting her violent emotions, and running his hands over hair so red the strands were almost bloody in her peripheries, between his fingers... "It's all right, I've got you. I've got you, Miss Esther."
Too late, she noticed the tensed hind legs, the stiff back.
The dog was going to lunge.
The beast howled, the sound glassy, hovering at the upper ranges of hearing, full of the same icy wind that hit the back of Esther's throat. Underneath the glassy edge was the song of flesh being ripped apart, the sweetness of hot blood, the savagery of crunching bones and sharp teeth. In spite of his wasted, emaciated appearance, the dog hurdled effortlessly over the snow and loped towards Abel, claws skittering on the lacquered sheen of the snow-muffled street. Father Nightroad had just enough time to push Esther clear, sending the nun stumbling, before the black monster collided with his chest, teeth bared –– eerily incandescent, as sharp as fine diamond swords –– as he planted his paws on Abel's shoulders. They both hit the snow and ice with the sound of splintered vacuum tubes, the white ground shattering beneath them. The wind was knocked from Abel's lungs with a low, agonized groan.
"Father!" screamed Esther. In an instant, the terrified fog fled from behind her eyes and she procured her shotgun from under her skirts, acting entirely on instinct. She rushed the pair –– two beasts entangled –– and was distantly aware of Father Garcia swearing several yards away, of his removing his sharp silver chakrams from his wrists. Esther knew she was in León's line of sight, but she didn't care.
Would Abel transform? she wondered distantly, dimly.
No.
Esther couldn't allow that to happen. Not here...
The animal's paw was crushing Abel's shoulder. Esther slammed her shotgun into the dog's head, hoping to break his jaw, but her efforts had all the effect of hitting a brick wall with a switch. Turning his head and spitting, almost in rebuke, the black beast ripped her shotgun from her hands...
And bit the weapon cleanly in half.
"Stop it!" shrieked Esther. "ABEL!"
She could hear Abel's ribs cracking one after the other, under the impossible pressure, like kindling broken across a bent knee. The monster pinning him to the ground had pushed his paw almost entirely through the priest's shoulder, crushing the scapula against the ice. The dog was studying him, pointed canines exposed, blood slavering from his gums, hovering centimeters from Abel's face. The teeth came closer, closer, slow and merciless––
Then Esther caught it... a glint in Abel's eyes, the color once clear blue, turning darker. Redder. She glimpsed in them a shadow of the winged creature that was his sin made flesh, the truth of him she had seen laid bare in the blazing sun months before, shorn of mystery and subterfuge. It was, Esther knew now, the truth behind the unassuming face and the miraculous powers, the truth that was the dead and empty space between the stars, a wasteland peopled by frightened children and forsaken angels.
A truth close to breaking free...
The wrath Esther found in Abel's eyes was world-ending.
"Please," she begged,
"Let him go..."