It looked so innocent.
The Lambs of the Seven Seals were located far away, in the scrublands of Texas far away from the metropolis of Houston. The city was too sinful. Yet they, like many other groups, operated a small storefront church and office here. She had followed the crow through the streets here, and now she stood staring at the first outpost of her enemy.
It wasn't much. She stood in the street and looked at it carefully. Just a small office above a convenience store. A sign in the window read Do you have questions? We have answers.
Questions? Oh, yes, she had questions.
The crow landed on her shoulder and cawed. She could feel its feet digging into the leather. Yet it didn't hurt. Nothing could hurt her – physically, at least.
Then suddenly the crow leaped into the air and flew high, circling lazily around the building. She blinked for a moment as her vision shifted. Vertigo overtook her; it felt like she was moving, but she wasn't. After a moment or two she realized she was seeing through the crow's eyes. It flew up to a third-floor window and alighted on the fire escape. She tried to focus and see what it meant her to see.
She saw a man inside, lying on a bed. He looked rather clean-cut for the inner city. The room was spartan: only a picture on the wall and a dresser. The shabby carpet was astringently neat. She tried to make out the picture and her teeth bared.
Him. The Reverend. The leader of the Lambs of the Seven Seals. This man was one of his followers. He worked for him somehow. She didn't know how she knew that, but she did. The crow had spoken.
Alice headed down into the alleyway and glanced around. This part of Houston was pretty down at the heels. That was probably why the cult had a branch office here; the rent was cheap, too. Her heels were silent on the cracked asphalt.
To climb the fire escape was not difficult, although the aged metal groaned and creaked under her weight. Hopefully she would not draw his attention. In short order she was on the third-floor fire escape next to the crow.
She put her hands on the aged window and pushed. It was locked. That would've stopped most people, but she wasn't most people. For her, it seemed like she just pushed a bit harder. Old wood and metal whined and then cracked under her assault. The window slid up obediently, as if acknowledging that it had been bested.
With a rustle of black leather, Alice slipped into the bedroom. The man awoke and sat up, blinking crossly at having been awakened. Yet it was already too late.
Alice ran forward and grabbed him by his T-shirt. He reached under the pillow with one hand and came up with a pistol. Quick reaction time, she had to give him credit for that. Yet all the same, it wouldn't do him any good.
"Who the hell are you?" he demanded.
Alice pulled him forward and felt the T-shirt rip under her grip. She leaned forward into the slot of moonlight, so he could see her face. She smiled horribly beneath the harlequin's mask.
"Vengeance," she hissed. Then she grabbed his gun arm, her left hand clamping onto his right forearm. For just a beat she glanced over his shoulder at the picture of his living idol on the wall. Rage coursed through her, charging her dead heart, and her lips skinned back from her teeth. Her fingers tightened, fueled by the all-consuming rage, and an audible crack was her reward.
The gun slipped from nerveless fingers, sliding silently to the mattress. Alice ignored it. An anguished scream came from her foe. She clamped her hand over his mouth to muffle any more, but otherwise ignored that too.
"What do you want?" he said, his tone jig-jagging up and down. His arm dangled helplessly in her grasp. Alice looked at it and realized what she'd done. It wasn't just broken, it was curved in the middle. Compound fractures provided the necessary flexibility. Between her own pale fingers his flesh was beginning to swell and turn red.
"Vengeance," Alice repeated. "Also, some information."
His face twisted in pain. "Please...I have no drugs.. I haven't got much. I am a religious man. I have money in my wallet on the stand. Take it and leave."
He thought she was an ordinary thief. Hearing anyone associated with that cult try to claim the mantle of religion enraged her again, and she slipped off the bed and threw him to the floor in one smooth motion.
"I don't want your money," she said. Her boot buried itself in his ribs, seemingly of its own volition. "Listen to me and listen good. I want you to answer questions. Do that and I'll let you live. If you lie to me once...I'll break every bone in your body. Do you understand me?"
The man blubbered and nodded. Alice leaned down and grabbed him by the hair. His face was a mask of agony, his eyes slitted in pain. He eyed his tormentor and then looked down at the floor in submission.
"What is your name?" Alice asked.
His breath hissed in and out. Yes, he was broken. That happened when people burst into your apartment with violence on their minds; Alice knew that well.
"John," he mumbled. "John Biden."
"John Biden. And what is it that you do for...the Lambs of the Seven Seals?" The last five words came out laced with hate.
"I...I'm an outreach coordinator," he said. "I...I run the office downstairs. I try and spread our Word."
"Your Word is hate and murder for those who try and leave," Alice snarled.
Biden flinched. "No," he mumbled. "We...we aren't...we're good people, you've made a mistake."
"I haven't made a mistake," Alice hissed. She thought of Chris, and of the love they had shared, and how she had been reduced to this: a cold corpse, fueled only by revenge. It was too much. She reached down and grabbed him; his body felt as light as a twig. To lift him bodily and throw him through the bedroom door was no harder than tossing a tennis ball. She followed him, her coat flapping like wings around her, and squatted over him like a vulture about to dine on its prey.
"Now, tell me, John. One year ago. The Lambs dispatched a...hit squad, I guess you could say. Four men to track down someone who had left and the girl he was with. You were here then, weren't you?"
John nodded, his eyes alight with terror.
"And you were part of that, weren't you?"
He held up his left hand, and for a moment Alice had to fight the vicious urge to break that arm too.
"I just...please...it was the Reverend's orders...I just set things up for them. I didn't...,"
His breath hissed in and out, and Alice realized belatedly that she must've broken a rib when she kicked him. Yet she felt no guilt. It had to be done, and he deserved it. Anything short of death would be a mercy.
"What did you do, John?" she asked.
"I...I helped them. I set up hotels, I got directions. I just...the Reverend said it was necessary," he said pleadingly.
Another wave of rage came over her. Alice grabbed his ankle and dragged him down the hall to the front door. If she looked at him she would break his neck. His body bumped along the floor. Occasional cries came from him as his injuries banged against the floor, but she paid them no heed. He had made sure her murderers slept in comfortable beds and knew where they were going.
Out the hall and down the stairs. That made him scream, and she grinned hard on hearing it. Then she was at the door marked Lambs of the Seven Seals Office. One kick was enough to break it off its hinges. She dragged him inside, picked him up, and threw him onto his desk. He made a pretty good broom; all the stuff on the desk fluttered and crashed to the floor. Lying little pieces of propaganda and flyers. And it all made her sick.
"I don't care if the Reverend said it was necessary," she hissed through her teeth. "You helped murderers. Two people and all they wanted was to live their lives and you helped kill them. How many others? How many have you killed because of what the goddam Reverend said?"
He flinched and covered his head. The shattered remains of a coffee mug laid next to his hand. Tears and snot ran down his face.
"Please...just that...,"
"Anything else you want to tell me?" Alice said.
He cowered and snuffled and shook his head.
"No other murders?"
He shook his head again.
"There was another girl who left the cult, by the name of Jade, a few months after we left," Alice said. "Did the Lambs do anything to her?"
He rolled over so that he could look at her from behind the feebly protecting arm. One eye stared out at her like a kid playing peekaboo. The other was hidden in shadow. She hadn't put that out, had she? It was hard to remember.
"We didn't kill her," he groaned. "Please...it hurts...,"
"It'll hurt worse if you don't tell me what I want to know," Alice said, and for a moment she was surprised at how flat and unempathic she sounded.
"We....just...she had to be taught the lesson...she's alive...,"
Alice bared her teeth at him. "What's her address? You must have it from when you sicced the reverend's attack dogs on her."
"I can't remember," he mumbled.
She stepped forward and grabbed his left hand in her right. She made a fist, clenching his hand as she had once held Chris's. But now, instead of love, it was fury and revenge that powered her grasp. Several small cracks and pops echoed distinctly from her fist. When she released his hand, it hung raggedly from his wrist.
"Try," Alice said, and smiled.
He gestured with his shattered hand. "Please...it's in there...in the drawer...red file...,"
He coughed. Fine red droplets came out of his mouth and misted the desk blotter. Alice opened the drawer. Sure enough, there was a red folder in there. She opened it and found printouts from Yahoo's people search. One for her and Chris. And one for Jade. Alice took that one out and stuck it in her pocket.
Now she knew what she wanted to do.
There was a filing cabinet nearby, and Alice ripped it open and pulled out the contents. A closet held more copies of their pamphlets and newsletters. She ransacked the desk drawers and confiscated the stuff on his desk.
All of it went into a neat cone-shaped pile. Biden glanced over at it and whimpered. He wouldn't last much longer. That was fine. She didn't need much longer.
"Please," he said. "Don't kill me."
"I'm not going to kill you," Alice said. "Your name is John, right? Like John the Baptist. He led the way for Jesus, you know. Well, you're going to lead the way for me, John. You're going to be my messenger. You're going to tell them that death is coming."
She leaned forward and grabbed him, forcing him to look at her. Her voice was cold and flat as a knife.
"It's scary when someone comes into your life and just attacks you for no reason you can understand. Isn't it?" She took the paper with her and Chris's address on it and waved it in front of him.
Shock and terror colored his pale face. He flinched.
"Are you...no, you can't...,"
"Yes," Alice said. "Jesus isn't the only one who can come back, it seems. But I'm not here to forgive."
She grabbed him one final time and walked over to the window. It, too, faced out onto the alleyway. It took only a moment to open the window. Then she grabbed him by the back of his pants and the back of his ripped shirt. For a moment she held him close, his head just ahead of hers. She could smell the coppery scent of fear-sweat on him as she spoke into his ear.
"You'll want to get out of here," she said. "This place...is unclean."
Then she threw him, with no more effort than it would take to throw a rubber ball. He catapulted out the window and fell, letting out a low moan as he tumbled and spun in space. She heard the thud of his body and a second cry as he hit the asphalt of the alleyway.
Never mind. He would live. He would suffer, but he would live.
Alice turned back to her pile and rummaged through the desk drawers again until she found what she was looking for: a half-used book of matches. She struck one and stared for a moment or two at the tiny flame. Such a small thing, barely capable of hurting anyone...but ah, how it could grow.
For fuel, she offered it the paper on which her address had been written. The tongues of flame ate hungrily at the paper, and reflex forced her to drop it to the pile. She watched the flame grow for a moment or two before turning to leave. This place would be cleansed.
Down in the alleyway, she took a moment to watch the growing orange glow from the window. Biden moaned a few times and flinched from her. She ignored him. He didn't matter anymore.
For just a moment, she wondered what she had done. She'd never done anything like that before. She'd never been violent in her life. Had she really broken into a man's home, beaten him half to death, and set the place on fire?
The evidence was indisputable. But what did that say for her? What had the Crow made her into? Was she here only for murder and pain?
The clocking of ancient bootheels made her head turn. She sighed and turned around. The Skull Cowboy entered the alleyway and eyed her for a moment from those ancient eyeholes.
"Nice work," he said calmly.
Nice. Was that the word for it?
"You think so?"
"Now you know what you have to do," the Skull Cowboy observed. "Get moving. You need to finish the job. And there's a lot left to do."
Alice felt the paper in her pocket.
"Not yet," she said. "I have something I want to do first."
The Skull Cowboy seemed annoyed. "The problems of the living are not your concern," he chided. "Do your job."
Alice turned towards the mouth of the alleyway. "I will," she said. "I just want to see one thing first."
She didn't look back. She just went.
