REJECT FEAR AND HYPOCRISY. FIND PURPOSE AND LOVE ON THE PATH OF THE LORD—JOIN HIM IN HIS GRACE AND WALK THE PATH OF ETERNAL LIFE. FIND SALVATION IN HIS PLAN!
—The Angelic Movement recruitment poster
What I remember:
Aisha and Faith holding me steady. One asks Nick if there’s any chance I’m infected. He shakes his head even though there’s a splatter of Flood rot on his sleeve.
A sunburned boy balancing Brother Hutch’s head in his hands, cutting off his left ear with a knife. He does the same thing to Steven but can’t walk by the boy smeared into the road. Bones stick out of him like monuments.
Nick standing by the Grace in silence. Finally, he wrenches out a tooth, prying it free with a knife of his own. My tongue running along my canines as I wonder how long it’ll be until my mouth looks just like that.
All of us standing together, perfect strangers on the battlefield, and it’s almost like my prayers have been answered, amen—but I don’t believe it for a second.
I wake up on the floor. I recognize that much immediately: the crick in my neck, the carpet that’s never plush enough to disguise the concrete underneath. I bury my face in my arms and groan.
“Finally, a sign of life,” says someone beside me. “You awake?”
“No.” I want to ask where I am, but it doesn’t matter. Anywhere is better than New Nazareth. I could wake up in a cell, and as long as it wasn’t Angels on the other side of the bars, I’d be better off than I was.
“No?” says the voice. “Damn, all right.”
After a minute, I sit up by propping myself against the desk behind me. The room looks like an office. Books are scattered in piles on messy shelves. Papers are on every available surface. Certifications, newspaper clippings, and photos hang on the walls, their glass frames dull like they haven’t been cleaned since Judgment Day.
As interesting as this is, though, I feel like shit. And so does the person in the chair across the room, if their scars and grief-reddened eyes have anything to say about it. The right side of their face is destroyed with pockmarks. One eye doesn’t open all the way. Latinx, scarred face, and painted nails don’t combine into a person I recognize. “Who…?”
“Shit, we gotta do introductions.” The stranger leans back, fingers lacing together as if to distract from the obvious tears. “Name’s Salvador. I was with the group that found you, though I didn’t get to say hi before you passed out. Got stuck on babysitting duty—no offense—to make sure you didn’t lose your shit when you woke up.” I’m too tired for that. I’ve lost it enough for one day. “So yeah, nice to finally meet you. Xe/xem pronouns.”
Right, Salvador was the one who pulled the sunburned boy away from the body. The memory is hazy, though. There’s a fog in my brain I’m too tired to claw through. I recognize everything that’s happened today from a distance, like the color’s been bleached out by the sun. Dad’s blood under my nails is the only evidence that he died today. That he died a few hours ago.
Salvador watches me warily.
“Yeah,” I say. “Cool. Xe/xem.” I go through the rest of the set: xe, xem, xyr, xemself. I read about neopronouns in a book Dad smuggled from the burn pile of confiscated items at New Nazareth. He brought up the book again our second night in the city, just a few days ago, when we sat in a dead stranger’s bathroom and cut off two feet of my hair with sewing scissors. He apologized with every snip, certain he was ruining it. By the end, I was sitting in a pile of red-brown scraps and running my hands through my choppy, shaggy, awkward boy hair.
I need to stop thinking about Dad. So I say, “Are you trans?”
Salvador blinks. “Uh.”
“Wait, no.” I can’t just ask people if they’re trans. “I shouldn’t have…”
“No, it’s fine,” Salvador says. “I mean, yeah, of course. I’m super trans. Like, an honestly heretical amount of trans. Why?”
I’ve never met another trans person before. Can I say that? Would it give me away as an Angel?
I decide on, “It’s been a while.”
“Then you’re going to lose your mind when I tell you this is an LGBTQ+ youth center.”
Xe’s right. “A what?”
Salvador gestures to the office. “This is the Acheson LGBTQ+ Center. Kind of like the YMCA but even gayer somehow. We call it the ALC for short.” Alck, xe pronounces it, like it’s some sort of medicine or maybe a hard liquor. An entire building, just for people like us? “It’s not much, and we’ve had to make a few adjustments”—xe nods to the boarded-up window beside xyr head—”but it’s home.”
A pause.
“Granted,” xe mutters, “today’s been shit. So.”
“I’m sorry about your friend.”
“Yeah. Me too.” Xe tugs at one long curl of hair falling out from behind xyr headband and changes the subject. “Nick said you’d been kidnapped.”
“It’s, uh, it’s a long story.”
“I mean, I figured,” Salvador says. “Angels don’t kidnap people.”
They don’t. They string up the heretics and cut them open. Maybe they make it painless if the nonbelievers come willingly. Hell, I remember a reverend praying to a newborn child before their parents drowned them in the river, repenting for bringing a sinner into the world without the church’s blessing. There is no need for new flesh.
Not with the Flood. Not with Seraph.
“I thought that too,” I say.
“Well, terrorists are terrorists, I guess. What I’m getting at is that Nick wants to talk to you. He’s picked up some kinda scent, and he’s not gonna let up until he figures it out, so you might as well get it over with. Think you can manage?”
Manage? I can manage a hell of a lot—whether it’s a smart idea is another thing entirely. “No better time than now.”
“Thought so.” Salvador gets up with a stretch. “Be right back. And don’t try anything funny. Cormac is outside, and he has an itchy trigger finger.”
That almost sounds like a threat, but before I say anything else, Salvador is gone.
So. An LGBTQ+ center. I stand, bracing myself on the desk. I’ve spent a lot of time in Sister Kipling’s office over the past few months, staring at the sparse decorations to avoid looking at the prophet of Armageddon, the woman who created the Flood. Sister Kipling had a crucifix above her door, framed diplomas above the desk, and WALK HIS PATH, FIND SALVATION, RETURN TO EARTH painted across the back wall.
This office is completely different. There’s a rainbow flag behind the office chair, a biography of a trans-rights leader on the bookshelf. One of the newspaper clippings is from all the way back in 2015, celebrating the legalization of gay marriage in the United States. I can’t picture 2015. I don’t think Mom and Dad had even met.
Every picture shows a world I left behind when I was eleven. A world the Angels destroyed when I was fourteen. A world I don’t know at all.
I’m staring at a photo—people with their fists in the air, screaming with rage and power—when the door opens again. I shove my hands into my pockets. Back straight, chin up, like Mom is checking my posture at church.
Salvador comes in with two people: Nick and a stranger. Nick takes a spot by the door like a guard dog, arms crossed. His hood is down, and his combat mask has been traded in for a pale gray one that goes well with his overgrown black hair. Bobby pins are jammed near his temples and forehead to keep loose strands out of his face.
He’s—he’s cute. His dark eyes, sharp brows, the distant but curious tilt of his head…
I dig my thumbnail into my finger, where my engagement ring used to be. I am still betrothed to Theo. I held his hand in front of the church and prayed for the world we were going to build together in Jesus’s name. I promised to bring glory as God’s fiery sword; Theo promised to fight beside me. We were perfect together.
To think like this about anyone else is wrong. No matter what Theo did to me that night.
The stranger says, “Hey, Sal,” so impossibly soft, like Salvador might crumple if xe hears anything other than a whisper. “You doing all right?”
“As all right as I can be,” Salvador says unconvincingly, “with everything.”
“If it’s not too much trouble, can you go check on Alex? Please? I haven’t seen them in a while, and I’m worried.”
Salvador disappears through the heavy wooden doors, and it’s down to three.
The stranger is a doe-eyed and delicate Black girl with deep brown skin dewy in the warmth of the office and long, braided twists decorated with thin golden bands. There isn’t a shred of black in her clothing. I can’t imagine it on her, not with the flowers on her mask and salvaged pastel eyeshadow.
“You have blood on you,” she says.
I pick at a bit of it that’s crusted on my jaw. “I get that a lot.”
“We’ll have to get you a bath, and some extra clothes, and…” She groans. “I’m so sorry. Today’s been hell, I can’t think straight. I’m Erin, and I use she/her pronouns. Sal told me you were excited to meet another trans person, so I hope meeting a second makes your day a little better.” She’s trans. She’s trans too. “What name and pronouns do you want me to use for you?”
I can say whatever I want. And that’s what she’ll call me. No questions asked.
“Benji, short for Benjamin. He/him.” It tastes so sweet that it almost wipes the memory of blood off my tongue. I would have smiled if I didn’t have more important things to worry about. I collect myself. “Are you in charge?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m in charge,” Erin says. “We don’t really do ‘in charge’ here.”
Nick says, “We do.”
“Well, you do. But I don’t. It doesn’t seem right.” Erin brings one of her braids around her front and starts picking at the ends. “Everyone thinks I’m in charge because I volunteered here before That Day, not because I was elected or anything. I’m more of an organizer? I like to think everybody is in charge a little bit—”
“Erin,” Nick says.
“Sorry.” Erin sighs. “We are the closest thing the ALC has to someone in charge, yes.”
Nick says, “And we have a deal for you.”
Shit.
Erin balks. “I wanted to ease into that.”
“No use.” Nick steps away from the door. I counter with a half step back. “Either he accepts or he doesn’t. How we say it doesn’t matter.”
I cut in. “Accept what?”
Nick holds out a tri-folded document from his jacket. The red wax seal is broken, but I would know it anywhere: folded wings at rest.
The Angels.
Another half step, and I hit the bookshelf. I check Nick and Erin for weapons. “Where did you get that?”
“A messenger,” Nick says, which translates to, I killed an Angel and looted their body. “Open it.”
“It’s okay,” Erin says. “Go ahead. I promise.”
Deep breaths. It’s fine. No matter what this is, it can’t be worse than what the Angels want.
Right?
“Fine,” I say. “Okay. I’ll open it. If you back up.”
Nick takes a respectful step away, and Erin ducks her head.
In blocky, typewritten letters, it reads:
NEW NAZARETH CHURCH OF GRACE
Church of the Angel, Church of the LORD Reverend Mother Veronica Woodside of New Nazareth speaks:
True believers of God’s word rejoice! The time has come. The LORD has blessed us with grace beyond our comprehension, a miracle beyond us all; eternal life is within our grasp. For we have found our way to SERAPH through—
My deadname.
My deadname is right there on the paper. It’s only been a week since I last heard it, but it still feels like a knife to the chest. And it’s on the official announcement of my recognition as the true Seraph. Copies of this announcement left New Nazareth in the bags of messengers who broadcasted it to camps across the world. News would reach colonies on almost every continent, soldiers embedded in the ruins of every country, and what a joyous day it would be. Now every Angel knows that after nineteen failed trials, nineteen false Seraphs, I will finally lead them to Heaven.
Except my name is Benji, and they don’t have me anymore.
I whisper, “What do you want from me?”
“So you are Seraph, then,” Nick says.
Erin looks away from us both.
I stammer. “You weren’t sure?”
“I wasn’t,” Nick says. “You could’ve been a failed trial who escaped. You could’ve been a sick kid who just got lucky.”
Tricky bastard.
“Hey.” Erin leans forward a bit to catch my eye. I lean away in turn. “We’re not going to hurt you. The ALC was built to help queer teenagers, and that’s what it’s always done. It’s just that the specifics have changed in the past few years.” She folds the document closed in my hands. “We want to help you escape.”
What? No. That can’t be—that can’t—
“But we need to figure out how to do it,” she says. “We have two ideas, and all you have to do is tell us which one you like best. Okay?”
Nothing is ever this easy. There has to be a catch.
But what if they’re telling the truth? Not everyone is as cruel as the Angels. Dad wasn’t. Theo wasn’t, for a time. Kind people exist. I know that.
I can take a chance on this.
“Tell me.”
Erin lights up—a switch is flipped, her face beaming despite the fog of death hanging over her. “The first option is that Nick and the others will get you out of Acheson and into Acresfield County. The path will suck, and you’ll have to stick it out on your own at the end, but we know a place where you can cross in the suburbs outside the city.” I stare at her, awestruck. “You get out of the city, and we won’t have to worry about a giant monster stalking around in a few weeks. It’s a win for everybody.”
I imagine the weight taken off her shoulders, knowing Seraph is far away from her and the ALC. That the Angels will never get their hands on me, and her friends can go back to preparing for the deadly heat and droughts of the upcoming summer instead of worrying about monsters like me.
And it’s what Dad wanted. I could just do it. Take their help and meet up with his memory in the farmland like I promised.
But could I really manage the whole world alone?
Without him?
Quietly, I ask, “And option two?”
Erin’s brows pull up, just a little, into something like worry, and Nick says, “What have the Angels done to you?”
“What?”
The truth is, the real question is, what haven’t they done? Mom snarling in the living room when I was little, threatening to press kidnapping charges if Dad tried to take me away again. Glittering wounds gouged into Theo’s back, shallow like tide pools, as his father held up Angel wings he’d been deemed unworthy of. The smell of mass graves and shit. Watching the world wink out of existence, community by community, family by family, when no one on Earth deserved a fate that cruel and lonely.
Nick reaches into his jacket again, and this time, he takes out a folded knife as black as his uniform, as black as rich earth.
He presses a small lever, and the blade springs out with a snap. An Angel knife, the same kind Steven held to my throat. Just like, I realize, the ALC’s guns are Angel guns. Stolen from their dead bodies and turned against them.
He says, “Because you could join us.”
The Angel killers.
I’ll be good, I’ll be good, I’ll be good.
“Take their greatest weapon,” Nick says, “and make them pay. You’ll escape by making sure there’s no one left to chase you. You’ll make them suffer for what they did to you.”
Make them suffer.
On the surface, there’s no way to do that and be good. They’re commandments at each other’s throats. But I found more good in helping Nick—in whispering to the Grace—than I ever could if I kept Seraph hidden.
Maybe, if I join the ALC, I can do both.
Nick holds the knife out to me, the blade between his dirty, bruised fingers. He trusts me. Even after seeing the letter, even knowing what I’ll become.
I take the handle.
It feels like there’s something writhing in my gut and erupting into screaming fury. Six wings outstretched and crying HOLY, HOLY, HOLY.
It feels like a chance to be anything but what the Angels made me.
