Violence that begets evil will always be worse than the violence that ends it. The LORD will guide our hands. We will drive a wedge between the faithless through blood, and they will understand the evil they come from. They will understand the truth of salvation and come to us in repentance.

—The Truth by High Reverend Father Ian Clevenger

Don’t say shit like that.

You don’t believe me? Ask him. See what happens.

And I said, Fine. I will.

The ALC erupts when we bring in the supplies. I clean up and change clothes at Sadaf’s urging, then help with inventory because it keeps me in the same room as Nick. People flow around me, peeling open boxes, handing off packages of socks, cradling painkillers like Fabergé eggs.

“You good?” Aisha says as she piles cans in the pantry.

“What?” She’s staring at me. I’m glad to see her out and about, even if she looks like she hasn’t slept in days. “Oh. Yeah, I’m good. Just waiting for Nick to finish up. Sorry, I’ll get out of your way.”

She picks up a few tins of Spam. “Rough trip?”

“Something like that.”

When Cormac said Nick was calling me it, my first thought was awful: What if Nick is just super transphobic? But that doesn’t make any sense. Nick and Erin are so close, they might as well be siblings. He hovers around her like some kind of guard dog, making sure nobody steps out of line. He wouldn’t dare do something like that, not when he adores her.

And there’s no way he thinks I’m just a Grace. An abomination. No, he can’t. That’s just not an option.

The only explanation is that Cormac is lying. He’s sneered at me in the media room, talked down to me, wants me gone. And now he wants me to turn on Nick. Make a scene. Get myself kicked off the Watch and even out of the ALC.

I’m going to call his bluff.

As soon as we’re done restocking and everyone has taken a small treat from the pantry—a can of pears and juice split among so many people, a handful of stale chips for the rest—I see Nick’s jacket slipping through a crack in the kitchen door, and I give chase. Erin squeaks as I blow past her.

“Nick!” I call. “Nick, can we talk for a second?”

I catch him at the bottom of the stairs to the second floor, leaning against the door with a sign reading: FIRE DOOR—KEEP CLOSED, DO NOT BLOCK. He turns with a start.

“About what?”

I don’t know how to explain without just spilling everything right here. “Can we go somewhere private first?”

He nods for me to follow him up the stairs. I do.

I just have to talk this through, and everything will be fine, it’ll be fine, but my jaw is still chattering with nerves.

Nick takes me to a room on the second floor with a label beside the door: Volunteer Coordinator. Another office. It’s been converted to a small bedroom, complete with a mattress in the corner and shoes shoved by the door. He’s collected piles of books on warfare, white supremacy, religion, and the history of environmentalism, and stacks of old newspapers gone soft around the edges. Containers of plastic pony beads and half a dozen incomplete bead lizards sit on a desk in the corner. And, of course, the windows are boarded shut from the inside.

I hadn’t realized Nick gets his own room, but it makes sense. This must be where he goes when he disappears. I imagine him locking the door and dropping his head into his hands, sucking in deep breaths, preparing to hold his chin high the next time we need him. Nick ushers me inside.

“So,” he says, wandering over to the desk and picking up a pink bead. “Talk.”

I start with, “I want to say upfront that I’m not accusing you of anything.” Since being raised a good Christian girl will do things to you, will make you hedge topics and soften blows, no matter how much Seraph you have in you. Though maybe that makes it worse, because Nick’s eyes narrow. “Frankly, I don’t believe it. I just wanted to get it out there and—”

“Spit it out.”

Right. No beating around the bush. “Cormac said you were calling me an it.”

The bead stops rolling between his fingers. A lump appears in my throat, but I keep going.

“That’s what I want to talk about. He’s been like this ever since I showed up and, look. I can put up with a lot, believe me, but he’s actively trying to turn me against you, and that is not okay. I wanted to bring it up to you before it gets worse. Does that make sense?”

Nick says nothing. The silence makes me itch.

“That makes sense,” I say, “right?”

“I,” Nick says, then he stops like the word got caught on something. It takes him a second to start back up. “I can’t discuss this right now.”

Um. “I don’t…” My eye twitches. “I don’t get it.”

He repeats, slower, as if I didn’t hear him the first time, “I can’t discuss this right now.”

“Right. Okay.” I gesture to the door. “If you need me to piss off and give you space after this morning, I totally get it. I’ll give you all the space in the world. I just need you to, I don’t know, clear the air. Tell me Cormac is a liar. Then I’ll go. Okay? Just tell me he’s lying.”

He doesn’t. He doesn’t say anything. My heart throbs in my throat like it’s trying to come up.

“You can write it down if you can’t talk,” I say. “Or, or you can tell me that he’s telling the truth. I don’t think he’s telling me the truth, but if he is, you can tell me that too. Because if he is, I feel like we should talk about that instead? Just, whatever it is, give me a yes or no, I don’t care how, and I’ll leave you alone. I swear.”

What if Cormac is right? If Cormac is right—

“Benji?” Nick says. His jaw barely moves. He’s trying really, really hard to get the words out. “I won’t talk about this.”

Nick read the letter. He knows what I am. He knows what I was. He knew the girl I used to be, the twentieth host of the virus, the Angels’ monster. He knew that long before he ever met me.

Oh God, what if that’s all he sees?

Now I’m fighting to get words out too. “Fine. Then I’ll stand right here until you will.”

A long, heavy breath shakes in his chest. He puts down the bead, and that’s what gives his fingers free rein to curl into something painful, knuckles turning white.

I almost feel bad. Almost.

Finally, he manages, “I know what you’re thinking.” This isn’t him standing in front of the Watch. This is him crumbling in front of the Vanguard. This is him weak. “I know what you’re thinking, and it’s not like that—”

“Like hell it isn’t.” I step forward, and a flicker of fear passes behind his eyes, the first time I’ve seen it since the Grace forced him down at the shelter. I relish it. Good. I tear down my mask and bare my teeth so he can see the jagged tooth sticking out of my gums. “So you did? And you’re too much of a coward to admit it?”

It’s like flipping a switch. Nick roars, “Get the fuck out of my room!”

I stumble. For half a second, that’s it, but it’s long enough. Enough to remember how Theo screamed at me before he hurt me, the way I cowered, the way I begged him to stop. I was so weak then. Helpless.

But I’m not helpless now. The virus burns so hot it turns the edge of my vision white. Angel robes, the white horse, one of the most dangerous parts of the flame.

Nick was supposed to get it. Out of everyone, he’s supposed to be the one who understands I’m not what the Angels made me. He’s supposed to be the one that gets it. And here he is, using a pronoun like it. It. Like I’m not even an animal, just an object, a hunk of flesh, a vessel for something else. The same things the Angels thought I was.

I hate that I can’t cry. I want to sob, I want to do something, anything, to get this pressure out of my head, this awful thing building behind my eyes, I hate it so much, and if I can’t tear Nick to pieces, I need to get it out.

“No, you listen to me.” My voice comes out in a terrible, pained rasp. “Listen to me. My name is Benjamin Woodside. I’m gay and trans as hell, I am a boy, my pronouns are he/him, and I am a goddamn person.” That is everything the Angels never let me have. Everything I am. “I joined the Watch because I thought you understood that. If I knew you were going to be like my fucking mom, I never would have stayed. I thought you were better than them!”

It feels like I’ve pulled out a thorn, yanked a spear out of my ribs, and now there’s an open wound I don’t know what to do with, just the relief that it’s out.

Nick’s eyes widen. His pupils are so dark, they’ve devoured every part of his eyes. The whites gleam in terror. Good. I hope he’s scared. I hope it hurts him as much as I hurt right now, as much as it hurts for Seraph to burn across my cheeks and sink its fangs into my jaw. I hope—

I hope…

Pap.

There’s a soft noise at my feet. So quiet I almost don’t hear it.

Pap.

I look down.

A black-red drop sits on the tile floor. Splattered from the impact.

Another falls from my chin and hits the ground. Pap. Soft but sharp on the tile.

Something hot and wet trickles down my cheek and gathers at the point of my jaw, where it soaks into my pulled-down mask before finally falling. Again. Pap.

I open my mouth—probably to say, What’s happening?— and half my face goes loose. There’s air on parts of me that shouldn’t feel air. Nick won’t stop staring.

Slowly, I touch my face.

My right cheek has torn all the way back to the muscle of my jaw. An open wound streaks from the corner of my mouth halfway to my ear, exposing the Grace-fang and all the teeth, tongue, and receding gums. A flap of loose skin dangles.

Pap. Pap-pap-pap—then the whole piece sloughs off and hits the ground with a wet splat. It’s festering at the edges. Pocked with decay. Yellow and black and gray and red.

I watched this happen to the martyrs.

I stare until Nick pushes a ragged shirt against my face. The white in my vision swallows almost everything, and I slump to the floor. I tilt my head forward to keep the rot from taking up my entire throat and choking me. I let it all fall into the shirt until it soaks through and trickles between my fingers, warm and slick.

“Just tell me if he was lying.” When I speak, all this shit splatters my hands. It trails off my chin, and I can’t catch it all. There’s so much. “And I swear I’ll clean this up and leave.”

I will. I’ll bundle up the piece of my face and bury it out back with my tooth so nobody will find it. I’ll make sure my mask covers the wound and pack it with tissue so it doesn’t bleed through. I’ll clean it up and go.

Instead of answering, Nick picks a notebook off the table. My hair falls into my face, and I remember the bobby pins he gave me. Why did I ever take them out? I reach into my pocket with my free hand—I need to keep my hair out of the blood, it’s just one more thing to clean—and find my knife instead.

The click of a pen is almost deafening. Nick writes for a second and, very carefully, hands me a little note.

It reads, I’m sorry.

He did.

Cormac wasn’t lying.

I take a deep breath because it’s all I can do right now. In, out. Blood and sludge comes out with the air.

Maybe I need to start getting used to this. It’s only going to get worse.

“All right,” I say, and it sounds like something final.

I hand him both the note and the knife. When I free the knife from my pocket, bobby pins fall out and scatter on the tile. Nick doesn’t move to take it, any of it, so I put it all on the floor between us instead. I don’t know what the hell this means, so I’ll leave that up to him.

I just don’t want that knife in my pocket when he’s the one who gave it to me.