“Hallelujah!” a woman shouted, raising her palms high.
“The time has come for the ritual to begin! For the Beast to rise and bring judgment to the sinners!”
“Hallelujah!” others joined in.
“We are the faithful. We must be strong. The Lord will brook no weakness in his chosen.” Pastor Algoode opened the book, finding the page he needed. “And I heard the angel’s voice as a voice of thunder saying, ‘None of the faithful shall enter the kingdom of the Lord but that they have purified their flesh with oil and the flames of heaven. Their sacrifice shall be the first, the sacrifice of the faithful, and the Beast will take from them the book and bathe in the smoke of their tithe. Thus will the first offering be made and the ritual begun.’ Hallelujah!”
Pastor Algoode passed around two jugs, which the faithful poured over themselves. Evie could smell the strong kerosene. Her heartbeat sped up. Pastor Algoode slipped his pendant around the boy’s neck and placed a hand on his forehead. “Take of our flesh and make it yours. Thus sayeth the Lord. Go. Do what you must. Find a dwelling and make it holy. Prepare ye the walls of your house. Do not forget to honor us with tribute.”
Calmly and quietly, the boy left the barn, locking it from the outside. On the other side of the door, Pastor Algoode continued praying while the congregation took up a plaintive hymn. Evie smelled smoke. Black wisps curled out from the cracks in the barn. Flames licked at the roof. The boy stood fast, also praying, letting the smoke fill his lungs. “The Lord will brook no weakness in his chosen,” he intoned over and over.
Inside, the children screamed and coughed. The women tried to keep the song going. Pastor Algoode’s voice was choked with pain; it made his prayers into a fearsome cry. Evie wanted to get away, but she couldn’t. She could not command her hand to let go of the ring, nor could she remember the code word. She was too far under, with no idea how to get out or ask for help. The screams had died to isolated moans. The roof caved in. The smoke. Evie coughed; she was smothering. Shouts from the woods—someone was coming up the mountain. The boy opened his eyes quickly. For a second, Evie thought she saw flames reflected in the cool glass of those eyes. The boy walked calmly toward the woods and the sound of a man’s voice calling out. Suddenly, he stopped and turned toward Evie. Something about his face—calm, cold, cruel—made Evie’s heart beat wildly. He was looking right at her!
“I see you,” he said, and his voice was not the voice of a boy; it was a terrible thing, more bestial than human. “I see you now.”
“J-James,” Evie whispered, suddenly remembering the code word. “Help. James.”
The next thing she knew, Jericho was shaking her. Her fingers were cramped but the ring was gone; Sam had taken it from her. “Evie!” Jericho shouted. “Evie!”
She gulped in a huge breath, like a drowning woman breaking a lake’s surface. “Oh, god, oh, god!”
“We should have stopped, Will!” Jericho growled.
“It’s all right,” Will said rather automatically.
“I saw him—I saw the Beast! Horrible, horrible!” She gagged but did not vomit. Her head began to throb and her vision swam.
“I’ll get her some water,” Sam said, running for the kitchen.
Evie held on to the edge of the desk even though she was sitting. Her cheeks were pale and her forehead bathed in sweat. The room spun. “He… he looked at me! Right at me! He said, ‘I see you, I see you’!”
“What the hell does that mean?” Sam asked. He’d returned with the water and tried to get Evie to drink, but she couldn’t.
“It’s all right,” Will said, shaken.
“It’s not all right! You can’t do this to her. She’s not an experiment,” Jericho snapped at a stunned Will. He gathered Evie in his arms, carried her to her room, and placed her on the bed.
Evie had never felt so sick. Her head pounded and her stomach roiled as she lay on sweat-drenched sheets in the dark room. Every sound echoed in her skull. She was vaguely aware that she was having the dream about James again, but it kaleidoscoped in and out of the images she’d pulled from John Hobbes’s ring till she couldn’t be certain what was happening anymore. At one point, she saw Naughty John playing chess with James on the battlefield, the Victrola playing so fast it made a mockery of the song. She saw Henry, too, running through the trees, calling for someone named Louis. A woman stood at the edge of the forest in her nightgown and a gas mask. When she raised the mask, Evie saw that it was Miss Addie. “Such a terrible choice,” she said as the sky lightened and the first waves of the explosion came toward them all.