Page 115 of Decimation

My heart stutters.

It is an hallucination; it has to be. The wishful thinking of a broken mind. I am suffering the same ridiculous delusion as my bastard of a brother.

But I still command my own heart to be still, to not beat, so I can listen. The silence stretches, an eternity in a second. And there. It is not her breath, but the whisper of her life. A flutter so shallow it is barely a suggestion, a moth’s wing beating against a glass pane.

Her chest, under the ruin of her beauty, is rising. It is.

I scramble up, I scramble to grab her wrist, to try to find her pulse there but it is so fragile, so delicate. I drop it quickly and instead press my fingers into the hollow beneath her jaw.

For one heart-stopping, soul-searing second, there is nothing. And then, a beat. A single, soft, irregular tap against my fingertips. It is the most beautiful sound in the history of sound. It is the music of the spheres, the voice of creation. Th-thump.

There. Again. A weak, arrhythmic miracle.

A choked, wet sound escapes me. A laugh? A sob? It could be both. It is a sound of a world being willed back into existence.

And then, I see it, a few inches from her body. It is not blood. It is cloudy, tinged with bile. Vomit. Whatever poison he forced down her throat, she vomited it up. She was unconscious, defenceless, a lamb at the altar and her body, that same stubborn, fierce vessel that housed her impossible soul, spat death back in its face.

This is not chance, this is not luck. This is a sign that God has made his choice. He has looked upon my bloody path, and he has not turned away. He has given me her life back. He has sanctioned this, all of this. I am an instrument of a divine, terrible will.

A roar, guttural and raw, a sound of pure, uncontainable joy tears from my throat.

“Yes!” I shout, my voice hoarse, splintered, echoing off the walls that were, barely a moment ago, a tomb. “YES!”

I gather her into my arms and I hold her tight to my chest, her head lolling against my shoulder, her breath a soft, warm ghost on my neck. The cross of blood on her forehead smears against my own skin, but I welcome it. It is an anointing. A marking.

I am Lazarus, risen not from the dead, but from a death of the spirit far more final.

“Stay with me,” I whisper against her hair, the words a prayer, a command, a plea. “Stay with me, Leandra. My miracle. The day has just begun, and we have a god to kill.”

Istand in the doorway, my shoulder pressed against the frame, watching the doctor as he works.

Leandra lies in the centre of my bed, swallowed by white sheets, her dark skin a stark contrast against the pillows. Someone has cleaned the blood from her forehead, but the faint pink stain of the cross remains, a ghost mark that makes my jaw clench so hard my teeth ache. They’ve dressed her in a silk robe, pale blue, the colour of a morning sky. It’s too loose on her, making her look smaller than she should.

The bruises on her throat have darkened in the hours since I carried her out of that burning house. They’re purple now, almost black at the edges, perfect impressions of fingers. Of his fingers. My brother’s hands that marked her. My brother’s hands that held her down and forced poison past those lips.

“Will she wake?” My voice comes out rougher than I intend, scraped raw from smoke and screaming.

The doctor doesn’t look up. “Her body has endured significant trauma. The poison, what I can identify of it, appears to be a compound of nightshade derivatives. Belladonna, perhaps. Henbane.” He pauses, pressing his stethoscope to her chest, listening. “The fact that she vomited saved her life. Most of the toxin was expelled before it could enter her bloodstream fully. What remains is causing the unconsciousness. Her body is fighting.”

“That’s not an answer.”

He straightens, finally meeting my eyes. His are pale blue, watery with age, but sharp. They’ve seen too much, but then we all have.

“I believe she will wake,” he says carefully. “When, I cannot say. Hours. Perhaps a day. Her body needs rest. Her mind...” He trails off, glancing down at her still form. “Her mind may need longer.”

I understand what he’s not saying. The poison is only part of what was done to her. The rest; the assault, the violation, the terror, those wounds don’t show on any scan. They don’t flush out with saline. They burrow deep, into the foundations of who she is, and they stay there.

I know this because I carry my own collection of such wounds.

“Stay with her,” I command. “If she so much as twitches, if her breathing changes, if anything happens…”

“I will send for you immediately.”

I nod, pushing myself off the doorframe. My body protests. I haven’t slept, haven’t eaten. I haven’t done anything but sit beside this bed and watch the shallow rise and fall of her chest, counting each breath like a miser counts coins. Each one is a fortune. Each one is proof that God has not abandoned me.

But now there are sounds in the hallway. Footsteps. Voices murmuring in that particular tone people use when they’re trying not to disturb someone important. It’s too early for Konstantine. The helicopter will still be in the air, carrying him toward the cathedral, toward his destiny. Toward my blade.

So who the fuck is this?