by Bobby Adair
His expression was the face of a coward.
With a girlish shriek, Winthrop threw Jasmine into the beast's arms and backed up as close to the fire as he dared. The beasts accepted Jasmine as if she were a sacrifice, ripping her to the ground, pulling chunks of flesh from her body. Jasmine struggled and screamed. She'd lost her sword. The demons stuck gnarled fingers into her mouth, her ears, and her eyes, searching for orifices or creating new ones as Winthrop watched. One of the demons ripped a piece of her entrails from her body, screeching in triumph as it held it into the air. Jasmine's agonizing screams went silent as the demons discovered the source of the noise— her lips—then devoured her throat, cutting off the last of her air.
The screaming stopped altogether.
Winthrop knelt down in front of the fire, holding a robed arm over his face, as if he were too godly to watch anymore.
William stopped running. His sword dropped to the ground. He couldn't speak. He couldn't move.
Phillip kept going until he'd reached Jasmine and the demons, screaming in rage. He wasn't finished. He sliced at the creatures that had killed Jasmine, knocking them off, killing them with jabs to the chest or to the head, stabbing them after they were long dead and as bloody as Jasmine.
But he couldn't change anything.
He knelt next to Jasmine's mutilated body, staring at her as if she might come to life.
That's what Winthrop had promised them. They were immortal. He was supposed to protect them.
"You did this!" Phillip screamed, standing up with Jasmine's blood on his hands. His eyes blazed in anger as he pointed a red, accusatory finger at Winthrop.
Winthrop uncovered his face and peered out into the gathering crowd. The priests who had survived ran back from the forest. A few priestesses who had been at the tree line stared between Phillip and Jasmine, in shock as they returned to the scene, seemingly unaware of what had happened.
"You killed her!" Phillip screamed again.
Looking around, noticing the demons gone, Winthrop slowly rose to his feet and clutched his robe. The priests and priestesses watched Phillip as if he were a devil come to life. Their faces were filled with fright. More people rushed from the nearby fires to watch what would happen. Some of them wielded their bloody swords, as if Phillip might be a lingering demon that needed slaying.
"You dare to defile your god?" Winthrop shouted.
William looked at the men who had run over with him and Phillip. Surely, they had seen what happened, and what Winthrop had done. But they remained quiet.
Phillip looked down at Jasmine's body, then back at Winthrop, his eyes wide and incredulous. "You threw her into the arms of the demons. You killed her!"
"I did no such thing," Winthrop said, standing to full height and dusting off his robe. "She was a brave woman. She sacrificed herself to save me."
The surviving priests and priestesses nodded their heads.
"You are a coward!" Phillip yelled, angry spittle flying from his mouth as he took a step toward Winthrop. He raised his sword.
For a moment, no one moved, and William was certain Phillip was going to run at Winthrop and strike him down. Phillip took another threatening step. Then another. Winthrop's face contorted from false bravery to fear as he held up his bare hands, as if he might have to fight for his life. Before anything could happen, several of the priests stood in front of Winthrop, blocking Phillip's path.
With Winthrop's priests in front of him, the courage returned to his face. "Blasphemer!" he shrieked. "You dared to insult your god! It is you who is a coward! Take him to the fire! Build a pyre higher than the ones in Brighton! Roast his body over the flames!"
Chapter 66: William
William watched, horrified, as four other priests grabbed Phillip's arms.
"What are you doing?" William screamed.
"We're taking him to the trees," one man said to William. "We have some extra ropes in the horses' saddlebags. We can tie him up there until we build the pyre."
The four priests moved a screaming, kicking Phillip toward the tree line while William ran after them, yelling, trying to pry off their hands. They swatted him away as if he were an annoying, circling gnat. One of them let go of Phillip long enough to shove William, and he fell backward, landing on his back on the hard, cold dirt.
"Hold him!" the priest yelled to one of the priestesses, who ran over to grab William.
Tears streamed down his face as he watched Phillip being carried to the trees.
"Leave him alone!" William screamed.
He looked for his dropped sword, but before he could grab it, one of the priestesses ran over and scooped it up. He wanted to run after the men and cut them down, rescue Phillip, and leave this place, but he knew he'd never get that far without Winthrop's permission. He had no power here.
He never had.
William looked back at the priestesses, as if one of them might help, but they were already carrying away Jasmine's body, moving her outside the light of the fire. None of them looked at Phillip. None of them cried for Jasmine.
It was as if Jasmine's and Phillip's lives hadn't meant a thing.
"Watch the boy!" Winthrop shouted, pointing at William. "If he says another word, burn him on the fire with his friend!"
One of the priestesses scurried over to William and bent down next to him, doing as Winthrop asked. She was carrying out Winthrop's orders, just like she'd slaughtered the demons, and painted her body with the blood of the twisted men.
She was pleasing her god.
Chapter 67: William
The other priests hoisted Phillip onto the pyre, ignoring his screams as they tied him securely to a long, thick piece of wood that had been dragged from the forest, while others scavenged branches from the other fires. Winthrop watched from a safe distance, waving his hands and chanting, as if he were conducting a sermon. His face had lost the fear and settled back into a familiar, hard expression that William had watched too many times on the dais in Brighton.
William struggled and tried to break free to help Phillip, but one of the priestesses clamped a hand over his mouth, cutting off his screaming.
"Quiet, child," she hissed in his ear. "Unless you want to join your brother."
Tears rolled down William's dirty cheeks. He felt as if he were in the crowds of Brighton again, waiting for the flames to lick the flesh of the unclean. Only, Phillip wasn't unclean.
He was being burned for Winthrop's cowardice. Nothing more.
Phillip kept screaming, even though the fire hadn't started. William knew those screams well. Within minutes, those screams would turn to agony, and then they'd be extinguished altogether as the flames turned a man into a memory, a face into a melted nightmare.
The priests finished stacking the wood. One of them held a torch from another fire high in the air, waiting for Winthrop's signal. Normally, the soldiers or the blue shirts lit the pyre.
"Shall I?" one of the priests asked.
Winthrop stepped forward, a smile creasing the sides of his droopy jowls. "Hand me the torch!" he boomed, as if he were gathering strength from Phillip's cries. He took hold of it and stepped toward the pyre, making sure Phillip was watching as he taunted him with the wavering flames.
The women in the crowd began singing the fire dirge, but the words were different, changed. Their voices were more insistent and earnest than they had been over the last few days, and they substituted Winthrop's name in place of their gods. It probably sounded like they were praising Winthrop, but William knew what they were doing—they were trying to save themselves from the pyre, like everyone in Brighton.
"For our god!" one of the priestesses crooned. "For Winthrop!"
"The light of the blessed will touch our condemned brother!"
"Father, take away his immortality!"
Winthrop walked over; the smile still stuck on his face as he touched the torch to the kindling, then lit it, watching it take hold. The fire crackled and spat as it grew from a small flame to a
larger one, slowly building force and working its way toward Phillip's pants.
William made one last, desperate lunge for freedom, to save Phillip, but the priestesses held him down.
"It will be okay, son," one said, soothingly, stroking his arm.
Winthrop's crooked smile spread across his entire face as the flames took hold of Phillip's legs and his eyes bulged, his screams turning into sounds that William would hear in his nightmares. The flames seared Phillip's pants, burning through the fabric and bubbling his skin. William screamed and screamed into the hand across his mouth.
There would never be a better Brighton.
Winthrop's hope was a lie.
Once Winthrop got there, Brighton would turn into hell.
Chapter 68: William
William ran through the woods, looking over his shoulder at the campfires that still glowed through the trees. It had taken almost an hour to convince the priestesses to let him go. He'd smiled, complied, and lain down as if he were going to sleep.
Then he'd fled.
All he had was Jasmine's backpack, which he'd managed to ferret away. Inside were some blankets, some berries, and a knife. He'd considered veering toward the horses, but Winthrop's men were guarding them too closely.
He wouldn't be caught.
He wouldn't die like Phillip.
He didn't know what would happen to him, but he wouldn't take his fate in the flames.
And that's what would happen if he stayed. Eventually, he'd do something bad enough that Winthrop would order the others to burn him. He almost had. He couldn't pretend that Winthrop was a god anymore. He couldn't sing, dance, or laugh with the others. Phillip and Jasmine were gone, and they'd taken William's faith with them.
All he cared about was getting away.
He didn't know where he'd go, or what he'd do to survive, but anything was better than staying with these people and their perverse rituals. Winthrop had promised a new life, a better Brighton, and instead he'd delivered the same pain and punishment that had always been at the town's core.
William had been right to leave Brighton the first time. He didn't need humanity's suffering. He didn't need Winthrop, or any of the Elder's lies. He'd get by on his own, or he'd die in the wild, but he wouldn't be a part of any of it anymore.
The smell of Phillip's charred flesh permeated his nostrils, even as he ran farther from the camp. He could still taste the dirty sweat from the priestess's hand that had held him down. He spat to rid his mouth of the oily taste. Somewhere in the trees, the night animals were probably already tearing into Jasmine's mangled corpse. The vision almost made him vomit the berries he'd eaten that afternoon. Instead, he ran faster.
Tears hit his cheeks as he grieved for people he'd never see again.
William ran through the forest, holding his hands in front of his face to block branches that he couldn't see. The forest was almost black, but William's fear was directed at the people behind him, not at the wild. He would rather live in darkness than feel Winthrop's light.
Anything he came across into in the forest was apt to treat him better.
He kept running, stopping only when the stitches in his side got too painful and when he could barely breathe. He didn't even realize how long he'd been running until the sun was coming over the tops of the trees and the birds were chirping a morning song.
William was at the top of a large hill overlooking a meadow. He scanned the countryside; empty at first, then watched it fill with a group of man-sized shadows that were roaming the plain, silhouetted by the morning sun. For a moment, William felt a stabbing fear as he considered that Winthrop's men had found him.
But it wasn't Winthrop or his men.
It was demons.
Chapter 69: Winthrop
The fires burned down through the night and the army rose with the sun again, marching on the narrow road through the forest toward Brighton.
Ever since the demons had invaded the camp the night before, all Winthrop could hear was demons.
The demon cries seemed to be everywhere—far, near, behind, to the sides. They rang through the chants of his warrior disciples, leaching at their resolve.
Winthrop cringed as he sat atop his horse. The late morning sun cast sharp shadows in the trees, swaying branches and making the dark shapes in the trees look alive.
He wondered if it was because the boy, Rowan, had disappeared from camp the night before. They'd spent time searching for him in the forest, but hadn't been able to locate him. The gods must've taken Rowan as a bad omen.
On the narrow road through the forest, with his army strung out far in front and back, Winthrop felt vulnerable. The carnivorous shadows that had lived in his dank room in the Temple, that lurked under the bed and slid over the walls, clawing for his soul while he slept—the ones that he'd contained so admirably—had found their escape.
They were no longer confined by the Temple's walls. They were the trolls of the forest now, surrounding Brighton, awaiting Winthrop's return. They were in the trees, in league with the demons, trying to tear away Winthrop's divinity and smudge him in the stink of mortality.
He'd felt immortal in the Ancient City, but they were trying to take that away.
He felt their greedy claws churning fear in his heart, twisting his bowels, and poking his bladder.
At any moment, a beast might pounce off a tree to clamp his throat in its vile jaws for a mouthful of his golden light.
A flock of birds exploded from a tree just ahead, shattering the chant with a hundred caws and splattering the sky with a frenzy of flapping black wings.
Winthrop nearly fell out of his saddle in fright.
He cursed under his breath.
He babbled in rapid godspeak, trying to wrap himself in the unassailable cloak of his divinity.
The damn demons had snuck into the camp in the dark while his guard was down, when he had been distracted by temptations of the flesh and was weak with mortal wants.
They'd almost taken him, but for the sacrifice of Jasmine.
The beast and his shadow siblings had almost taken the last light from the world: Winthrop himself.
"I am a god," Winthrop muttered. "They can't harm me."
"I am a god," his words grew in strength.
"I am a god!" he shouted.
Still, the trouble in his bowels threatened to soil his saddle.
Chapter 70: William
William sat in the tall, brown grass as forty-some demons scavenged the area around him. Every so often, one screeched in triumph when it found a carcass, or a few would run when an inattentive rabbit made the mistake of showing itself. Despite their preoccupations, the demons kept a protective circle around William.
With the morning sun splashing on his face and warming his skin, and in the company of a new pack of demons, William should've felt safe. He wanted to forget about the cruelty of men and beasts, the unbound violence of war, the sight of bodies ripped and cleaved, the smell and the taste of horror.
But he couldn't.
His fear turned to anger as he thought about Jasmine's screams, or Phillip's melted, dripping face as it burnt in Winthrop's pyre.
William pulled out a pouch of berries from Jasmine's bag—a pouch that she'd shared with him. He couldn't forget how kindly his friends had treated him.
The logical part of William's mind told him to run across the plain and disappear into the forest with his demons, to make his way back to the Ancient City, but he couldn't bring himself to follow his own suggestion. He wanted to punish Winthrop. He wasn't sure how, but he wanted him dead.
William wiped fresh tears from his face as he opened the pouch of berries, stuffing several into his mouth as his demons milled about on the plain, oblivious to his torment.
Chapter 71: William
Demon cries in the distance made William sit up straight. He looked around the meadow.
The cries were coming from elsewhere.
Some of his demons perked up, as if they'd been wa
iting for the noise. A few of them moved across the tall grass in the direction of the commotion. Several more looked back at William, like he was their leader, their alpha, though he was not the strongest or fastest, but the weakest and slowest. They recognized something in him that his demon brothers from the Ancient City had seen. William didn't know what that was, but if their instincts made them follow him, he'd indulge it.
William hiked with his demons through several patches of forest as the noises grew louder. With each step, his new band of demons grew more excited, tripping over one another as they listened to the screeches of twisted men in the distance. They kept next to William, though.
They wouldn't leave him, as so many others had.
More demons would mean more safety, more protection from people like Winthrop. Maybe even a chance to get revenge.
That thought drove William onward.
They pushed on until they reached a clearing through the trees, through which was a patch of road. A shimmer of fear went through William as he considered that he must've circled back to where Winthrop's army was. But he didn't hear any of the incessant chanting that had characterized his time with them.
He clung to the trees, peering out until he knew into what he'd be walking. He couldn't risk death. The road in front of them was empty, but a mass of bodies was coming from back in the direction of the Ancient City.
William's fear quickly dissolved as he saw demons, not men, filling up the road.
The demons moved in a massive cluster, extending off into the distance and farther than Winthrop's army had, the biggest horde of twisted men on which William had ever laid eyes.
Demons traveled in thick groups down the middle of the ancient road, shoulders bumping, eyes darting back and forth over the road as they walked. Some of them ran alongside the road's shoulder, pissing on trees and then chasing to catch up to the others. Others stuffed meat in their mouths—remnants of whatever meals they'd captured. William watched the horde get close, and then the first demons were passing by.