The Church (The Cloister Trilogy 3)

“Nothing’s changed.” She tightens the binding on her wounded hand. “I’m going to kill her.”

I sigh. “I know.” I shut her door and plaster myself against the wall. “Mom!” I call.

“Adam?” Her voice comes back, precariously close to the double doors. She must have been about to burst through, gun blazing.

“It’s me. What are you doing?”

She opens the door with the barrel of her gun and peeks at me, then smiles. “It really is you. Good. You can help.” A baby cries behind her, its wail high and piercing. She walks through the doors and lets them close.

“Help with?”

“I’ve got the dynamite set, but I can’t figure out how to light it without being too close. I was trying to get some of the sheets off the whores’ beds to use as a longer fuse, but then that—” She gestures down the hall with her gun. “Devil of a girl showed up.” She walks to the nearest door and opens it. “She let them go. The children.” Walking farther down, she opens another and gasps. I move up behind her, readying to take her down, when I see Grace lying inside, eyes closed, not moving. The knife in her chest is final.

“And she did this, too!” Mom slams the door and whirls on me. “Killed my Grace. Left her lying here like a piece of roadside trash. That whore you fucked is ruining everything! Where is she?” Her gun hasn’t dropped, the barrel pointed at me the entire time. She’s cagey.

“She doesn’t matter. This is between us. What you’re doing here, you—”

“She’s still here, isn’t she?” Her beady eyes dart to the dark doors on the left and right. “You’re covering for her.” She takes a step toward the nearest room, but breaking glass pulls her attention back to the wives’ dormitory. “What was that?”

“I don’t know.” I gently take her elbow and turn her back around to me. “Mom, you can’t kill these children. Let’s get out of here and—”

“These bastards need to die. They’re a threat to us, Adam.” She adopts an imminently sensible tone. “Children grow up, then one day they’ll all be challenging you for the throne. We can’t have that.” She pats my cheek.

A door opens slowly behind Mom, Emily’s bloody white dress coming into view a few centimeters at a time.

Fuck.

“Let’s just go.” I put one hand on her shoulder and stare into her eyes, the ones that are still as sharp as they always were, even if I know in my heart they’re clouded with madness. “The state will come in and take all of them. Put them in adoptive homes. They won’t even know where they came from.”

The door opens farther, and Emily steps through, the blade of sacrifice in her hand.

“They’ll know. There’s DNA and all sorts of devilry now. They’ll find out. Besides, they need to be punished. Bastard children are filthy, unclean abominations. They have no place here.”

Emily slinks closer, a cat stalking its prey. I can’t let her do this to herself, and I hate to admit that some small part of me—the little boy that I used to be—wants to warn my mom, to save her. But she’s long past that. No one can save her. And she needs to answer for Georgia’s death.

There’s no move I can make. “I know, Mom, and I agree. But you don’t want blood on your hands. Living with it will break you.” I’m not talking to my mother anymore. I’m talking to Emily, but I don’t dare look at her.

My mom scoffs, her face contorting into the ugliness that now lives inside her. “You’re weak. Just like your father.” She lifts the barrel higher and points it at my chest. “I was foolish to think you could ever be Prophet. You’re too soft. You want to spare the bastard children that will one day destroy you. Idiot!” She presses the gun over my heart as the double doors from the dormitory open silently.

Noah creeps in, but Emily is blocking him. He raises a pistol and aims at Mom over Emily’s shoulder.

Sirens blare, the sound growing louder by the second.

“I don’t have time for this, Adam.” She backs away from me. “I have one more son. He’s even dumber than you, but he can be guided. He’ll be the Prophet, but if he fails me, too, I’ll find another. Blood doesn’t mean as much as it used to.” She puts her other hand on the gun, steadying it.

Emily is almost to her, the knife raised.

I break and look at her, then give a subtle shake of my head.

Mom squints. “What are you—”

“Emily, down!” I yell and drop at the same time.

The sound of gunfire deafens me, and scorching pain rips along my neck. I reach up to touch it, but my hand comes away wet.