Page 159 of Decimation

“Let my wife go.”

The words are steel. They are a promise, a threat, and a prayer all at once. They’re the only thing keeping me grounded, the only thing keeping me from lunging at him and tearing him apart with my bare hands. Because if I do that, if I lose control, I might lose her. And I can’t lose her. Not again.

Ezekiel laughs. It is not a pleasant sound. It is the sound of a man who has spent too many years believing his own mythology, who has surrounded himself with followers who have never once told him no, who has mistaken obsession for faith and cruelty for divine purpose.

“Your wife?” He tilts his head, feigning confusion. “But Lazarus, Leandra was my bride first. Long before you ever laid eyes on her. Long before you ever…” his smile sharpens into something filthy “…fucked her.”

I see Leandra flinch against her bindings. Her eyes find mine across the chapel, and even in the flickering torchlight I can see the terror in them, but there is something else there too. Something fierce. Something that refuses to break.

My chest tightens.

“Your bride,” I repeat, and the words taste like ash. “Is that what you call it? Taking a woman barely older than a child?”

Ezekiel’s expression flickers, just for a moment. Just long enough for me to see the crack in his composure before it smooths over again.

“I called her to a higher purpose,” he says. “I gave her meaning. I gave her destiny, and then you…” his voice hardens “…you and your brother took everything. You filled her head with lies. You made her forget what she was made for.”

“She was never made for you.”

“She was made by me.” He says it with such conviction, such absolute certainty that for a moment I am struck silent. Not by the words themselves, but by the madness behind them.

This is not a man who can be reasoned with, this is not a man who can be negotiated with, bargained with or bought.

This is a man who has built his entire identity around a delusion, and I am standing right in the middle of it.

“She was given to me by her father,” Ezekiel continues, pacing slowly around the altar. One of his hands reaches out to trail across Leandra’s bare shoulder. She jerks away from his touch, and I see the muscle in his jaw tighten. “Given freely. A gift. A tithe. And I shaped her, I moulded her, I made her into something worthy.”

“She was always worthy. It is you who is not. You who are tainted, everything you touch, you befoul. You might have broken her, but I made her whole again.”

Ezekiel’s hand freezes mid-reach. His head turns toward me, and the smile is gone now. In its place is something colder. Something that has been waiting beneath the surface all along.

“I forget,” he says quietly, “that you are second born. You do not know the prophecies, do understand them. You do not understand what is coming, what has always been coming.”

“I understand that you’re a fanatic who has been trying and failing to destroy my family for generations.”

“Your family.” He laughs, and this time there is genuine amusement in it. “Your family is a branch. A splinter. The Brethren lost their way centuries ago, and your bloodline has done nothing but accelerate the decline. Your father was weak. Your brother was a madman. And you…” he tilts his head, studying me, “…you are an abomination. A twin who was never meant to rule. A shadow who stepped into the light only because the original burned out.”

I lunge.

I don’t think about it, I don’t plan it. One moment I am standing in the doorway and the next I am moving, my body acting on instinct, every muscle coiled with the need to get my hands around his throat and squeeze until there is nothing left but silence.

I don’t make it.

Two men in dark robes emerge from the shadows on either side of the chapel. They grab me before I’ve taken three steps, their hands clamping down on my arms, their weight throwing me off balance. I twist, trying to throw them off, but they are strong. Trained. They’ve been waiting for this.

“Ah, ah, ah.” Ezekiel wags a finger at me like I’m a disobedient child. “Not yet. You’ve arrived just in time to witness the ritual. It would be a shame for you to miss all the fun.”

I strain against the hands holding me. “What ritual?”

Ezekiel’s grin returns. It spreads across his face like a wound opening.

“A blood sacrifice.”

He reaches into his robes and pulls out a knife.

It is long and curved, the blade arching like a crescent moon. The hilt is ancient, wrapped in leather that has darkened with age. Even in the torchlight I can see the symbols etched into the steel, symbols I recognize from the oldest texts in the Brethren’s archives, texts that predate the Templars. Texts that speak of things so fantastical they have to be madness.

“This,” Ezekiel says, holding the knife up so the blade catches the light, “is the very blade that killed Saladin. Do you know the story, Lazarus? Do you know how the great sultan fell? It was not in battle. It was not from old age or disease as they say. It was at the hands of men who understood that power requires sacrifice, that blood is the only currency that matters.”