Page 22 of Chapel at Ender’s Ridge (Ender’s Calling #1)

Scarlet Painted Doors

D ecker cocked his head.

There it was again, from the alley. He silently got to his feet; he hated to leave her, but Sitara would be fine for a moment, and Laurie’s fevered prayers went silent two hours ago.

The preacher wouldn’t be answering his visitor.

Decker slipped out of the back door of the barn, keeping to the shadows as though he were one himself.

Barely breathing, he edged around the corner.

A lanky figure hunched over the parsonage door, claws ripping at the handle.

Decker cleared his throat and a canine face snapped up, jagged lips pulling tight over splintered yellow teeth.

Nathan looked worse than the last time Decker saw him like this, snarling and straining against chains in the back of the barber. Barely human, hardly animal, his golden eyes slitted.

Roped muscles writhed under the shredded shirt that clung to him like the last bit of his humanity, and the wolf shuddered, lashing out with a snarl as the doorframe split under his claws.

Laurie, hope your prayers made you tired enough to sleep like a fucking stone .

“You’re not here about newspapers this time.” Gravel crunched underfoot when he moved forward and Nathan’s scattered heartbeat pulsed in his head like thunder. “What do you want with the preacher?”

Nathan snarled, guttural and broken, bloody drool slicking the patches of brown fur sprouting from his neck. “Got to get him for—for me, got to,” he said, his voice as fragmented as he appeared.

Decker eased closer. “What do you need him for?”

“Not me…not me… he needs him—”

“Who, Nate?” Gentling his voice, Decker spoke to him like he had done years ago. “Who are you getting Laurie for?”

He staggered in place. Spine cracked and bent, rippling under his shirt like it was sawing through his skin.

A pang of pity shot through Decker. The moon had always been hard on Nathan, worsening the unpredictable symptoms of his conditions, but never left him like this, half formed and incoherent.

“You can tell me.” Decker reached out, slowly, his hand grazing the misshapen mass of his shoulder.

We knew each other once. Please grant me this.

Nathan steadied under his touch, his gaunt face lifting. “You—you got….weak, James .” His eyes burned, desperation and fury igniting him.

Gnarled claws lashed out.

Decker stumbled back, cheek split and stinging as the alley caved in on his vision .

Nathan moved at a wrong angle as he lurched forward, tongue lolling from his elongated muzzle. His second attack blurred with snapping teeth at Decker’s throat and he threw him to the ground.

“Nathan, Nate, please—” he panted, one hand thrust under his jaw as the creature he once knew snapped at him, splintered teeth a breath away, snarl gusting across his face in a cloud of decayed meat and bile. Decker was too weak for this; he’d gone too many days without proper food.

He grappled with Nathan, wincing at the string of rotten spit slung across his face.

Bracing his shoulders against the ground, Decker shoved him away. Nathan’s claws gouged the sand as he caught himself, a snarl twisting his lips. Springing to his feet, he stomped at his face, the heel of his boot crunching a half-second after Decker rolled to the side.

This wasn’t the Nathan he once knew, reserved but kind. There had always been space in his barber’s chair for a talk, or a late-night drink at the saloon. Decker had since lost him somewhere between quiet moonlit nights and twisted bedsheets when Nathan left Ender’s Ridge.

Whoever wanted Laurie had done this to Nathan; Decker would bet it was the same person who’d helped him with the article and the break-in at the Star .

Decker lunged into Nathan’s legs with all the force he had left. A bone cracked. Scrambling to his feet, Decker slammed his shoulder into the side of the chapel. He bit back a groan, breaths wheezing through his tight chest.

Nathan staggered, his leg buckling under him, and pained eyes fixed on Decker as a howl ripped from his throat. Muscles rippled under his hide, gathering his last strength. Blood streamed from the bone shard jutting out of his leg.

Too loud.

They were being too loud. Anyone leaving the dance hall late or checking on livestock would be able to hear them, and Ender’s Ridge didn’t take kindly to fighting amongst their own.

Any moment the parsonage door could crack open.

“Nathan, don’t—” Decker warned. His teeth pricked at his lip, aching and hungry, mind narrowing to the blood-soaked ground. “Please—”

Claws slashed across his chest and Decker hissed, catching himself against the chapel wall.

Nathan retreated, a growled laugh rumbling deep in him. “You can’t save him.”

Wounds would heal. Decker would heal. Nathan wouldn’t.

Not when Decker was through with him.

The last bit of Decker’s resolve slipped through the sharpened tips of his fingers.

As long as he could stay between him and Laurie.

Reprieve only lasted a brief moment before Nathan lunged at him again and Decker met him just as viciously, catching his wrists as he slashed towards him.

“Nate—” he tried one last time through gritted teeth, his fingers crushing the tendons in the other man’s wrists as he held ragged claws away from himself.

Nathan snarled in answer and left his muscled throat exposed for one crucial moment.

Decker struck .

The snap of Nathan’s neck chased his last howl down the alley. With one rabid slice of Decker’s fangs, the vein burst and scarlet splattered across the parsonage door, soaking Decker’s hair as he kneeled over him.

His nails sunk into Nathan’s neck, drowning in the heat flaring across his body like fire. In the back of Decker’s blood-fogged mind he thought perhaps this was a terrible mistake.

Losing his sense in copper and warmth, Decker clutched him as he drank, and drank, until the wolf’s lips leached grey and his misshapen body went cool.

When the liquid slipping past his lips also cooled, he leaned back onto his heels, dragging in deep breaths.

Decker’s body lit up with crackling lightning.

Chest rose and fell, the gashes forgotten along with the line across his cheek.

The parsonage door creaked behind him.

His head swiveled. Through the red haze, a faint figure stood at the doorstep, hand pressed over his mouth.

Another heartbeat.

The beast’s body lay cold and still as he rose to his feet.

“Decker.” The figure’s shaken words were nearly lost in his frantic pulse, heart full of fresh blood. Human blood.

He stalked towards him, tongue flicking out and collecting the drop of life lingering on his lip.

The slight figure shrank back from him, the blood across the door now coating his hands. He scrubbed them against his white shirt and never took his eyes off Decker.

One step back and I could never touch you. Not unless you wanted me to .

Chapel. He was in a chapel.

Decker faltered, fog thinning with every breath.

“What have you done?” the figure whispered.

Stop.

Breathe, Decker.

Decker Belmont.

Laurie Lane.

Neighbors.

Nathan.

He lay off kilter, leg skewed, white bone reflecting the change-igniting moon.

My friend.

Decker’s stomach roiled. He’d killed one of his own. Fed from him, like he was livestock.

Your body, my food, your body, my food, you came for Laurie, I had to do this for Laurie—

“Laurie,” he forced out raggedly. “Laurie, he—” What evidence did he have? What proof that this wasn’t cold murder?

Laurie would never believe him. Decker had to try.

Had to do it, had to, had to.

He was covered in Nathan. Wiping an arm across his mouth left his sleeve dark and damp.

Laurie blanched, his gaze flickering away to the claw marks raking through the wood next to the handle.

“I—I stopped him—he was coming for you,” Decker said.

Sinking his nails into his palm, Decker stepped back, his footing slick .

The preacher looked at him like a monster. Filth dripped from Decker as if he’d been baptized in scarlet. His shame-hollowed chest ached under the deep wounds.

“Go back inside, Laurie.” His voice caught in his throat. Decker wanted to taste Laurie, drain him and be done with it, never hearing his fluttering heartbeat again and maybe Laurie would be the end of him, and he wouldn’t even mind.

If Laurie sounded the alarm, would anyone from Ridgewater answer a call to help in the small hours of the morning? Would Decker attack him, protecting the creatures of Ender’s Ridge from what would happen if they were found out?

Laurie took a trembling breath.

Stepped off the wooden platform near the door.

Met the fading red of Decker’s eyes. “I will not . ”

“Please.”

“No.” Laurie didn’t look at Nathan’s body.

Decker searched for words and only came up with exhaustion. “I’ll tell you.” Decker’s stomach clenched, nausea rolling through him, and he left a bloody handprint on the side of the Goose . “I need—I need Safi first. The girls went to the dance hall—”

“Decker—” Laurie’s voice was thin, desperate as he ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, as if he was trying to rouse himself from a horrible nightmare.

“Decker, I don’t—you want them to see this?

” He helplessly gestured at him, at the broken body at his feet.

“What if—oh, God—” His face went pale and he bent over, hands on his knees.

The only danger to me is you, Laurie Lane. You are my undoing.

“They know,” Decker said, hollow .

“Oh, God, they know.” Decker wasn’t sure if it was relief or horror lacing Laurie’s voice.

The preacher straightened, face strained, and disappeared into his chapel. He returned in a clean shirt, stumbling in a trance to retrieve the others.

Decker knelt in the dirt. His hands brushed gently through Nathan’s hair, once long and sleek, now matted and lank. He’d worked through the last tangle as they rounded the corner, Laurie leading them like a prophet.

Willa let out a low whistle, crouching on her heels next to him. “He look like this before you got to him?”

“He used to be more—wolf than this,” Safine joined them, frowning as she bent over to get closer.

Decker thought she brushed hair away from her face. Maybe it was his.

Black spots clouded his vision and he blinked them away.

“I saw him a couple weeks ago. Didn’t look good then. He said—” Decker struggled with the flashes of memory. “He was here for Laurie. Someone needed him.”

“Needed me?” Laurie stood next to the blurred outline of Sister Inez, his face a sickly pallor rivaling the white of her habit.

The lightning from feeding turned into molten sparks within his body, and Decker clutched at Nathan’s cold chest. Shreds of shirt moved under his fingers, sloughing away from his damp skin.

Decker recoiled.

Stitches held Nathan Griggs’ body together.

Crossing his chest, above his heart, jaggedly running across his stomach like he’d been taken apart and pieced together. The stitched wounds seeped and blistered .

Safine cursed.

“The girls in Santa Fe were like this. ‘Cept this one is still alive. Was ,” Willa said, standing up. “I think we found one of Dr. Whitton’s experiments.”

Decker’s throat closed, his tongue thick and dry. Black spots appeared and his vision tunneled before the world went dark.