Page 31 of Chapel at Ender’s Ridge (Ender’s Calling #1)

No Matter the Cost

S candalous.

Decker smiled and joined him, naked body slipping through the water. Laurie’s good, preacher-kind eyes never wandered.

Working the tie out of his hair, Decker carefully loosened the tangles. Their legs touched under the surface.

Emboldened and unmoving, Laurie’s curiosity got the better of him. “How were you turned?”

Deals. Their dance around each other survived off deals and promises, and tonight was no different. If that’s how he wanted it, then he would have to offer as well.

“I’ll tell you if you tell me the truth of why you left seminary.”

Laurie ran his hand over his face, rinsing away the speckles of mud. “You already know.”

“I want to hear you say it. Your side of the story,” Decker said softly.

Laurie made himself even smaller, knees pulling to his chest. “Alright.”

“Alright.” The story dried up in Decker’s throat and he cleared it and uncorked his flask. “There was a famine,” he said, the pinch of hunger settling in his gut a now-familiar feeling, “and our village near Kalikata was one of the first. Disease weakened us, and drought withered our crops.”

The East India Company ignored the cycles they’d survived on for hundreds of years, and demanded more, more, more until the villagers were sacks of bone.

Decker had almost forgotten the taste of spices ground into a paste with the last of the rice, the humility of dragging fingers along a bowl to gather the last drop of food when there wouldn’t be more tomorrow, rib-bones digging into his own when he wrapped himself around the frail form of his mother.

Decker swallowed. “We were dying. There were twenty-two of us left when he came one night with his coven.” He recalled the man’s deep brown skin, glowing in the torchlight like he’d swallowed the sun, and his teeth, too sharp when he smiled.

At the time he thought it was the effects of starvation chasing his mind.

“He was…” Decker’s gaze lingered on the droplets of water clinging to Laurie’s parted lips, “one of the most beautiful men I’ve ever seen.

He gave us a choice. Follow him and be forever changed or die.

” A wry grin tilted his mouth. “Like your god.”

Laurie managed a faint, pained smile. He took one of the washcloths and soap from the edge of the tub, the sharp scent of lye at odds with the lavish room. “Like my God, there's more to his story, isn’t there?”

“He promised deliverance from foreign rule and an end to their suffering. They all accepted. Most of the parents decided for the children. Whole families, signing their execution warrant. ”

“Did you have siblings?”

“No. My mother had complications before me. I was the first and last for them.”

“They were protective of you.”

“To the highest degree.” There wasn’t any hesitation.

They were the first to step forward, and he clutched his father’s emaciated arm as the stranger’s fangs sank into Abba’s throat.

The change took days, each new fledgling turning another in an endless cycle.

The stranger to his father, father to his neighbor, neighbor to his mother. She was the last of them.

“You weren’t turned then.” Laurie’s brows furrowed.

Would it have been easier if I was? Would it have made a difference?

Decker had dredged through the fog of that night a thousand times and still wondered what would have become of him if he agreed to be turned. Amma and Abba had begged him. Their forever child, even though he was a man.

Decker took the bar of soap and the second cloth Laurie nudged towards him, leaving a thin film of bubbles across his chest. “I thought the stranger was going to kill me for refusing what he called the gift. I saw what it did to the others, the pain, the thirst. Instead, I became an unwilling companion.”

Memories of the time blurred, as if his mind had a tendency to protect him, even when he scraped through every detail with ripped nails.

Decker didn’t know how others of his kind didn’t go mad—decades of his own memories were fractured, shadowed.

Another two hundred years and he wouldn’t remember the ache of his mother’s betrayal in his gut or recall the gentle softness of Laurie .

“I was dragged along with the coven and fed with scraps in already starving villages. When those became scarce, he turned to…other methods to keep me alive, or risk losing the two most powerful members of his coven.” Decker scrubbed the soap over his damp hair and sank into the tub, tipping his head back before emerging.

“After they drank their fill, nothing could be wasted.”

Laurie’s washcloth slipped into the water with a small splash, his body gone still and mouth tight.

Decker’s lips tilted in a crooked smile. “At least he was kind enough to build me a fire.”

“How many times?” Laurie’s lips thinned as if he was chewing at the inside of them.

“Only once. We all ran soon after. Drinking blood was justified in their mind but being forced to eat human flesh to survive—that crossed the line,” Decker said wryly.

“Amma and Abba and I made our own way. I tried to settle down and lead a normal, good life. Scraped together enough for a few cattle, and as soon as my life would calm, they’d return. ”

Laurie took the bar of soap from Decker and scrubbed it through his curls, lingering before he asked, “Who did it?”

Knowing the taste of fellow human flesh somehow wasn’t the worst part.

Decker pulled his hair aside, the smallest strands of grey dripping beside his ear.

“This is what killed me. Amma couldn’t bear the thought of her son growing older.

I escaped being turned for the first decade, only to be cornered by my own mother.

I hated her, and I loved her,” Decker said softly.

The bathwater cooled, and Decker took the soap back and ran his washcloth slowly along his neck. The sting of four fangs imprinted like a brand and the sound of the whispered incantation rang rough in his ears. His chest was hollow again, like his ribs ached for the silent heart inside them.

“I could forgive the killing, the lies, the constant reminder of being surrounded by the unnatural, but I couldn’t forgive immortality.

I took a new name so my parents could never find me and stowed away on a ship to the Americas with Willa.

” His name was one of many, each changing with every life he lived—drifter, soldier, barkeep.

Through them all, Decker had never forgotten his first.

Gift of God.

The bitter irony of what he had become and the meaning of what Amma named him wasn’t lost.

Suddenly Decker no longer wanted it to be only his burden to bear.

“It’s Dev. The name I was given was Devdutt Basu.” His throat tightened at the sound of his name curling from his lips. Once so familiar, now so foreign. “She called me Gift of God ,” Decker said, forcing an acidic smile. He wanted Laurie to know.

Say it’s a foolish name. Say it’s dead to you, like they are to me. Say my name, Laurie, even if it’s only to tell me how wrong they were.

Laurie softened, brows drawing together in gentle compassion. “There’s truth to your name.”

“Maybe back then.” Decker’s cynicism barely hid his longing.

“Even now. Especially now.” Laurie had that look about him again. The pitying kind that should only be directed at a kicked dog or a whipped horse, not a man. “Will you ever use it again?”

His heart thrummed softly in the space between them, drawing Decker in with the promise of blatant, warm sincerity. He could almost hear Laurie murmuring his name in a sleep-fogged voice, whispering it in the dead of night, welcoming him into the chapel with his name.

Lovely. Hazy. Unattainable.

A door slammed down the hall. Laurie blinked, compassion flaring to embarrassment on his cheeks.

Decker shifted in the cool water. “When I’m ready,” he finally said.

When you’re long gone and I’ve forgotten you.

Decker rinsed the soap from his skin.

They would smell like each other in the morning.

Laurie was silent as he steeped in the bath water. Decker had told only half the story to Safine years ago and she still didn’t say anything—only poured herself a strong drink and nursed it for an hour while he waited for questions that never came.

But Laurie wasn’t Safine. Losing family was personal to him.

“Do you ever wish to see them again?” Laurie asked.

Did he want Amma and Abba, or did he want overflowing memories that bloated and split like a corpse in the searing heat of truth?

Memories couldn’t sustain a relationship that poisoned him the moment his heart stopped.

The times before the lies, when they were a simple family, before fangs in his neck from the person he trusted the most, were over.

“No. I have what I need,” Decker said.

A sad smile creased Laurie’s face like worn paper. “You don’t seem content.”

“You don’t seem to accept your affinity for men, yet here we are.”

Clearing his throat, Laurie stood and twisted, snatching at a towel to fold around his waist before he stepped out of the tub with a stiff back .

Shyness didn’t come naturally to Decker. Not like how it did to Laurie. He moved like a stray dog, fearfully trusting and ready to snap at the nearest raise of a hand.

“It was a man—the reason you left seminary.” Decker accused him gently. There was no reason to keep quiet about it. Not anymore.

Laurie’s shoulders hunched away from him.

“Did he feel the same?”

The bed creaked as Laurie sat. “We were both struggling with our faith. We…had times together. Prayed after Mass, kept each other company while we studied old Hebrew texts and never talked about what happened when we turned down the lights.”

Decker clasped the edge of the tub and stood, water streaming from his hair and body as he tucked a towel around his waist and ran his hand through his hair to squeeze out the water. “And then you left. His family or yours?”