Page 37 of Chapel at Ender’s Ridge (Ender’s Calling #1)

From Mouths of Locusts

D arkness shadowed the sun an hour after it rose, but the two on the bed huddled closer to the oil lamp and forged ahead.

Laurie suddenly straightened, his heart jumping. “I think I’ve got it. Here’s the word ‘return’ and ‘unwind’, and here’s the word for ‘bring back’—Decker, we might be able to reverse everything.” His eyes lit up with promise, stumbling through the page black with writing.

Hope sparked a flame in Decker. This was a step forward after they’d struggled through the nonsensical jabbering of a madman bent on bringing creatures to the light.

Whitton doggedly pursued the knowledge of what made them different from humans and how to make creatures human again.

His journals explained the stitched together lines of Nathan’s chest. His old friend never accepted what the bite had made him, and Decker couldn’t blame him for trying to make himself human again. Even if it meant dealing with Whitton.

Wings roared in the distance, rousing them, and Laurie dog-eared his page and tucked it under his arm before they took the steps two at a time together .

Willa peered out the cracks of the boarded windows as a humming droned in the distance, rising and swelling. The locusts blackened the sky, borne on thick, foggy heat.

Sister Inez glanced up from the rosaries in front of her. Her needle was gone, and she wet the end of the cord before meticulously feeding it through the next bead. “Your doctor knew Elias.”

Laurie stared at her.

“You’re a miracle worker, Sister Inez,” Decker said. He cracked open the door to the back room. Whitton’s head hung limp on his blood-soaked chest, rising and falling in labored breaths. Deep, ragged pits gaped in his face where his eyes had been.

Whatever the cost.

She shrugged off his praise. “He wasn’t helpful. He said he helped Elias with a problem, didn’t know anything about the plagues until the illness struck, and he knew there would be many bodies to use.”

“He’s lying,” Decker said. “We found proof that the plagues are manufactured. Has to be Whitton.”

“And what about him knowing Elias? Always comes back to him,” Safine muttered as she flipped through a page of the medical journal in front of her.

The coffee cups around her told him she hadn’t slept.

“These are from my notes, my research through the years. All those times you let Elias come over, gave him a room when the chapel was too drafty , he was taking my knowledge to the doctor, selling us out.” Safine’s eyes were hollow when he met them. “He used you, and you let him.”

“I couldn’t have known, Safi. ”

“What about him?” She jerked her head towards Laurie, and he shrunk behind Decker. “How can we know, for sure, he’s not a part of this?”

“I trust him.”

“You trusted Elias.”

“I made a mistake.”

“Another one is breathing down your neck.” Safine slammed the book shut, her chair screeching behind her as she stood.

The Goose darkened as the swarm descended on Ender’s Ridge and millions of wings rasped as they landed.

The building groaned as tiny claws dug into the roof, and Willa’s knuckles went white around her gun.

Safine’s eyes blazed with green fire. “When will you stand behind your own people, Decker? When you’ve run out of graves for them?”

The last thread of his temper cracked. “Laurie is the only one giving us a chance to get out of this,” he snapped.

“ This only started when he showed up.”

“Doesn’t mean a goddamn thing—”

“Decker.” Laurie’s shoulder brushed against his own as he stood next to him, thumb worrying the edge of the journal.

“She’s right to question. I think I understand why Elias was here.

My aunt acted strange the last few years of her life—only leaving at night, drawing the curtains, and when I begged her to visit, she made poor excuses.

I knew she was grieving when he didn’t return, but it was more than that.

She—the police say she fell on the fence.

Iron through her heart,” Laurie said, wincing at the memory.

The pieces slotted into place like a well-mixed drink. Decker could sympathize—the preacher’s wife falling gravely ill with a sickness keeping her from her faith, leading him to a partnership with a doctor who welcomed unsavory practices.

“If he wanted to save his wife, trying to destroy the rest of us is a shit way to go about it,” Safine bit out.

Decker didn’t move from between the two of them. He knew damn well who would win if she jumped at Laurie, and he didn’t want to choose which side to be on.

He couldn’t.

“Whitton wouldn’t have helped him without payment. He didn’t want money, he wanted bodies,” Willa said.

“Decker, you told me you never found bodies of the people who disappeared when Elias was here, those were it. They were the payment.” Laurie cast an apologetic look to Safine, then Decker and the scars cradling his hands. “He just…decided he wanted to get rid of them instead of helping his wife.”

Knowing Elias first came there to seek help for his wife could have changed things if he’d known. Still, Decker was sure nothing would have changed the hatred that festered in his heart and led to his death.

Safine glowered but stood down, stalking to Willa’s side.

A locust, red and black and as long as a finger wriggled through the crack at the base of the door.

It crunched underneath Safine’s heel. “So you’ve figured out why your uncle wanted to kill us, but we’re going to be defenseless when the last of the plagues strike and Ridgewater remembers we’re here. ”

“We’ve made progress,” Decker said.

Sister Inez made a dismissive sound. “Your doctor won’t be of any help. He made it clear. ”

“So get rid of him,” Willa said, glancing back at them. She leaned against Safine, her hand braced behind her on the back of the chair and her other winding softly through her hair, cradling the back of her neck. “If he won’t talk he’s useless to have around.”

Safine sharpened. “And if he’s lying, the plagues might end with him.”

And Willa might be freed.

Wooden beads rattled against the table as Sister Inez knotted the last thread of her rosary and laid it next to the other four. “Locusts have a taste for human flesh when they’re hungry enough.”

Safine’s eyes met Decker’s from across the room. She brushed a kiss against Willa’s sweat-flecked temple and trailed a hand across Sister Inez’s habit.

Decker returned Laurie’s look with a small grimace before he and Safine disappeared into the back room.

They worked as one—Decker stripped an empty barrel of the iron bands and bent them into impenetrable shackles for Whitton’s arms and legs, tightening them until blood oozed over the metal from the mottled flesh, and Safine took an armful of bar towels and wedged them into the gap under the door to the saloon.

Passing one to him, they knotted thin rags around their face, leaving a sliver of their eyes visible.

A groan wheezed from Whitton as Decker slid the chair to the door. Safine waited until he was poised, ready, returning his slight nod.

Fast. They had to be fast.

A flurry of chittering wings and hot air blazed in when she yanked the door open.

Claws burrowed into Decker’s hat, his legs, biting through shirt sleeves.

Decker hissed in pain, the ground turning slick and crunching underfoot as he dragged the chair outside and yanked the gag out of Whitton’s mouth.

If there is a God, maybe he’ll judge you less harshly.

Decker backed away and batted at the insects as Whitton’s body lurched under the starving horde. The locusts swarmed him, skittering up the chair legs in a frenzied cloud, clicking and trilling in a mist of blood as they burrowed into the empty pits of his face.

Whitton’s first garbled scream clipped off as Safine heaved the door shut behind Decker.

Swiping his hands over his body, he shuddered as handfuls of the creatures pinched at his arms and face and buzzed.

Safine beat them away with a towel, her face stern as she cleared his back and arms. She’d wrapped her patent boots in cloth, and the calico fabric left dark, sticky footprints in her wake.

A locust squeezed under the door and darted at Decker’s face. He caught it, hurling it to the floor and stamping it out with a thud before plugging the last crack. His skin crawled and he shuddered again.

Safine did the same, itching at her arms. She took a breath to say something and then fell silent, wrinkling her face in disgust as she peeled away the soaked fabric from her boots.

The pump creaked under Decker’s hands when he filled a bucket with water and splashed the mop onto the floor.

“Safine—”

“Decker—”

His words died in his throat as he scrubbed the floor. Safine twisted the towel in her hands .

He wanted to tell her he was sorry, ask what he could do to make her forgive him. If he could do anything to make her forgive him. He would do anything.

“I’m going back to New Orleans.”

The mop stuttered to a halt, tangled in spiked insect legs and sludge. She hadn’t been back to her parents since she’d left years ago, came out West to find her husband and tended the saloon with him. “Soon?”

“When this is over. When you don’t need me anymore.”

Decker swallowed. Steadied his voice. “We’re always going to need you, Safi.”

I’m always going to need you.

“This isn’t what I want to do,” she said suddenly.

“I don’t want to pour drinks and wash tables and play games my whole life.

I need to learn what my parents know, I need to be better.

If I’d—if I’d known what to do when everyone got sick, when Cricket got shot—” she stopped herself, her knuckles going white against the blue towel she gripped.

“You did what you could, you did well—”

“And they’re all still dead.” The towel landed with a harsh, wet noise as she flung it at the basin. Silence, sharpness, avoidance—he understood, and still the room gaped between them like a canyon.