Page 44 of Chapel at Ender’s Ridge (Ender’s Calling #1)

The Firstborn

D ecker lunged towards him, teeth bared.

The ninth plague was here, and the looming tenth ripped through him like a stake in his chest.

Human. Decker’s defenses tore away with his immortality as the tenth plague, the death of Ender’s Ridge, rippled through him.

Human limbs slowed, and the heavy ache of his chest, lurching and pounding, brought him to a faltering halt as he gasped for air.

His heart, beating for the first time since India.

Elias’s face lit with morbid glee. “At last.”

The serpent towered in place at his side, fangs shining with venom as it waited for a command from its master.

Decker’s chest throbbed, head spinning. Humanity never felt like this. Being torn apart and rebuilt, skin and muscle, all wrong.

He’d never missed the stillness of his heart until now.

Elias spread his hands towards him, and the serpent lunged.

Too fast.

Everything once slow, predictable , was now like fleeing lightning.

The chapel doors burst open behind him .

Wood shuddered and split as the serpent slammed into the space where Decker had been a second before. Laurie snarled as he stood between the serpent and his maker. He was still untouched by the plague of humanity, but how long could it hold?

A shot snapped past them and tinged off the throat of the serpent and it thrashed, caught in the sturdy stair-railing.

Shouts skittered through the town and Callie Gibson appeared behind them, flanked by her family, all of them armed to the teeth. Her dark eyes gleamed with understanding.

Willa straddled the roof, her shotgun snug to her shoulder as she fired again, splinters of wood flying from the steps. “Go!” Fear still etched lines in her face, and the barrel never swung to Elias.

Shielding him, Laurie dragged him down the alley and Sister Inez yanked them inside the chapel, locking the door behind them.

“Decker?” His hands were on his body, face, prodding, searching for the cause of his stupor.

Dragging in deep, strangling breaths, he tried to clear his head. “You barred the door?”

Sister Inez leaned down to paint one last symbol and tossed the brush to the side. “After you left.”

“ Decker ,” Laurie said. His hand lingered on his face. Tenderly. Like more than neighbors had already begun.

He stowed away the warmth in his gut. “I’m fine. Something happened to Willa.”

Safine’s head snapped up and the spoonful of herbs clenched in her hand twitched.

“She’s alright,” Decker said. “She—she froze. She couldn’t shoot Elias. ”

“Hurry,” Sister Inez said grimly. “The door will not hold.”

Laurie, still looking concerned, slotted his pages of translations in the journal and stepped into the circle.

The door rattled under the heavy body of the serpent and the barricaded pews screeched against the ground in protest. Pigeons strewed feathers across the sanctuary as they fled.

Safine gritted her teeth and tossed a stick of dynamite to Sister. “I’ll lure the snake out of town. Time it right and don’t blow your arm off.”

“I’ll keep my arm.” She snatched matchsticks from their jumble of supplies. “Decker, keep your head.”

He exchanged a glance with Laurie. “I’ll make sure Elias is distracted and give you time.”

Heavy scales scraped against wood one last time before the boards quieted against Decker’s back as he braced himself next to the front door. A hush fell over the sanctuary, like quick rest lulled into peaceful sleep by the hum of Laurie’s incantations.

Five minutes. I can give you five minutes, Laurie. Talk fast.

His heart thrummed in his chest, strange, breathless. His weakened hearing strained for the sound of Elias, or the serpent being drawn away.

Decker’s hand curled around the curve of his pistol. Six shots.

Make ‘em count.

The doors shattered open in shards of crafted pews and rusted nails and Decker flinched away, bringing his arms up to shield his face. Flesh burned with specks of shrapnel despite his attempt, and he hissed, batting away tiny splinters in slow motion as his mind snapped at his body to catch up .

Flame rolled through the gaping hole and acrid smoke grasped at the edges, clogging Decker’s lungs and stinging his narrowed eyes. Angling to the side, he waited. The handle of the pistol went slick in his palm and his finger ached on the trigger.

Blackened hands raised in front of Elias Lane like a terrible saint immortalized in glass as he swept through the doors.

Five minutes.

Decker pulled the trigger.

Too slow.

His last hope clattered to the side with Elias’s strike, discharging in a shower of bullets and sparks. Laurie’s voice stuttered to a halt with the gunshots.

“Keep going!” Decker snapped. They could not stop. Not when they were so close, not when the curse clouded them like the incense rolling off Elias, and not when Elias came for him, eyes blazing with righteous fury.

Decker bared teeth that were too blunt.

The serpent he’d conjured was gone, but Elias still held power far beyond what Decker had ever witnessed in the narrow scope of his life.

Elias seethed with it, the chapel holding its breath for the arrival of the next plague to twist them all into shallow forms of humans without the heart of what it meant to be truly human.

Humanity was better left to those who understood their own power, cherishing time in their race against mortality.

The weight of Decker’s mortality crushed him like the soil he’d shoveled over Elias three years ago and his own, painfully human heart drummed in his head so he couldn’t think.

Elias came at him and batted his defense aside before he caught him around the throat. “ Abomination ,” he snarled, dragging him around the jagged hole in the center of the chapel. The years in the grave hadn’t helped his way with words.

His nails bit into Decker’s flesh, crushing, biting until hot liquid pooled at the base of his throat. Twisting and thrashing, strangled, Decker fought. He just needed to be a distraction for Laurie.

Laurie.

The measured incantation stopped, bitten off in a sharp intake of breath, and then Laurie was there, fangs flashing in a panicked snarl. The fading strength of a fledgling was the only thread holding his new self together while Decker crumbled.

Elias hauled Decker upright at the front of the chapel and spun him, back to chest. “You made him a mockery of his faith,” he hissed in his ear.

“He saved me.” Laurie’s face went bone-white, and he advanced like cornering a wild animal, slow with the fear of being struck.

The break of his voice reached Elias and he paused, shifting behind Decker. “You care for him.”

“Yes,” Laurie said.

Decker could almost envision the sneer. He jammed his elbow back.

Human elbows were strong enough. Cracked ribs echoed through the chapel and Elias snarled, fingers digging into his throat as he threw him to the side.

“I’ll be rid of both of you.”

Bone crunched under Decker. A tearing sensation shrieked up his leg, and he grasped blindly at the pew as he bit back a cry. His leg lay at an odd angle, rippled and twisted .

Pain had been fleeting in the last hundred years. Now it devoured him, untethered, and he wavered as spots bloomed in his vision and a whine wrenched from him.

Decker reached for any thread of himself. He found nothing but human flesh and a mortal soul. A cough ripped through his chest and he dragged labored breaths in through his raw throat.

Have to get up. Have to keep fighting before we’re stuck like this.

Elias blocked Laurie from him with a soft, “Don’t.”

Laurie’s hands clenched at his side. The same fear that had taken over Willa and stayed her aim from Elias, crept into his eyes and he did not strike. Did not come for him. Humanity was the only salvation against Elias.

Reaching out, Elias cradled Laurie’s head in a nauseatingly tender motion, and Decker witnessed a flicker of the once-present bond. Uncle and nephew, mentor and mentee, now Prophet and Protector.

Desperation twisted Laurie’s face and he pressed into the touch.

Keep your mind, Laurie. You were reborn.

In the sliver of room visible between the quilt, Laurie’s book lay abandoned in the circle.

Time was running out.

Copper curls slipped behind the quilt.

Decker coughed and spit blood on the floor next to an oil lamp.

Distraction .

“It’s a dark miracle,” Elias said softly. “I loved Beatrice. But she never took on the youthful health of you two.”

Decker gave a bitter laugh, dragging himself to sit, torturously slow until his legs straightened. “She starved. And your doctor? He knew the solution all along. None of this was necessary. ”

“All of it was necessary. A town run by blasphemous creatures. I shouldn’t have wasted my time trying to save you. I should have thrown a match the moment I met you.”

“We would have burned you with us. You are us,” Decker said. Elias’s face contorted with the truth he faced.

Forgive me, Laurie.

Blue glass fit in his hand as he snatched up the lamp, hurling it at the edge of the stand. Freshly-oiled wood caught like tinder and flames engulfed the pulpit like a pillar leading them home.

Laurie cried out.

Elias dragged him, one hand knotted in his hair. The inferno roared behind them, licking at the floorboards, spreading, hungry. Laurie thrashed and twisted and fought, but Elias’s grip was iron shackles.

Forced to his knees, mouth at Decker’s neck, Laurie’s panicked breath burst against his skin.

“Take your last communion,” Elias said. “Make him know what he’s done to so many people. What all your kind has done.”

Decker’s heart hammered. “It’s alright,” he whispered. Laurie jerked back, lips pressed together.

Elias’s eyes flashed and he yanked the crucifix from his chest, slashing the sharp end into Decker’s neck.

He jolted, the movement offsetting his leg and sending a fresh burst of pain spiraling through him. Blood streamed from the deep wound, hot and sharp and instead of making him ravenous, the thick copper smell made him sick with the way Laurie looked at him, and oh, god .