I was wrong, and I can begin again.
I won’t make the same mistake with him.
Bleary eyes burned, and Decker forced himself through the haze.
The bed was empty.
Porcelain crashed to the floor in heavy shards.
Laurie crouched, still as death, atop the now-empty washstand. Long fingers cracked the edge.
“Don’t be afraid,” Decker said raggedly.
The preacher’s trembling hand raised, clutching at his chest. Feral terror flashed through Laurie’s red eyes when he found no sign of his faith.
“Laurie—”
He fled from the room in a great leap. Decker grabbed at air. Framed pictures shattered down the stairs when Laurie stumbled, his shoulder skidding into the wall. He ran, leaving a trail of broken chairs in his wake.
Decker cursed.
The chapel.
Decker—selfish, desperate—hadn’t even thought of Laurie being cast out of his chapel.
Waning moonlight cast Ender’s Ridge into shades of black and quiet.
Laurie ripped at the door of the chapel. Metal snapped in two and the door swung from its broken hinge, slamming against the wall as he clawed at the edges, panting, screaming, nails and finger-flesh splitting and tearing.
His voice wasn’t his own, grated across raw vocal cords, garbled like a tainted prayer. “I can’t get in, I can’t get in, it won’tlet mein—”
Bone fingertips clicked against wood.
Decker lunged and the rusted railing of the church gave way under them. They tumbled to the ground.
Sharp, newly-formed fangs snapped, but it was ill-timed. Catching him by the wrists, Decker twisted away from his teeth, forcing him down and pinning him with an arm to his throat. Dust clouded his eyes, yet they still snapped like red flames.
Laurie was more alive in death than he was in life.
Brilliant scarlet eyes blazed at him from under perfect curls of burnished mahogany, the color deepening with his rebirth. His skin, always sunburnt and dry, was now lined with young fury.
Laurie was perfect.
And he was hungry.
Laurie bucked under him, twisting in his grasp and throwing Decker aside as if he were stray boards from the chapel. Springing to his feet, his lips drew back in an animalistic snarl as his eyes met those of his new god.
“Easy.” Decker crouched, hands spread as they circled each other, master and apprentice, god and creation, the voice of reason and the achingly bitter snarl of unwanted destruction.
Is this what Amma saw in him? Brilliance to last a millennia, power and grace in an almost-human body. This was right. She had been right. His cattle, bones; himself, little more. He would have been another death of the famine.
Love could never be reasoned with.
A laugh wheezed from Laurie, bitter and mocking. “I am forsaken. Drinking—” something passed through his eyes, a flicker of himself. “Drinking blood as my only survival?” Muscles coiled under him and he lunged again.
Decker yanked Laurie to his chest with both wrists caught between them.
Laurie bristled like a cornered wild animal. “I was not meant for this,” he gritted out.
