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They had brought this on themselves.
Joe looked over all of us, asking a question without making a sound.
“She’s fine,” I said. “With Chris and Tanner. She’ll keep them safe. Elijah. She’s—we have to help them. Jessie. Rico. The town.”
The Alphas tilted their heads back and howled.
In the distance, we heard the sounds of gunfire.
SHE WAS waiting for us in front of the Lighthouse.
Her gun was in her hand, at her side.
She sat in the snow, cross-legged.
The bodies of six Omegas lay at her feet, all with smoking wounds, the silver burning its way through them.
She had pulled the wolf’s head back, letting it rest on her neck.
Her coat was open.
On her torso, attached to a thin Kevlar vest, were long glass cylinders. Eight of them in total. Each had two wires fixed to the top, green and red. The cylinders were packed full of silver ball bearings, just as Chris had said. Between her Kevlar and the cylinders were small bricks of what looked like black putty.
Behind her, the Lighthouse stood darkened.
Rico and Jessie must have heard her coming and turned out the lights. Hopefully they were keeping everyone down on the floor and quiet. I was about to look away when Rico peered out the window, eyes wide. He saw us approaching and disappeared. Christ, I needed to keep them safe.
Elijah slowly rose at our approach. The moon caused her shadow to stretch out grotesquely onto the Lighthouse.
She wasn’t scared.
Her hands did not shake.
She smiled.
She said, “Alphas. Monsters. Beasts. A blight on the skin of the world.” She spat onto the bodies of the Omegas at her feet. “Paul the Apostle gave warning. He pleaded with his elders to keep watch over the Lord’s blood-soaked flock. He told them that after his departure, fierce wolves would come among them, not sparing the flock. They did not care, these wolves, about righteousness. About piety. They were devoted only to the rage that called from the moon. And Peter—he knew this too. He told them of false prophets who would rise amongst the people.” She raised her voice. “Just as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction. And from among your own selves will arise men speaking twisted things, to draw away the disciples after them.” She looked at Ox. “You. You are the false prophet. The false teacher. The abomination. You, who found a way to become an Alpha even before you gave in to the sins of a wolf. Beware the wolf in sheep’s clothing. It will come to scatter the flock. But the Lord is my shepherd, and I shall not fear the wolf.”
“It’s over,” I said. “You’re outnumbered, Elijah. Your people are dead.”
Her smile widened. “A necessary sacrifice which proves everything I’ve said. Everything I’ve believed. This town has a curse upon it. The land has been poisoned. We came here once, hoping to cleanse the earth so that it could heal, free from the chains of the beast. My God walked with me that day, steadying my aim.” She tilted her head toward the sky. “Especially when it came to the smaller ones. The little wolves. They… tried to run from me. I was a shining light in the darkness, and they could not escape.”
“They were just kids,” I said hoarsely as the wolves growled around me, all of us blue and blue and blue.
“Little wolves grow into big wolves,” she said. “And big wolves know nothing but the taste for flesh and blood. They were already lost the moment they took a breath in this world. Either they must be put down, or their spirit broken until they become nothing but a pet.” She glanced at the timber wolf, who flinched and tried to crowd closer to Carter. “But even then they disappoint you.”
Mark took a step forward, growling dangerously.
Elijah didn’t recoil. If anything, that made her angry. “But we couldn’t take them all. I watched as my family fell around me. I saw their skin tear. I heard their screams. I was a child, but I saw it all from the trees.” A tear fell from her eye and onto the knotted tissue of the scar on her face. “My family. Aunts and uncles. Cousins. People who believed such as I did. The wolves didn’t know I was there. The blood was too thick in the air for them to notice me. My father, he… lost his way, after that. He didn’t understand why God had forsaken him. Why he had abandoned us when we needed him most. He couldn’t see what I could see. He didn’t know what I knew. We hadn’t been abandoned. We had been tested. It’s always been about the strength of faith. He is a just God, but he is a demanding God. He needs proof of our convictions. My father had lost sight of that. He spoke of walking away. Of just letting them go. And no matter what I said to him, no matter how much I begged and pleaded with him, he wouldn’t listen to reason. He had fallen from his faith.” She raised her gun and put the barrel to the side of her head. “I told him that I was sorry.” Her voice broke. “That I wished it didn’t have to end like this. But I couldn’t have his discord spread to the others. In the end, he, too, was a wolf in sheep’s clothing, trying to take down the flock one by one.” She put her finger on the trigger. “God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his son. On Moriah. To prove his faith. He took his son to the mountain, bound and gagged, and placed him atop the altar. And just as he was about to show God how much he loved him, an angel came, telling him that God knew just how much Abraham feared him now. A ram appeared, and Abraham was able to sacrifice that instead, and God was appeased.” She put the slightest amount of pressure on the trigger. “I knew that I was being tested, just as Abraham was. I knew what God was asking of me. Because I had faltered. In this place. I had failed. So I went to my father while he slept. And I put my gun to his head, and I put my finger on the trigger, and I waited for the angel to appear, I waited for a sign to tell me that I had proven myself, that I was who God wanted me to be.”
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“Nothing came,” Elijah said. “And I did what I had to. I didn’t cry when I shot my father in the head. I didn’t—I felt peace. I knew that I had done the right thing. What had been asked of me. It was necessary. My father had failed. And I could not. It was… simple, in the end.” She lowered the gun back down to her side. “I buried him under an old oak tree. I carved his initials into the trunk. He would have been proud of me for that. My brother, Daniel, he—he didn’t see it that way. I buried him next to my father.”
“You won’t leave here,” I told her. “This is the end, Elijah.”
She nodded. “I know. I always knew that coming back would be the last thing I ever did. I prepared myself for that, even if I felt my skin crawl at being ordered by one such as Michelle Hughes. Standing in front of her and not filling her with silver was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. And she thought we agreed for the sake of protecting the wolves from sickness. From infection. It was never about that. It was finally time to return to this place that had taken so much from me. It was about doing what I was born to do. What I was instructed by God to do.”
“I won’t let you hurt them. I’ll kill you before you can—”
