The Jock was still in dog mind, bolstered by the presence of the pack and the alpha. The others were, too.
Saint John wanted to laugh, to kiss each of them for that ignorance. It was as delightful as it was false. So entertaining.
But he did not laugh. Instead he cast his face into the beatific smile he wore at such moments. Like Leonardo’s model, his smile was a tiny curl of the lip that promised secrets but not answers. He spread his hands high and wide. He had long arms and longer fingers tipped with nails that had each been painted a different shade of night gray.
The Jock nudged the Big Man, pack dog alerting the alpha to the possibility of something wrong. When the Big Man looked up, the smaller man bent and tried to kiss the woman. Even to Saint John such a kiss was strange and awkward. Obscene.
The Big Man growled deep in his chest as he saw Saint John standing there with his arms outstretched.
A ripple of explosions troubled the air close by, and the three men looked over their shoulders. Even the woman looked.
That amazed Saint John because he could not imagine in what way the destruction implied by those blasts could possibly matter to any of them. How could anything beyond the confines of this moment matter to them? Were these men in particular too stupid to grasp the importance of
Apparently so.
One by one they turned back to Saint John.
The Jock said, “Fuck off, you little faggot.”
“Get your own,” said the Naked Man.
The Big Man could not be bothered to pay a moment’s further attention to the interruption. It’s why he had a pack. Instead he glared down. “Lay still, you bitch.”
Saint John caught a flicker of movement, and he looked across the street to see a fourth man standing by the corner. He was a shifty, nervous little thing. Clearly a junkie or a drunk suffering through DTs. He shifted from foot to foot and grabbed his crotch, but he didn’t cross the street. He was either too afraid of the three more aggressive pack members, or he had not yet crossed the line that separated social depravity from personal destruction. The man caught Saint John looking and immediately whipped his hand away from his crotch. He stood there, staring back, mouth open like a silent ghost.
The three men surrounding the woman laughed and told her the things they were going to do, and told her how much she would like it. And the penalties that would be imposed if she did
The predictability of this drama, and the triteness of the dialogue, began to wear on Saint John. He lowered his arms and said, “Let me share with you.”
They all laughed, confirming that they were too stupid to understand what was going on.
“Let me share,” repeated Saint John as he reached into the folds of his blowing white clothes and brought out his toys. They gleamed in the smoke-stained firelight. They were small and elegant, each polished to such a perfect shine that they seemed to trail sparks as he once more brought his hands out to his sides. A delicate blade extended the reach of each hand as he stood cruciform on the step above them.
The Jock and the Naked Man stared in awakening horror as everything froze into a bubble of time in which they all floated. The woman lay supine, her mouth strained open to cry out for mercy from a God who most of the survivors of the plague believed was either dead or mad. The Big Man knelt between her thighs in a mockery of a supplicant. On either side of him crouched the Naked Man and the Jock, their hands pressing the woman’s wrists to the ground as above them an angel spread its glittering wings.
Saint John stepped down onto the pavement, and two steps brought him to the curb. The Jock could have reached up to strike him. But he was unable to move. In his mind the pack was gone, transforming him from predator to prey.
“Thy will be done,” whispered Saint John, and a sob of joy escaped his throat as his arms folded like wings and the knives flashed a crisscross before him. Rubies of hot blood splattered the steps and his clothes and his face as veins opened to his touch. Before the Big Man could look up again, Saint John swept his arms back and forth, each movement ending in a delicate flick of his artistic wrists.
The Big Man finally looked up as blood slapped him across the face. Saint John appeared not to have moved, his arms held out to his sides. But on either side of him the members of the Big Man’s pack sagged to the ground in disjointed piles.
Saint John watched the man’s eyes, saw the whole play of drama. The brutal lust and frustration crumbled to reveal shock. Then there was that golden sweet moment when the Big Man looked into the eyes of the cruciform saint and saw the only thing more terrible and powerful than the portrait of himself as postapocalyptic alpha that he had hung inside his own mind. Here was the sublime Omega.
“No,” the Big Man said. Not a plea, merely a denial. This was not part of his world, not before or after the Fall. He had survived the plague, God damn it; he had fought through the riots and the slaughters. He had become more powerful than death itself, and he expected to rule this corner of Hell until the End of Days.
Yet the Omega stood above him, and the pack lay drowning in their own blood. So fast. So fast.
The Big Man tried to fight.
But before he could close his fists he had no eyes. Then no hands. No face.
No breath.
The Big Man’s mind held on to the last word he had spoken.
Then he had no thoughts and the darkness took him.
ACROSS THE STREET the nervous little junkie was backing away, one hand clamped to his mouth, the other still clutching at his crotch. When he reached the corner he whirled and ran. Saint John did not give chase. If the little junkie and these dead men had friends, and if those friends came here, then there would be more offerings to God. If it happened that the offering included his own life, then so be it. Many saints before him had died in similar ways, and there would be no disgrace in it.
Saint John turned suddenly, aware that he was being watched. He looked up the stairs to the church. The doors stood ajar, and the faces of saints and angels watched him. Stone saints from the carvings around the arch.
But the angel faces? They watched from the open doorway. Cherubim and seraphim, hovering in the darkness. Saint John lifted a hand to them, but they were gone when he blinked.
Saint John wiped blood from his eyes.
Still gone. There were only shadows in the doorway. He nodded. That was okay. It was not the first time something had been there one moment and not the next. It happened to him more and more.
Even so, he let his gaze linger for a moment longer before turning away.
“Angels,” he said softly, surprised and pleased. He had only ever dreamed of angels before. Now they were here on earth, with him. And that was good.
THE WOMAN LAY CURLED in pain, drenched in the blood of the three monsters who had hurt her, her faced locked into a grimace; but the scream that had boiled up from her chest was caged behind clenched teeth.
She stared at Saint John. Not at his knives, because even in her horror she understood that they were merely extensions of the weapon that was this man.
Saint John took a step toward her. Blood dripped from his face onto his chest.
“God,” she whispered. “Please … God.”
Red splattered onto the cracked asphalt.
The saint knelt, doing it slowly, bending at ankle and knee and waist like a dancer, everything controlled and beautiful. The woman watched with eyes that were haunted by lies and broken promises. If she had possessed the strength, her muscles would have tensed for flight; but instead there was a weary acceptance that she was always going to be an unwilling participant in the ugly dramas of men.
Saint John bent forward and placed the knives on the edge of the curb with the handles toward her. Inches from her outstretched hands. Dead men lay on either side of her, but she watched this, darting quick glances from
