Adam and Adnihilo both had to help him drag the stove from over the cellar entrance, and even then, the door was rusted shut. David cursed at the sounds of soldiers from the corridor. Desperate, he stomped on the trapdoor till its pig-iron hinges snapped, and he would have fallen in had Adam not grabbed him.
David pulled himself up holding onto his son, then he mutter to him for what felt like ages. Meanwhile, Adnihilo’s heart was racing. The footfalls were right outside the kitchen now. There was a wail, a moan, a familiar voice complaining about too much noise.
“I, I can’t!” Adam started. “I’m not going without you!”
David forced the sword into his son’s hands, then turned to Jezebel. “It’s pitch dark down there. Keep to the eastern wall, where the columns are close together.”
The singer’s eyes were wide as saucers, her hands clutched against her chest. She nodded.
“I’m not going!” Adam shouted again. The pastor grabbed his son and pulled him into a hug, said that he loved him, and in the next second, shoved him down into the hole. He commanded the others to follow. They obeyed without argument.
Inside the cellar was only darkness and noise, the grinding of iron and dwindling of light as David slid the stove over the entry—then Adnihilo heard the thud of the kitchen door breaking open, then footsteps. After that, he wasn’t sure. He whispered to Adam. The Messah was crying and pleading with God, and soon, Adnihilo started tearing as well. He resisted it for as long as he could, but when he felt Jezebel’s arms wrap around him and her wet cheek rest on his, there was no stopping it. They wept in the dark until their eyes were dry, until the cellar fell cold and the minutes died in silence.
“It’s time,” the singer said once Adnihilo was finished and Adam composed enough to hear her voice. “We need to go. Adam, can you lead us out?”
The pastor’s son sniveled a moment, then he croaked to hold on while he groped about the cellar before calling them over the treacherous dirt floor. More than once, Adnihilo tripped on collapsed wine racks and fist-sized shrew burrows, and Jezebel fared much worse. She twisted her ankle before they’d even reached where Adam was waiting and had to limp the rest of the way leaning on the columns for support. Fortunately, the beams ran closer together as they made their way east, standing an arms breadth apart near the decrepit cellar door. It was old wood, like the one in the kitchen, abandoned for years and bowed under sand—would have long broken open if not boarded shut. But the single plank, too, was warped and failing: it had splintered in several places, and the nails were crumbled rust.
It only took one try for Adam and Adnihilo to pry the boarded door open with just their fingers, though they weren’t prepared for the deluge of sand not for what awaited them after. Coughing and through stinging eyes, they saw Eemah alight in the bitter night air—a fiery glow mingling with smoky sky, faint groans in the distance, hooves clopping the sand. They glanced back toward the parish. The hands of Hell gripped there as well, the roof belching deep red and orange flames, and Adam staring vainly all the while as everything he’d ever known became rubble, cinders, and smoke. Mother, thought Adnihilo, looking to the south, realizing only now that the same was likely true of his home—that his mother would be alone when the soldiers finally found her, that he was hiding like a coward while they—he did not want to imagine. He staggered away from the others in a daze, vaguely listening as the clopping on the sand grew closer. He ignored that too until Jezebel called his name.
Adnihilo turned and faced the rider as he rounded the parish: a man in harness of white enameled plate. He rode a towering, black mount dark as its barding—snarling like the golden lion embroidered at its side. He reined the beast fifty paces out and dismounted, then unlatched his armet and shook free a tail of sun-blonde hair. He was younger the half-blood expected, perhaps younger than Cain, with cocksure grin and eyes like emeralds surer than sin. And his stride—it was almost a skip as he closed the distance, drawing a double-bitted axe from the ring on his hip.
“The Saint’s Cross,” Adam uttered. His legs were trembling, yet he unsheathed his father’s sword and steadied the point toward the stranger’s heart. But the man did not stop. Even as the tip brushed against his breast plate, he kept on marching till Adam’s arms started to shake.
“Drop it,” the stranger ordered, and Jezebel begged Adam to lay the weapon down. But the pastor’s son chose to stand his ground instead. He thrust his blade for the stranger’s face, and the point fell short to a flash of steel—to the wind-thin flats of an axe aside his head. Adam’s legs buckled, his scalp stained pink, And the singer screamed, as Adnihilo retrieved the sword. The stranger only stared, almost hopeful.
The half-blood glanced at Adam then at the armoured man. His hands were shaking, his palms slick on the grip of David’s sword. Sweat dripped under his arms and above his eyes. He thought of Cain, of how many times they’d trained for this moment, yet Jezebel was begging him to stop. Then he thought of the shame he felt in the nave and swore he wouldn’t surrender to his fear. Not again. He remembered the way Cain charged the men, the fright on the face
