Other than the money, one of the benefits of being a filthy rich construction and real estate magnate’s widow was the extensive network of connections that came with it. Margaret’s network spanned the social spectrum, from high-and-mighty politicians and clergymen to lowly contractors and the rabble they employed. With the right connections, building a secret compound for her (and the Angel’s) personal paramilitary organization in the bowels of her skyscraper was as easy as pie. Best of all, for a front, she’d decided to make the compound into a dive bar: Forty Feet Under. And the cherry on top? She’d gotten to watch Elpeck Polytechnic’s prissy academics squirm when she announced that she’d pulverized the ancient pagan ruins that had been discovered down there during the digging. Henrichy spun the scandal into a most delightful week of the news cycle. After that, all it took was recruiting a handful of disgruntled military personnel and acquiring a decently sized munitions stash and, presto, the Innocents now had the perfect base of operations from which they could act with impunity.

“Haven’t you seen the footage?” Rufus asked. “It was on Ilzee Rambone’s show last night.”

Margaret scoffed. “Of course not. Who do you take me for, my idiot son-in-law? Why would I watch that harlot?” She tilted her head and nodded. “I have standards, Rufus.” She slurped down a lemony stick of asparagus. “If it was anything worth worrying about, I’m sure Henrichy’ll mention it on tonight’s show.” She looked up at the clock again. “It should be on in an hour, assuming he’s still alive,” she added.

Henrichy was one of the fun ones. She’d probably miss him if he was gone.

Probably.

Shocked by Margaret’s answer, the Archluminer pulled out his console, brought up an excerpt of the footage from Ilzee’s exposé, and showed the video to Margaret.

After seeing it, Margaret adjusted her chair—leaning it backward—and then, crossing her arms, let out a big sigh of relief.

Once again, Rufus was confused by his patron’s words. He stared at her, slack jawed, shaking his head.

“It’s about damn time.” Margaret said. “The sooner this shitty world ends, the quicker we can get to Paradise.”

The Archluminer sat back in his seat. “Ah, yes. That,” he said, nodding in agreement. “I have no doubt about that, Margaret. You have done so much for the Godhead’s cause.”

“Do you think the money helped speed it up?” she asked. “The Last Days, I mean?”

“Though only the Godhead can know for sure,” he answered, “I would like to think that it did.”

With all these revelations, Margaret decided to ask what felt like a harmless enough question.

“Since you seem to know a lot about this plague—even though it supposedly isn’t ours, have you heard anything about people waking up thinking they were dead?” Margaret asked.

She still held onto the hope that Rufus was lying to her, and that the surprise was the news that the plague really was a biological weapon of theirs.

Or, maybe, they finally succeeded in summoning an avatar of the Hallowed Beast?

There was nothing like an incarnation of a person of the Godhead to unleash some much-needed divine punishment.

Rufus shot up from his seat. “What!? Margaret, you—” he pointed at her as he stammered. “That means you’re becoming one of them!”

“Huh?”

“One of those serpents!”

Margaret’s eyes widened. “You can’t be serious.”

I just feel dead. That doesn’t mean I’m turning into a butt-ugly snake monster.

“You’re—“ but Rufus let out a groan and slapped his golden skullcap. “—Margaret, why didn’t you tell me sooner?!”

“I don’t see why it would concern you,” she said.

The doorbell rang. A pleasing, two-toned sound.

“That’s them!” Rufus said. “Thank the Angel! They can explain this better than I can.”

“Is this my surprise?” Margaret asked.

He looked over his shoulder at her. “Yes.” He nodded. “Now, come!”

Rufus seemed as giddy as a child.

“This better be worth it, Rufus,” she said.

Margaret pulled away from the table with a stroke of her joystick controller. Twisting the thing then rotated her wheelchair on the spot, freeing her to wheel around the table and out of the double doors and into the living room.

One of the things Margaret liked about her home was that stepping in it was like stepping back in time. She could almost pretend that the Prelatory hadn’t been overthrown. The walls were white and tall, as were the doors and the corridors, in stark contrast to the rich, dark wood paneling the floor—though the carpeting was shaggy and white. The walls’ marble molding and pilasters were speckled in whites and grays. The artisanal furniture and objets d’art that Mortimer had collected over his lifetime were all very impressive to look at, not that she cared what they were.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Margaret’s favorite bits were the fine oil paintings regularly placed along the walls, and the holy icons mounted in between them. Nearly all the paintings were portraits.

Pel insisted that there was a lovely landscape in there, somewhere, but in all the times I’d visited her parents’ home, she’d never managed to find it—only more portraits, and ones new to her, at that.

A third of the portraits showed dukes and dames from the Trenton Empire of old; the ladies wore fine, lengthy garments that left almost everything to the imagination; the men were often with a horse, or on a horse, usually wearing ornate, ceremonial armor—epaulets and tassel-hilted swords and bayoneted rifles with lacquered inlays. Another third of the portraits were Prelates and Presidents of the Prelatory in formal business attire—stern faces as far as the eye could see. Last, but not least, were the religious portraits: Saints and Lassedites in symbol-littered scenes, with looks of agony or ecstasy on their faces.

As a young girl, my daughter had made me terribly proud by saying that the paintings of the religious people looked like they were soiling themselves over all the holy icons on the walls around them. I’d high-fived her on the walk back to the car, with Pel rolling her eyes at us.

“ALICE,“ Margaret said, prompting the AI, “is it people I know?” She pushed one of a collection of buttons on the wall. This unlocked the main entrance, the door to which was at the end of the antechamber next to the foyer at the other side of the hallway to her right.

“Yes, My Lady,” the AI answered. It spoke in a smooth, feminine voice. “I see Eyvan, and… well, I’m not quite sure how to describe the others with him, other than to say that he has company.”

“Alright,” Margaret said, shooting a look at Rufus, “let them in.”

The door opened, and a powerfully sweet smell wafted into the apartment.

Footsteps echoed on the wood floor as the man who’d lobotomized Ileene Plotsky strode into view.

Evyan was as finely dressed as ever, wearing a perfectly pressed white buttoned-up shirt, with a tie striped in red and gold. Margaret was pleased to see he wasn’t wearing his suspenders; she didn’t like the way they looked on him, and had told him so. He looked like he’d been built on a factory floor—the latest, greatest version in a line of designer human beings. Margaret liked that about him; in fact, it was the main reason she’d taken him as a lover, ever since the Innocents had first chosen him to replace their old liaison after the old liaison had gotten captured and given the death penalty. Eyvan had been a teenager back then, and his body had grown only more delectable in the intervening years.

So many of the young people were lost nowadays, even more so than young people normally were. Margaret had been a toddler when the Prelatory fell, and she spent her whole life watching things go downhill. The country had gone soft. Everything was runny. What was solid was now liquid. There weren’t any standards anymore. You so much as said that a woman’s place was in the home or that the Munine suffered from darkpox for clinging to their sinful Daiist ways, and every celebrity from Elpeck to Noyoko would say the most awful things about you on TV and the internet. The way Modernity’s Cathedral persecuted pious Lassediles nowadays was more insidious than anything the Church had ever done in the past. One day, you wake up, and your daughter marries a faggot and your son marries a slit-eyed temptress. People didn’t mind their business anymore.

That’s why Margaret liked Eyvan. He wasn’t like that. He followed the straight and narrow path. He was strong.

He’s everything my son-in-law isn’t.

Eyvan’s expression was equal parts terror and ecstasy. His eyes were wild and wide.

“Marge!” he said, almost yelling as he rushed into the living room. “Marge! You’ll—you’ll never believe it!” He shook his head, raising his arms up high. “It’s a miracle! A miracle!”

She looked down the hall. “What is it, Eyvan?”

Margaret heard a rustling, scraping sound coming from around the corner.

Something was being dragged along the floor.

Margaret gasped when she saw the creature come into view. He—it?—wore the sacred hummingbird robe. His bloated, toad-like neck was covered in minute scales—a purulent yellow, nothing like the brilliant gold color of his skullcap and cope. The sacred robes barely contained him. The iridescent red pellegrina strained against his enlarged, lengthened chest; his shimmering teal cassock was too small on him.

He was a monster.

His three-fingered hands sporting massive claws, as black as Night, and he dragged an utterly inhuman tail on the ground behind him, covered in the same sickly yellow scales as his hands and neck. The thing had to be almost as long as a man was tall, and as wide as one, too. It swished from side to side along the varnished hardwood floor and the shaggy white carpet. It was so cumbersome, he would have been forced to stoop forward and walk bow-legged, had he been walking—but he wasn’t walking. He was floating—and several inches off the ground, at that, hovering mid air, with his tail drooping onto the floor behind him. And, if that wasn’t strange enough, a drop of radiant, multicolored fluid rolled down the side of his head, as if he was sweating rainbows.

Margaret averted her eyes, glancing down at her hands.

One of his fingers had to be nearly as thick as three of her own.

Only a fool would deny he wasn’t a force to be reckoned with.

Margaret gulped.

Rufus had to have his facts in a tangle.

I can’t be turning into that.

It was ridiculous!

As for Archluminer Umberrige, he was absolutely gobsmacked by the creature in the hummingbird robes. He went down to his knees and made the Bond-sign, keeping his eyes aimed up at the ceiling.

Then the creature spoke: “Ma’am,” bowing toward her. “Are you Margaret Revenel?”

His—his—voice was glorious. Glorious; as rich as a pipe organ, though somber rather than shrill. His words resonated in his throat, his sagging neck skin visibly vibrating.

Margaret nodded. “I—I am,” she said. She clutched the joystick tightly in her sweaty, sauce-slicked hands. “W-Who are you?”

Lowering himself to the floor, the creature reared up tall, looming over her. He splayed his claws on the walls at either side to support himself.

“I am Mordwell Verune, the Lassedite Returned,” he said. His voice was music.

His voice was legion.

Margaret made the Bond-sign with her pudgy fingers as she trembled in her wheelchair.

“I am told you are the benefactress of these Angel-fearing souls,” he said, motioning with a claw. “And that you have… resources.”

His tail curled around his legs, hidden though they were beneath his cassock.

Margaret nodded. “I am. I—I do.”

Verune nodded, pleased. “I am here to do the Angel’s will. The Last Days have come.”

Margaret nodded again. “Th-that, they have.”

“Excellent,” Verune said.

Margaret looked to the console on the nearby wall. “ALICE, tell the folks in the bar to get up here, they’re going to want to see this.” Then, she turned to the Lassedite Returned and, nervously, pointed at the dining room. “Would you like to take a seat? Your Holiness?” she said, adding the honorific for good measure. She looked at Rufus. “We were just in the middle of dinner.”

“That would be delightful,” Verune said, and the apartment vibrated with his approval.