"Down," The word flies through the mesh of his mask like a hoarse bark. His fingers twisted into Laurent's naked flesh, hooked into his arm, the Chosen drags his companion back behind the parked truck, Oh John shivering from the radio. The rattling of gunfire erupts, not yet to attack, only to warn. Perhaps misguidedly so. Thought they could scare them off. Beraiah places a flat palm between Laurent's shifting shoulder blades, feels the river's clammy dew on his skin. No force, not yet, only a command: stay. It is his duty and honor to protect the preachers, the miracle workers, the mothers and children. He cannot risk a baptist; he cannot risk this baptist.
His eyes dart back to the would-be convert, a ranch owner that was dragged out of his house kicking and screaming. Ber remembers, he was there. They marked him for this fate, submerged in the BLESSED/BLISSED waters of the Henbane river. Now the crumpled figure kneels in the shallows, water dripping from his chin, too dazed to hear even the arriving cavalry. Resistance trucks come to a screeching halt, guns poking out the rolled down windows. But the shooting has stopped as they survey the abandoned scene. Look how they calm, how they flirt with vainglorious contentment. Anger jolts through Beraiah so viciously, for a moment he thinks his heart stopped around it.
His sin is not wrath. He does not rage and rave. It was never his way. But he can feel the aborted baptist trembling under his fingertips, his cool skin taut over tensing muscles. He strains back to his work. He is not done. But Beraiah is not thinking of liturgy. He is dog-minded, striving forward, teeth bared. SACRIFICE THE WEAK. A hoarse voice explodes in his head. The Herald's voice, Jacob's voice.
Cull the herd, do what you must.
So when the rescuers, three men one woman, hesitantly approach the rancher, trying to appease his confused stammering as he licks more water into his mouth, Ber knows where to aim first. The long neck of the assault rifle slides along the curve of Laurent's pale shoulder. He is sorry not to warn him, but not sorry enough to wait. His round descends upon the congregation before their impure hands can reach the restraints. The hostage drops dead, splashing into the river that eats it without a second thought. Panic blisters and blazes. They fumble for their weapons, turn wildly, shouting their fear like bleating lambs before the slaughter.
Beraiah stands up and opens fire.
This is not waste. There is no waste in carrying out the Will of their Father. But there is no sanctity in sacrilege.
Laurent trembles with fury in outrage of the profane, the sin at the temple steps. Still dripping with the waters of the Henbane, Laurent is blind as his charge is torn away from his arms, bleating in the confusion of a stolen kid. It had been perfect, perfect, made without flaw, soon made a brother or an unblemished calf. Laurent had been unwilling to yield to the crunch of gravel at the river’s edge until Beraiah is forcing him to cover, and he knows that this is promise’s end. Wrath sears white behind his eyes, burning hot like the purifying bulbs strung from the holy vault of his Herald’s chapel, promising everything in yes. They could have had the world with yes.
The smooth skin of the barrel slides over his shoulder before he had sensed Beraiah move, and Laurent’s ears ring with the clarion report of the shot before he even feels the kick shiver over him, bite through to his teeth. Laurent breathes out, stills for him, waits. The bullet rips through the rancher like a finger of divine lightning, its body jerking into the consecrating river. It was not designed to be a degrading end.
Still, he does not wait to watch the man die. Paradise was never meant for everyone.
Laurent tenses at the heated press of steel at his back, rusty paint flecking his skin where Beraiah’s broad hand had warmed the damp of the river away. He remains crouched from where the Chosen had pulled him, and for a moment the world is swollen with pregnant silence as the morning the reaping had begun. And then Beraiah stands, and righteousness explodes from the seething mouth of his gun.
His knees in the dirt, Laurent twists at once to pull the beretta strapped at Beraiah’s hip. His fingers settle around the textured grip with the gesture of a devout as his prayers click in the chamber, and Laurent readies them.
He anchors his foot behind him, as Beraiah had taught him. (Like this, he remembers. Like this, here, and here.) Like this, and Laurent twists to brace his aim over the tailgate in covering fire, heretics swarming across the steely gunmetal of his vision like the snarl of red ants in summer; angry, and biting, and too small to understand the works of builders greater than they.