Dead Moon Chapel

prologue

THERE WAS NOT ONE SOUL who did not weep when an angel was taken to the altar to die. Even the creature herself wept. From fear, from sadness, from a sheer and overwhelming sense of duty, no one could quite tell. Perhaps it was all of those things that worked together to wet the angel's dozens of eyes as she knelt, horrifying and beautiful before a crowd of saints. Her holy gaze turned upward to the sky.

Surely even God wept as He watched over his creation.

Why must such a beautiful creature face such a cruel fate? The will of God was a curious thing indeed, one that a boy of only twelve was not yet wise enough to understand. Despite this, he watched on, fat tears spilling over the dull olive skin of his youthful cheeks. Cheeks that were still o round for someone who ought to be growing into his bones.

He did not weep for the same reason that Father Malachi wept, he was not overwhelmed by the awesome sacrifice of such a beacon of purity. He cried for no noble reason. In truth, he was terrified, already grieving the angel who had breath in her bosom yet. He wished there was anything at all he could do to stop it.

Malachi's thick fingers dug into his shoulder, keeping the boy firmly in place, as though he was aware of what he was thinking. The boy's thinking was nothing but wishful, of course, but the priest could not be too careful when it came to a child as erratic as this one. His soul was far too gentle and far too headstrong for the brutal realities of God's holy plan.

"You know why this must be done, child," Malachi hissed below his breath, briefly tearing his sharp gaze away from the spectacle below.

The young boy did not have such strength to look away for even a moment. As much as he dreaded what was to come, he could not find it within himself to place his hands over his eyes and look away from the angel's magnificence. The angel did nothing to deserve this, but that was precisely the point. She was free of sin, pure and holy and righteous, a saint among sinners. And now she was to be offered up to a benevolent God, delivered in a manner too ruthless to feel sacred anymore.

"The devil is cruel without mercy," Malachi had once told him. "Justice is the result of a God who knows both."

He was still waiting for the mercy to come.

The large chapel echoed with the sounds of the crowd around him as they knelt in unison. The boy watched them in confusion. When he tried to seek an explanation from Malachi, the priest simply pointed back to the scene. As hard as it was to look away, it was even harder to look back, but the boy's curiosity and compulsive obedience got the better of him. He cast his eyes back to the tragedy unfolding before the crowd.

No, not a tragedy. A necessary sacrifice, and a willing participant. The suffering would be worth it in the end.

A High Priestess pulled a gleaming blade from a sheath on her hip and blessed it. The boy could see how sharp it was from here. What kind of power did this blade possess that it could kill one of God's own messengers? Of course, if it was God's will, he supposed anything could kill an angel.

Another High Priest placed one hand on the angel and lifted the other, bowing his head in reverence as he recited a prayer. The crowd was deathly silent, enough that he could hear every word even in a room so large. Hundreds of saints had come to witness the sacrifice, the most sacred ceremony there was. But for a moment, the only beings in the room were a trembling boy and a weeping angel.

Shhhhing!

A wet slicing sound was the only indication that the deed had been done. The cut was so precise that for several moments, the boy did not think an angel could bleed.

But oh, how wrong he was.

There was a chorus of pained cries from the crowd as the blood began to flow from the angel's throat all at once. One of those cries may have been the boy's own, but he was too frozen in place to know for sure. His watery eyes glistened, and it made the angel's feathered wings sparkle in the light of the Dead Moon, which shone red through the large rose window.

What was once a pure white being was now drenched with crimson as blood gushed from the wound, filling in the lines of a pattern carved into the floor beneath her. The High Priests held her up as she bled, blood so thick it appeared black. The boy did not know blood to flow in such a gruesome manner, and it did not slow for a long time.

Too long.

When it finally did relent, the angel's white aura had faded entirely with the life that emptied from her earthly vessel. It was only a body, and it crumpled to the ground with a sickening thud when the High Priests released it. The cries and sniffles of the congregation did not stop, but they faded into silence as the boy's head filled with cotton. Pain gripped his fragile heart and ripped it apart, twisting it cruelly and leaving it there to fester and ache. It was so great a pain that a body so small did not know what to do with it.

His eyes rolled back into his skull, and the thud of his small frame hitting the floor echoed that of the angel's. But there would be no one to cry for him, even as his own life left his eyes.

These eyes would never see the same again.