Legion's Arc

Chapter 19 of 22

Diana carried the bark book back through the dead town. The church waited with its broken doors hanging open. Inside, the bodies still lay where Legion had left them. Margaret. The townspeople. Diana stepped over them and set the book on the altar. She knew now what she had to do. The Mother had made the beast with words. Maybe words could undo it. She opened the cracked pages and began to read the ceremony aloud. The strange words scraped her throat. As she spoke, the church faded. Diana was no longer standing at the altar. She was in the cellar. Cold dirt pressed under her hands. The dark was total. She smelled rot and heard hundreds of people crying around her. She felt the hunger tear at her belly. She felt the rats crawl over her legs and bite. She was the Mother now, trapped in the barn, betrayed and starving. The rage filled her like fire. Diana understood at last what had been done here. The vision broke. Diana gasped and gripped the altar. Her hands shook. She kept reading, forcing each word past her lips. A sound came from the doorway. Diana looked up. Legion stood there. The towering shape filled the frame, built of countless rats crawling over one another. Its black eyes found her. It stepped forward into the church. And then something changed. A rat dropped from its shoulder and hit the floor. Where it landed, the rat swelled and stretched. Fur became skin. A woman lay there, gasping, alive. Another rat fell and became a child. Then a man. One by one they dropped from Legion's body and turned back into people. The captives from the cellar. The hundreds Ezekiel had locked away. The ceremony was pulling them free of the swarm. They crawled across the floor of the church, weeping, blinking at the light. Diana kept reading. Her voice cracked but she did not stop. Legion grew smaller as each rat left it. The huge shape thinned down to almost nothing. Only a handful of rats remained, clinging together in the doorway. The last few fell. They struck the boards and rose up as a single man. He stood on unsteady legs. Dark hair. A beard. A torn checked shirt. He lifted his head and looked at her. His mouth opened. "Diana," he said. The book slipped from her fingers. She knew that voice. She had heard it every day for twenty years. "Mark?" she whispered. He took one step toward her, then fell to his knees. The freed villagers stirred around him, dozens of strangers she had never seen, all of them freed by her reading. But she saw only him. The husband she had burned. The man she had buried in her heart. He was here. He was breathing. And behind his eyes, something older still watched her.