Dead Harvest

  Every time but one. It was early evening, and Liz was walking briskly down the street, a bag of groceries in her hand. Her face was downcast, her brow furrowed in worry, and in that moment, I wondered if she was thinking of me. As she passed, I called to her – just her name, just once.

  I said, "You're lying."

  She turned around then, the bag falling forgotten to the sidewalk. I saw Liz peering into the crowd, searching for my face, but with my ratty hair and my twisted scraggle of a beard, she didn't see me looking back at her. But I saw. I saw too much. I saw the weight she carried in her cheeks – just a touch, rounding out her face and glowing pink in the chill fall air. I saw her swollen belly, protruding from beneath her woolen jacket.

  "Did you tell yourself it wasn't yours?" said So'enel. "I assure you that it was."

  And in that moment, I understood.

  "Shut up."

  Why she had pushed me away. Why she'd been forced to let me go.

  "And that child grew into a woman, who had a child of her own."

  She'd been protecting her child.

  "I said shut up."

  Protecting our child.

  But he didn't shut up. "A child that grew up strong and sweet and brave and beautiful, so like your fair Elizabeth."

  She'd been protecting it from me.

  "Shut up shut up shut up!"

  It was then, as I stood staring at the woman that I loved and the daughter I'd never know, that Bishop struck.

  "A child that this one killed, without mercy, and without remorse."

  The pain was excruciating as Bishop gouged my soul out of my chest, cackling gleefully all the while. In truth, I didn't mind. I knew then that I deserved it. For the person I'd become. For the choice I'd forced Elizabeth to make. And as the world around me disappeared, replaced by the swirling gray-black of my soul, I thought I heard her call out – just one heartbreaking syllable, her voice tremulous and full of hope: "Sam?"

  My entire body shook in rage and pain and sudden doubt. I looked from the seraph to Kate, who once more fought against her restraints. She was trying in vain to speak, but the gag prevented it, deadening her words into a frantic series of grunts. Her eyes, wide with shock and terror, found mine, and even without her words to guide me, I knew that she was beseeching me not to listen.

  "It seems the girl has something she'd like to say," the angel said. "Well, then, by all means, let her speak." He gestured, and the duct tape unwound from Kate's mouth as if of its own accord. "But first, my dear, a question. Your half-brother: what was his name?"

  Kate forgot her fear for a moment, so thrown was she by the question. "C-c-connor," she said. "Connor MacNeil."

  "Yes," said So'enel, not unkindly, "but what was his middle name?"

  At that last, Kate's eyes went wide with shock and horror. When she spoke, it was flat, uninflected, barely audible. To me, though, it was a fucking knife in the gut.

  "Samuel," she said. A single tear tracked downward across her trembling cheek. Then, as if from somewhere far away: "Patricia said it was in honor of her grandfather. But Sam, I never thought–"

  "Enough of this," the angel said. "You see, Collector, I've steered you true. You know what it is you have to do."

  I felt sick. Tears poured down my face, and my breath came in ragged, hitching gasps.

  "Collector," So'enel said, and then he stopped short, correcting himself. "Samuel. This violation of your blood cannot be allowed to stand – the girl must pay."

  "No!" I said, clenching shut my eyes as though to shut out the world – as though to shut out the angel's words.