David stood with Karen in the La Cortina duplex housing complex as Grifford's hunters pulled entire families from their homes.

The registration act was a success.

"Karen..."

Karen raised a gloved hand, and whispered. "I know, David."

"This isn't hunting, Karen. This is wrong."

She nodded. "Shuttup."

"I'm going to call Detective Polovatski."

"You gonna bring him here for the roundup? Have him slaughtered with the rest of them?"

David scowled. "We can't let this happen."

"How do we stop it, David? How do we stop this without getting ourselves killed in the process?"

He shook his head. "Maybe we're not meant to survive this. You were right."

"No shit I was right." Karen frowned. "I wrote the school. I wrote the church. No one's coming to stop this."

"This is the price of victory? Every last Coven gone... and for what? What will we do?"

"We'll live our lives." Karen shrugged. "We try to put this behind us."

"Where will they take them?"

"The Rowans."

"The Rowans are gone, Karen. Burned to the last tree."

"Griff felt it was poetic that they should burn in the ashes."

David clenched his fists. "...and anyone who would stop this is gone. Dean, up in Pridewater. The reinstated Bishop, cozied up in his old estate. Bart Walker, dead and gone. Karen, there's only us."

"Griff will pay for this, David, but not tonight."

"This is genocide."

Karen shoved him, her eyes hard, teeth clenched. "It's always been genocide, David. You think it's alright killing them a few at a time? This is The Order's solution."

David rubbed his shoulder. "The final solution, right? First Driftwood, then Pridewater? What about Collings?"

"I know, David. We can't do anything right now. If we try to stop it they'll put us to the stake. Treason is a death sentence."

"This is not The Order. Not our Order, Karen..."

Karen pushed a gloved hand over David's mouth as one of Grifford's personal guard moved past them.

The hunters ushered the crowd away from the street, battering those whose moaning, or weeping grew too loud. Grifford's men made quick work of shackling the people into groups of four, chains looped between each group and locked in place.

Frightened children were separated from weeping children, brothers and sisters pulled apart, fingers reaching for one another on outstretched hands.

David felt his stomach drop as the baritone roar of a diesel engine carried up the empty street, louder as it grew closer. He heard the brakes screech and the creaking suspension as the vehicle turned into La Cortinas.

The primer black M32A cargo truck pulled up and parked in the lane between the duplexes.

David watched as they pushed, and shoved the crowd into the truck.

"There's not enough room!" Someone from somewhere in the crowd bellowed.

"There'll be soon enough!" One of Grifford's men yelled back, his thick Irish accent tinged with amusement.

"Holy God in heaven." David moved close to Karen. "They're back. He's got the Zealots."

"I guess everyone has a price." Karen had her hands firmly clapsed over her stomach.

David saw a tear rolling down Karen's cheek, and he took comfort in it.

✟ ☧ ✟

At the cliffside to the looming Driftwood Heights, in the rowans - their ashen remains - were gallows, ropes tied with thirteen rings, tinder piled up at the base of the dead and burned trees.

David stood alone watching Grifford's men dragging the screaming, helpless and hapless people from the cargo truck. How they begged, begging David heard a dozen times in the past from his various hunts. How they bargained with promises they could not keep. Some of the women pulled their shirts open, offering their bodies to whatever Zealot would listen. David flinched every time he heard another shot ring out, every shot a surprise when. It should not be. He flinched everytime a dead woman dropped to the ashen floor of the rowans, dying an ignoble death as those to whom they were chained were forced to drag thr bodies to a place between the makeshift stakes and the gallows.

Torches burned there, casting shifting shadows against the cliffside, and the ruined grove of burned rowans.

David felt a shiver run down his back, faint and foreign memories of another place and time snaking their way into his mind.

At first, he thought it was a breeze blowing through the dead boughs and around the burned trunks of the rowans. Something like a whisper until it was no longer like a whisper, and manifested as a sound, a voice without a voice. The message was unclear, except for the happenstance every now and again that he caught the word sinner.

At first, David thought it was only him... but soon enough the others, the zealots stopped, turning their ears up. They looked dazed. Even Grifford, standing atop the gallows had a distant expression.

There was nothing.

Then it was there, vaguely a woman in shape wearing the vestments of a nun. Her face was hidden in shadow by her habit. The whispering was louder now, condemnation and accusation.

Her witchery was... not witchery.

David sensed nothing of the nature of magick from her.

She was not a witch.

She walked, and her robes flowed behind her like black billowing smoke. She arrived beside the first of the cowled zealots and stroked his cheek as she did. He dropped to the ashen, earthen floor before he could register what happened. There under the cowl, his dead eyes stared into infinite distance, unseeing.

The whispering stopped, and the remaining zealots shook their heads out of the daze. The closest lunged at her. She raised a hand and she parried him and as soon as her wrist met with his, he stopped and dropped dead at her feet.

"...what the fuck?" David's voice trailed off. They came at her with blades drawn and she dodged their attacks with little effort, reaching out with quiet grace to touch them, any part of them, and paid them no heed as they dropped dead.

"Faithless heathens." Her whispering voice echoed all around them. Grifford was already climbing down the gallows. Running, escaping from the she-thing.

David did not move.

She focused on Grifford.

"From The Hands of God, you cannot escape."

She stopped, and in a sharp jerking motion, her head turned. David stared into the dark shadow of her habit, and in a single silent stride, she was near him. David could not see through the shadow, as if she was the shadow itself.

"I've wronged nobody..." David held a gloved hand up and she stepped a single step back holding up one of hers and shook her head.

"...what are you?"

She was already gone, far away from David and wading through the bodies of the dead as she culled out the last of of Driftwood's coven en masse.