Chapter 1

In the Church of Hangmen,

Death brings life from the Berkano.

We silence the sins of our brethren,

A gift of peace for the next tomorrow.

My voice rolled across the lyrics and carried them to the rafters high above my head, where, knotted around the sturdiest wooden beam, a noose hung. The thick rope's loop circled my face without touching it, like a weathered halo that had tipped off my head and stayed suspended in the air mid-fall, as if waiting for me to right it. Every time I stood in front of the congregation and sang about the coming sacrifice, I imagined any sour notes that accidentally pushed from my lips would snag on the wiry fibers of the rope and stick there. Despite my rattling nerves at leading my first sacrifice, those fibers were currently spotless.

Voice of an angel, Dad always said. An angel without a halo and banished to the baptismal, because according to High Witch Allison Parris-Williams, I didn't have church tongue.

When I was halfway through the second chorus of the ritual song, the side door at the back of the nave opened. A flutter lifted through my chest, and I took a breath when I shouldn't have. My fingers twitched into my black shirt, balling themselves tighter into my palms, but I stopped them. I needed to stay loose, controlled. As the chief hangman's daughter, this sacrifice should be as natural as blinking.

Through the eye of the noose, I spied Dad sitting next to Allison in the first row. Twilight filtered between a crack in the boards and chicken wire that covered the stained-glass window at his left. It painted his cheek in a sliver of red, as if he'd been sliced across the face. It matched the ugly patterned scarf Allison wore around her neck, the one she liked to slap his arm with when she rubbed herself against him while he politely backed away. Dad sported a dreamy smile like he always did when I sang, but Allison's upper lip was scrunched in her usual expression of disdain. Pretty sure she was constantly smelling her own ass since she'd shoved her head up there long ago.

I wished it were she who would soon be led through the side door at the back of the nave with a wool bag over her head. It would mean she was on her way up to the noose and my lynching hand. Or her giant of a stepson, Hendry Williams, who sat alone in the balcony like he always did. That morning, he'd made it a point to tell me not to fuck up - the only words he'd ever spoken to me - because since this was my first sacrifice and all, that was exactly what I needed to hear. I'd told him he would never be the man his stepmom was, and that he could take his shitty wisdom and choke on it with his own cock.

Yep, no church tongue.

My song ended on a lilting, haunting note, one that always dragged a chill up the back of my neck. Two figures stepped inside the doorway, one tall, the other monumentally smaller. The heads of those seated turned as Kit led the shorter one with a bag over their head around the back of the congregation and down the middle aisle toward me.

Not just small. A child. My heart stuttered, and a cold sweat chased a shiver across my scalp. We never hanged children as part of the sacrifice. It was always the elderly, the sick, or someone who no longer wanted to be controlled by the Berkano vampires. Monthly sacrifices seemed to appease them, and if it didn't, they would make it known.

But we never hanged children, like this girl who couldn't be older than ten. Matted blonde curls grazed her shoulders underneath the sack on her head. What once had been a frilly lavender dress and shiny patent leather shoes had been scuffed and muddied. Twin wounds marked her knees and dribbled blood down to her lacy socks. She looked like she had been ready for church once upon a time. But not this one.

The congregation stayed silent as they watched her slow progression up the aisle. All eyes aimed at her and Kit, who kept his meaty hand on her shoulder. Except High Witch Allison's, whose icy green gaze stayed pinned to me, as if gauging my reaction. Was she behind this, the choosing of a child? It was always Dad who did the choosing, but I couldn't believe he'd be so heartless.

Kit stooped toward the little girl's ear. "Three steps up," he said gently, more as if he were walking her toward a nice game of pin-the-tail-on-the-demon than to her death. "Ready?"

My hand fluttered to my stomach, and I forced a swallow down a bone-dry throat. I couldn't do this. No way.

Movement from the balcony caught my eye. Hendry stood, clutching the banister in front of him. Even from this distance, his shoulders seemed wider than Sandreka, the golden goddess of the sun, whose picture hung behind me. His words from earlier pinged against the goddess and banged through my skull in great pulsating knocks: Don't fuck up. Three words, three steps, as the girl came closer to the noose.

Kit moved her so she faced the crowd. Did she know what was about to happen? Once she stood next to me, her tiny hands that were bound behind her back balled themselves into fists. She sniffed, and a slight tremble rippled up her dress.

A whimper slinked over my tongue, but I rolled my lips together to keep it contained. She was scared, just like me.

I glanced at Dad, praying he would step in and put a stop to this madness, even though this was supposed to be an honor I'd inherited from him. And I'd been excited, thinking it was a way to change people's opinions about me, a way to earn back my fallen halo because I didn't have church tongue. Now, he nodded with lifted eyebrows for me to carry on and suck it up. He didn't see anything wrong with what was about to happen. To a child. I guessed I wasn't supposed to see anything wrong with it, either.

With a jerky arm that seemed to belong to someone else, I reached out for the bag on the little girl's head. The rough fibers scratched my fingertips when I pulled it off, and a pair of stunning blue eyes connected to mine. Purple pockets rested underneath them, stark against her pale skin. She gasped, shrinking in on herself as she took in me and the rest of the congregation. I wanted to comfort her, tell her everything would be okay, but I didn't want some of the last words she heard to be lies.

Instead, I opened my mouth to recite the rest of the ritual before the sacrifice. It came automatically, in a monotone voice that sounded foreign inside my own head. If I didn't complete this, the Berkano would swarm and shake the foundation of our church until there was nothing left. We'd been holed up here for the entirety of my eighteen years. Few of us would survive outside without walls to surround and protect us. We didn't stand a chance.

Which meant I couldn't fuck this up.