Total pages in book: 40
Estimated words: 38333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 192(@200wpm)___ 153(@250wpm)___ 128(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 38333 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 192(@200wpm)___ 153(@250wpm)___ 128(@300wpm)
I am Legion.
The demons inside the swine.
And we will never have a happy ending.
I stand. Savannah's hand reaches for mine but I'm already moving toward the elevator. The doors slide open. I step inside.
She doesn't follow me.
Good. Because it's over now.
It's truly over now—not just between us, but everything. The whole rotten structure I thought was brotherhood.
Badlands is about to turn into Ruby Ridge. Waco. Every fucking FBI siege they ever televised, every bloody standoff that ended with bodies in bags and ATF agents testifying in front of Congress.
I think about the war etched across my back and chest—angels descending to hunt demons, demons rising to drag them down, an eternal battle that never ends because neither side can win.
Except that's bullshit.
The angels never had a fucking chance.
This world doesn't belong to heaven. Never did. It belongs to the legions—the many, the numbered, the marked. We're born into it screaming and we die choking on our own blood.
Everything in between is just distance between graves.
Good tries.
God knows, it tries.
But trying doesn't mean shit when the dirt remembers every body buried in it, and the rain keeps washing blood into the river, and the river keeps flowing toward the same black ocean.
The demons won before the first word was spoken.
Before light.
Before anything clean existed to be ruined.
We just keep pretending otherwise.
Because the alternative is admitting we were fucked from the start.
FBI BOOK CLUB — FINAL SESSION
Assignment:
The Book of Legion (Book of Legion #5) by JA Huss
Transcript — CLASSIFIED
(This time Castillo isn't insisting. This time it actually is.)
[8:47 AM — AGENT: KOWALSKI has started the meeting]
[8:47 AM — AGENT: KOWALSKI has flagged meeting as: EMERGENCY — LEVEL BLACK]
[KOWALSKI VISUAL — bedroom floor, mascara destroyed, empty wine bottle, book facedown on chest like a defibrillator]
Kowalski: I am calling this meeting thirteen minutes early because I have been on this floor since 4 AM and I am NOT getting up. I'm not going to work. I'm not filing reports. I am tendering my resignation from the Federal Bureau of Investigation to become an old lady at the nearest MC and if anyone has a problem with that you can find me facedown in Montana clay next to thirty-six fucking bodies because THAT'S WHERE MY HEART LIVES NOW.
[8:48 AM — AGENT: MARSH has entered the meeting]
[MARSH VISUAL — indoor range, both hands on Glock]
Marsh: I've been here since five. Four magazines. Two for Brick. One for Cash. One for myself because I am a licensed psychologist who has spent five weeks building a clinical profile on a fictional morally gray MMC with a demon name and I just need to sit with what I've become.
[8:48 AM — AGENT: DAVID has entered the meeting]
[DAVID VISUAL — office, blinds drawn, tie missing, collar open, eyes red]
David: Before we begin, I want to establish that I am fine.
Kowalski: You look like a man who finished a dark romance at 3 AM and hasn't recovered. You look like the BEFORE photo in a book hangover post.
David: I said I'm fine. Not that I slept.
[8:49 AM — AGENT: KAI has entered the meeting]
[KAI VISUAL — predawn darkness, headlamp on, vast empty Montana landscape, distant compound lights in background]
Kowalski: Kai. KAI. Are those compound lights behind you?
Kai: I'm not confirming or denying my current location.
Kowalski: YOU'RE STILL IN FUCKING MONTANA.
Kai: I have a lot of PTO.
[8:49 AM — AGENT: CASTILLO has entered the meeting]
[CASTILLO VISUAL — her usual office. Clean desk. No files. No suspect. No second monitor with Google Earth. Hands folded. Face blank.]
Kowalski: Castillo?
[silence]
Kowalski: ...OK we're starting. HE KILLED BRICK. Legion walked into church with a Glock and shot Brick point blank between the FUCKING eyes and I have never felt more SEEN by a fictional man in my entire life. He didn't hesitate. He didn't monologue. He just — BANG — and then Diesel and Chains and Ratchet opened up because they KNEW. They were fucking WAITING for him to pull the trigger. Ride or die is not a trope in this book it's a LIFESTYLE and I am 🫠 — I need to be picked up off this floor. Somebody send help. I am FERAL. I am in my FINAL FORM—
David: The church sequence is—
Kowalski: Do NOT make this formal, David. HAVOC. Havoc took three fucking bullets and kept fighting. Havoc who GRILLS RIBS. Havoc who has SIX KIDS. Havoc who sat at that dinner table talking about the backside of twenty-three with June and — — JUNE. Oh my God, June is at that farmhouse right now and she doesn't KNOW—
Marsh: The Havoc death is — [magazine release, reload, slide rack] — listen, I had a whole attachment theory framework prepared for this session and I'm throwing it out because FUCK the framework. He was the only functional relationship model in five books. He showed Legion what love looks like after twenty-three years and then he bled out on the church floor three chapters later. That's not character development, that's an ASSASSINATION of my emotional stability. [GUNFIRE — 2 rounds]