The endearment sounded wrong in his mouth, poisonous with false affection.Matthias shuffled forward.When he stood within arm’s reach, Desiderius placed both hands on his progeny’s temples.The gesture looked almost tender, almost like a blessing, until you saw how Matthias’s entire body went rigid, muscles locking as his sire invaded the most private spaces of his mind.
“Tell me about tomorrow’s mission,” Desiderius commanded, his voice taking on that hypnotic quality I’d heard him use on the family at the farmhouse.“Every detail Brother Marcus shared with you.”
Matthias’s mouth opened, but the voice that emerged didn’t sound quite like his own—higher, strained, as though the words were being pulled from him against some deep resistance.“The coven in Red Hook.Five women, maybe six.They gather in the old Sinclair warehouse, the one damaged in last winter’s fire.Brother Elias will lead the mission.You and the new one—“ his vacant gaze flickered toward me, ”—are to prove your commitment through total destruction.”
“Descriptions,” Desiderius pressed.“What do these women look like?”
“Young.”Matthias’s head tilted at an unnatural angle, as though Desiderius were rifling through his memories like pages in a book.“The leader has red hair, tall, maybe twenty-five.Irish, from her accent.Two are sisters, dark-skinned, from the Caribbean.Another is blonde, small, couldn’t be more than sixteen.The last two...”He trailed off, brow furrowing as Desiderius dug deeper.
I pressed myself against the wall, trying not to watch yet unable to look away.This was violation on a level that made my skin crawl.Yet we needed this information.Without it, those women would die.
“The morgue on Flatbush Avenue,” Desiderius continued, his fingers pressing harder against Matthias’s temples.“You know where it is?”
“Yes, sire.”
“Good.You will go there before dawn.You will find bodies that match these descriptions as closely as possible.Young women, similar builds and coloring.”
My throat constricted.We were discussing corpse theft as casually as planning a dinner party.What had I become that this seemed reasonable?Necessary?
“You will deliver these bodies to the Sinclair warehouse tomorrow at dusk,” Desiderius continued, his voice now layered with compulsion so thick I could almost see it, like heat shimmer rising from summer pavement.“Place them nearby, but in a location the coven will not discover them or detect their odor.Then you will return here and remember nothing of this conversation.You will believe you spent this time in prayer, seeking redemption for your sins.”
“Prayer,” Matthias repeated, the word hollow as a tomb.“Redemption.”
“When you deliver the bodies, you will be careful.If anyone sees you, you will flee rather than fight.Your only purpose is to complete this task and forget.Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
Desiderius released him, stepping back as Matthias swayed on his feet.For a moment, his progeny’s eyes cleared, confusion flickering across his features.Then the commands took hold fully, and his expression smoothed.
“I should go,” Matthias said, though he sounded uncertain why.“There’s much to pray about before tomorrow’s mission.”
“Yes,” Desiderius agreed.“Go with God, Matthias.”
Matthias simply nodded and shuffled from the chamber, his mechanical movements carrying him toward a task he was compelled to forget.
The silence that followed felt heavier than the stones above us.Desiderius leaned against the wall, and I noticed his hands trembling slightly—the effort of such deep manipulation had cost him.
“It’s done,” he said simply.
“It’s monstrous,” I countered, though my voice lacked conviction.“You violated his will, made him a puppet.”
“Would you prefer we let those women burn?”He turned to face me fully, and I saw my own conflict reflected in his ancient eyes.“This is what we are, Alice.We’re monsters playing at redemption, and sometimes that means choosing the lesser evil.”
I wanted to argue, to quote St.Teresa about suffering and salvation.Instead, I clutched her book tighter, letting its burn anchor me to what remained of my humanity.
“The Order believes we’re damned regardless,” Desiderius continued, his voice softer now.“Perhaps they’re right.But if we’re damned anyway, shouldn’t we at least try to save those we can?”
BrotherElias’sfacelookedlike something carved from wax and left too close to flame—features melting downward, shadows pooling in the hollows beneath his eyes.He wasn’t as imposing as Brother Marcus, and probably had never been a legitimate “brother” at all, but Marcus had apparently conferred the title on his most loyal followers.
Elias stood before us in the monastery’s crypt, where monks who used to pray in this now-forsaken place now rested, or spun in their graves.
“The heretics call themselves the Daughters of Hecate,” he began.“They practice their abominations in the ruins of the Sinclair warehouse in Red Hook.”He unrolled a map across the stone table, weighing down its corners with human finger bones pulled from the wall.“Intelligence suggests five, possibly six practitioners.They must be utterly destroyed.”
I stood at attention, maintaining the rigid posture expected of new initiates.Beside me—though carefully separated by several feet—Desiderius affected the same submission.
“The corruption runs deep within this coven,” Elias continued.“They’ve been recruiting among the immigrant populations, promising false hope to the desperate.Young women mostly, who don’t know better than to resist such temptation.”His lip curled.“Fire will be your primary tool.Nothing recognizable must remain.The Order cannot afford another incident like Baltimore.”
I didn’t ask about Baltimore.New initiates weren’t supposed to know about the Order’s failures, only its “divinely” mandated successes.
