Ruth’s expression darkened.“An alabaster jug of water.Clear, ordinary-looking.But when a drop touched my skin, it spread like acid.Not burning exactly, but...dissolving.The flesh simply ceased where it touched.It took an hour to regenerate fully, and that was just from a single drop.”
“Holy water?”Rebecca asked.
“Something more.The archivist mentioned it came from ‘the source,’ though he wouldn’t elaborate.He treated it with uncomfortable reverence.”Ruth closed her notebook.“If they have more of that water, if they could weaponize it...”
“They could destroy us all.”Desiderius finished.“Which is what they intend to do in the end, regardless.”
Rebecca shifted on her cot.“The donors talked while they waited.They don’t know what we are exactly, but they know they’re feeding something inhuman.They’ve been told it’s holy work, that their blood would pacify devils.”A bitter laugh.“They’re not entirely wrong.”
“Did you learn anything about the Order’s structure?”I asked.“Their plans?”
“Fragments.Brother Marcus has been increasing recruitment among the donors.They need more blood than usual, though no one would say why.I presume it’s because they intend to recruit still more Nightwalkers.And there’s talk of a gathering—something important happening within the month.All the senior members will attend.”
“The weapon,” Desiderius said with certainty.“They’re preparing for the Purge.”
“We need more information,” I added.“Tonight proved we can maintain the deception, but we were nearly found out.I don’t know how many times we can pull something like that off before someone gets wise to it.We need more information about that weapon, and how to stop it.We need to know where it’s at.”
“Not in the archives,” Ruth said.“I’d have noticed something like that.”
“Patience,” Desiderius counseled.“We’ve been here one day.Trust takes time to build, even false trust.We continue our missions, prove ourselves indispensable, and eventually they’ll reveal more.”
“And if they discover what we did tonight?”Ruth asked.“Those women you saved—what if one talks?What if they return?”
“They won’t.”Desiderius’s certainty was absolute.“The memories I gave them will ensure it.They’ll run far and never look back.”
I thought of those five women, fleeing the city with heads full of false horror, alive because we’d desecrated dead bodies in their stead.Father O’Malley would understand, I told myself.He’d taught me that sometimes faith meant making impossible choices.But would he approve?Had we done too much when we should have stayed starving in that storm shelter, waiting for news from the bishop?
“Get what rest you can,” Desiderius said finally, standing with the careful movements of exhaustion.“Tomorrow, Brother Marcus will test us further.We need to be ready.”
As they filed out to their own cells, I remained on my cot, St.Teresa’s book in my hands.The saint wrote of her own suffering, how she’d offered it as a kind of prayer for those who suffered more than she did.But she was a cloistered nun.She’d never imagined suffering like this—the moral agony of saving lives through evil acts.
I opened to a passage Father O’Malley had marked: “Let nothing disturb thee, nothing affright thee; all things pass; God never changeth.”
All things pass.Even this deception, this necessary evil, would end.Either we’d succeed in stopping the Order’s weapon, or we’d burn in their purge.Either way, the suffering would pass.
But would salvation follow?Or had we already surrendered that possibility?
The questions had no answers.Only the certainty that tomorrow would bring fresh horrors, fresh compromises, fresh tests of whatever remained of our humanity.And we would endure them, because the alternative—the Purge, the systematic destruction of our kind—was unthinkable.
God never changeth, St.Teresa promised.But we had changed, were changing, would continue to change until we no longer recognized what we’d become.The only question was whether anything worth saving would remain.
Chapter 9
Thecruciformhallstretchedbefore me like a throat waiting to swallow, its vaulted ceiling lost in shadows that the scattered candles couldn’t penetrate.My footsteps echoed against stone, each sound multiplying until it seemed a congregation of ghosts walked beside us.Ruth walked to my left, Rebecca to my right, while Desiderius maintained his customary distance.
Other Nightwalkers had already assembled, perhaps a dozen in total, each bearing the telltale marks of our condition: pallor that no amount of blood could remedy, movements too fluid to pass for human, and that terrible stillness when they forgot to breathe.They stood in loose clusters, careful not to touch, as though physical contact might expose the monsters beneath their skin.I recognized none of them from my brief time here, but their eyes tracked our entrance with the wary interest of predators acknowledging potential competition.
Matthias emerged from an alcove where a statue of St.Bartholomew—flayed and holding his own skin—presided over the proceedings.His wounds had finally healed properly.He moved with purpose toward a figure I hadn’t noticed before, one who stood apart from the others like a single candle burning in an empty church.
“Brothers and sisters in service,” Matthias began, his voice carrying that peculiar mix of reverence and madness I’d come to associate with true believers.“Tonight we are blessed with instruction from one who has walked further along the path of redemption than most dare imagine.Gabriel has served the Order for nearly a year, but in that short time he’s eliminated more witches and converted more vampires to our cause than some have across centuries.”
Matthias glanced at Desiderius as he said it—what was he implying?—but the older vampire didn’t afford his progeny’s unexpected slight any real notice.
Gabriel stepped forward into the circle of candlelight, and my first thought was that he looked like something Caravaggio might have painted—all sharp angles and shadows, beauty corrupted into something almost holy in its ruin.He couldn’t have been over twenty when turned, with dark hair that fell across a face too pale even for our kind.
“My siblings in pursuit of salvation,” Gabriel began, and his voice sent something cold skittering down my spine.Not fear exactly, but recognition’s ghost, like hearing a half-remembered song from childhood.“We gather tonight not to mourn what we’ve lost, but to celebrate what we might yet become.While you might think your humanity was stolen from you,” Gabriel looked me straight in the eye, though I didn’t know why.“In truth, many of us were unworthy of salvation even in our former lives.Through the genuine sacrifice of ourselves, we’ve been granted a last opportunity to prove ourselves to the Almighty.”
He lifted a Bible from the podium—not the ancient, burned thing Marcus had used for our oaths, but a newer edition, its leather binding unmarred except where Gabriel’s fingers gripped it.Even from ten feet away, I could see the slight tremor in his hands, smell the faint char where his corrupted flesh met holy writ.Yet he held it as tenderly as a lover’s face, suffering for the privilege of contact.
