I retreated to the farthest corner of our hideout, where shadows clung like cobwebs.Sinking to the cold floor, I closed my eyes, shutting out the world and Desiderius’s worried gaze.The sire bond was a labyrinth, a dark and twisted path that led from my soul to Gabriel’s.I had traversed it only once before, in desperation, and the experience had left me drained, my mind echoing with his tormented whispers.
But tonight, I would not merely listen; I would demand answers.I reached out with my senses, feeling the chill of the night seep into my bones as I sought the invisible tether that bound us.The bond resisted, coiling away from my touch like a serpent unwilling to be charmed.I persisted, my breath coming in shallow gasps as I forced my will upon it.
The bond quivered, and for an instant, I felt Gabriel’s presence—a cold, distant star in the void of my consciousness.Then, as abruptly as it had appeared, the connection snapped taut and recoiled, flinging me back into the shadows of our hideout.My eyes flew open, my breath escaping in a harsh gasp.Pain lanced through my temples, the echo of a door slammed shut with brutal force.
“Alice?”Desiderius’s voice cut through the haze, sharp with concern.
I raised a hand, silencing him as I fought to regain my composure.The room spun, the shadows writhing like living things in the periphery of my vision.Whatever barrier Gabriel had erected, it was far stronger than anything I’d encountered before.His mind was a fortress, and I was left standing outside the gates.“It won’t work.Something’s interfering; it’s like he’s protected himself from my influence.”
Chapter 11
Thestonefloorbitthrough my dress as I knelt, each ridge and imperfection pressing into my knees.My hands clasped before me trembled—not from the monastery’s perpetual winter, but from the weight of understanding that had settled into my bones like frost.Gabriel, my supposed progeny, had somehow erected walls against the very bond that should have made him mine to command.The sire bond had recoiled from him like flesh from flame.
Perhaps it was on account of relative vampiric youth.I’d learned that the sire bond isn’t as easy to access for the newly turned.But what I sensed when I tried to reach out to him, the way I’d connected to Ruth and Rebecca, didn’t feel like a weak connection.It felt like repulsion, like something was actively pressing against my intrusion.
“Our Father, who art in heaven,” I whispered.How many times had I addressed God this way?A thousand?Ten thousand?Each repetition another stone in the wall I’d built between myself and the monster I’d become.Yet tonight, with Marcus’s notes still burning in my memory, they prayer felt more urgent.It was a prayer not merely against the monster that threatened me from within, but those who came at me from without.
“Hallowed be thy name,” I continued, though my voice caught on the words.What was holy anymore?Gabriel walked these halls like an impenetrable enigma.Marcus plotted my destruction while speaking of my usefulness in fulfilling a supposedly divine purpose.And I—I prayed to a God who had let me become this thing, who had watched as Mercy Brown drained my blood in that alley and said nothing, did nothing, offered nothing but silence.
The silence was my answer now.I’d grown accustomed to heaven’s silence, but tonight it felt deliberate, as if God himself had turned his face from me.
A soft scraping interrupted my litany of doubt.Not the usual sounds of the monastery—not footsteps or whispered prayers or the distant bell calling the living to compline.This was deliberate, furtive.Something sliding across stone.
I rose in one fluid motion.The sound had come from beneath my door, where a sliver of lamplight marked the threshold.My hand found the iron handle.
But I hesitated.The scraping had stopped, replaced by footsteps—but strange ones, muffled and irregular, as if someone walked on cloth-wrapped feet.They faded quickly, too quickly.
I yanked the door open, moving into the corridor.Empty.The stone passage stretched in both directions, lit by oil lamps.No sign of whoever had been here, not even the lingering warmth that living bodies left in their wake.But there, on the floor where my cell’s threshold met the corridor stones, lay a book.
Worn leather, cracked with age.I knew it before I bent to retrieve it, knew it the way I knew my own hands.This was no stranger’s gift.I lifted it carefully, as if it might crumble or vanish, and turned it toward the lamplight.“The Ascent of Mount Carmel” by St.John of the Cross.But it was the marginalia that stopped my unnecessary breath—neat, careful script in fading ink, notes that could only have been written by one hand.
Father O’Malley.
I pressed the book to my chest, feeling its weight.How had he known?I’d told no one where I was going when I left Providence, least of all Father O’Malley or anyone connected to the Church.Yet somehow, he’d found me.More than that—he’d come here, or sent someone here, walked these halls where any member of the Order might have seen him, and disappeared like a ghost.
My fingers traced the book’s spine, feeling each ridge and imperfection.This wasn’t a coincidence or luck.This was Father O’Malley being Father O’Malley—stubborn, clever, impossibly persistent in his mission to save my soul.Even now, even after everything, he hadn’t given up on me.
But how had he managed it?He was too ill and frail to make his way here on foot, much less flee with such speed that he’d left the hall before I could swing upon my door.Had he sent someone else, someone likeme?
I clutched the book tighter, a lifeline thrown into my sea of doubt.Whatever method he’d used, whatever danger he’d faced, Father O’Malley had made sure this reached me.In my darkest moment, when even God seemed to have abandoned me, Thomas O’Malley had not.
Iopenedthebookcarefully, as one might handle a relic.Father O’Malley’s neat script adorned the margins—annotations in fading ink.Notes my priest had made years ago, but somehow felt like they’d been addressed to me.
“In the dark night of the soul, bright flows the river of God’s delight.”
The paradox struck me.Here, St.John of the Cross wrote of darkness as a pathway to light, of suffering as a river leading to divine joy.My eyes widened slightly as I absorbed the meaning.It was a similar message as that I’d gleaned from St.Theresa, but said in a way that seemed to address my current predicament head-on.
How many nights had I wandered in my own darkness, believing it to be punishment rather than purification?
I leaned toward the candle, its flame throwing my shadow large against the wall behind me.The second marked passage waited, Father O’Malley’s careful underlining drawing my attention:
The road and ascent to God, then, necessarily demands a habitual effort to renounce and mortify the appetites; the sooner this mortification is achieved, the sooner the soul reaches the top.But until the appetites are eliminated, one will not arrive no matter how much virtue is practiced.For one will fail to acquire perfect virtue, which lies in keeping the soul empty, naked, and purified of every desire…
A habitual effort.To mortify the appetites.Could the appetites of someone alreadydeadtruly be mortified?Perhaps I wasn’tmerelydead.Insofar as I held onto my faith, I remained alive.Albeit in a sense that conflicted with the evidence my flesh used in testimony against me.
Hence, we call this nakedness a night for the soul, for we are not discussing the mere lack of things; this lack will not divest the soul if it still craves for all these objects.We are dealing with the denudation of the soul’s appetites and gratifications.This is what leaves it free and empty of all things, even though it possesses them.
Perhaps no metaphor spoke to me better than that ofnight.After all, it was only during the night when I experienced any freedom at all, when I wasn’t limited to the confines of human structures.Even then, I was stuck in darkness, in a night of a kind.
