“Sometimes the hunter becomes the hunted by pursuing too eagerly.”I rubbed my brow.“Sometimes wisdom lies in stillness.”
Ruth snorted.“Stillness?While Marcus plots our destruction?While that thing—the Gilded Cross—waits to be used against us?”She rose from her perch, pacing now.“This isn’t the time for religious sentiments, Alice.It’s time to take action.”
“And yet religion is exactly what we’re dealing with,” I countered, though my heart wasn’t in the argument.Let them think me weak, defeated.It would make what came next easier.
Desiderius’s gaze fell to the books in my arms.“Where did the second one come from?”His voice carried a new note—not quite suspicion, but certainly curiosity.“You had only the one before.The book from St.Theresa.”
I opened my mouth to respond, to craft some explanation that would satisfy without revealing too much, but the door burst open with such force that it cracked against the wall.For the first time, I was glad to see Matthias.He stood in the doorway, his gaunt frame blocking what little light remained in the corridor.
“Brother Marcus requires your immediate presence.”His fevered eyes darted between us.“All of you.Now.”
We rose as one, though I moved more slowly than the others.My legs trembled with the effort, and I had to steady myself against the wall.Desiderius noticed—of course he did—but said nothing.We filed out into the corridor, following Matthias’s broken form through passages that smelled of incense and old stone.
As we walked, Desiderius fell into step beside his progeny.I watched him lean close, speaking in tones too low for human ears but perfectly audible to mine.“Tell me, Matthias,” he murmured, and I saw the subtle shift in Matthias’s expression, the way his eyes glazed like frosted windows.“What does Marcus truly want with us?”
Matthias’s pace never faltered, but his voice took on a distant quality, as if speaking from within a dream.“He suspects...you were all involved in the death of Silas Blake.No proof, but suspicions.Dangerous suspicions.”His face twitched.“A test.He requires proof of loyalty.Something about a mission, but I know nothing more.He and Gabriel spoke in private.”
“And the Cross?”Desiderius pressed, his influence threading through each word like silk through a needle.
“I don’t...”Matthias struggled against something, his expression contorting.“Gabriel knows.Gabriel guards the knowledge.Even from me.”
Desiderius released him then, the influence withdrawing so smoothly that Matthias barely stumbled.His eyes cleared, confusion flickering across his features before being replaced by his usual fervent determination.He continued leading us as if nothing had happened.
I exchanged glances with Ruth and Rebecca.Ruth’s expression had hardened into something resembling carved stone—she understood the implications as well as I did.Rebecca merely looked hungry, always hungry, but there was fear in it now too.We were walking into a trap, or at least a test designed to destroy us.
The corridors grew colder as we descended.All I could think about was Christ in Gethsemane, sweating blood while his disciples slept.He knew what was coming, had always known, yet walked toward it anyway.The comparison was blasphemous—I was no savior, no lamb without blemish.I was a monster clutching at redemption.
But perhaps that was exactly what was needed.A monster’s sacrifice, willingly given.
Brother Marcus’s chamber was several degrees warmer than the rest of the monastery, though I saw no reason for it.No wood-burning stove.No fireplace.The air tasted of lamp oil.
Marcus sat behind his oak desk like a judge behind his bench, fingers steepled.His hollow cheeks caught the lamplight in such a way that drew attention to the skull beneath his face.The silver crucifix on the wall behind him dominated the room, its Christ figure twisted in particularly graphic agony.Ancient texts lined the shelves—some I recognized, others bearing scripts I’d never seen before.
Gabriel stood at Marcus’s right hand, still as a statue.His presence pulled at something within me—the sire bond, perhaps, though it felt different from what I shared with Ruth and Rebecca.Where those connections flowed like water, this one had crystallized into something brittle and strange.His eyes found mine the moment I entered, and I felt the weight of his attention like hands around my throat.
“Come,” Marcus spoke with the quiet authority of a man who never needed to shout.“Stand before me.”
We arranged ourselves in a rough line—Desiderius at one end with his centuries of practiced dignity, Ruth beside him with her barely contained fury, Rebecca trembling with hunger and fear, and myself at the other end.Matthias had retreated to the corner.
Marcus studied us for a long moment, his gaze dissecting each of us.When his eyes reached me, they lingered on the tremor in my hands.A slight smile touched his lips—satisfaction, perhaps, at seeing me so diminished.
“You have claimed dedication to our cause,” he began, each word measured.“You speak of redemption, of service to the divine will.Tonight, you will prove whether your words carry truth or merely echo in hollow deception.”
He rose from his chair with the careful movements of a man whose body had been trained to betray nothing.His fingers traced the edge of his desk as he walked around it, coming to stand before us.The lamplight threw his shadow large against the wall, and for a moment it seemed to merge with Gabriel’s, creating something monstrous.
“There is a Catholic charity mission on Cherry Street,” he continued, his tone shifting to something clinical, detached.“They call themselves the Sisters of Perpetual Mercy.They feed the poor, tend the sick.”He paused, letting the words settle.“They also harbor creatures like yourselves.Vampires who feed on those they pretend to help.Who spread their corruption under the guise of Christian charity.”
My barely beating heart clenched.That had to be Father O’Malley’s mission.Brother Marcus had probably connected us to him, andthiswas how he meant to force us into either revealing our true loyalties or proving our allegiance to him and the Order’s mission.
“This particular mission has been spreading dangerous heresies,” Marcus elaborated, returning to his position behind the desk.“They preach that the damned can find salvation through works, through suffering, through anything other than complete submission to divine judgment.They mock the natural order, the clear distinction between the saved and the lost.”
Ruth shifted beside me, and I caught the slight narrowing of her eyes.She understood the implications as well as I did—this was no random target.This was calculated.
“Your task is simple,” Marcus said, his fingers finding their steepled position once more.“Enter the mission.Identify every vampire within.Execute them.Leave none alive—neither the damned who hide there nor those who shelter them.”His voice never changed inflection, discussing mass murder with the same tone one might use to describe a casual trip to the farmer’s market.Marcus’s eyes gleamed with fanatical certainty.“The Order demands absolute obedience.Only those who demonstrate unwavering loyalty—no matter how distasteful the task—and endure until achieving success shall be permitted to participate in the culmination of our sacred work.”
The word ‘endure’ stood out to me, echoing St.John of the Cross’s writings about enduring the dark night.But Marcus meant something different—he meant our willingness to become instruments of destruction, to prove our loyalty through senseless bloodshed.
Desiderius spoke first.“And if we find humans there?Innocents who know nothing of what they harbor?”
