“So?”
“You said yourself you haven’t fed.But I’ve gone longer than you.”
I stopped walking, forcing him to pause as well.“You heard me?”
“I did.”Gabriel nodded.“I admire you, Alice.But you need to be careful how openly you speak.”
“How did you hear me?You were turned after me.My hearing should be better than yours.If I’m really the one who—“
“You are,” Gabriel interrupted, raising a hand to forestall my words.“You turned me, Alice.You made me what I am.”
The confirmation hit harder than I’d expected, even though I’d already known it.“But you’re younger than me in this...existence.You should need blood more frequently, not less.”
“Age has nothing to do with it,” he said, resuming his walk.I had to hurry to keep pace despite my weakness.“It’s about discipline, about spiritual preparation.I was well established on my path, in dying to myself, before you bit me.The seminary taught me mortification of the flesh, denial of worldly pleasures, submission to divine will.When you transformed me, those lessons didn’t disappear.They became...re-contextualized.”
I winced.“Silas had told me you were a papist warlock.”
Gabriel stifled a laugh.“Come on, Alice.I can’t blame you for believing it when he said it.You were surely raised with an anti-Catholic bias.Still, didn’t that seem a strange accusation?”
I winced visibly, guilt washing over me.“You’re right, I agree.I’m sorry.I couldn’t control—“
“I know,” Gabriel said, raising his arm in a gesture that might have been absolution or dismissal.“The hunger was new to you then.The demon of your nature had full control.You were no more responsible than a rabid dog.”
His words should have been comforting, but they weren’t.A rabid dog gets put down, after all.
“But at least we have an opportunity for redemption,” he continued, his voice taking on an almost wistful quality.
I huffed out a breath.The Order’s promises of redemption were hollow as our veins without blood.They spoke of salvation while planning our destruction, of divine mercy while sharpening their stakes.But I couldn’t let Gabriel see my doubt.Not yet.Not when I still didn’t understand his role in all of this.
“Redemption,” I repeated.“Is that what you call this mission?Murdering priests and those who shelter with them?”
“Sometimes destruction is a form of mercy,” Gabriel said.
“Sometimes,” I countered, “people use divine will as an excuse for their own cruelty.”
Gabriel turned to look at me fully then, and in his eyes I saw something that might have been approval.Or perhaps it was pity.With him, I couldn’t tell.
“You’re learning,” he said softly.“Good.You’ll need that wisdom for what’s coming.”
Before I could ask what he meant, Rebecca’s sharp whistle cut through the night air.She stood at the entrance to a narrow alley, her posture tense with impatience.
“Are you two finished flirting with each other?”she called.“Or should we proceed without you?”
Gabriel moved toward them without another word, leaving me to follow on legs that threatened to give way with each step.The conversation had drained me more than the walking—the weight of memory, guilt, and uncertainty proving heavier than my physical weakness.
As I stumbled after him, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Gabriel had been testing me somehow.His questions, his revelations, even his forgiveness—all of it felt calculated, purposeful.
The junction split before us like a choice between damnations—one path leading directly to the mission’s front entrance, the other winding through shadows toward what might be a service door.Desiderius had stopped to consider our options, his ancient mind no doubt calculating angles of attack and retreat.Ruth and Rebecca flanked him, their recent feeding lending them a predatory patience I couldn’t match.My legs trembled with the effort of standing still.
Gabriel caught my eye and winked—a gesture so unexpectedly human that for a moment I forgot what we both were.The dim light from a distant street lamp caught his face at an angle that made him look younger, almost like the seminary student he’d been before I’d destroyed his life.
“There’s so much I wish I could tell you,” he said, his voice pitched low enough that even our companions’ supernatural hearing would struggle to catch it.
“The weapon?”I asked, my whisper barely more than shaped breath.“The Gilded Cross?”
Gabriel cocked an eyebrow, neither confirming nor denying.His silence spoke volumes—there were things he knew, things that might change everything, but something prevented him from sharing them.Orders from Marcus?Some oath to the Order?Or something else entirely?
“Among other things,” he finally said, then louder, for the others to hear: “Let’s just say that what you stand to prove tonight isn’t your brutality.”
