The corridors stretched before me like the throat of some stone beast, each step echoing off walls that had absorbed decades of prayer.My weakness had become something almost comfortable now—a constant companion that reminded me I still had something to lose.The candlelight from iron sconces threw my shadow in multiple directions, as if even darkness couldn’t decide what I was anymore.
Religious imagery crowded every surface.St.Sebastian pierced by arrows watched me pass with painted eyes that seemed to understand something about enduring what should destroy you.St.Lucy held her gouged eyes on a plate while somehow still seeing everything.Even the very blessed stones were saturated with faith.
The incense was strong, drawing me toward the chapel.Frankincense and myrrh, the gifts of the Magi, the perfume of ancient ritual.It should have choked me.Instead, I breathed it in like a drowning woman who’d discovered she could somehow survive beneath the waves.
But I couldn’t go to the chapel.I wasn’t sent here to pray.I was sent on a mission I knew I couldn’t complete.But I still had an agenda.I needed to find him, theone manwho’d given me hope, who somehow knew I’d come to New York, who’d sent me a book, like a kind of companion volume to the first one he’d presented me, at the moment I needed it the most.
Two nuns appeared at the corridor’s far end, their habits rustling like wings.The younger one—barely more than a girl—saw me first.Her face went white as communion wafers, and she pressed herself against the wall so hard I thought she might push through it.The older sister grabbed her companion’s hand, pulling her into an alcove where a statue of St.Francis stood with his stigmata bleeding painted blood.
“Don’t look at it,” I heard the older one whisper.“Don’t meet its eyes.”
It.Not her.It.
They knew what I was, or at least knew I was something that shouldn’t be walking these blessed halls.More than that, Brother Marcus had said this mission was housing vampires, caring for them, but these nuns seemed afraid.They knew what I was, but didn’t see beyond the condition of my flesh to mypersonhood.Perhaps they were just novices, whatever it was they called “beginner” nuns.Or maybe they were jaded by an unpleasant experience with a vampire they’d try to help.Whatever the case, they didn’t meet me with the same compassion that the nuns who’d met to help my fallen friends did at the mission’s front door.
Though if they were afraid of me, they didn’t exhibit any panic.They didn’t run away, didn’t call for help.They simply waited for me to pass.But I wasn’t going to justpass.“Father O’Malley.”I glanced at each of them.“He’s a friend of mine.He’s helped me before.I need to find him.”
The two nuns exchanged glances.One of them nodded.The other one pointed to a small hallway that branched to the right.
“Thank you,” I said.“God bless you.”
They nodded back at me, something almost like regret in their eyes.Like they’d realized they’d mis-judged me, that they’d failed by thinking of me as a mere object, as anit.I could only hope my kind smile, tight-lipped to hide my fangs, would be enough to assuage their guilt.
Father O’Malley’s quarters were exactly where the nuns suggested I’d find it, down a narrow hallway that branched off from the main corridor.I knew because his presence lingered in the air, a distinct odor.Every human, I’d discovered, has a scent of their own.Perhaps that’s why dogs often sniff at someone’s hand, to confirm their identity, their signature aroma.Father O’Malley’s scent was always accompanied by a particular combination of aromas: pipe tobacco and old books, whiskey for medicinal purposes, and ink.
The door stood slightly ajar, revealing glimpses of a spare room within.I pushed it open with trembling fingers.
Empty.
But not abandoned.The narrow bed was made, its thin blanket pulled tight enough to bounce a coin.A worn Bible rested on the nightstand, its leather cover soft as skin from countless handlings.The margins would be full of his notes, I knew, his careful script documenting decades of wrestling with faith’s harder questions.On the small shelf above the bed: his breviary, a rosary with wooden beads polished smooth by repeated rounds by weathered fingers, and three books from theSummaof St.Thomas Aquinas.
His desk drew me forward.Papers covered its surface in organized chaos—half-written homilies, correspondence with other priests, notes for tasks he needed to be sure he didn’t forget.But in the center was something that looked as though it had been waiting for someone, for me, to find.
A golden pyx, the small container priests used to carry the Eucharist to the sick.And beneath it, a single piece of paper with Father O’Malley’s handwriting.Not his usual careful script, but hastily scrawled, as if written in urgency or darkness:
“We always find that those who walked closest to Christ were those who had to bear the greatest trials.- Teresa of Ávila”
I knew that quote.He’d marked it in the first book he’d given me.But why leave it here?Why now?And why with...
My fingers trembled as I opened the pyx.Inside, cushioned in white linen, lay a single consecrated host.
The Body of Christ, according to Catholic doctrine.The Real Presence, not symbol but substance, bread transformed through words and faith into something divine.
I shouldn’t touch it.Every instinct screamed against it.This was holy, and I was...what I was.When I’d received it before, Father O’Malley placed the host on my tongue.It dissolved even as it burned.But to consume this, I’d have to take it in hand.It felt wrong.Undeserved.But also like it was exactly what I needed.
Had Father O’Malley left it for me?Surely he’d left the quote there as a sign, something he’d know I’d recognize.He’d known I would come here—how, I couldn’t fathom, but he’d known.And he’d provided what he thought I needed.
St.John of the Cross wrote about the dark night, about God seeming absent when He was most present.St.Teresa described the soul’s interior castle, chambers within chambers, the innermost containing God Himself.What if this was my invitation to enter deeper?What if this consecrated host, a taste after a long period of famine, was the key to rooms I didn’t know existed?
Only one way to know.
I lifted the host with shaking fingers.It weighed nothing but also carried the weight of One who’d created everything.Light played across its pressed surface, and for a moment I could have sworn I saw something impossible—light coming from within it rather than reflecting off it.
“This is my body,” Christ had said at that last supper.“Broken for you.”
Broken.Yes.We were all broken here—my companions writhing in the entrance hall, the frightened nuns in the corridors, Father O’Malley and his infirmities, and me, standing here about to commit either the greatest sin or the greatest act of faith in my unnatural life.
I placed the host on my tongue.
