It should have burned.It had always burned, even after I’d grown accustomed to it back at St.Mary’s parish.Instead, warmth spread from that small point of contact—not the heat of destruction but something else entirely.Like sunlight remembered from my life before.Like summer afternoons before I knew whatrealdarkness meant.The warmth spread down my throat, into my chest, radiating outward until even my fingers and toes felt it.
My legs stopped shaking.The constant gnawing hunger that lived in my gut like a parasite...didn’t disappear, but changed, transformed into something less of a threat, less of an enemy storming the interior castle of my soul, and more like a prisoner kept in the dungeon, one I could observe but who posed no danger.The weakness remained, but underneath it, supporting it, was something that felt suspiciously like strength.Not the strength of fed vampires with their borrowed blood and stolen life.This was different.This was...
“Grace,” I whispered.
The word falling from my lips like a confession.But it wasn’t a confession ofguilt; it was a confession rooted in conviction.I’d become a monster of a kind; people would always see me that way.I had appetites, desires, that most people who were made in God’s image never experienced.But that didn’t mean I wasn’t worthy of love.It didn’t mean I’d lost my dignity as God’s special creature, one made in His image.It didn’t mean He didn’t care for me, still.Did it pain Him to see me suffer?Surely it did, as it must have pained the Father when the Son suffered for us.But love sees past pain, past suffering.It transcends it.Itenvelopsour suffering and redeems it into something that’s more than pain, that’s greater than our tribulations, that is transmuted into genuine victory.Grace is an unwavering and irrefutable disposition of love.It transforms us into something more than flesh-and-blood, ruled by our passions.It makes usholy.
“We’re done here.”
I spun toward the voice, my newfound stability the only thing that kept me from stumbling.Gabriel stood in the doorway, his face tight with something I’d never seen on him before.Fear?Urgency?His usual composed demeanor had cracked, revealing something raw underneath.
“This isn’t going how I expected.”He stepped into the room, closing the door behind him with deliberate care.His fingers found my arm, grip cold even through my sleeve, pulling me toward the room’s far corner.“I’ve been found out.”
The warmth from the host still pulsed through me, making his touch feel like ice in comparison.“What are you talking about?”
His eyes darted to the door, then back to me.Something had changed in him since we’d entered the mission.The careful control, the measured words, the sense that he was performing a role—all of it was crumbling.And underneath was someone I didn’t recognize.Someone young and frightened and possibly, impossibly, human.
Chapter 15
ThewarmthoftheHost still pulsed through my veins like borrowed sunlight, but Gabriel’s words froze it solid—ice crystals forming where grace had flowed.His fingers remained locked around my arm, and in the guttering candlelight I could see something I didn’t expect from the enigmatic Nightwalker: genuine terror.
“Found out by whom?”I kept my voice low, though every instinct screamed to pull away from his grip.The small room pressed in around us—Father O’Malley’s sparse quarters suddenly feeling like a confession box with no absolution waiting.
Gabriel released me to press his ear against the door.Satisfied we were alone, he turned back, and I saw him truly for the first time.Not the zealot who’d stood beside Marcus, not the mysterious progeny who’d blocked my sire bond—just a young man, barely out of seminary when I’d destroyed his mortal life, now caught in machinations that threatened to destroy what remained.
“Bishop Harkins sent me.”The words tumbled out like water through a broken dam.“After Marcus’s excommunication, His Excellency couldn’t simply abandon him to darkness.Excommunication is always a last resort, a last attempt to bring someone to repentance.”
I snorted.“Not sure it works like that.Didn’t for Marcus, anyway.Didn’t they excommunicate Luther?It resulted in greater schism in the Church.It healed nothing.”
“Sadly, it’s rare than one repents following excommunication.The Luther case is a sad story, for even Luther didn’t want to start a new church.But we cannot judge intentions by hindsight alone.Perhaps in that case, excommunication was premature.Maybe it was justified.Theologians have debated the wisdom of that sad chapter in our history for centuries now.If anything, we’ve learned from that example and others why the power of the keys, to bind one in his sin, shouldn’t but wielded lightly.But Marcus was obstinate, too blind by personal loss and his quest for vengeance against the creatures—the vampires—who’d killed his sister.Nothing short of excommunication could have opened his eyes to the truth.Bishop Harkins, though, never lost hope.He never abandoned Brother Marcus to damnation.That’s why I’m here.It’s why I’m doing what I’m doing.”
My unnecessary breath caught.“The Bishop of Providence?He knows about—“
“Everything.”Gabriel’s laugh held no humor.“Or near enough.The Bishop maintains...connections.Observers who report on supernatural threats to his diocese.When Marcus established himself here with the Order, Harkins saw an opportunity.”
I sank onto Father O’Malley’s narrow bed.“You’re saying you’ve been pretending this whole time?Playing the loyal follower while—“
“While documenting every heresy, every corruption of doctrine, every soul Marcus has destroyed in his crusade.”Gabriel moved to the desk, fingers ghosting over the papers there as if drawing strength from their proximity.“The Bishop hoped the fruit of Marcus’s actions might shock him back to orthodoxy.A naïve hope, perhaps, but Harkins believes in redemption even for the worst of us.”
The irony wasn’t lost on me—a vampire sent to redeem an excommunicated priest.I watched Gabriel’s hands tremble as he spoke, noting how young he looked when stripped of his careful masks.Had I ever truly looked at him before?Or had I seen only my guilt reflected back as an accusation?
“The book,” I said, understanding dawning.“You were the one who—“
“Slipped it under your door, yes.”He turned to face me fully.“Father O’Malley suggested it.We’ve been...communicating.It hasn’t been easy, and I fear now that at some point our correspondence was intercepted.”
“Father O’Malley knows you?”I shook my head, shocked I hadn’t seen it before, that Father hadn’t told me.“He knows what you are, what I made you, and he—“
“Forgave.”Gabriel’s voice went soft.“Both of us, Alice.When Bishop Harkins first brought me to him—broken, newly turned, raging against what I’d become—Father O’Malley saw past the monster to the man still trapped inside.He taught me what he’s been teaching you.Though he believed it best not to bring us together.He didn’t believe you were ready, that if you knew the mission I received from the bishop, that you’d made me, that you’d either fall back into self-loathing and guilt, or insist on joining me.He was trying to protect you, Alice.”
I thought of Father O’Malley’s careful guidance, his patient instruction, and the book he gave me.All along, he’d been shepherding two of the damned toward something resembling salvation.
“But if you’re working for the Bishop, why maintain the pretense after we arrived in New York?Why let Marcus continue—“
“Because I didn’t know how deep the corruption ran.”Gabriel began pacing, three steps and turn, three steps and turn, the room too small for anything more.“The Order’s reach, their resources, the number of souls they’ve ensnared—it’s beyond what anyone imagined.And then you arrived.”
He stopped mid-stride.“You and your companions weren’t supposed to be here.But Marcus found out about you, he suspected your involvement in the death of Silas Blake.He set his trap through Matthias.”
“Matthias?”The name felt heavy on my tongue.“When he first came to us, it looked as though he’d been through a fight.He was injured.”
