“Marcus knew,” he gasped, catching himself against a brick wall when he nearly fell.“He must have known we’d—that you’d—“
“Of course he knew.”I reached deeper into the bond, feeling it pull me northeast.
We tore through New York’s maze—past crumbling tenements, beneath street lamps whose jaundiced glow we skirted without thought.The occasional night owl flattened against brick as we passed—some making hurried signs of the cross, others watching with the dull eyes of souls who had witnessed enough of the city’s horrors that two figures racing at inhuman speed through darkness hardly registered as anything more than a curiosity.
The bond pulled harder, and with it came fragments of sensation that weren’t my own.Rebecca’s hunger, sharper than knives, but underneath it a terror that had nothing to do with starvation.Ruth’s bitter fury transformed into something closer to despair.And Desiderius—ancient, unshakeable Desiderius—radiating a pain that went beyond physical agony into something that touched the soul itself.
“Consecrated ground,” I breathed.“He’s taken them somewhere blessed.Somewhere that will—“
I couldn’t finish the thought.My dress caught on a broken fence as we turned onto a smaller street, the fabric tearing.The cold air bit through the new gap.
The city’s edge approached faster than seemed possible, buildings giving way to scattered houses, then to empty lots, then to the scraggly trees that marked where wilderness still claimed its territory despite humanity’s best efforts.The transition felt like crossing between worlds—from the realm of men into something older, darker, where different rules applied.
The ground turned hard beneath our feet, frozen solid by winter’s grip.Each footstep crunched loud enough to wake the dead—ironic, given what we were.Branches reached for us like skeletal fingers, catching at my already-torn dress, pulling threads loose until the garment hung in tatters.One particularly vicious limb caught my cheek, drawing a line of cold blood that the wind immediately froze.
“How much farther?”Gabriel asked, though we both knew I couldn’t answer with certainty.The bond didn’t work like a map—it was more like being pulled by an invisible rope, growing tighter with each step, the sensation of my progeny’s agony increasing until I could barely separate their pain from my own.
The trees grew denser, their branches intertwining overhead until they blocked out even the faint starlight.We moved by instinct now, by the supernatural vision gave us better vision in darkness than light.Pine needles carpeted the ground, muffling our steps but filling the air with their sharp scent.
“There,” Gabriel whispered, pointing ahead where the trees seemed to part.“Do you still feel it?”
I did.
The bond pulled me forward, branches tearing at what remained of my dress until I looked more like a madwoman escaped from Bedlam than anything resembling the preacher’s daughter I’d once been.Gabriel stumbled behind me.
The clearing appeared without warning—trees simply ending as if God himself had drawn a circle with his finger and declared nothing would grow there.The space beyond looked wrong, violated, the very earth scorched black despite the winter cold.And in the center—
“Dear God,” Gabriel breathed behind me
The stakes stood in the clearing’s center like a blasphemous trinity.Three rough-hewn posts driven deep into the dead earth, and bound to each—
Desiderius hung from the leftmost stake, his ancient dignity stripped away.Centuries of careful control meant nothing here.His body contorted against the ropes, not from their physical restraint but from something far worse.The ground itself rejected him, consecrated, but for what purpose I couldn’t say.
Ruth occupied the center stake.She’d stopped struggling against the bonds, but her body still writhed, muscles spasming in rhythms that followed no natural pattern.
Rebecca, smallest and most vulnerable, had been bound to the right stake.The hunger that usually twisted her features had transformed into something else entirely—pure agony that made her look even younger than her sixteen years.She’d been strong enough to resist feeding several times, but she still fed regularly at the monastery to maintain her strength, and now that very strength condemned her on this sanctified ground.
My legs nearly gave way.Not from my own weakness, but from the weight of understanding.They suffered because of me.
“Ah, the prodigal arrives.”
Brother Marcus’s voice cut through the clearing’s unnatural quiet.He stood beside a makeshift altar—rough stones stacked with deliberate care.
His hollow cheeks caught the moonlight.He’d draped himself in ceremonial robes I’d never seen before, black fabric marked with silver thread.
“Welcome, Miss Bladewell.”He spread his arms wide as if embracing the entire scene.“Welcome to your final test, your final judgment.”
Movement behind the altar caught my eye, and my unnecessary breath caught in my throat.Father O’Malley—my priest, my guide, the man who’d shown me grace when I deserved none—sat bound to a chair of rough-hewn logs.They’d positioned him where he could see everything but do nothing, a witness to whatever horror Marcus had planned.
His frailty had never been more apparent.The ropes seemed almost excessive against his thin frame, his body curved by age and illness into something that barely held its shape.But his eyes—those warm brown eyes that had looked at me with such patience, such faith—remained clear and focused.He met my gaze across the clearing, and in that look I saw no fear for himself, only sorrow for what was to come.
Brother Timothy, always loyal to Marcus, stood behind Father O’Malley with a blade pressed to the priest’s throat.Not close enough to cut, not yet, but the threat was there.Timothy’s young face—he couldn’t have been more than twenty-five—held the blank certainty of someone who’d never questioned an order in his life.
“You brought him here.”I couldn’t hide the offense in my voice.“An innocent priest.A man of God.”
“Innocent?”Marcus laughed, and the sound had edges like broken glass.“He harbored you, creature.Gave you the Eucharist!As if you could ever be worthy, even as it’s been refused to me!Can you believe it?A monk who’d made vows refused what they offered to devils, like you?”
Brother Elias stepped from behind the altar’s shadow.In his hands, raised on a processional pole, gleamed the Gilded Cross.
