The relic caught my eye, but not as I’d imagined it would.Just hammered gold—uneven, with visible tool marks where someone had shaped it by hand.The gems were crudely set in shallow depressions.The whole thing looked like something made by a blacksmith who might have been more accustomed to forging weaponry than sacred wares.In an odd way, its ordinariness made it more terrifying.
“Do you understand now?”Marcus asked, his voice the only sound that could pierce that terrible quiet.“This was never about your redemption.How can a creature whose soul is already damned expect redemption?”
The Host’s warmth still pulsed in my chest, a small sun against the darkness Marcus was weaving.But it felt so small now, so insufficient against this display of power and hatred.
“This is about purification,” Marcus continued, gesturing to encompass the entire scene.“Tonight, we cleanse this city of its corruption.Every vampire, every witch, every soul that chose darkness over light.Beginning with you.”
Gabriel’s hand found my arm, his grip tight enough to bruise if I still bruised.When I looked at him, his face was devoid of any emotion.He understood, as I did, that we’d walked into something far worse than a trap.
I was done listening to Marcus’s diatribe.Father O’Malley coughed.His hands trembled and clenched into fists.For a moment, I thought he was going to die then and there.“Father!”
My body moved before my mind could object.Whatever strength the Host had granted me, whatever reserves remained in my starved muscles, I spent it all in that single surge forward.The scorched earth blurred beneath my feet as I crossed the clearing faster than any human could move, faster than I should have been able to move in my weakened state.Love drove me forward—not the careful, theological love I’d been cultivating, but something raw and desperate and utterly human.
Father O’Malley’s eyes widened as I rushed toward him.I saw his lips move, forming words I couldn’t hear over the roaring in my ears.A warning, perhaps.Or absolution.Timothy’s blade pressed harder against his throat.
“Stay back, demon!”
Marcus’s voice erupted across the clearing with the force of judgment itself.But I couldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop.My priest, my confessor, the man who’d seen me not as a monster but as a soul worth saving—I would not let him die for the crime of showing me mercy.
“You speak of faith and love, Miss Bladewell!”Marcus spat, abandoning the crossbow for a moment to stand fully upright behind the altar, his face contorted with righteous anger.“But true loveobeys!True faithpurifies!“ He gestured toward Desiderius, Ruth, and Rebecca, who continued to convulse against their stakes.“They are damned, and so are you!But God, in his infinite mercy, offers you one last chance tocleanse your soul!”
Brother Elias stepped forward, holding the Gilded Cross aloft—the relic gleaming.
“Take it!”Marcus commanded.“Release it’s power, it’s light, it’s judgment!Wield it against these heretics, against your corrupted progeny!Purge them in the light of God!”
The choice was a thousand stakes aimed at my soul.Save Father O’Malley, the source of my hope, by destroying the people I loved.Father O’Malley was dying already, I knew it, but it was one thing to lament his impending death, another to be the cause of it.Either path led to bloodshed and absolute moralruin.Marcus was not offering a choice; he was forcing an act of damnation.Because what he really wanted me to do was unleash the power of the Gilded Cross, to eliminate every vampire in the region.
I stumbled, my momentum halted by the sheer terror of the decision.I reached out my hand—the one that had sworn a half-hearted oath to the Order—and grasped the pole atop which stood the Gilded Cross.
I faced my friends, raising the Cross slightly.Desiderius’s eyes, wide with pain, locked on mine.In that moment, the years of wisdom, the careful survival, meant nothing.He saw only death.Ruth’s mouth stretched in a soundless scream of betrayal.Rebecca simply wept blood-tinged tears of pure terror.Marcus believed I was a monster, and for a moment, I think that’s what they saw.
It was the ultimate lie.The final sin.I lowered the Cross, shaking my head violently.“No,” I whispered, the word a rasp against the night.“I won’t.This isn’t redemption.This is hate.”
I turned the Cross, using the long silver staff it was mounted on as a weapon.I hurled it forward in a single, desperate, unthinking motion, aiming for the nearest threat:Timothy, who still stood over Father O’Malley.
It struck him in the shoulder.But before I could rush to free him, before I could free any of them, I heard a string snap.Marcus’s crossbow—or was it Elias’s?I didn’t know.
The first bolt took me through the left hand.
Iron punched through my palm with a wet sound that shouldn’t have been audible over everything else.My hand exploded backward from the impact, fingers splaying helplessly as tendons severed and bones shattered.
The second bolt found my right wrist before I could process the first.
This one came at an angle, Timothy’s aim slightly off on account of the injury I’d caused him, but still devastating.It tore through the delicate bones where hand met arm, sending my right hand into useless spasms.Blood—thin and cold, so much colder than it should be—flowed from both wounds, trickling down my arms like a parody of prayer.
I stumbled.
My supernatural speed died mid-stride, momentum carrying me forward even as my body failed.I tried to catch myself, to maintain balance, but my pierced hands wouldn’t respond.I pitched forward, and in that graceless fall, the third and fourth bolts found their marks.
Both feet almost simultaneously.
Marcus and Elias had aimed low, waiting for this moment when I’d be off-balance, vulnerable.The bolts drove through my worn boots, through flesh and bone, pinning me to the scorched earth.
I hit the ground hard, unable to break my fall with my ruined hands.My knees struck first, then my torso, leaving me sprawled in a position that might have been prayer if it hadn’t been defeat.The bolts in my feet kept me anchored, prevented me from curling into myself against the agony.
Gabriel, seeing my plight from the tree-line, charged after me.But Marcus had seen him and fired a stake from his crossbow directly into his heart.
“No!”I cried, but I was stuck in place.I couldn’t move.
