“But when you’re ready,” I added.“His grace never changes.”
They didn’t need to be told twice.Timothy and Elias fled into the forest, crashing through underbrush in their haste to escape what they couldn’t understand, couldn’t fit into their rigid theology.The darkness swallowed them quickly.Sadness washed over me.They could have repented, like Matthias, like Marcus.But they weren’t ready.Not yet.
The Cross’s light dimmed to a steady glow, warm but not overwhelming.I held it loosely, understanding that it wasn’t mine to keep—it belonged to no one and everyone, a symbol of sacrifice that transcended ownership.
Marcus knelt in the dirt where he’d collapsed, looking smaller than I’d ever seen him, but also somehow more real.The elaborate robes, the hollow authority, the careful construction of divine judgment—all of it had been stripped away, leaving just a man who’d lost his way and was finally, finally ready to find it again.
Chapter 21
GabriellayexactlyasDesiderius had left him, the stake jutting from his chest.The pine needles beneath him had darkened with his blood, vampire blood that looked black in the strange light cast by the transformed Cross.His stillness went beyond sleep, beyond even the unnatural motionlessness of our kind—this was the stillness of something suspended between states, neither truly dead nor truly alive.
I approached him slowly, aware that everyone watched—Desiderius with ancient eyes that had seen too much loss, Ruth with her bitter understanding of betrayal, Rebecca with the wide-eyed horror of someone still young enough to believe in happy endings.Even Marcus watched from his knees, perhaps recognizing in Gabriel’s still form all the others he’d condemned to similar fates.
The stake was like those that took me down.Narrow to fit a crossbow, but still hewn from wood.
I knelt beside my progeny, setting the Cross down carefully in the pine needles.My hands found the stake’s rough shaft.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, though I wasn’t sure if I was apologizing for removing it or for putting it there in the first place through the chain of events I’d set in motion by turning him.
I pulled.
The stake came free with a wet sound that made Rebecca turn away, made even Desiderius flinch.Gabriel’s body convulsed once, a full-body spasm that looked more like electrocution than anything biological.Black blood welled from the wound, not flowing but seeping, as if even his blood had forgotten how to properly leave his body.
But he remained still.After that single spasm, nothing.The wound gaped open like a second mouth, silent yet accusing.I stared at what my actions had wrought.Gabriel—this progeny I barely knew—had sacrificed everything for me.In that moment when the crossbow bolts struck my hands then feet, he chose me.He sacrificed his cover, his mission, to saveme.
I picked up the Cross again, its weight different now, heavier with purpose.The gold warmed in my hands, responding to an intention I hadn’t fully formed yet.This relic that they’d mistaken as a weapon, that had freed Matthias through dissolution, that had revealed truth throughout this clearing—could it also heal?Could something that had been used for so much destruction become an instrument of restoration?
Only one way to find out.
I pressed the Cross against Gabriel’s wound, the gold meeting his torn flesh with a soft sound like a sigh.For a moment, nothing happened.Then the light came—not the explosive radiance of before, but something quieter, more focused.It poured from the Cross into Gabriel, filling the wound with warmth that looked like liquid sunrise.
His back arched off the ground, mouth open in a silent scream or gasp—I couldn’t tell which.The light spread through him, visible beneath his skin like veins of gold, racing through his body in patterns that reminded me of the sacred geometry in cathedral windows.Every part of him illuminated from within, revealing not the monster Marcus claimed we were, but something else—a soul, perhaps, or whatever remained of one in creatures like us.
The wound began to close.Not the supernatural healing our kind usually displayed, but something more deliberate, more careful.The flesh knit together slowly, as if being rewoven rather than simply sealed.When the light finally faded, when the Cross cooled in my hands, no mark remained where the stake had pierced him.Not even a scar.
Gabriel’s eyes opened slowly, focusing on me with difficulty.For a moment, confusion clouded his features—then memory rushed back, and his hand flew to his chest, finding smooth skin where the wound should have been.
“Alice?”His voice came out rough, uncertain.“Am I—did I—“
“You’re healed,” I said simply.“You tried to save me.”
“I failed.”The words carried such weight, such self-recrimination.“I saw the bolts hit you, and I couldn’t—“
I pulled him up and into an embrace before he could finish.Not the careful, distant contact of sire and progeny navigating their complex bond, but something simpler—one person comforting another, one soul recognizing another’s pain.He stiffened at first, unused to such direct affection, then slowly, carefully, returned the embrace.
“You didn’t fail,” I whispered.“You sacrificed yourself to save me.That’s not failure.That’s the greatest victory possible.”
“But how did you?”Gabriel surveyed the scene, Timothy and Elias gone, Marcus on his knees and eyes raised to heaven in prayer.He saw my friends no longer bound by stakes, afflicted by the holiness of the place, and revived.“I don’t understand.”
I just smiled.“I’ll tell you later.Let’s just say that I ascended Mount Carmel.I followed the path.Or perhaps more accurately, the path found me.”
When we finally separated, I saw tears on his face.Vampire tears, tinged pink with blood, but tears nonetheless.
I rose, my body feeling simultaneously ancient and newborn, and turned toward Father O’Malley.He remained bound to his rough chair, though the ropes hung looser now.His weathered face tracked my approach, those warm brown eyes holding such complex emotion that I almost looked away.
My fingers worked at the knots, supernatural strength making quick work of bonds meant to hold a frail human.The rope fell away, and Father O’Malley swayed forward.I caught him, careful not to cause more harm, and helped him to his feet.He weighed almost nothing, this man who’d carried such spiritual weight, whose faith had been the anchor that kept me from drifting into complete darkness.
“You look better.”I observed, noting the color that had returned to his face.“Are you healed?”
