“Yes,” I promised, even as I positioned myself between her and my companions.“If you choose it.If you fight for it.”
“I’m so hungry,” she whispered, tears of blood streaking her pale face.
“I know,” I said gently.“We can help with that.Donated blood at first, then gradual weaning, then—“
Michael recovered faster than I anticipated, his newfound strength amplified by rage and hunger.He tackled me from behind, his weight driving me onto the wet cobblestones.His teeth snapped inches from my throat as I fought to keep him at bay.
“Run!”I called to Ruth and Rebecca.“Get back to the convent!”
Neither obeyed.Instead, Ruth grappled with James while Rebecca moved to help me, her face a mask of grim determination.
Catherine stood frozen, watching the violence unfold with growing horror.Then, with a cry of anguish, instinct won out over hope.She launched herself at Rebecca, fingers clawing at my companion’s habit.
I knew then that our chance for peaceful resolution had passed.These souls were too newly turned, too consumed by bloodlust.They needed to be subdued before they could be saved—if they could be saved at all.
My hand found the handle of my umbrella, the wooden shaft tipped with a silver point—a weapon disguised as a fashionable accessory.With a desperate plea for his protection, I drove it into Michael’s chest as he lunged for me again.
His expression registered shock, then confusion.His pupils blew wide, swallowing the irises in blackness as his soul was violently yanked from the physical plane, cast down into the temporary hell that awaited the staked.His body went instantly rigid, then slumped onto me, a heavy, lifeless weight.
I shoved him aside, gasping for air, but I did not reach for the handle of the umbrella.To remove the wood now would be to invite him back to the fight back before we were ready.I left the shaft protruding from his chest, and scrambled to my feet.
My hands trembled as I hiked up the heavy fabric of my dress, fingers finding the familiar leather straps against my skin.It wasn’t the first time I’d been forced to silence a feral soul only to wake them later in a cage.I drew two short, thick stakes of hawthorn from the holsters on my thigh.
I turned to help Rebecca.Catherine had her pinned against a wall, but Rebecca’s discipline gave her an advantage the feral vampire couldn’t match.With a controlled movement, Rebecca broke Catherine’s grip and spun her around, exposing her chest.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, stepping into the opening.“Custodi animam eius.Guard her soul.”
Catherine’s eyes met mine in the instant before I drove the short wooden point home.Something human flickered there—recognition, perhaps, or gratitude—before the light vanished from her eyes.
“Keep her safe in the silence, Lord,” I prayed, “until she can choose the light again.”She went boneless in Rebecca’s grip, sliding down the wall to rest like a sleeping doll on the cobblestones.
James, seeing his companions fall not to dust but to the counterfeit sleep of the dead, fought with renewed desperation.Ruth had him on the defensive, but his wild strength made him unpredictable.I approached from behind, my heart heavy with the knowledge of the difficult rehabilitation that lay ahead of us.
“Sustain him in the depths, O God,” I prayed, gripping the second thigh stake.“And prepare him for the rebirth to come.”
James sensed my approach and whirled to face me, his face contorted with rage and hunger.“What are you?”he demanded, eyeing the bodies of his friends.
“Someone who once stood where you stand,” I answered sadly.“Someone who found another way.”
His attack was clumsy, born of fear rather than strategy.I side-stepped his lunge, and the hawthorn point found his heart.He gasped, the sound wet and sudden, as his consciousness was severed from his form.
As his knees buckled, I caught him, lowering his heavy, dormant body gently to the ground beside the others.
“Guard their going out and their coming in, from this time forth and forevermore,” I finished, smoothing his hair back from his forehead.I looked over the three quiet forms, the wooden stakes serving as the only locks keeping their souls from their bodies.“Bring the cart, Sister.We have work to do.”
Chapter 6
Ikneltbesidethestaked bodies, each one frozen in that liminal space between true death and unlife.Their souls had been temporarily severed from their flesh, cast into what we called ‘vampire hell’—not eternal damnation, but a shadowy nowhere that would hold them until we removed the stakes.It was a necessary cruelty, one that weighed on me despite the years I’d spent performing this grim ritual.My fingers traced the silver cross at my throat as I whispered a prayer for each of them, these lost children who had not asked for the darkness that claimed them.
“We need to hurry,” I said to Ruth and Rebecca, rising from my crouch.The night had grown colder, though I felt it only as an abstract awareness rather than discomfort.“Bring the cart from behind St.Vincent’s.The one the morticians use.”
Ruth nodded, her expression somber despite the earlier heat of battle.“Will they...feel anything?Where they are now?”
“Time passes differently there,” I answered, the words bitter on my tongue.“What seems hours to us might be an eternity for them.Or merely an instant.Father O’Malley believed it depended on the state of the soul when it was cast out.”
“I’ll pray for them,” Rebecca said simply, then touched Ruth’s arm.“Come.The sooner we retrieve them, the sooner they may begin their journey back.”
The two moved swiftly into the darkness, their habits billowing like wings in the night breeze.I remained with our staked charges, my heart heavy with the weight of what we’d done.Necessary, yes—they had been too far gone in their hunger to listen, too newly turned to control their baser instincts.Yet the act of driving wood into their hearts, of casting their souls into that dark limbo, never grew easier.
