“Where—where was I?”Catherine choked out, her voice raw.“It was so dark, so empty—please, don’t send me back there!”
I pressed the vial to her lips, my voice steady despite the way her anguish clawed at my chest.“The darkness is gone.Take this.”
She latched onto the vial desperately, gulping the contents as though it were water in a desert.When it was empty, some of the wildness receded from her eyes, replaced by confusion and lingering fear.
“What happened to me?”she whispered.“I remember a fight, and then...nothing.Just darkness and cold.So cold.”
I leaned closer, my voice barely above a whisper.“What you felt—that void—is the shadowland where we exist when staked.It’s a glimpse of our eternal fate should we give ourselves over to bloodlust completely.I had to send you there briefly to transport you here without risk to others.”
Cautiously, I motioned for Ruth to approach with another vial while I loosened Catherine’s restraints.
“There is another path,” I continued, watching her face for understanding.“A difficult one, filled with pain and sacrifice, but one that leads away from that darkness.A path of redemption.”
Catherine’s lips curled back, revealing the tips of her fangs.“Redemption?”The word caught in her throat.“You might as well offer salvation to a rabid dog.”
Ruth stepped forward, her eyes meeting Catherine’s without flinching.“I once felt as you do.”The candlelight danced across her face.“I remember believing the hunger would consume me forever.That I was damned.Yet here we stand.Living proof that another way exists.”
Catherine snorted.“Living?”
I nodded.“We’re more alive than you’ve come to believe.This is not death, Catherine.We are not damned.Not yet, anyway.”
Catherine’s gaze darted between us, suspicion warring with desperate hope.
While Ruth continued to explain to Catherine, I moved to James and removed his stake with the same swift motion.His awakening was more violent than Catherine’s, a roar of fury erupting from his lips as consciousness returned.Rebecca immediately held a vial to his mouth, which he bit into savagely, glass cracking between his teeth as he gulped the contents.
Michael’s revival followed a similar pattern, his eyes blazing with hatred as I pulled the wood from his chest.He spat curses that would have shamed a sailor, straining against the silver restraints until they smoked against his skin.
“The process is painful,” I admitted once all three were awake and had taken their first feeding.“Purification always is.You must learn to resist the urge to feed on the living, to control the hunger that consumes you.Eventually, through prayer and discipline, you may find that the Eucharist itself can sustain you.You will no longe require human blood.”
James and Michael exchanged skeptical glances, their defiance palpable despite their weakened state.“Pretty tales for children,” James spat.“We are predators, not penitents.”
“So was I,” I replied evenly.“So were we all.Yet here we are.”
“Where did you come from?”Desiderius asked, his tone conversational though his eyes remained sharp.“Who turned you?”
All three fell silent, exchanging wary looks.
“The Order of the Morning Dawn,” I suggested, watching their reactions carefully.“Did they find you?Promise you power, purpose, salvation if you proved yourselves worthy?”
Michael’s jaw tightened, but he maintained his silence.James looked away, suddenly finding the stone ceiling fascinating.Only Catherine’s expression shifted, a mixture of surprise and recognition crossing her features.
“They said we’d be cleansed if we proved ourselves,” she admitted quietly.
“They who?”I pressed.“Did they mention the Order by name?”
Catherine shook her head.“No.They never said what they called themselves.Just that we needed to show our worth by eliminating certain...threats.”Her eyes flicked to me.“They described you—said you were corrupting others of our kind with false promises.”
“I’d expect the Order to think nothing less,” I sighed, my suspicions confirmed even without the name being spoken.“They create vampires, then use them as disposable weapons against their enemies.When your usefulness ends, so does your existence.”
“That can’t be true,” Catherine protested, but doubt had crept into her voice.“They saved us when we were turned.They gave us shelter, blood...”
“Enough to keep you alive, to make you dependent,” I finished for her.“But did they offer you true control?Or merely direction for your hunger?”
The uncertainty in Catherine’s eyes told me everything.Behind her, I noticed James shifting uncomfortably, the first crack in his defiance.
Desiderius stepped forward.“I have guided many like you.Vampires who believed themselves beyond redemption, consumed by bloodlust and rage.I can show you techniques that worked for them—controlled feeding rituals, prayers, gradual exposure to the Eucharist, and the spiritual discipline needed to master your condition.”
To demonstrate, he performed a brief ritual with Rebecca—a careful prayer followed by her touching a small silver cross without flinching, then sipping from a chalice that I knew contained consecrated wine.We were not generally granted free access to the Eucharist; we typically received it kneeling at Mass, but for these purposes, the Bishop had granted us a dispensation.
