I closed my eyes and went back to my earliest meditation exercises—a candle in a dark place. I took and released several breaths, each breath slower and deeper than the one before. I kept the candle before me, the only light in the darkness.
Beast? I want to be Jane.
Why? Jane is weak.
I will never be weak as long as Beast is with me. I/we are Beast.
Out of the darkness, Beast padded into the light of the candle. Her golden eyes met mine, her mouth partly open, her killing teeth showing.We are more and not-more than we were before,she thought.
We have a lot of things to do. Sometimes I’ll need one form or the other. And right now, I need to go to HQ and check on things there.
Jane spirit is still broken. Jane needs holy water. Go to place of holy water, and Beast will shift.
Okay. Deal. But I want the shift now.
Beast reached a paw and placed it on my hand. I began to shift. Pain slithered up from her paw, up my arm, into my shoulder, and down my spine.
***
I woke stretched out on the boulder, human shaped, in a freezing, drumming rainstorm.Dang cat,I thought. But it was affectionate, not irritated. My clothes, however, were shredded, and I had really liked my alligator tee.
I got my icy hands under me and shoved up into a sitting position to see Eli standing on the porch with a blanket and towel. I squelched to him on my muddy bare human feet and let him wrap me in the blanket and my hair in the towel. “Wipe your feet on the mat. Go get a hot shower. I’ll have oatmeal ready when you get out.”
I nodded, pulled off my ruined jeans while wrapped in the blanket, and handed them to him so I wouldn’t mess upthe floors. I went inside, leaving him to wring out my pants. It felt good to hear him chuckling as I followed orders.
Bruiser and Wrassler had gone to HQ to handle some problem, and when I was dry and mostly presentable, I weaponed up over a thin T-shirt and pulled a sweatshirt over that. Beast said I needed holy water, and there were only a couple of places in NOLA where I knew I could get baptismal water. One no longer allowed me in the doors because I had befouled the pool, and the other was a new church I had never really worshiped in. I emptied my out-of-date holy water vials and tucked them into a gobag before I told the boys where I was going.
“Not alone,” Eli said. “I’ll drive.”
“I need to do this alone,” I said. “Please.”
He hesitated and Alex muttered, “Bro. She’s going to church, which she hasn’t done in months. She doesn’t even make us pray over meals anymore. Give her some privacy. Sheesh.”
Surprised that Alex had noticed that, I took a set of keys from one of the hooks by the door. Out front I beeped the fob, raced through the sprinkles to the SUV, and climbed in. I waved to the security detail as I drove off. And pretended not to see Eli racing to another SUV to be my backup. He was an overprotective idiot, but he wasmyoverprotective idiot.
The church I once attended had been in a storefront before it moved to a better location. A new church had taken over the site, and I pulled into a parking spot down the street. I stared at the church front, thinking, or maybe just sitting in a fog and not thinking, watching people in a line go in and come back out. I realized they were homeless, entering with backpacks and bedrolls and exiting with the same but also with paper bags of food. I left the SUV, locking it as I neared the storefront and the new little church that now inhabited it. I joined the slow-moving line of homeless people of all races and ages, and some families with kids. I nodded to the man in front of me and the old woman in a soaked winter coat who came in behind me, waiting patiently with them as we shuffled forward.
Inside, it was bustling. Where there used to be two rowsof chairs with a central aisle, the chairs were folded against one wall, making a wide area where tables were set up and five people behind them were making sandwiches and putting lunches together. At a different table, someone was going through neatly folded stacks of clothing and passing out shirts and jeans and occasionally a rain slicker. At the last table was a man with a three-ring binder and an ancient laptop going through and looking up essential services and addresses that offered showers, health testing, and dentists who helped the needy. In front was the preacher couple, praying with anyone who wanted to join, teaching scripture to a small group. Few of the homeless joined that group, but it looked like the place I needed to be.
I took a chair in the second row and laced my fingers together, bowing my head. The male preacher was talking about the nature of redemption. I didn’t know if that was cosmic coincidence, God talking to me, or just the man’s usual spiel. Either way, the universe had a weird sense of humor.
“Redemption takes both faith and action, and is denied to no one,” the preacher man said. But I remembered the bright and blinding moment when Sabina lost her soul, and I had to wonder. After the short message and bible reading, the meeting ended and the couple stood around chatting with the participants. When their backs were turned, I hoofed it behind the curtain to the baptismal pool.
It wasn’t the same baptismal pool as last time. This was a new, oval, redwood, Japanese hot tub, with the benches around the sides removed. I leaned over the edge and refilled my vials of holy water, tucking them away safely in the gobag. Where I found a fifty dollar bill. I always travelled with cash and a change of clothing in case I shifted and ended up naked and alone somewhere, but I didn’t remember the fifty.
“Can I help you, sister?” a voice said from behind me. I swiveled and saw the woman preacher.
“Maybe,” I said, surprising myself. “Your husband said that redemption is denied to no one. But it’s been said that the fallen angels couldn’t be redeemed.” My brain went sideways with possibilities. “So can vampires? And areother paras cursed? What about were-creatures who were turned against their will? And what about witches?”What about me?
“Redemption is... complicated,” she said gently. “Angels who fell knew beyond doubt that they were fighting a war against the one true God. Redemption isn’t offered to humans who believe yet sin anyway, only to those who repent and change. Witches can be or do whatever they wish. If they desire redemption, then it is theirs. Vampires live long lives, as do were-creatures, some choosing to trade humanity for a form of eternal youth.” She shrugged the tiniest bit. “The survival of them is in the hands of the Elohim.”
Elohim.It was one of the earliest Hebrew names of God, the plural term for God, meaninggods. It was interesting that she used it. I asked, “And vampires and were-creatures who are turned against their wills? Abused against their wills?”Like Rick?The thought rang in my head like a gong, though I didn’t say it. For all his flaws, Rick had a deep and abiding need to protect the innocent. After a slight hesitation, I finished. “Do they get a chance for heaven?”
She sighed sadly. “I’ve talked with vampires. Some of them suffer horribly, not knowing. And I’ll tell you like I tell them: I don’t know. That’s in God’s hands. But they can hope. They can always hope.”
I didn’t say it, but Sabina had been hoping to find her soul for two thousand years. At some point, that hope had to fade. It might already have. I looked back at the soaking tub. The water in it had been warm to the touch. Like blood. Which made sense in a macabre way, because it was supposed to take the place of blood. I wondered if a vampire had ever tried to be baptized and burned up in the water. I frowned, remembering the pool I had fouled.
“You’re Jane Yellowrock, aren’t you?” she said, her voice low. “I’ve seen you on TV.” I nodded and she went on. “You’ve killed vampires. Are you worried that you sent them to hell?”
