"How do you know?"
"Oh, I know. We always recognize our get. I keep him around for entertainment. And as an extra stick to keep the serfs in line. I threaten to feed them to Devlin if they slack off on their duties. That's about all Devlin is good for now. He didn't retain enough intelligence to distinguish between friend and foe, which means he'd be attacking serfs as well as legitimate prey, so I can't even use him as a guard dog."
Franco tapped on the window and the creature burst into motion, leaping at the door with blinding speed, screaming and clawing at the glass. Joe almost tripped backpedaling away.
"Look at me, priest," Franco said. "Look at me and listen. Remember when you said you'd never be like me? Didn't you wonder why I agreed? It's because when you look at Devlin you are seeing your future. I'm going to let Devlin turn you."
Joe couldn't speak, could only shake his head and back away, thinking, no ... no ... this can't be true ... this can't happen ... to be like that thing, that creature, that monster .. . forever .. . no .. .
"Ah!" Franco said with a grin. "That's what I've been waiting for. That look of doomed horror, the realization that your darkest nightmare is about to come true. Where is your arrogance now, priest?"
"No," Joe whispered as he found his voice. "God, no, please!"
"That's right. Pray to your god. Beg him like so many before you. But He's not going to help you. In less than two weeks you'll be just like Devlin, only a little less intelligent, a little more bestial. Won't that be an inspiration to your parishioners? But before you're too far gone, you'll have a talk with the charming undead woman I've placed in charge of your area. You'll fill Olivia in on all the details of your little vigilante operation, and then you'll be sent back to prey upon your parishioners." I won t!
"Oh, but you will. And you'll take the most trusting, the most devoted first, because they'll be the easiest. Isn't this a coup? Isn't this so much better than killing you? If you simply died, you'd be a martyr, a rallying point. But this way, you're still around, and you've turned against them. You are feeding on them! Imagine how they'll feel. If you're lucky you won't survive long. I'm suspecting they'll gather together and stake you—for your own good. And theirs, of course. And then where will that leave them besides sick at heart and demoralized? Where will they be after killing their beloved Father Joe? Why, they'll go back to where they were before you came. Hiding, waiting for the inevitable."
"No! What's been started is bigger than one man! They know now they can fight you, and they'll keep on fighting you!"
Franco put his hand on the door handle. "Well, we'll just have to see about that, won't we."
He pushed the lever down and shoved the door inward. "Bon appetit, Devlin."
Joe turned and ran, sprinting down the hall, looking for an unlocked door. He heard a howl behind him as he tried the first one he came to—locked. Without looking back he leaped across the hall to the next. The knob turned, the door swung inward—a chance!—and then he was struck from behind with unimaginable force. It drove him through the doorway and into the room where he went down under a growling fury made flesh. He tried to fight back but the savagery of the claws and fangs tearing at his flesh, ripping at his throat overcame him. He felt his skin tear, felt hot fluid gush over his chin and chest, heard an awful guzzling, lapping noise as something fed off him. He tried to rise, to throw it off but he had no strength. He felt his mind growing cold, the world growing distant, life becoming a dream, a receding memory. Joe saw one last flash of light, intolerably bright and then all was darkness and nothingness . . .
- 7 -
CAROLE . . .
Unable to sleep, Carole sat at the window, watching the night, waiting for the dawn that was still hours away. Returning to the convent, to this room, her room, the room where she'd had to kill Bernadette . .. sleep was unthinkable. Even if it weren't, her bed was occupied.
Lacey, poor thing, had collapsed when she'd heard that Father Joe was missing. A couple of the male parishioners had helped carry her here—Carole had emptied her wagon and carried her duffel and her personal items herself, afraid to let anyone else near them.
They'd placed her on Carole's bed. What an ordeal Lacey had suffered tonight. Carole had gleaned a few details from her jumbled jabber on the way to the church and had shut her ears to the rest. And then to learn that her uncle had disappeared while searching for her. It was more than anyone should have to bear.
When was it going to end?
She waited, expecting to hear Bernadette's voice shout an answer, but the voice was silent. Carole hadn't heard from it since she'd reentered the convent.
She looked at Lacey, curled into a fetal position under the blanket. Father Joe's niece. She hadn't quite believed her, but the way she'd been greeted by the parishioners had left little doubt. Some of them had even recognized Carole. She'd been uncomfortable with their joy at knowing she was still alive, especially uncomfortable with their earnest questions about how she had managed to survive and how she'd been spending her time. She couldn't tell them, couldn't tell anyone.
A little while ago Carole had left Lacey and made a quick trip back to the church to see if Father Joe had been found. He hadn't. But one of the parties searching for him had returned with his large silver cross. He'd had it with him when he'd gone out earlier this evening. They'd found it on the roof of a nearby office building.
Carole had asked if she might take the cross back to Lacey and let her keep it until her uncle returned. Because Father Joe would return. He was too good, too strong, too faithful a man of God to fall victim to the undead. He— only a small part of her believed that. She'd seen too much . . . too much. . . . Yet she forced herself to hope. She placed the cross on the windowsill, as a guardian, as a beacon, calling him home.
She closed her eyes and listened. Silence. The convent was virtually empty. The rooms were available to the parishioners but most of them felt safer in the church—in its basement, in the choir loft, anywhere so long as they were within those walls. Carole could understand that from their perspective, but for her the convent was home. Though she felt orphaned now, it would always be home.
She turned back to the window and gripped the upright of his cross, thinking, Come back, Father Joe. We need you. I need you. We—
What was that? By the rectory. .. something taking to the air from the roof. . . something large . . . man-size . . .
Terror gripped Carole's heart in an icy, mailed fist. A vampire, one of the winged kind, flying away from the rectory ...
Somehow she knew in that instant that they'd done something terrible to Father Joe.
"Oh, no!" she whispered. "No! Not him!"
She grabbed the silver cross, pulled a flashlight from her duffel, and ran for the hall. She hurried down the stairs and out into the night. Holding the cross before her as a shield, she ran across the little graveyard, trampling the fresh-turned earth of graves that hadn't been there before, and arrived at the rectory.
A small building, holding only three bedrooms and two offices, it stood dark and empty. This was priest territory and would be the last place the parishioners would think to occupy.
Carole turned the knob and the door swung open. She flicked on her flash and directed the beam up and down and around before stepping inside.
"Father Joe?" she called, knowing that if her worst fears were true he wouldn't be able to answer. "Father Joe, are you here?"
No response. No sound except for the crickets cheeping in the lawn behind her. She moved through the rectory, checking the two downstairs offices first, then the upstairs bedrooms. Empty, just as she'd expected.
Only one place left: the basement.
Knowing what she was almost certain to find, Carole feared to go there. But she had to. Too much depended on this.
She opened the door. Light in one hand, cross in the other, she started down. No blood on the steps. That was good. Maybe it had just been a flyer looking over the church complex, doing reconnaissance for the undead or hunting for stragglers. Carole prayed that was so, but expected that prayer to go unanswered like all her others.
She reached the floor and flashed her light around. She allowed her hopes to rise when she saw nothing on her first pass. But then as she moved to the rear of the space, where old suitcases and cracked mirrors and warped bureaus were sent to die, she spotted something protruding from beneath an old mattress. A step closer and she realized what it was: a bare foot, its toes pointing ceilingward. Too big for a woman's... a man's foot.
"Please, God," she said again, whispering this time. "Please, oh, please. Let it not be him."
She pressed the cross against the foot. No flash of light, no sizzle of flesh. Whoever it was hadn't turned yet. She leaned the cross against the wall, gripped the edge of the mattress. . . and hesitated. Her mouth felt full of sand, her heart pounded in her chest like a trapped animal. She didn't want to do this. Why her? Why did it always seem to fall to her?
Taking a breath and clenching her teeth, Carole tilted the mattress back and aimed her light at the shape beneath it. She found herself staring into the glazed dead eyes of Father Joseph Cahill.
Images leaped at her like a frantic slide show— —his slack, blood-spattered face—
—the wild ruin of his throat—
—his blood-matted chest—
With a cry torn from some deep lost corner of her soul, Carole dropped to her knees beside him. Her arms took on a life of their own and, for some reason her numbed brain couldn't fathom, began pounding her fists on his chest. She heard a voice screaming incoherently. Her own.
After a while, she didn't know how long, she stilled her hands and slumped forward, letting her forehead rest on his bare shoulder, moaning, "God, dear God, why must this be?"
And for a fleeting moment, even as she spoke, she wondered how she could still believe in God, or stay true to a god who could allow this to happen to the finest man she'd ever known. This was it, this was the end of everything. Where could she go from here? She'd only hung on this long in the hope that he'd return. He had, but only for a few days before this—this!
She straightened and looked at Father Joe again, averting her eyes from his genitals. To kill him was bad enough, but to leave him like this: naked, torn, bloodied, with not a shred of dignity . . .
Well, what did she expect from vermin?