"I think you do. I think you're in the market for a little transcendence yourself, just like everyone else. Am I right?"
Joe's scrutiny was making her uncomfortable.
"Just because I don't believe doesn't mean I don't want to. Don't you think I'd love to feel that a little spark of me will continue on into eternity after this body is gone? But I can't get past the idea that it's only wishful thinking, something we, as a sentient species, have yearned for so deeply and for so long that we've surrounded that need with all manner of myths to convince ourselves that it's real."
Joe picked up the knife Lacey had used to cut her thumb, and idly ran his finger along the edge.
"All myths have a spark of truth at their core. Look at it this way: doesn't the existence of transcendent Evil indicate that there must be a counterbalancing transcendent Good?"
"You mean the undead? I'll grant you they're evil, but they hardly strike me as transcendent."
"No?" He was staring at his finger. "I just cut myself. Take a look."
He laid his hand, palm up, on the table. His palm hadn't been exposed to the sun so it was unscarred. Lacey saw a deep slice in the pad of his index finger, but no blood.
"I don't seem to have any blood."
Lacey gasped as he jabbed the point of the blade into the center of his palm.
"Father Joe!" Carol cried.
"Uh-uh," he said, removing the knife and waving it at her. "Just Joe, remember? I'm not a priest anymore."
"Doesn't it hurt?" Lacey said.
"Not really. I feel it; it's not comfortable, but I can't call it pain." He held up his hand. "Still no blood. And yet..." He placed the hand over his heart. "My heart is beating. Very slowly, but beating. Why? If there's no blood to pump, why have a beating heart?" He leaned back and shook his head. "Will I ever understand this?"
"You have a better chance than anyone else," Lacey said. "Obviously something else is powering your cells, something working outside the laws of nature."
"Which would make it supernatural. And since there's no question that it's evil..."
"Are we back to that again?"
Carole cleared her throat. "I hate to drag this conversation back to current reality, but there is something very important we need to discuss."
Lacey looked at her and noticed that she seemed upset. Her hands were locked together before her on the table.
"What is it, Carole?"
She stared at her hands. "Blood."
Lacey heard Joe groan. She glanced over and saw him lower his ruined face into his hands.
"What blood?" Lacey said.
Carole lifted her eyes. "The blood he needs to survive."
"Oh, that." Lacey shrugged. "He can have some of mine whenever—"
Joe slammed his hands on the table. "No!"
"Why the hell not? You had—what?—three or four drops and that was all you needed. Big deal."
"The amount is not the point! A drop, a gallon, what difference does it make? It's all the same! I'm acting like one of them—becoming a bloodsucking parasite!"
"They take it by force. I'm giving this to you. You don't see the difference? It's my blood and I have a right to do whatever I want with it. If I were giving a pint at a time to the Red Cross to save lives you'd say what a fine and noble thing to do. But giving a few drops to my own uncle—a blood relative, don't you know—is wrong?"
"Your giving isn't the issue. My taking—that's the problem."
"What problem? Since I'm volunteering, there's no ethical problem. So if it's not ethics, what is it? Esthetics?"
He stared at her. "What are you? A Jesuit?"
"I'm your niece and I care about you and I want to get the sons of bitches who did this to you. With you as you are—part undead, part human—we might have a chance to do real damage. But if you're going to let a little squea-mishness get in the way—"
"Lacey!" Carole said, giving her a warning look.
Joe had closed his eyes and was shaking his head. "You have no idea what it's like... to have loathed these vermin and then be turned into one. To spend every minute of the rest of your existence knowing you are a lesser being than you wish to be, that everything you were has been erased and everything you hoped for or aspired to will be denied you." He opened his eyes and glared at her. "You ... don't... know .. . what... it's ... like."
Lacey's heart went out to her uncle. Yes, she could imagine maybe only a tiny fraction of what he was suffering, but she couldn't let him surrender. He had to fight back. She had a feeling that what they decided here tonight could be of momentous importance, and it all hinged on him. That was why she had to push him.
"I don't pretend to. But we can't turn back the clock. You've been dealt a lousy hand, Unk—an unimaginably lousy hand—but right now it's the only one you've got. And it may hold some hidden possibilities that we'll never be able to use if you fold and leave the game. I know it seems easy for me to sit here on this side of the table say it, but it's a simple truth: you have to accept what's happened and move on. Take it and turn it back on them. Use it to make them pay. Make them wish they'd never heard of Father Joe Cahill. Make them curse the day they ever messed with you. If all it takes is a few drops a day of my blood—which I'm more than willing to donate to the cause—then where's the downside? They tried to make you like them but something went wrong. They failed. You're not like them—you know it and Carole knows it and I know it—and a few drops of blood is not going to change that."
Lacey leaned back, winded. She glanced at Carole who gave a small nod, just one.
Joe seemed lost in thought. Finally he shook himself and said, "We'll see. That's all I can say now .. . we'll see." He looked out at the growing light filtering through the salt-stained picture window. "Let put this aside and go out and watch the sunrise."
JOE . . .
Lacey's words tumbled back and forth through Joe's brain as he followed the two women down to the churning water.
Accept it and move on . . .
Easy for her to say. But that didn't mean she was wrong.
Yet... how do you accept being subhuman?
Turn it against them and make them pay . . .
That he could understand. Take this aching emptiness inside and fill the void with rage, pack it in like gunpowder in a cartridge, then take aim at those responsible for what he'd become.
Carole had called him a weapon. That was what he would become.
He joined Carole and Lacey at the waterline and stood between them. Gently he placed a hand on each of their shoulders, Carole flinching but not pulling away, Lacey leaning against him. He realized he loved them both, but in very different ways.
He noticed Carole checking her watch as the sun hauled its red bulk above the rumpled gray hide of the Atlantic. Immediately he sensed its heat, just as he'd felt the fever of the setting rays last night.