Page 37 of Of Faith and Fangs

His lips quirked in what might have been a smile. “An interesting proposition, but no. I’m offering understanding. Perhaps even hope.”

“Hope?” I laughed bitterly. “For this?” I gestured at myself. “There is no hope for the damned, Father. Your church teaches that as clearly as mine does.”

“Does it?” he asked mildly. “I’m not sure you’ve studied our teachings as thoroughly as you believe.”

I remembered Daddy’s sermons about Catholics—how they worshipped statues, how they believed their priests could forgive sins, how they claimed to drink the actual blood of Christ in their blasphemous communion. Blood-drinkers, he’d called them. The irony struck me again, sharper this time.

“I know enough,” I said. “Enough to know that God has abandoned me. That I’m beyond salvation.”

Father O’Malley leaned heavily on his cane, studying me with those penetrating eyes. “No one is beyond salvation, Alice. Not even those who walk by night.”

The certainty in his voice caught me off guard. “You seem remarkably calm for someone confronting a vampire, Father.”

“You’re not the first I’ve encountered,” he said simply.

This revelation stunned me into momentary silence. The Order had led me to believe vampires were rare, isolated creatures—aberrations to be hunted down and destroyed. The thought that this aging priest might have knowingly spoken with others like me was disorienting.

“And you’re still alive?” I asked finally.

He smiled, a genuine expression that softened his weathered features. “Clearly. Perhaps because I offered understanding rather than condemnation.”

“Understanding won’t quench my thirst for blood.”

“No,” he agreed. “But it might help you find a way to live with it that doesn’t require becoming a monster.”

The words struck deep. Wasn’t that exactly what I’d been searching for? A way to exist without surrendering completely to the darkness within me? Without being used as a weapon by Silas and the Order?

“How?” The question escaped before I could stop it, betraying my desperation.

Father O’Malley glanced toward the eastern horizon, where the sky remained dark but would eventually lighten. “That’s a longer conversation than we have time for tonight. But if you’re truly interested, come to St. Mary’s tomorrow night. Late mass, midnight. The sacraments might offer you a path toward healing, a form of redemption.”

I scoffed, falling back on Daddy’s teachings like a shield. “Sacraments? Wafers and wine that you pretend is actually flesh and blood? That’s your solution?”

“I don’t expect you to believe it now, given your background,” he observed. “But given how you’ve changed, but appear very similar to what you were before, is it that hard to believe such a change might occur in our masses?”

His words left me speechless.

“I should warn you,” he continued, “it won’t be painless. Holy ground will burn you. Prayers will sound like knives in your ears. The consecration itself may cause you more agony than you can bear.” He paused, his eyes gentle but unflinching. “But pain can be purifying. Pain can remind us we’re still human.”

I burst out laughing. “Still human?”

“Is it that absurd?” the priest asked. “Do you not still have the remnants of a conscience? Have you considered even a moment that the reason it hurts to pray, to enter a church, to even say the name of the Lord, is because it’s your cross, the path you must take to become new with Him?”

The echo of Daddy’s words from long ago rang in my memory: Pain kept me present. Pain kept me faithful.

“Why would you help me?” I asked, suspicion warring with desperate hope. “Why not just drive a stake through my heart and be done with it?”

“Because that’s not my calling,” he said simply. “My calling is to shepherd souls toward God, not to judge which souls are worthy of the journey.” He turned to go, then paused. “The choice is yours, Alice Bladewell. Midnight tomorrow. St. Mary’s.”

He walked away, his cane tapping a steady rhythm against the cobblestones. I watched until he disappeared around a corner, my mind racing with conflicting emotions. Every instinct warned me this could be a trap. Yet something deeper than instinct—something that might once have been called faith—whispered that Father O’Malley had offered me the first genuine chance at redemption since my transformation.

The eastern sky remained dark, but I knew dawn approached. I needed shelter before the sun rose. As I turned toward the abandoned root cellar at the edge of town where I’d been hiding, I realized I’d already made my decision.

Tomorrow night, I would go to St. Mary’s. Not because I believed Catholic rituals could save me, but because after months of darkness, even false hope was better than none at all.

And if it was a trap? Well, perhaps death would be a mercy.

Chapter 17

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