Father O’Malley knelt next to me, offering an oddly reassuring presence even though he was the one responsible for my present distress. “The mass has meaning beyond the words,” he whispered. “Each gesture, each response—they connect us to two thousand years of faith, to believers who came before and those who will come after. In fact, we believe they’re here with us even now. Since Jesus rose from the dead, and we believers belong to the body of Christ, death doesn’t divide us, either.”
I watched as the priest at the altar raised a white disk above his head. “Hoc est enim Corpus meum,” he intoned.
The pain that shot through me then was unlike anything I’d experienced before—even my transformation had not hurt like this. It felt as if every cell in my body were being torn apart and reassembled. My vision blurred, darkened at the edges. I clutched the pew in front of me, my fingers digging into the wood hard enough to leave marks.
“This is my body,” Father O’Malley translated beside me. “Given for you.”
The priest now raised a chalice. “Hic est enim calix Sanguinis mei...”
Another wave of agony crashed over me. Blood. He was speaking of blood, and something in me—the monster, the vampire—recoiled in recognition and terror. This wasn’t just wine being transformed in symbol; something real was happening, something my undead nature recognized and feared.
“This is the chalice of my Blood,” O’Malley continued, “the Blood of the new and eternal covenant, which will be poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me.”
I couldn’t bear it any longer. With a strangled sound that might have been a sob, I stumbled to my feet and lurched toward the door, barely aware of Father O’Malley’s concerned gaze following me. I burst outside, gasping unnecessarily for air, and collapsed onto the church steps.
The pain subsided almost immediately, leaving me trembling with reaction and something else—something I couldn’t immediately identify. I sat there, staring up at the star-filled January sky, trying to make sense of what I’d just experienced.
It hadn’t felt like an attack. Not exactly. The pain had been real, excruciating even, but it wasn’t the same as the pain I’d felt when Silas had pressed a silver crucifix against my skin as “training.” That had been purely destructive, meant to weaken and control. This had felt... different. Cleansing, somehow. Like lancing an infected wound—agony in service of healing.
I touched my palm where the holy water had burned me. The welt remained, but the skin around it felt strangely alive—more sensitive, more present than the rest of my cold flesh. I wondered if the mark on my forehead looked the same.
The church door opened behind me. Father O’Malley emerged, leaning heavily on his cane. Without a word, he sat beside me on the step, mindful of the distance between us.
“How do you feel?” he asked after a long silence.
“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “It hurt. More than I expected.”
He nodded. “Yet you endured longer than most would on their first visit.”
“Most?” I turned to look at him. “You’ve done this before? Invited vampires to mass?”
A small smile touched his lips. “As I told you yesterday, you’re not the first of your kind I’ve encountered. Why else would I even offer a midnight mass?”
I stared at him with new curiosity. “And the others? What happened to them?”
“Some couldn’t bear it and never returned. Others found the strength to continue, to push through the pain.” He looked toward the cemetery beside the church. “A few found peace, of a sort.”
“Death, you mean.”
“Not always.” His eyes, when they turned back to me, held a depth of understanding that made me want to weep. “Alice, what you experienced in there—the pain, the rejection—it’s not punishment. It’s recognition.”
“Recognition?”
“Your body—your transformed nature—recognizes the divine presence and reacts to it. Like iron glowing red in fire, pain is merely the visible sign of a deeper transformation taking place.”
I considered this, turning the idea over in my mind. “In Daddy’s church—in my church—they taught us that suffering was punishment for sin.”
“And do you believe that still?”
The question caught me off guard. Did I? After everything I’d seen, everything I’d done?
“I don’t know what I believe anymore,” I admitted. “Except that I don’t want to be a monster. I don’t want to kill for Silas or the Order. I don’t want to kill at all.”
Father O’Malley nodded slowly. “That’s a beginning.” He rose stiffly, using his cane for support. “Will you return tomorrow night?”
I looked back at the church, remembering the agony of the consecration, the feeling that my very being was being unmade. Could I endure that again? Did I want to?
“Yes,” I heard myself say. “I’ll return.”