Page 40 of Of Faith and Fangs

Something like approval flickered across his weathered face. “Good. We have much to discuss—about faith, about what you are, about what you might become.”

“What I might become?” Hope—dangerous, foolish hope—stirred within me. “What do you mean?”

“All in time, Alice.” He gestured toward the eastern horizon, where the sky remained dark but would eventually lighten. “You should seek shelter before dawn. We’ll continue tomorrow.”

As I stood to leave, a strange impulse made me turn back. “Father? Thank you.”

He inclined his head slightly. “Don’t thank me yet, child. The road ahead is long and will not be easy. But perhaps, at the end of it, you’ll find what you’re seeking.”

“And what am I seeking?” I asked, genuinely curious about his assessment.

His eyes met mine, unflinching. “Not absolution, I think. Not yet. First, you seek understanding—of what you are, of why God permits such darkness in His creation.” He paused. “And beneath that, something simpler: you seek to be more than your hunger.”

His words struck with uncomfortable precision. I nodded once, then turned away, moving swiftly through the night toward my temporary shelter. The eastern sky remained dark, but somewhere beyond the horizon, dawn was coming. For the first time since my transformation, I found myself looking forward to the next nightfall—not with dread, but with something that might, with time, become hope.

Chapter 18

It felt like a double-life. Most days, Silas was gone, undoubtedly looking for supposed witches or vampires he might send me to murder. At night, the more I played the role he wanted me to, the more I was free to go to mass. It was the last thing Silas would think I was doing—which might be one reason why it felt so safe, despite how painful it was each visit.

The sacristy smelled of beeswax and old incense, a small room hidden behind the altar where priests prepared for mass and stored sacred vessels. Father O’Malley had led me here after another mass I couldn’t get through, offering me this quieter space to recover from my ordeal.

I sat on a wooden chair, my hands still trembling slightly, watching as he methodically extinguished candles and stored away vestments. Every movement seemed practiced, reverent—a ritual in itself. The walls were lined with cabinets of dark wood, worn smooth by generations of hands. A crucifix hung above a small washing basin, Christ’s carved face captured in an expression of serene suffering that made me look away. This hidden room felt like crossing into another world entirely, far removed from the Puritan simplicity I’d been raised in, where even a cross without Christ’s image had been considered suspect by some.

“The pain subsides more quickly each time,” Father O’Malley said, noticing my still-shaking hands. “Your body—or whatever animates it now—begins to recognize the difference between destruction and purification.”

“During the consecration, it feels like I’m being torn apart. I don’t get why that moment is so difficult. It’s like it’s I’m the one being sacrifices, like my body is the one being broken.”

“Yet here you are.” He smiled slightly. “Still whole, still yourself.”

Was I, though? Still myself?

Father O’Malley removed his stole—the long embroidered cloth he’d worn around his neck during mass—and kissed it before carefully folding it into a drawer. “Do you know what happened on that altar tonight? What happens during every mass?”

“Your priest said some words over bread and wine,” I replied, falling back on what Daddy had taught me. “And all of you pretended they became something else.”

If my bluntness offended him, he didn’t show it. Instead, he nodded thoughtfully. “That’s a common misunderstanding. We pretend nothing. We believe—no, we know—that the substance changes while the appearances remain the same.”

“That’s impossible,” I said automatically.

Father O’Malley’s eyebrows rose slightly. “Is it? You still appear human in most respects. Your face is the same one you’ve always known. Yet something fundamental to your nature has changed, hasn’t it? The substance of what you are transformed while the accidents—the outward appearances—remained largely the same.”

The parallel caught me off guard. I’d never considered my transformation in those terms before.

“That’s different,” I protested. “What happened to me was... unnatural.”

“Was it?” He sat across from me, his hands resting on his cane. “Or was it merely something outside your previous understanding of nature? The world contains more mysteries than we can comprehend, Alice. The line between natural and supernatural isn’t as clear as we like to believe.”

I shifted uncomfortably. “Daddy always said Catholic beliefs about communion were blasphemous. That you claimed to sacrifice Christ again and again, when scripture clearly says He died once for all.”

“Your father misunderstood our teaching,” Father O’Malley said gently. “We don’t sacrifice Christ anew—we participate in His one eternal sacrifice. Time works differently in sacred spaces.” He glanced toward the altar visible through the doorway. “When the Eucharist is consecrated, we’re not creating something new; we’re connecting with something eternal.”

The concept was difficult to grasp, yet strangely compelling. I’d experienced firsthand how different time felt since my transformation—how nights stretched endlessly, how moments of feeding compressed into blinding intensity.

I still struggled with the idea. “Jesus said to do this in remembrance of him. That’s what it’s all about. Remembering what he did.”

Father O’Malley laughed a little. “That might be how a modern lady like you at the end of the nineteenth century in America thinks about remembrance. But what we have there is a technical term. It’s connected to the Passover ritual and Exodus 13:8. When Jewish people celebrated the Passover, they were to regard themselves as participants in the original Exodus, as though they were themselves being rescued from slavery by the Lord. So likewise, when we use the word ‘remembrance,’ it’s not about nostalgia. The word Jesus used there actually means joining ourselves to his death and resurrection, the distance of time and space completely removed, so that his sacrifice is real for us, and in us.”

“So you genuinely believe that wafer becomes flesh?” I asked, unable to keep the skepticism from my voice.

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