“I don’t know how to do this,” I admitted. “There’s so much...”
“Start with what weighs on you most heavily,” Father O’Malley suggested. “The sin or regret that comes to mind first when you lie awake at dawn.”
Without hesitation, a name rose to my lips. “Mercy Brown.”
“Tell me about her,” Father O’Malley said quietly.
I took an unnecessary breath, steadying myself. “She turned me into this. A vampire. She was dying of consumption at the sanatorium. Her father asked me to pray with her, to save her soul before she passed.” The memory was vivid—Mercy’s fevered eyes watching me as I read scripture by her bedside. “I failed. Or maybe she failed. I don’t know anymore.”
I paused, gathering my thoughts. “Someone showed up, a vampire, and turned her into one. I think it was arranged as a way of saving her life, since she was dying. After that, well, I tried to stop her. I was trying to help. The people from the Order said I’d be safe, that my faith protected me from her. But it didn’t work.”
“She bit you.”
I nodded. “Drank my blood. When I woke, I was... this.” I gestured at myself, though Father O’Malley couldn’t see the motion through the screen. “I hate her for what she made me,” I continued, my voice cracking. “But I can’t stop thinking that if our positions were reversed, I might have done the same. I hate her, but I feel bad for her. Maybe it’s that I hate myself more for not being able to save her until—“
“Until what?” the priest asked.
“Until it was too late.”
“What else bothers you, Alice?”
Now that the big one was out of the way, the rest flowed rapidly like a river after three days of rain. The Order finding me, me waking strapped down with Silas looming over me. Silas training me, using me to hunt “witches” who may have been nothing of the sort. The blood I’d drunk, the lives I’d taken, the growing suspicion that I’d been manipulated into becoming the very monster I feared.
When I finally fell silent, the confessional seemed to hold my words, cradling them in the darkness like precious, terrible things finally given shape.
“Your anger toward Mercy is understandable,” Father O’Malley said after a long moment. “She violated you in the most fundamental way, changing your very nature without consent.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting the harm done to you,” he continued. “It means refusing to let that harm define your future. It means releasing the power that person holds over you—the power to make you bitter, to make you become like them.”
I considered this, turning it over in my mind. “Forgiveness is a kind of freedom, then?”
“Exactly so,” Father O’Malley agreed. “Not for her sake, but for yours. And forgiveness is a process, not an event. It happens gradually, in layers, as you continue to choose it day by day—or in your case, night by night.”
“And the others?” I asked. “The women I killed for the Order? How do I seek forgiveness for that?”
“By living differently now,” he said simply. “By using whatever time God grants you—be it hours, days, years or centuries—to bring healing rather than harm. True repentance isn’t just feeling sorry; it’s changing direction.”
He guided me through an act of contrition—a prayer asking for forgiveness—speaking the words for me when they burned too much for me to say myself. Then he pronounced words of absolution, his voice taking on a formal cadence that seemed to resonate in the small space.
“God, the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins; through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
The words seemed to settle over me like a mantle. Not miraculous transformation—I still felt the hunger, still knew what I was—but something had shifted, a weight lifted that I hadn’t realized I’d been carrying.
And it didn’t hurt. Not even a little. It was like I was new again. I was still… well… a vampire. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t human, too. It was like God’s image was restored in me. Like I had another chance.
“Thank you, Father,” I said quietly.
“Your penance,” he continued, “is to perform an act of kindness each night for the next week. Something small, something that brings light rather than darkness into the world.”
I nodded, though he couldn’t see me. “I will. But is my forgiveness contingent on that? Like how do I know if I’ve done enough?”
The priest billowed a hearty laugh. “The absolution was already spoken, Alice. There’s more to sin than your personal guilt. Sin has a double-effect. It also wounds your soul. This penance isn’t about earning forgiveness. Think of it as a prescription, a way to heal in your soul. To live out your forgiveness in a meaningful way.”
When I emerged from the confessional, Father O’Malley followed a moment later. He moved to the font of holy water near the church entrance and beckoned me over.
“Try it again,” he suggested.