Page 50 of Of Faith and Fangs

The implication was clear. The real threat was directed at me. I nodded once, then slipped through the door into the corridor beyond.

As I climbed the stone steps back toward the surface, toward the night sky and the freedom it represented, my mind churned with impossible choices. To defy Silas meant risking everything—not just my own existence, but potentially the lives of the women who were now bound to me through blood.

I couldn’t see a way I’d make it to mass. Surely, Father O’Malley would understand if I had to delay my first communion a single night. Then again, I didn’t want to complete the mission at all. Would committing such murder in obedience to Silas undo all the progress I’d made already? Would it lead me back into a state of mortal sin?

Tomorrow night loomed before me, a crossroads with no clear path forward. The hunger within me twisted with anxiety. I pushed it down, forced it back into its cage. I would not let it rule me. Not now.

“Guide me,” I whispered to the God who I’d just started to believe might hear me again. “Show me the way.”

But only silence answered, and the hunger that waited, patient as death itself, for tomorrow night to come.

Chapter 22

The basement steps creaked beneath my feet as I descended into darkness. Each wooden plank protested my weight with the shrill complaint of ancient timber, announcing my arrival to those waiting below. The damp air pressed against my skin like a cold, wet shroud, carrying the metallic scent of old blood and the musty breath of forgotten places. I had come seeking monsters, only to find broken reflections of myself.

A single lantern guttered in the corner, throwing wild shadows across stone walls slick with condensation. Its weak light barely penetrated the gloom, but my eyes—changed as they were—needed little illumination. The basement of the Order’s hideout stretched before me like a tomb, its low ceiling and narrow confines a prison for those who had once been human, who’d been free.

They huddled together in silence, these women I had hunted. These women I had believed dead by my hand. Their faces turned toward me as one, eyes gleaming with an unnatural light that mirrored my own. The witches who weren’t witches. The innocent I had condemned. Now Nightwalkers like me.

“You,” hissed the older woman, her gray hair hanging limp around hollow cheeks. “Come to gloat over what you’ve made of us?”

I stepped forward, keeping my spine straight the way Daddy taught me when facing sin. “I’ve come to lead you.”

Bitter laughter rippled through the small cluster of women.

“Lead us?” The younger one with tired eyes scoffed. Her name escaped me—I had known her only as the fire-worker, the one who could coax flames from nothing but breath and will. “You led us to slaughter once already.”

“I need to know your names.” I held my voice steady despite the guilt that threaded through my chest. “All of you. Your real names.”

Silence fell heavy as a burial shroud. The women exchanged glances, a silent communication passing between them. I recognized the bond of shared suffering—they had been reborn in blood and darkness together, while I had suffered my transformation alone.

“Why should we tell you anything?” asked the woman from the forest. “You could have resisted Silas, instead you did his bidding. You didn’t care about our names then.”

“I believed what I was told. I thought—“ I swallowed hard. “Silas told me I was doing God’s work. Deep down, I knew it was wrong, but you have to understand. I’d lost everyone. It’s not an excuse for what I did, but I didn’t choose to become like this, either.”

“And now?” The grandmother’s voice cut sharp as a filleting knife.

“My name is Alice,” I insisted. “And I need yours. We’re bound now. Whether we want to be is irrelevant. The Order has made sure of that.”

The hunger pangs struck. A sharp reminder of my fast. Three days without blood left me weakened—at first it made everything dull, but somehow now, it strangely heightened my senses. The others wouldn’t know this feeling yet—they were being kept fed, docile.

“Martha,” said the grandmother finally, her chin lifting in defiance. “I was Martha Holloway before your Order took everything from me. I was trying to save my granddaughter from the consumption with remedies my mother taught me.”

I nodded, committing her name to memory. “Martha,” I repeated.

“Ruth Simmons,” said the tired-eyed woman, the fire-worker. “Not that it matters anymore.”

“Sarah,” whispered the forest woman. “Just Sarah. They took my family name when they took me from my home.”

The healer with the herbs remained silent, her eyes fixed on me with undisguised loathing.

“And you?” I pressed gently.

“Elizabeth Porter,” she said after a long moment. “Though I doubt that matters to the Lord anymore, now that I’m damned.”

“We aren’t damned,” I said automatically. “We didn’t choose to be what we are. We can choose what to do with what we’ve become.”

“Listen to her,” sneered Ruth, the fire-worker. “Still spouting their gospel. Tell me, Alice. If we’re so redeemable, why do they keep us chained here like animals?”

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