A Dozen Black Roses (28 page)

"What am I to do?" he asked the Virgin Mary. "What is it that God wants of me? I have witnessed His judgment—but I am confused. Am I to help the creature or destroy her? How am I to know His will? Holy Mary, Mother of God, Bride of Heaven—give me a sign! Weep tears, sweat blood—do something!

Anything!"

The plaster icon smiled placidly down at him, as she had every day for the last twelve years, and said nothing, as she had every day for the last twelve years.

***

He started at the sound of the stranger's voice, his cramped muscles shrieking from the sudden motion.

Disoriented, he glanced up at the stained-glass windows—it was already dusk. He must have fallen asleep while praying. He turned his head toward his guest, trying not to grimace in pain. The muscles in his neck and shoulders were so stiff he could literally hear them groan and crack.

The stranger was standing at the end of the nearest upright pew, leaning against it uncertainly. Although she was pale to begin with, something told him she looked unhealthy even for the undead.

"Are you okay, father?"

"I'm—fine. Forgive me. I was lost in prayer. But you shouldn't be walking about like that!"

"I couldn't agree with you more," she grunted, easing herself into the pew. "But I hate being cooped up.

Makes me feel—helpless."

Father Eamon got to his feet, wincing as the blood rushed back to his legs. It felt as if his extremities were being stabbed by hundreds of imps armed with pins. "I saw your friend. He said not to worry. He'll take care of it."

"Cloudy's an okay guy. I just hope he doesn't get nabbed by Esher's goons. The bastard knows I wasn't in the Black Lodge by now. If I had been, Sinjon would have tossed me out after the first grenade went off.

Esher's not the kind to forgive and forget. I killed his childe and stole his bride. He wants me worse than he did Sinjon."

"How can you know all this?"

"Let's say I have a gut feeling," she said with a dry laugh, thumping her chest with her fist. "I can feel his blood calling to me—it's taking what little strength I have left not to get up and walk back to his stronghold."

"You must go lie back down—you look like Death warmed over."

She laughed and pushed the bridge of her sunglasses back into place with her forefinger. It was a surprisingly human gesture. "You really know how to flatter a girl, Father. No, I think I'll stay here for awhile, if it's all right with you." She glanced around, taking in the cracked stained glass, the toppled pews and the layers of dust. "Nice place you got. How long you been here?"

"Twelve years."

She nodded to herself, as if this answered something. "Uh, don't take this wrong, Father—but are you a real priest?"

Eamon surprised himself by chuckling. "I'm not offended—I can certainly understand why you'd ask that. But, yes, I am a real priest. I graduated from the seminary in 1959." He glanced up at the cross, then back down at her. "I hope you don't mind me asking you something personal—but were you religious before you, um, before you were—"

"Before I became what I am?" She looked thoughtful for a long moment, then shook her head. "I guess not. I mean, her family was as religious as your average Americans—which is to say, not very."

"'Her'? They weren't your family?"

"It's a complicated story, father. You see, back in 1969, a seventeen-year-old girl was seduced and raped by a vampire named Morgan. When he was finished with her, he threw her from a moving car into a London street. She was found and taken to a hospital, where instead of dying—she lapsed into a coma.

When she awoke nine months later, it was to find herself—changed. She was no longer human, but because she had never really died, neither was she one of the undead. She discovered she was a thing unto herself: she could walk in the daylight; she could feed off of and control the negative emotions of the humans around her. But none of these wondrous powers made her happy. You see, she didn't like being a monster. She fought hard to keep from succumbing to the cruelty and bloodlust inside her. She even tried

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) to create for herself a family, of sorts. But time and again she failed. So she dedicated her existence to hunting down the vampire who had stolen her humanity and making him pay for what he'd done to her."

"And—and did she find this man?"

"Oh, she found him all right." Her laugh was dry as dead leaves. "And she discovered her favorite food—was the blood of vampires."

"How does the story end?"

The stranger shrugged and smiled crookedly. "I don't think it does. Well, enough about me—so who's this Saint Everhild?"

"I doubt he exists anymore. He was removed from the Book of Saints sometime during the Second World War. He was an early English martyr who was chopped to bits and fed to a pack of wild boars by the Vikings. Supposedly the boars then tossed themselves en masse off a cliff into the North Sea. He was the patron saint of swineherds, I believe. Perhaps they chose St. Everhild because of the similarity between his martyrdom and Jesus exorcising the demon called Legion. "

"What's the history behind this place? Why did the Church build in Kindred territory?"

"I don't know. The history behind the parish is shrouded in mystery. There's no documentation concerning the construction and consecration of St. Everhild anywhere, yet rumors and myths concerning its existence have been floating around for over a hundred years. Some said it was raised as a challenge to the dark powers. It had a reputation for being a parish where the priests and nuns assigned to it routinely disappeared. Some said the Holy See sent its more troublesome, heretical clerics here deliberately. All I know is that it was abandoned sometime during the Depression."

"So what are you doing here?"

Father Eamon blinked and rubbed his mouth nervously. He really wanted a drink right then. He glanced over to the statue of the Virgin, then back at the stranger. With a deep groan, he lowered himself in the pew beside her.

"It's a long story."

"I've got time."

He stared into the stranger's mirrored gaze and saw the twinned reflection of what he'd become looking back out at him. Perhaps it was time, after all these years, to finally tell the tale.

"I never really knew my parents. My mother was very young when she succumbed to rheumatic fever. I was three months old when she died. My father was killed in a traffic accident when I was four years old.

I was sent to live with family. My aunt and uncle were good enough people, I suppose— but they were elderly and childless. They did not know what to make of me, or what to do with me, except put me to work on their farm.

"They did not beat me or abuse me—at least no more than was considered normal for those days. But they were not emotional people—either with me or one another. As I said, they treated me well, but I was never anything but a distant relative. As I grew older, I proved to be a good student. I was bright and studied hard. But it was difficult for me to make friends. My aunt and uncle did not dance. They did not listen to music. They did not entertain. But they did go to Mass. It was there I met Father Raymond.

"Father Raymond looked at me and saw a lonely, fatherless boy. So he decided to take me under his wing. That is, after all, a parish priest's role—to be father to all children. It was Father Raymond who encouraged my scholastic ability—Father Raymond who arranged a scholarship for me to Loyola University. It was Father Raymond who saw to it that I got into the seminary. He showed me nothing but kindness and support, and I decided he was the kind of priest I wanted to become.

"As I mentioned, I graduated from the seminary in 1959. I was twenty-four and full of idealism and naive energy. Within a year America elected its first Catholic president and I was certain great things were in the offing. I wanted to help orphaned children find themselves, much as Father Raymond had helped me. My first few years in the priesthood were spent teaching in various parochial schools for the underprivileged. Then, in 1969, I was sent to the St. Ivo Orphanage for Boys.

"St. Ivo's was not a particularly well-funded institution, and the headmaster's duties were largely taken up with fundraising, so the priests and brothers who oversaw the welfare of the children weren't overly supervised. At first I did not think much of it—then I came to notice one of the other priests, a Brother Marten. It was little things, at first—how his hands seemed to linger when he touched some of the younger boys, for instance. There was something decidedly unwholesome about his interest in making sure none of the boys' underwear bore signs of "self-pollution." I had my suspicions, but I was unsure. I

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) dared not mention them to the headmaster, for fear of causing a scandal that would damage St. Ivo's precarious economic security.

"Then one of Brother Marten's favorites, a frail little six-year-old with the face of an angel, was claimed by a long-lost relative. Apparently the boy said something to his family that aroused their suspicions, and they notified the police. The headmaster went to the bishop, who managed to smooth things over with both the boy's guardians and the police. Brother Marten was removed from St. Ivo's and, so I believed, the priesthood. That was 1971.

"I remained at St. Ivo's four more years, then I was transferred to St. Levan's Orphanage. You can imagine my shock and dismay when I arrived and found Brother Marten there. I was incensed! I went to the headmaster and told him what I knew of Brother Marten's proclivities, but he refused to take me seriously and accused me of being a troublemaker. I was forced to work alongside Brother Marten for over a year. I tried my best to keep an eye on the children and see that no harm came to them—but in the end I failed. There was a boy. He was no more then four. His name was Christopher."

Father Eamon stopped and took a deep, shuddering breath and turned his face to the rafters. His eyes blinked rapidly for a few seconds as he struggled to regain his voice.

"Christopher was a beautiful child. Absolutely beautiful. He had the biggest, softest eyes—like those of a fawn. It broke your heart just to look at him. He was the kind of child I had dedicated my life to stewarding. I—"

Father Eamon's voice wavered and began to crack. The memories were too much. Even after all these years, the pain was still sharp, the wound still fresh. He closed his eyes, but the image was still there, only now there was no whiskey to dull the edge and make it go away. He wiped the tears from his face with a shaky hand.

"I found him in the coat closet. His underpants were shoved so far down his throat he'd choked on them.

I knew who did it. And knowing drove me mad with rage. I went looking for Marten. I found him in the basement, getting ready to burn his own undergarments in the furnace. There were blood and other things on them. I accused him of raping and murdering poor, sweet Christopher. The bastard attacked me with a coal shovel. He might have been a terror to small boys, but he was no match for a grown man. I ended up wresting the shovel from him—" Father Eamon's eyes narrowed and his face became rigid, like a man reliving the pain of unanesthetized surgery. "And for a brief moment I simply stood there, knowing that this would get swept under the carpet, just like it had at St. Ivo's. I knew Brother Marten would never see the inside of a prison. At best he would be defrocked. At worst they would simply ship him to a new parish, to start afresh. Either way children were in danger. Children like Christopher. Poor, innocent Christopher.

"I beat Brother Marten's brains in with the shovel.

"The police called it self-defense. The archdiocese absolved me of any crime as well. If anything, they needed a 'heroic priest' to counterbalance the murderous pedophile. I told myself that what I did was just—that I was acting as an instrument of the Lord's wrath. But it was a lie. As I stood there over Marten, listening to him bleat and beg for mercy, I felt nothing but hate! A priest is supposed to hate the sin but love the sinner, but I hated him! I hated him for what he'd done to that poor child! I hated myself for failing to be there when Christopher needed me! There was nothing of God in me when I brought that shovel down on his head, and I knew it. I began drinking shortly after that. I suffered a nervous breakdown in 1982. The archdiocese sent me to a sanitarium. After six weeks I went AWOL. I claimed the small inheritance left after my aunt and uncle passed away, and I've been living on that ever since.

"I'd heard the stories about 'the parish of the damned' while I was a student at the seminary. It took me a year of wandering to find it—but I finally located Deadtown. People have a funny way of finding this place after all other avenues of life have been closed to them. I have dwelt here for a dozen years, drinking myself into oblivion every night and praying for a sign from God that I have been forgiven. But I pray in vain—because I am not truly sorry for my trespasses. I cannot feel true regret for what I did. My soul is stained with the blood of another. But it is not Brother Marten's. "

"You can't forgive yourself because of the boy."

"I failed him. I promised that no harm would come to him—and I lied. There is not a night that has gone by in the last twenty years that I haven't closed my eyes and seen him lying there, cold and dead.

Sometimes I wake up, choking as he must have choked in those last horrid moments."

"Father—it wasn't your fault. You're torturing yourself for nothing."

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"That's what the doctors said at the sanitarium. But they were wrong. You're wrong. Everything that made me a priest died that day. I'm one of the damned, now. That's why I sought Deadtown out. I belong here." He pushed himself out of the pew, trying his best to control his tremors. "I—I have to get some air.