My boy.
Just like my girl, Jade.
“He has my son.”
“He has nothing,” the man said. “He’s a head on a pike. One tormented knowing his heart beats in the chest of a good man.”
Ignoring the ring of suddenly silent vampires—beautiful dead things that toed a line they could not cross—I faced the intruder.
And knew him.
Which was not comforting.
Arms folded under my breasts, further concealing my modesty from roving eyes, I saw the face he refused to offer on display at the wedding. And I found little gratitude considering all the years I called out for help and had been ignored.
“What do you think?” He was ignoring my narrowed eyes and heaving breath. “They fear their fallen king so much they cannot even step forward to snatch up two vulnerable daywalkers.”
“You are not vulnerable.” And he should not pretend as such.
Where brown eyes had dragged over the crowd, many vampires scampered back as though burned. They came back to rest on me. And gave me no pain.
Outstretching a hand, he said, “I’m not afraid of him.”
“I am.” That was not a hand I would take.
“I know. That’s how darkness worms in. Evil feeds on fear yet is slain by love.” The answer was easy, even offered with a kind smile.
“And God is real. And the world should vibrate with forgiveness. And my children were taken from my body. And the only lover I’ve ever accepted used me as a prop to stage a show. And I am alone. And you hide your face.” My lip shook, fresh tears falling as I struggled to say, “And your teachings were false.”
“So much of what I tried to share was twisted, even by those who claimed to follow me. I said one thing, and they claimed another long after I walked away from the tomb. Believe me when I tell you that the truth is devoured. It has to claw its way out of the belly of the beast. It has to fight what it is being replaced with. And, in doing so, is altered.” He looked pained. Endlessly sad. “I had been warned.”
I knew. I had dreamed of those forty days and forty nights in the desert. “So what do we do?”
“I had been warned,” he clarified. “But that didn’t mean I was wrong to disagree. I still do. You have lived miracles. You have seen God work in such amazing ways.”
Hysteric giggling preceded. “I have lived miracles?”
My faith was a joke. Jesus was insane.
Looking side to side as if taking in the artwork of the landscape, the man said, “I have not been in this garden before. I imagine it must be quite beautiful in the sun.”
Not that it was relevant, but it would be. There were fountains and flowers and little streams about, a façade to hide the ugliness of what lingered all over the grounds. “I didn’t mean to come here.”
“But here you came all the same. You cried out for home and slipped from one place to another. What does that say about you that home is at the feet of that thing?”
Ugly truth. I’d had enough ugliness for one night. “It says that I am—”
“Confused,” Jesus, still holding out a hand to me, interceded. “Young. That’s all you are. Please, I need you to take another step away from the demon.”
“Why?”
“Because you are cutting into your wrist and you don’t even feel the pain. All it would take is a few drops of you to worm his way deeper, and he possessed you long enough.” His eyes pointed down to where my hanging fingers suddenly felt warm and icy all at once. “Don’t you think?”
I was bleeding all over the grass, and not just a few drops. My nails had rounded into sharp little moonlight-white talons, and I had dug one in enough that bits of my torn muscle fibers were hanging from the corner of a claw. “Jesus!”
Tripping over my feet, that red dress, my panic, I put far more than a few steps between the head and my body—feeling a strain, almost to the point of a snap, between my mind and the mind of the monster who still played with me.
“This isn’t funny!” No scream ever would be loud enough to trumpet that. Arm mending, my blood soaking into the dirt, and I was once again the laughing stock.
Those soft eyes turned toward the head, a frown turning a compassionate countenance into one of sadness. “But still, he laughs.”
A grotesque cackle I could suddenly hear clear as a bell in my head. I could feel it on my skin. The papery dryness of a mummy possessing my body, and it tore my mind to shreds.
Hands to my ears, I screamed, “How can you stand it?”
“God is with me.” It was then I noticed the threadbare cassock. A pauper’s clothing, similar to what he wore as the old man at the wedding.