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“W e suspect Mercy Brown killed him.” Silas’s voice was precise, emotionless. “After she killed you. She went to your home. Your father opened the door to her, likely expecting your return. We found him, his throat torn open and his body exsanguinated on the doorstep.”

I felt something crack inside me, some essential part that had been holding me together. My father—stern, righteous, flawed, but mine—gone. I couldn’t weep, though my body shuddered with the impulse. No tears came. Another confirmation of what I’d become.

“Why did they die, but I didn’t?” It made little sense. If the vampires drained both Mr. Brown and my father, why was I alone in this… condition?

Silas rubbed his brow. “Tell me, Alice. What’s the last thing you remember?”

I took a deep breath, but it wasn’t satisfying. It was as though my new body no longer required it. “Mercy bit me. Mr. Brown tried to use the crucifix. The light washed over me. But then I saw a dark figure show up behind Mr. Brown. The same figure who bit Mercy in the sanatorium.”

Silas nodded slowly. “Then it happened, as I suspected. The power in the crucifix completed your transformation. Though the vampire drained you, the light sustained you, ensuring that your death would be… transitory.”

“But my father…”

“No such light shone on him. I am sorry, Alice.”

“You’re lying,” I whispered, but I knew he wasn’t. I could smell the truth on him like I could smell the gun oil on his clothes, the soap on his skin, the blood pumping through his veins.

His veins. My attention fixed again on his throat, on the steady pulse visible beneath the skin.

I could hear it now—the wet, rhythmic thump of his heart, pushing blood through his body.

I could smell it, rich and coppery and alive.

The burning in my throat intensified to agony, and my mouth filled with something that wasn’t quite saliva, thicker and tinged with metal.

Hunger. Thirst. Need.

I lunged against the restraints, no longer caring about answers or my father or anything but the blood pulsing just beneath that thin barrier of skin.

The leather at my right wrist snapped, my arm flying free.

I reached for him, fingers curled into claws, a sound escaping me that was more animal than human.

Silas stepped back smoothly, unsurprised. He drew a crucifix from his pocket and held it before him, not in fear but with the clinical interest of a scientist conducting an experiment.

The moment the cross entered my field of vision, pain lanced through my head, driving into my eyes like hot pokers. I screamed, turning away, my free arm shielding my face.

“As I thought,” Silas said, making a note in a small book he’d produced from his pocket. “The aversion is immediate and severe.”

“Take it away,” I gasped, the pain still radiating through my skull.

He tucked the crucifix back into his pocket. “The holy water test won’t be necessary, I think. Your reaction to the cross is confirmation enough.”

The pain receded, leaving me trembling. The hunger remained a constant, gnawing presence, but the immediate frenzy had passed. I slumped back against the table, my broken restraint dangling uselessly.

“What are you going to do with me?” I asked, my voice hollow.

Silas pulled a chair closer and sat, maintaining a careful distance. “We’re going to train you, Miss Bladewell. The Order has protocols for situations like yours.”

“Situations like mine?” I echoed, disbelieving. “You make it sound like a common occurrence.”

“Not common,” he admitted. “But not unprecedented. The Order has, on rare occasions, made use of turned agents. Vampires who retain enough of their humanity, enough of their moral compass, to continue serving the cause.”

I laughed, a harsh, broken sound. “Moral compass? I want nothing more right now than to tear your throat out.”

“The bloodlust is strongest at first,” he said. “It can be managed. Controlled. Channeled.”

A thought struck me, terrible in its implications. “You planned this,” I whispered. “You wanted me to be turned.”

Silas’s face remained impassive. “We did not plan for Mercy Brown to kill you, no. But we recognized the potential the moment we found you in that alley, your dead eyes already red, your fangs growing.”

I allowed my tongue to trace the teeth that didn’t feel like they belonged in my mouth.

“I want to pray,” I said suddenly, the words surprising even me. “I need to pray.”

Silas’s expression softened fractionally. “I wouldn’t advise it.”

I ignored him, closing my eyes and beginning the words that had been my comfort since childhood. “Our Father, who art in Heaven—“

The pain was immediate and overwhelming. It felt as if my skin was being flayed from my body, my bones crushed to powder. I screamed, thrashing against the remaining restraints, my back arching off the table. The words of the prayer died in my throat, replaced by animal howls of agony.

When it finally subsided, I lay shaking, my dead body wracked with phantom tremors. No tears came, though my chest heaved with sobs. I couldn’t even weep for what I’d lost.

“The aversion to prayer is particularly severe in those who had strong faith in life,” Silas said, his tone almost gentle. “It’s why the cross caused such a reaction. The stronger your faith in life, the more your aversion to it in death.”

“That’s bad theology.” I snorted.

“For humans, yes. But so far as I’m aware, our theology has no redemption for your kind. Not that’s been written, anyway. There is reason to believe it’s possible.”

“To be saved?” I could barely get out the question.

“Through the successful fulfillment of a divine mission. You must embrace your new nature like Christ embraced the villainous cross. What men meant to use to extinguish all hope must become that which delivers life, which saves the world.”

“You want me to save the world? I’m not God. I can’t do that.”

“But you can help. You can eliminate those evil ones who share your nature, but lack your spirit, your faith.”

I snorted. I wasn’t even sure what to make of that. What good was my faith if I couldn’t so much as pray without it feeling like a herd of elephants was trampling my skull?

“Do not worry,” Silas said, standing and adjusting his cuffs. “You were made for a purpose. You will get your revenge, Nightwalker. You will earn your redemption and save us all.”

Nightwalker. The name fell like a stone into the hollow where my soul had been. It wasn’t Alice. It wasn’t even a person. It was a thing, a creature, a weapon.

“I’ll never serve you,” I whispered. But what choice did I have? Where else could I go? Who else would take in the monster I’d become?

Silas smiled for the first time, a thin, cold curving of lips. “You already do, Miss Bladewell. You already do.”

He turned and walked away, his footsteps fading as he left me alone with my hunger, my pain, and the terrible emptiness where my soul had been.