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E xeter slept while I haunted its streets, a ghost among the living.

My footsteps made no sound on the cobblestones; my breath formed no clouds in the January air.

The town I’d once called home felt foreign now, viewed through these cursed eyes that saw too much—every shadow harboring potential threat, every distant heartbeat a reminder of what I’d become.

Three months since my transformation, and still I couldn’t reconcile the monster I now was with the faithful daughter I’d once been.

My hands, pale in the moonlight, had torn out throats.

My mouth, once shaped only for prayer, had drunk the lifeblood of those Silas called “witches.” God’s silence had never been so deafening as it was now, walking these empty streets.

At least Silas trusted me enough to allow me out at night. So long as I didn’t come back fully fed—biting without authorization was strictly forbidden—he promised I’d gradually gain more freedom and sooner that later I might be able to go on the Order’s missions alone.

The storefronts stood dark and shuttered against the night—Parker’s General Store where Mama used to buy fabric for my Sunday dresses, the cobbler’s shop where Daddy had his boots mended each winter, the milliner’s where we never shopped because Mama said their hats were “too worldly.” Each familiar landmark seemed to judge me as I passed, aware of the blood that stained my conscience, if not my skin.

I could hear everything: a cat stalking a mouse in the alley beside the bakery; an infant’s restless whimpers from an upstairs window; the rumbling snores of the blacksmith who’d always tipped his hat to Daddy after Sunday service.

My heightened senses transformed the sleeping town into a symphony of life from which I was forever excluded.

I was neither alive nor dead—trapped in an unholy limbo.

The image of the burning vampire haunted me.

Her screams echoed in my memory, cutting through the silent night as they had cut through the winter air just days ago.

I’d stood and watched. I hadn’t stopped it.

I’d been complicit, just as I’d been complicit in all the deaths before.

Had any of them truly been what Silas claimed? Had any of them deserved their fate?

“Monster,” I whispered to myself, the word hanging in the frozen air like a pronouncement. “You have become death.”

I paused at the intersection where Main Street met Church Road.

To my right stood Daddy’s church, its spire reaching toward heaven like an accusing finger.

No lights burned in its windows—the God I’d once served with such devotion apparently kept bankers’ hours now.

I hadn’t been inside since before my transformation.

Couldn’t bear to desecrate the sacred space with my unholy presence.

Not to mention, if some other minister had taken Daddy’s pulpit, I wasn’t sure I could handle it.

I preferred to imagine Daddy was still inside, at his study, preparing Sunday’s homily.

I knew it wasn’t true, just a fantasy, but when that’s all you have to live by, you embrace it.

Perhaps if I imagined it that way enough, somehow, some way, it might come true.

If God was still out there, if I still had a guardian angel, if miracles were possible.

“Daddy,” I whispered, staring at the dark church. “What would you say if you could see me now?”

I knew the answer. Reverend William Bladewell had been uncompromising in his sermons against evil. “The wages of sin is death,” he’d thundered from the pulpit. “And those who consort with darkness shall find no mercy in the light of God’s judgment.”

He’d been particularly venomous about Catholics.

“Papists,” he’d called them, spitting the word like poison.

“Blood-drinkers who claim to consume their God in their blasphemous rituals.” The irony wasn’t lost on me.

I’d become the very thing he despised—a literal blood-drinker, damned beyond redemption.

Yet here I was, still in Exeter, doing the Order’s bidding, seeking... what? Absolution? Understanding? Or merely the comfort of familiar streets as I contemplated an eternity of darkness?

I turned away from the church and continued walking, passing the silent, snow-covered cemetery where Mama lay buried.

I couldn’t bring myself to visit her grave.

What would I say? “Sorry I’ve become an abomination, Mama.

Sorry I won’t be joining you anytime soon.

I could live like this forever, or go to hell, but I can’t go where you are. ” The thought was unbearable.

As I approached the edge of town, the houses grew sparser, the darkness deeper.

Few streetlamps lit this section of Exeter, where the poor and the immigrant populations lived in cramped quarters.

The Irish neighborhood lay ahead—Catholic territory, as Daddy had always warned us.

“They worship idols and practice necromancy,” he’d said, though I wasn’t sure I believed it.

Something changed in the air—a subtle shift that raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

I was being watched. My eyes scanned the darkness, my body instinctively coiling for fight or flight.

Three months of training with the Order had honed my predatory instincts, even as it had dulled my humanity.

A figure emerged from the shadows between two buildings—a man in a long black coat, moving with purpose rather than stealth.

My enhanced vision cut through the darkness, revealing a weathered face framed by gray-streaked hair, kind eyes set in a face lined with both smiles and sorrow.

He carried a wooden cane, leaning on it slightly as he approached.

I tensed, ready to disappear into the night. Had the Order sent someone else to retrieve me?

“Good evening,” the man said, his voice quiet but carrying clearly through the night air. He stopped at a respectful distance, studying me with an unnerving directness. “Or perhaps I should say good morning. It’s well past midnight.”

I said nothing, calculating the distance to the nearest alley, the fastest route out of town.

“You’re Reverend Bladewell’s daughter,” he continued. “Alice, isn’t it? I’ve seen you with your father at the market. Though not recently.”

His accent carried the faint lilt of Ireland, softened by years in America. His collar identified him clearly—a Catholic priest. What was he doing out at this hour?

“I don’t know you.” My voice was hollow.

“Father Thomas O’Malley,” he replied with a slight bow. “St. Mary’s parish.” He gestured vaguely toward the small stone church at the edge of the Irish quarter. Then, without warning, his expression shifted to one of gentle recognition. “I know what you are.”

My body went rigid. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He took a step closer, and I fought the urge to retreat. “You’re not breathing,” he observed quietly. “Your skin has the pallor of marble. And your movements...” He tilted his head slightly. “Too smooth. Too controlled. Like a predator.”

Fear and rage surged through me. Had he been sent by Silas, after all? Was this some new trap?

“What do you want?” I demanded, baring my teeth slightly. The hunger stirred within me—always present, though I’d fed recently enough to control it. For now.

Father O’Malley didn’t flinch. “I want nothing from you, child. But perhaps I can offer something instead.”

“I doubt that very much, Father.” I infused the title with all the disdain Daddy had taught me to feel for Catholic clergy. “Unless you’re offering your throat, which I don’t recommend.”

His lips quirked in what might have been a smile. “An interesting proposition, but no. I’m offering understanding. Perhaps even hope.”

“Hope?” I laughed bitterly. “For this?” I gestured at myself. “There is no hope for the damned, Father. Your church teaches that as clearly as mine does.”

“Does it?” he asked mildly. “I’m not sure you’ve studied our teachings as thoroughly as you believe.”

I remembered Daddy’s sermons about Catholics—how they worshipped statues, how they believed their priests could forgive sins, how they claimed to drink the actual blood of Christ in their blasphemous communion. Blood-drinkers, he’d called them. The irony struck me again, sharper this time.

“I know enough,” I said. “Enough to know that God has abandoned me. That I’m beyond salvation.”

Father O’Malley leaned heavily on his cane, studying me with those penetrating eyes. “No one is beyond salvation, Alice. Not even those who walk by night.”

The certainty in his voice caught me off guard. “You seem remarkably calm for someone confronting a vampire, Father.”

“You’re not the first I’ve encountered,” he said simply.

This revelation stunned me into momentary silence. The Order had led me to believe vampires were rare, isolated creatures—aberrations to be hunted down and destroyed. The thought that this aging priest might have knowingly spoken with others like me was disorienting.

“And you’re still alive?” I asked finally.

He smiled, a genuine expression that softened his weathered features. “Clearly. Perhaps because I offered understanding rather than condemnation.”

“Understanding won’t quench my thirst for blood.”

“No,” he agreed. “But it might help you find a way to live with it that doesn’t require becoming a monster.”

The words struck deep. Wasn’t that exactly what I’d been searching for? A way to exist without surrendering completely to the darkness within me? Without being used as a weapon by Silas and the Order?

“How?” The question escaped before I could stop it, betraying my desperation.

Father O’Malley glanced toward the eastern horizon, where the sky remained dark but would eventually lighten.

“That’s a longer conversation than we have time for tonight.

But if you’re truly interested, come to St. Mary’s tomorrow night.

Late mass, midnight. The sacraments might offer you a path toward healing, a form of redemption. ”

I scoffed, falling back on Daddy’s teachings like a shield. “Sacraments? Wafers and wine that you pretend is actually flesh and blood? That’s your solution?”

“I don’t expect you to believe it now, given your background,” he observed. “But given how you’ve changed , but appear very similar to what you were before, is it that hard to believe such a change might occur in our masses?”

His words left me speechless.

“I should warn you,” he continued, “it won’t be painless.

Holy ground will burn you. Prayers will sound like knives in your ears.

The consecration itself may cause you more agony than you can bear.

” He paused, his eyes gentle but unflinching.

“But pain can be purifying. Pain can remind us we’re still human. ”

I burst out laughing. “Still human?”

“Is it that absurd?” the priest asked. “Do you not still have the remnants of a conscience? Have you considered even a moment that the reason it hurts to pray, to enter a church, to even say the name of the Lord, is because it’s your cross, the path you must take to become new with Him?”

The echo of Daddy’s words from long ago rang in my memory: Pain kept me present. Pain kept me faithful.

“Why would you help me?” I asked, suspicion warring with desperate hope. “Why not just drive a stake through my heart and be done with it?”

“Because that’s not my calling,” he said simply. “My calling is to shepherd souls toward God, not to judge which souls are worthy of the journey.” He turned to go, then paused. “The choice is yours, Alice Bladewell. Midnight tomorrow. St. Mary’s.”

He walked away, his cane tapping a steady rhythm against the cobblestones.

I watched until he disappeared around a corner, my mind racing with conflicting emotions.

Every instinct warned me this could be a trap.

Yet something deeper than instinct—something that might once have been called faith—whispered that Father O’Malley had offered me the first genuine chance at redemption since my transformation.

The eastern sky remained dark, but I knew dawn approached. I needed shelter before the sun rose. As I turned toward the abandoned root cellar at the edge of town where I’d been hiding, I realized I’d already made my decision.

Tomorrow night, I would go to St. Mary’s. Not because I believed Catholic rituals could save me, but because after months of darkness, even false hope was better than none at all.

And if it was a trap? Well, perhaps death would be a mercy.