Page 26

T he stone steps descended into darkness, each one taking me further from the night sky and deeper into the Order’s underground sanctuary.

My footsteps echoed against damp walls, the sound bouncing back to me like whispered warnings I chose to ignore.

Gas lamps flickered in iron sconces, casting my shadow in grotesque proportions against the stone—elongated one moment, compressed the next, as if the darkness itself couldn’t decide what shape I should take.

I touched my fingers to my palm, still cool from the holy water that had, for the first time, not burned my skin.

Father O’Malley’s words echoed in my mind: “Progress.” If only Silas could see me now.

But he wouldn’t see. Couldn’t know. The thought of tomorrow night’s Communion filled me with a fragile hope I dared not examine too closely, like a butterfly cupped between protective hands.

My face remained carefully neutral as I descended the final steps into the main corridor.

The Order had eyes everywhere, and Silas had taught me well how to read the smallest betrayals of emotion. I would not betray myself now.

The corridor stretched before me, hewn from bedrock and reinforced with ancient timbers that groaned beneath the weight of earth above.

Water trickled down one wall, collecting in a small channel that disappeared beneath the stone floor.

The air hung heavy with the scent of mineral-rich soil, mold, and something else—something metallic and familiar that made the hunger within me stir despite my recent feeding.

Blood. Fresh blood.

I paused, tilting my head to listen. Voices carried from the main chamber ahead—Silas’s commanding tone rising above others I didn’t recognize. Women’s voices, their words indistinct but their cadence marked by fear or pain or both.

A frown tugged at my lips. The Order rarely brought outsiders to their sanctuary.

Even I, their weapon, their “Nightwalker,” was kept at arm’s length, allowed only into specific areas at designated times.

What was happening in the main chamber that required the presence of women?

I hadn’t been invited there before. It was off-limits.

But now, something drew me there. A compulsion I couldn’t define.

I approached the heavy iron door that separated the corridor from the chamber, my enhanced hearing catching fragments of conversation.

“...remarkable progress...” Silas was saying.

“...the hunger is insatiable...” a woman’s voice replied, her words slurred as if speaking through pain.

“...connected through blood...” another voice, lower pitched, but couldn’t tell if it was an effeminate man or an older woman.

I pushed the door open; the hinges protested with a low groan that announced my arrival more effectively than any herald. The conversation ceased abruptly. All eyes turned toward me.

The main chamber opened before me, a cavernous space supported by thick stone columns.

Braziers burned along the walls, filling the room with smoky light and the scent of pine resin.

At the center stood Silas, his tall frame dominating the space as always, his pot-marked face half-illuminated by the uneven light.

But it was what lay beyond him that froze me in place, that sent a shock of recognition and horror through my dead heart.

Cells. A row of iron-barred cells lined the far wall, each one occupied by a woman. Not just any women—women I knew. Women whose throats I had torn open. Women whose blood I had drunk until their hearts stuttered to silence.

Women who should be dead.

The healer with her herbs. The fire-worker with her tired eyes. The young woman from the forest. The grandmother who had been trying to save her family. Their faces were hauntingly familiar, branded into my memory by guilt and regret.

But their eyes—their eyes were different now. No longer human, they glowed with the same hungry luminescence as my own. They watched me with a terrible recognition, their gazes following my movements with predatory attention.

They were vampires. All of them.

“Alice,” Silas said, his voice warm with something like pride. “Perfect timing. Come, witness the miracle of redemption.”

He extended his hand, beckoning me forward. My feet moved of their own accord, carrying me past columns and braziers toward the cells. The women pressed against the bars as I approached, their nostrils flaring, their bodies swaying slightly as if drawn by an invisible force.

“They sense you,” Silas explained, placing his hand on my shoulder in a gesture that once might have felt paternal but now seemed possessive, controlling. “They recognize their sire.”

“Sire?” The word felt wrong on my tongue. “I don’t understand.”

But I did. As I voiced my denial, a clear and dreadful realization took shape inside me.

I hadn’t killed these women. I had fed on them, yes—drained them to the point of near-death.

But Silas had never intended for them to die.

He had collected them afterward, brought them here, and somehow healed them, initiated their transformation.

“Your blood carries power, Alice,” Silas said, confirming my horrified realization.

“When you feed, you take their life into yourself. But the bite also introduces something of a venom, your essence, into their weakened bodies...” He gestured at the cells with reverent satisfaction.

“Typically, those bitten die without intervention. But I should say, the Lord Himself has healed them, completed their evolution that we might use the tools of the enemy against him! You are all like the cursed cross—cursed, indeed, but a curse that might bring healing when used toward God’s purpose to rid the world of even greater curses, of graver evil! ”

One of the women—the healer whose herbs had hung from her cabin ceiling—pressed her face against the bars, her once-kind eyes now wild with hunger. “Mother,” she whispered, the word twisted into something unnatural. “Mother of blood.”

The others took up the whisper, a chorus of voices that scraped against my nerves like fingernails on slate. “Mother... mother... mother of blood...”

Silas squeezed my shoulder, his fingers digging into flesh that could no longer bruise. “See how they recognize you? The bond of blood is sacred. Unbreakable.”

I struggled to keep my expression neutral, to hide the revulsion and betrayal that threatened to overwhelm me. How many times had Silas cut these women, provoking my hunger, knowing exactly what would follow? How many times had I been his unwitting accomplice in creating more monsters like myself?

“How long?” I asked, my voice steadier than I felt. “How long have you imprisoned them here?”

“Since the beginning,” Silas replied. “Since your first hunt.” His voice took on the cadence of a sermon. “Through you, they are saved from their witchcraft, reborn as warriors of the Order.”

I thought of the female vampire Silas had burned alive, her screams echoing through the winter forest. She’d been turned already, she wasn’t subject to my sire bond.

She couldn’t be recruited to the Order’s warped mission.

So, she became a demonstration to ensure my continued cooperation.

An object lesson, meant to show me the ruthlessness that the Order could embrace if I ever crossed them.

My gaze swept across the cells, counting. Five women. Five hunts. Five lives I thought I’d ended in my bloodlust. Five souls now trapped in the same unnatural existence as my own.

And then I saw it—the subtle gleam of triumph in Silas’s eyes.

This was no miracle of redemption. This was calculation.

This was power. I didn’t believe for a moment that God had completed their transformations by some kind of miracle.

Silas did it. He still had the crucifix that I’d awakened, that Mr. Brown carried, the same one that supposedly ensured my final descent into the hell that had become my existence.

In the wake of this nightmare, the reality that stood in front of me, I nearly forgot about all the hope I’d gained from Father O’Malley, all the progress I’d made toward overcoming the darker part of my nature.

In an instant, all I wanted was to kill and destroy, to tear the Order of the Morning Dawn apart member by member, limb by limb.

But I also had enough sense to know I couldn’t do it alone. I wasn’t strong enough to do it, and Silas was trained, protected somehow. And I had to wonder, was vengeance the salvation I’d been after, night after night, at St. Mary’s? I knew it wasn’t—but I could think of nothing else.

“Tomorrow night,” Silas said, his hand still heavy on my shoulder, “you will lead them on their first hunt. Their first step toward redemption through service, just as you have been redeemed through yours.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. The hope I had carried felt dim.

Just minutes ago, I was eager for my first communion—I was ready to welcome the final agony, to feel the suffering of the Crucified One who re-presented himself to me in the appearance of bread and wine.

Now, I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to make it there.

How could I, when I had a mission to lead these… Nightwalkers… on a mission for Silas?

“I’ve waited months for this moment,” Silas continued, his voice lowered for my ears alone. “For you to see the fruits of your sacrifice. For you to understand your true purpose with the Order.”

My true purpose. Not redemption. Not salvation. But reproduction—creating more weapons for the Order’s crusade against those they deemed unholy.

The hunger within me twisted again, recognizing its reflection in the eyes that watched me from behind iron bars. My progeny. My victims. My responsibility.

“Tomorrow night,” I echoed, the words hollow. “I understand.”

But it didn’t feel like understanding. It was more like drowning. Like someone had tossed me a rope while the sea was overwhelming me, only to have it yanked away from me just as I was about to take hold of it and be brought safely aboard ship.