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S ilas’s hand remained on my shoulder as he guided me forward, his fingers digging in like talons.

The cells stretched before us in neat rows, an inverted and grotesque mockery of the pews in Father O’Malley’s church.

Where I had found hope in those wooden benches, here I found only despair etched in iron and stone.

The chamber air hung heavy with the metallic tang of blood—old stains darkening the floor beneath our feet, fresh droplets gleaming on collection tools arranged with surgical precision on a nearby table.

My nostrils flared involuntarily, the hunger inside me responding even as my mind recoiled.

“Walk among them,” Silas instructed, his voice carrying the cadence of a proud father showing off his children. “Feel the connection. They are yours in blood.”

I stepped forward, moving between the rows of cells as if in a nightmare.

The cold seeped through my boots, a damp chill that rose from the earth itself.

Iron manacles hung from the walls at intervals, their hinges rusted with what might have been age or dried blood.

Beneath the overwhelming scent of blood,

“Magnificent, aren’t they?” Silas continued, following a step behind. “Each one selected for potential, each one saved from the corruption of witchcraft through your intervention.”

“Saved?” I cocked an eyebrow.

“Of course, dearest Alice!” Silas’ tone had never been more patronizing.

“They were damned already, each one of them, in their diabolical practices. Had they simply died naturally when you eliminated them, they’d have earned hellfire for sure.

Your kind might be devils, but as I’ve told you, you’re not hopeless devils.

You have a path toward salvation—provided you eliminate more evil in the service of our sacred Order than your nature represents. ”

I didn’t argue with him. I couldn’t, if I intended to remain here as Father O’Malley suggested, to find a way to dismantle the Order of the Morning Dawn from within.

There’d be a time for my light to shine here, but this wasn’t that time.

Then again, if these ladies truly were subject to me above all else, Silas had made a hefty gamble.

Did he truly believe that I was loyal—had I deceived him that thoroughly that he’d give me an army beholden to my command?

I didn’t believe it even a little. He had something else up his sleeve, a way to eliminate us if we fell out of line. He wouldn’t give me this kind of power if he wasn’t hiding an ace up his sleeve, something even greater than the threat I might become.

The first cell contained a young woman from the forest—she had fled from her half-cave, half-cabin when we arrived.

In life, she had fought with unexpected strength.

In undeath, that strength had been magnified.

Her fingers gripped the iron bars, bending them slightly with pressure that would have been impossible for human hands.

Her eyes followed me, luminous with hunger and something else—confusion, perhaps, or accusation.

“I’m sure you remember her. This one was turned three weeks ago,” Silas explained. “She’s adapted remarkably well to her new condition. Strong. Resilient. Quite useful traits in a soldier.”

Soldier. The word chilled me more than the damp stone beneath my feet. Is that what Silas saw when he looked at me? At them? Not souls to be saved, but weapons to be wielded?

In the next cell, the fire-worker with her tired eyes pressed against the bars. Her hair, once streaked with premature gray, now gleamed unnaturally black in the dim light. The transformation had reversed some signs of aging, though the weariness in her gaze remained.

“Mother,” she whispered as I passed, the word slithering from her lips like something unclean. “We feel you. We know you.”

The other women took up the whisper, their voices blending into a discordant chorus. “Mother... maker... sire...”

I flinched at the sound, each word striking me like a stake to the chest. These women hadn’t asked for this existence any more than I had. Yet here they were, bound to me through blood and violation.

“They sense your presence,” Silas explained, his voice taking on the quality of a lecturer.

“The bond between sire and progeny is one of the most fascinating aspects of your condition. They feel your hunger as their own. They sense your emotions, your intentions.” He stepped closer, his breath warm against my cold skin.

“And they will obey your commands as if they were divine writ.”

“Commands?” I echoed, struggling to keep my voice steady.

“You are their maker,” Silas replied. “Their sire. The hierarchy is clear and unbreakable. They cannot refuse a direct order from you, any more than you could resist the hunger when it first took hold.”

I thought of those early days after my transformation—the all-consuming thirst that had driven me to acts I still couldn’t fully face in memory. The thought that I held such power over these women made me sick with revulsion.

“And who commands me?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

Silas smiled, the expression not reaching his cold eyes. “The Order, of course. As it has always been. As it shall always be.”

His words confirmed what I suspected. They had something they could use against me if push came to shove. I suspected it was that crucifix, the one that Silas wanted me to believe was taken by Mercy and her sire the night I was turned.

We reached the end of the row, where a small desk had been positioned. Papers were spread across its surface—maps, diagrams, lists of names. Silas gestured toward them with proprietary pride.

“The Order of the Morning Dawn has chapters across New England,” he said. “Each one now undertaking the same holy work we pioneer here. Salem. Boston. Providence. New Haven. All creating their own Nightwalkers, all preparing for the coming crusade.”

“Crusade?” The word felt like ashes in my mouth. “So you admit it. You planned this from the start? You meant for me to bite those girls?”

“Apologies, dearest Alice.” We’d come a long way from the earlier hunts when he’d refused to call me anything other than Nightwalker.

Now, I wasn’t merely Nightwalker, or even Alice.

I was dearest Alice. “You must understand that this is revolutionary. Your extraordinary transformation presented the Order with an opportunity we’d never had before.

A way to get an upper hand against the devil himself, to seize the vilest of his corruptions, and turn them against hell itself. ”

“Uh huh.” I held back the vitriol I wanted to spew into his face.

“Against the darkness that threatens to engulf us all,” Silas continued, his voice taking on the fervent quality I’d heard in Daddy’s sermons against sin.

“Witchcraft spreads like a disease through our communities. Foreign influences corrupt our youth. Papists seek to undermine the true faith.” He spread his hands across the maps.

“We fight a war on multiple fronts, Alice. A war that requires soldiers who cannot die, who do not tire, who know no fear.”

Soldiers like me. Like the women in the cells.

An army of the undead, bound by blood to serve the Order’s interpretation of God’s will.

That he’d listed Papists—people like Father O’Malley alongside witches wasn’t lost on me.

If Silas only knew the truth—that he was the darkness, that he was the one who’d undermined the true faith, that the Order of the Morning Dawn was nothing less than an agent of Satan, deluded by self-righteousness and blinded by self-importance.

“The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Silas continued, his voice lowering to a reverent whisper. “Who would have imagined that the darkness we contend with would offer us the tools essential for our triumph? What you perceive as a burden—your affliction—has turned into a gift.”

I turned away, unable to bear the zealous light in his eyes.

My gaze fell upon the cell containing the former healer—the first woman whose blood I had drunk at Silas’s orchestration.

Unlike the others, she stood quietly, her hands at her sides rather than clutching at the bars.

Her eyes met mine directly, and what I saw there stopped my breath.

Not hunger. Not confusion. But clear, unmistakable awareness. A silent communication passed between us—recognition, understanding, and beneath it all, a plea. Help us.

I averted my gaze quickly, afraid that Silas might notice the exchange.

But the woman’s eyes had spoken volumes in that brief moment.

She was more than her hunger. She remembered who she had been.

And she wanted freedom, not from her condition, but from the cells that contained her.

From the Order that had manipulated her transformation.

Just as I wanted freedom from Silas’s control.

“You’re quiet,” Silas observed, his tone sharpening with suspicion. “Does the magnitude of your role overwhelm you?”

I forced myself to meet his gaze, to school my features into an expression of appropriate awe. “It’s... a lot to take in. I never imagined my bite could create...”

“Life from death,” Silas finished for me. “Strength from weakness. Purpose from chaos.” He clasped my shoulders with both hands. “This is why God saved you, Alice. Not just for the witches you could hunt alone, but for the army you could help us build.”

“I don’t understand. You said there were other chapters. I didn’t bite all those people, I didn’t make them.”

“There are other candidates , Alice, who’ve volunteered to take up your dark mantle, fervent members of the Order who willingly subjected themselves to vampires, that they might be like you. Once the vision was plain, our chapters all across these United States agreed to the plan.”

And there it was. More Nightwalkers, but each chapter under a “sire” who’d been loyal to the Order from the beginning, who knew what they were getting into.

It also meant the crucifix we’d used wasn’t the only one.

I had to wonder, though, what the actual source of the magic that seemed to course through it was.

I doubted it was angelic, as they’d claimed—it was witchcraft of a kind. It had to be.

I realized these other chapters also served a double-function to ensure my compliance. Even if I resisted, if I turned on Silas, there’d be other Nightwalkers out there willing to eliminate me and my progenies.

The women in their cells watched us, their eyes gleaming in the dim light. Eight pairs of eyes, all bearing the same unnatural luminescence as my own. All bound to me through blood and violation. All victims of Silas’s grand design.

“They hunger as you hunger,” Silas said, his voice almost gentle.

“They will obey as you command. Tomorrow night, you will lead them on their first hunt—a test of their abilities and your control over them.” His fingers tightened on my shoulders.

“The Order has great expectations for you, Nightwalker. Do not disappoint us.”

I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. The weight of responsibility pressed down on me like a physical force—not just for my own actions now, but for the actions of these women I had unwittingly created.

These women who looked to me with my hunger mirrored in their eyes, who called me “mother” with voices that dripped with need and resentment.

As Silas led me away from the cells, back toward the iron door, I felt the healer’s gaze following me. That silent plea echoed in my mind: Help us.

But how could I help them when I could barely help myself?