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“The pain is most intense for the newly transformed,” Father O’Malley continued, his gaze moving between Ruth and Rebecca. “It’s not punishment, but purification—like fire burning away impurities in metal. In time, with faith and perseverance, it will lessen.”

“How much time?” Ruth asked, her voice barely audible.

Desiderius answered before Father O’Malley could.

“It could take days or years. For me, it was nearly ten years before I could hear the Mass without feeling as though my skin was being flayed from my body.” His aristocratic features, still partially burned from the crucifix’s light, arranged themselves into something like compassion.

“But each time was easier than the last.”

Rebecca’s eyes widened. “Ten years? I can’t—I don’t think I can endure that long.”

“It doesn’t have to take that long,” Father O’Malley insisted. “Desiderius here was already a very old vampire. His patterns and habits had taken deeper roots. For you, if you are open and willing to endure the process, it may be possible after only witnessing the consecration a few times.”

I moved to sit beside her on the pallet, taking her cold hand in mine. “It only took a few nights for me. I’m finally ready to receive it. I think.”

“I should say you are.” Father O’Malley nodded firmly as he donned a simple stole—not the full vestments he would wear for a public Mass, but enough to mark the sacredness of what we were about to witness. He moved to stand behind the altar, his expression solemn yet hopeful.

“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,” he began, making the sign of the cross.

The Latin words seemed to shimmer in the air, heavy with centuries of devotion.

Ruth and Rebecca tensed beside me, their bodies rigid with anticipated pain.

I felt it too—a distant pressure, but it didn’t hurt anymore.

It was almost soothing. Desiderius stood perfectly still, unaffected by the words.

As Father O’Malley continued the ancient liturgy, the pressure grew for my progenies.

Rebecca was the first to break, a small whimper escaping her lips as she scrambled back from the altar, pressing herself against the far wall of the chamber.

Ruth lasted longer, her face contorted in a grimace of determination, but by the time Father O’Malley reached the Eucharistic prayer, she too retreated, joining Rebecca in the shadows.

“Hoc est enim Corpus Meum,” Father O’Malley intoned, raising the host.

The pressure intensified, becoming almost physical—not pain exactly, but a weight so immense it threatened to crush me beneath it.

I remained standing, drawing strength from Desiderius’s unwavering presence beside me.

His centuries of practice steadied me, showing me it was possible to endure, to push through to whatever lay on the other side of this purifying fire.

“Hic est enim calix Sanguinis mei,” Father O’Malley continued, raising the chalice.

Something shifted inside me then—a loosening, as if tight bands around my chest had suddenly released. The pressure remained, but it no longer threatened to overwhelm. Instead, it felt almost like an embrace, firm but not crushing.

Father O’Malley’s eyes met mine as he approached with the host. “Corpus Christi,” he said softly.

“Amen,” I whispered, and received the wafer on my tongue.

It didn’t burn as I’d feared it might. Instead, it melted like snow, cool and clean. I closed my eyes, waiting for the revulsion that should come with consuming anything other than blood, but it never arrived. The host settled within me, a presence both foreign and familiar.

When Father O’Malley offered the chalice, I took it with steady hands. “Sanguis Christi,” he said.

“Amen,” I responded, and drank.

The wine—no, not wine anymore, but blood, perfect blood—touched my lips.

A single drop would have been enough, but I took more, unable to stop myself.

It coursed through me like liquid fire, not burning but illuminating, revealing hollows and shadows I hadn’t known existed inside my transformed body.

This wasn’t the hot, copper tang of human blood that had sustained me since my transformation.

This was something else entirely—ancient and new all at once, the ideal blood from which all other blood was just a shadow.

It filled me in ways that no feeding ever had, satisfying a hunger deeper than the physical craving for life that drove my kind.

I handed the chalice back to Father O’Malley, leaving barely a drop at the bottom, which he gave to Desiderius.

From the corner, Ruth and Rebecca watched at a distance where the pain was more bearable, witnessing something they couldn’t yet comprehend. Their time would come, or it wouldn’t—faith couldn’t be forced, only offered and accepted.

As Father O’Malley completed the Mass, the pressure gradually subsided, leaving in its wake a strange clarity.

I felt more present in my body than I had since my transformation, more aware of its limitations and its possibilities.

I was still undead, still caught between worlds, but for the first time, I understood that this liminal existence might have a purpose beyond mere survival.

In the stillness that followed the final blessing, I found myself remembering a psalm Daddy had often quoted during his sermons: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.”

I had been walking through that valley since the night Mercy Brown drained my life.

But in this moment, with Christ’s blood still warm within me, I made a silent vow: though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, I would not allow death to claim or define me.

I would live—not just exist, but truly live—in whatever form God had allowed me to continue.

Desiderius caught my eye across the altar, his ancient face peaceful despite the burns that still marked it. He nodded once, recognizing something in my expression that told him I had crossed a threshold. That I’d been made new.

Father O’Malley extinguished the candles one by one, returning the chamber to shadow.

But something of the light remained, glowing within me like an ember that refused to die.

Whatever came next—whether hunting the Order that had created and betrayed us, or finding others of our kind who might be shown this path—I would carry that ember forward, proof that even in darkness, light could endure.

I glanced at Ruth and Rebecca, still huddled together in their corner.

They were my responsibility now—not just as their sire, but as someone who had glimpsed a truth they might someday be ready to embrace.

I would not abandon them to the night, to the hunger, to the despair that came with believing oneself damned beyond redemption.

“Rest now,” I told them softly. “Dawn approaches, and with it, dreams. Tomorrow night, we begin again.”

And in the sacred darkness of that hidden chamber, surrounded by the living and the undead, I felt something I had not expected to find again: real joy, real life, real love.

THE END OF BOOK ONE

To Be Continued in…

The Gilded Cross (Nightwalker #2)