Author's Notes: The last of three vignettes. All the usual disclaimers apply. Much thanks, once again, to those who reviewed parts one and two.

SURRENDER

But see how patient I am grown

In all this coil about thee:

Come, nice thing, let my heart alone,

I cannot live without thee!

-- Michael Drayton, To His Coy Love

It's a Tuesday when he takes her to meet God.

She doesn't want to go, he can tell. She wants to go home, to pick up some things, she says. But she ought to know better. He doesn't like her going back there, to the place before him. To all the reminders of why she ought to just walk away. To the one very big reminder of why she can't. She has to make a choice, he tells her. He thought they'd already been through this trial, but he's more than happy to repeat himself. She's silent after that, walks a half-step behind him as they go, pilgrims both, in search of absolution. Or contrition, or benediction.

Still, he has to search hard for a church that has what he wants. He asks Justine and gets a blank look for his trouble. Except for a wedding or two, the occasional funeral, she's never seen the inside of a church. He's properly scandalized by that, and she looks at him oddly when she thinks he doesn't see.

He finds one eventually, tucked snugly between a mosque and a Christian Science reading room. It's odd to see it there, stained glass and statuary. Pageant, ritual. All out in the open. All these warring faiths side by side, feigning tolerance. Pretending everything is true, pretending there is no truth. He doesn't understand this age at all. But he goes inside, takes a deep breath, inhaling familiar incense, and decides it doesn't matter very much.

Faith is so much simpler, and more complicated, than that.

He slips into the confessional, leaving her standing in the aisle, looking tired, looking worried. Looking mutinous. But that can wait. For the moment, anyway. "Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been… rather a long time… since my last confession."

But what to confess? There's no time for all, for two centuries of outdated sins and dreamt blasphemies. Doubt, anger, lust… carnal thoughts, carnal deeds. The girl, Justine… best perhaps to leave her out. She's the closest thing to purity he's found in this quicksilver Babylon, the closest to honesty. She's exactly what he needs, an extension of himself, of his will. Of God's will. Surely that can't be a sin.

It might even be his salvation. Might be hers.

***

This place gives Justine the creeps. She's never been much for talking to God. But it's important to Daniel, so here they are. She's sitting in the very back pew, cradling her bandaged hand, kicking the kneeler up and down (which must be sacrilegious) and thinking about hell.

Churches never make her think about heaven.

But she never really believed in hell before, either. She thought about it, sinners and Satan and the cosmic unfairness of the whole idea, but never really believed it. Never believed such a place existed, that there was actually a hell. Or hells. Daniel says there's more than one, and that's a multiple-choice question she never wants to get right. I'll take what's behind Door #3… Not really all that funny, actually, because it could be true. It is true, and that's a weird feeling. But then she'd never believed in vampires either. She doesn't want to believe in these things. Doesn't want to think about what they mean, really. But now? It's far too late for that. She's seen things, felt them, touched them. She's tasted dust, dry as ashes. So now, in this place, she has no choice but to believe. Even if belief makes her heart hurt. Even if it asks things of her she's not ready to give, even if he does. Even if the stained glass saints shattered, the crucifix spoke prophecy and the statue of the Virgin wept blood on the altar. It would be, now, only a minor surprise. If that. There are weirder things under heaven and earth, and she's well on her way to seeing them all.

The church is too hot for January, flame-lit and thick with incense. The air swims a little bit, a California highway-mirage shimmer of heat, and she shrugs off her jacket, sweating. He's been shut away with the priest for an eternity and she tries to guess what he's confessing, but she can't begin to imagine. She can't shake the feeling that anything he needs to confess, she's better off not knowing. And anyway, what she really wants to know is why Daniel dragged her here to begin with. He needs a little religion? Fine. But she doesn't know a cassock from a canticle, and he knows it, so why bother? Maybe he wants to save her soul. Oh, yeah. That must be it. She kicks the kneeler again and it rebounds sharply off the stone floor. Somehow she's pretty sure her soul isn't what he's after.

She digs another store-brand aspirin from her jacket pocket and crushes it between her teeth. It's bitter, chalky, but at least it cuts the pain a little. Her hand actually hurts more now than it did just after, hurts from her ring finger to her wisdom teeth, sometimes jagged and electric, sometimes dull and pounding. Just now the pain thuds in time with her heartbeat. She tries to dry-swallow a second pill and briefly considers washing it down with altar wine just to see what would happen.

Better not. She's slowly learning not to tempt fate.

But she's tired and she hurts and he's taking forever. She leans on the armrest, pillows her head on her good arm. She can feel the earth turn on its axis when she closes her eyes. The pew is too hard, uncomfortable beneath her, and for some reason that makes her remember the last time she was in a church.

The memory makes her want to run.

She opens her eyes instead. Has to blink before things come back into focus. The room is still spinning slightly and she feels hot and cold all over the back of her neck. The incense is making her queasy. Maybe he won't notice if she just slips outside for some air.

"Justine."

She jumps guiltily, knocking her throbbing hand against a sharp, hardwood edge. And, damn it, it hurts. She bites her lip. He just looks annoyed. Then again, he tends to look annoyed as a general rule. She climbs sloppily to her feet, pulling herself up with her other hand on the back of the pew. He's standing by the shadowed alcove, with its made-for-TV serial killer shrine of candles, an avenging angel with drooping, black leather wings. Watching her. She hadn't even noticed when he'd left the confessional.

"Soul all clean?" But her heart isn't in it. He isn't paying her words any real attention anyway. He looks over her shoulder at the altar, seeing something Justine doesn't.

"Come here." Again with the commands. But she has a stigmata puncture wound of her own to remind her to obey.

Still she hesitates, drags her feet. She isn't quite ready to let him know the power he has. He probably knows anyway. She steps out into the aisle, crosses over to him, aware of something in the way he watches her.

Maybe she does know what he confessed after all.

But that isn't why she shakes when he touches her. She is trembling, though, and she's not someone who trembles, or faints, or cries. His fingers are cold, even through the thick, sticky bandage. She's dizzy again and misses most of what he says next.

"I want you to do this for me," is all she gets.

She balks at that, confused, and takes a step back. Away. Out of his grasp. Or so she thinks. But he reaches easily for her elbow and pulls her back, stands her in the shadowed corner, in front of the candles.

"Are you sending me to time-out?" The words come out thin, wavery, not the way they'd sounded in her head.

"Justine." There's a warning in his voice, so she sighs and takes the taper he's pressing into her palm. "Here." He stands behind her, takes her hand in his and guides her. She can feel the pulse at his thumbs on her wrists. It's fast, uneven. He holds her too tightly, and her own heart flutters and starts, trying to match rhythms. It can't and skips, a double-beat against her breastbone, her breath catching in her throat.

They've been living like this, in tandem, for weeks. At first she assumed it was his way of teaching, by action, by example. Always holding her hand, guiding, showing her the way to go, how to move, how to think, to feel, to fight. But now the others have come to them… and still he holds her hand and no one else's. Holds her hand, tells her she's made for this, for him, to be at his side. All part of the lessons, or so she thought. But he doesn't teach the others this way. He leaves their teaching in her hands. So now she isn't sure what to think, or even if she wants to think.

"Well, what now?" she asks, even though she's figured out exactly what it is he wants her to do.

"Don't be difficult."

She sighs, holds the taper down to one of the tiny flames. Somewhere behind them a door swings open, the candles gutter in response, but none go out. He tightens his grip on her wrist and chooses three unlit candles.

"One for Caroline. One for Sarah. One for little Daniel." He speaks softly into her ear, a murmured litany each time she touches flame to wick. Here. Here. And here. A soft, slow dance with ritual. His other hand rests on her hip, clutches, familiar in a way that's new. She isn't sure she likes it.

She turns to blow out the taper, but he holds her fast. "And one for Julia," he murmurs, forcing her hand back down. The candle flickers, licks, dribbling wax. The wick catches, splitting flame in two, dividing.

She burns her fingers, but doesn't pull away.

***