By the time they walked past St. August Cathedral and there was a light on in the rectory, the need was too strong to ignore. They'd been pacing the streets in utter silence, two shadowed figures who radiated enough menace that the local population had left them entirely alone. Sabbath didn't speak and there was no need for words. He understood the way things seemed to pile up around a person and then constrict, until the slightest stimulus could lead to explosion. Why Schuldich had to keep throwing sticks on the fire was beyond Farfarello, but then again, very few people even had the potential to understand the telepath. Sometimes Farf thought he might be close, but then Schu would always pull something so incomprehensible it boggled even him.

Sabbath, on the other hand, was real, visceral, and very much present at his side, keeping pace. She was lost in thought again, but not quite as dead to the world as the last time he'd seen her in this state. When he slowed to a stop, she stopped too, and after a moment she actually twitched and looked at him. He was staring at that light, lips slightly parted, pupil contracted to a pinpoint surrounded by hungry golden light.

She looked mildly confused, but then when she saw the light in the window, comprehension dawned. Farfarello glanced down at her, gauging her reaction. Emotions warred in her face and then a muscle in her jaw stood out.

At the moment, the sudden rise of anticipation in his chest seemed like just that; anticipation. Much later, looking back, he'd see this as the moment he fell in love with the crazy little witch.

"It can be risky. If the police come…"

"Then we'll have to make sure nobody picks up the phone," she said frankly.

Farf smiled slowly, and she shook out her hair and held out a hand.

"I know you have a knife."

He slipped one free from the many hidden sheaths in his clothing and offered it to her; she took it and tested its weight, plying a finger at the edge.

"Have you ever killed before?" he inquired flatly. "The Collective doesn't count. They are not people."

She shook her head. "No. But before we worry about popping that cherry, let's pop the phone lines." Her voice was utterly emotionless and sharp with clipped efficiency.

He nodded, and without a word, she circled around the right side of the church and he around the left.

Moments later, they met behind the church, in the tiny graveyard. She nodded toward the back door, then turned and went back around the front, tucking her knife into her hoody as she went. He slipped up to the door and looked through the narrow, dirty window. There was light back there, light like the light of God that shone in every human being. That creative spark, that creative essence, the thing he wanted to snuff out, the piece of God he wanted to kill. He waited five minutes, then six, and then he tested the doorknob. It was locked, so he slammed his fist through the window. The glass was thick but it shattered, sending shards across the dull carpet inside. Fumbling through the window, feeling pressure as jagged chips of glass dug into his arm and the warmth as blood trickled out of the cuts, he found the lock and the bolt, higher up along the frame, and slid them both back.

The door opened for him and no one came running to see what had happened. Just his luck.

He searched each room methodically, the small kitchen, the Sunday School rooms, the offices, until he reached the sanctuary. No one was there… probably a lone priest, holding vigil, or perhaps a parishioner in desperate need of Divine intervention. He slipped into the sanctuary through the rectory door and found a priest sweeping the floor as Sabbath lit one of the votive candles at the feet of the Virgin Mary. She seemed to sense him, and turned, flashing him a black smile as she cupped the small candle in her delicate hands. He returned the look, baring his teeth as he crept up on the priest. The older man started to turn toward Farfarello, but then a sweep of Sabbath's arm sent all the candles clattering off of the pedestal to shatter on the floor and spill wax, and fire, everywhere. Startled, the priest turned in her direction, and that was when Farfarello slid up behind him and clapped a hand over his mouth.

The man struggled but when the cold edge of a blade was pressed to his throat, he quieted, fearful. Farfarello watched as Sabbath slowly stood up, setting her candle where the others had been, right in the middle of the pedestal.

"You know," She said casually, turning to face them. "Some Wiccans believe the Virgin Mary is just another manifestation of The Goddess. Though She was surmounted and made irrelevant by the God raised up by man, she returned in one of her many guises, that of Holy Mother, to guide and comfort the women oppressed by the God's regime. But Mary was only one aspect of Her, and not one I've ever been particularly fond of. She did her job, though. She brought some people peace. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, for you have lost your son on Calvary and suffered much grief and pain. You are the mother scorned, the mother hated. You are the mother who cannot touch your children, blind and deaf to help your son when he hung on the cypress tree. You, like the women you are supposed to guide and protect, are impotent." Her teeth bared and she snarled. "THIS is your rendition of our Goddess?"

The priest made muffled protests but Farfarello squeezed tighter.

"I've got another quote for you, father. How about this? 'All evil stems from carnal lust, which is, in a woman, insatiable.' Do you recognize your own evil book? Do you recognize the tome that led your predecessors to slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocent women and men? Do you understand the hypocrisy in the statement when so many of your brothers in CHRIST look with lust at altar boys? Do you understand the LIE?"

Farfarello watched her, entranced by her fury, as she stalked closer, gaze fixed on the priest. "God has abandoned you this night, father. And you know what? It doesn't matter if you curse him before you die or not. You're still going to die. Because today, MY GODDESS subsumed your lying GOD."

Her right hand slipped into her left sleeve. She drew the knife. The priest screamed behind Farfarello's hand and Farf kneed him sharply in the groin. He doubled over, scream choked off. When Farf looked up, Sabbath was smiling at him. "Do I need a knife?" she asked, and he shook his head.

Twin blades clattered to the floor and they set upon the priest with tooth and claw.

He screamed until a twist of Farfarello's knuckles paralyzed his vocal chords. Then he only rasped, flailing on the stone floor as four hands sought out the tender places of his body, peeling back the skin, tearing the muscle, seeking out the hot blood inside. Sabbath pulled up double-handfuls of intestines and yanked them loose, spattering blood wildly. And as the man convulsed in his dying throes, Farfarello's hands dove in alongside Sabbath's, seeking the life and the light inside him. The spirit flared and Farfarello found a beating organ and closed his hands around it, and then it stuttered even as he dug his nails in.

The spirit fled.

A heave of Sabbath's shoulders split the corpse in two with the sound of ripping skin and Farfarello sat back in the puddle, gazing at his bloodied hands. She was breathing hard, shoulders heaving, arms plunged almost up to the elbow in viscera. She moved her arms and there was a snap.

"I want to break everything," she whispered, the sound as loud as a thunderclap in the utterly silent stone sanctuary.

He watched a drop of blood fall from his fingertips to the floor and vanish in the growing pool of it. He looked up and her and she at him, understanding fully that she had just crossed a spiritual and moral line. She had murdered. This was not self defense, this was not justifiable. It was rage and bloodlust and she had given into it, let him drag her down the spiral path of insanity. She withdrew her hands and rubbed the fingers together. "It's sticky," she said dully.

"And thick, and hot," he agreed, placing a hand, palm-down, on the bloodied carcass. "Do you like the taste?"

"It's sweet, like copper and salt."

"Then drink." He tilted his head back and raised his hand, making a fist out of which blood dribbled freely. It spattered his lips and tongue and he swallowed, running that tongue along his hand to lap up the rest of it.

Sabbath brushed a strand of hair from her cheek and left a bloody streak. His fingers quickly caught her chin and her bloody hands found his neck and pulled him down. His tongue flicked along her cheek and collected honeyed blood and the scent of patchouli, and then he fastened his mouth at her neck and bit down on a small fold of skin. She arched up into him, just as the priest had convulsively arched, but it was different, all different. He felt her hands slid along his head, spreading redness in his frost-white hair and tightening in the short-cropped strands. Moving up, he found her ear and she turned, and his tongue slipped the taste of human blood into her mouth, salty liquid stinging her lips and settling like deep musk in the back of her throat. The force of his kiss bore her back and only his arm snaking around her waist kept her from falling back into the blood puddle. After all, it wouldn't do to track blood into the apartment. He pulled her against him. She was so slender, but so firm, like a cat, and her spine bent backward almost double as he shifted beneath him. His tongue found hers and tangled with it and she nipped at his, teeth finding his lower lip and tugging on it sharply. He tangled his other hand in her hair, the strands sticking to his fingers.

A soft gasp distracted him and he tore his mouth from her, narrow eye instantly pinning down the source of the exclamation. One nun, a single woman, who had just come down the stairs with a dish towel in her hands and was now staring at the scene before her, trembling uncontrollably. She was inches from a set of shrieking hysterics and as Farf and Sabbath hurriedly disentangled themselves, twin expressions of bloodlust fixing on the poor nun, she whirled and ran toward the back door.

"Go," Sabbath breathed, and Farf grunted as he pushed off the floor and bounded after her. Sabbath sprang to her feet and followed him.

He had not locked the door after entering through it, which struck him now as stupid. The bolts, at least, would have slowed the woman down. But she made it out the door and down the steps and fled across the small graveyard, toward the houses on the other side.

Farfarello burst out of the church behind her, a silent, slim devil on her heels. He quickly caught up with her and reached out, but she stopped, twisted, and doubled back the way she'd come, leaving him to reverse his sprint as his momentum allowed. Looking back his way, she ran back toward the church even as Farf tried to pull about and slipped on wet grass, skidding on his knees. He'd just found his feet and was about to start off in pursuit again when Sabbath planted a foot on a grave marker, leaped, and came down in a full tackle on the fleeing woman, knocking her solidly to the earth and sending the breath whooshing out of her lungs. The nun opened her mouth to gasp and Sabbath planted her forearm solidly in it, pressing down hard and preventing the nun from biting, lest the woman bite her own captured lips.

Farfarello stalked quietly toward them. She noticed him and her eyes went very wide as she began to kick and struggle. Sabbath was a small girl who weighed very little, but she wound her limbs around the nun and held her. And then Farf was there, twisting his fingers in the woman's hair and pulling thoughtfully.

"We should take her inside," he suggested. "It would give us more time to play."

Sabbath extricated herself and sat back as Farfarello manhandled the woman to her feet. She stared wildly at Sabbath's blood-streaked face, though with the all-black garb, it didn't show much on her clothing. "You're evil," she whimpered.

Sabbath hiked an eyebrow. "And forgive us sinners, now and at the hour of our death."

X-X-X

When they went back to the apartment to change clothes and shower, everyone else had already gone to bed. Farfarello wandered out of the bathroom in battered jeans, rubbing a towel over his head and chest, to find Sabbath already curled up with a mug of tea. She wore black drawstring pants and a too-large olive-green hoody, the sleeves of which overshot her hands by about seven inches. Her feet were bare, and he found it endearing how the toes curled under as if cold. Was she feeling a chill now, shaken to the bone? Did she regret that night and the lives they had so casually taken? He stood and watched her and she glanced up at him, eyes narrowing briefly in indecision before she melted into a wry smile and laughed.

"You look like you expect me to throw a hysterical fit any minute now," she told him dryly.

Farfarello shrugged. "Schuldich did, the first time he watched me do that. He got used to it quickly. Now, he simply thinks it's amusing. Every once in a while he participates."

"I don't know what I think yet," she told him. "I'm shaken. Here." A fist clasped to her chest. "And at the same time, I'm horrified and thrilled. There's this heady sense of power, and justification, and revenge. And at the same time, there's sadness and loss, like I've been empowered and diminished at the same time."

"The spark of God in you tries to pull you back," Farfarello told her quietly as he prowled over to the couch. He sat beside her, feet crossed and knees pulled up to his chest. "You can still be forgiven, now. You can still return to his kingdom."

Sabbath made a snorting sound. "Fuck his kingdom. It's Her displeasure I'm worried about." Dark brown eyes fixed on Farf's and he waited expectantly. "I keep telling myself that there is destruction and there is creation, and this is the balance of life. There HAVE to be destroyers. It's because humanity has no natural predators that we suffer from such an overpopulation crisis right now. But at the same time, I realize that what we did tonight was destruction without purpose. Nothing was created out of this. It was hatred set free, and that only leads to bad karma."

"Did not Kali delight in wanton destruction as well?"

She sighed. "She did. She danced on ashes and was more than a little wicked. But she was balanced, that's the key. There's a balance here I'm trying to find, and what we just did doesn't seem to fit into it." She shook her head. "I don't know why I'm worried. Kali's got her share of death cults who'd have applauded what I just did. But it wasn't really justice, even though it felt like it. I don't know that that priest ever did anything wrong. He might have been pious. He might have been tolerant of others and gentle and understanding. And the nun, she might have been raped and chose to forswear men after that, to take succor in God's arms." She laughed. "Funny how I'm having romantic thoughts about Christians after killing two of them."

"The angel in you tries to spread its wings," he whispered, and her eyes found his again. "Feel them beat against your ribcage as your heart pounds. It is God. He weeps. Can you hear him?" He placed a hand on her stomach and felt the flutter. "Can you feel it?"

Her lips parted and she nodded. "Beating feathers and fluttering bat wings. Everything wants to burst out."

"Is your hatred gone?"

She paused and looked introspective. "I don't feel it right this minute. But I don't know if it's gone forever. I guess it takes time to know."

He leaned in and pressed that hand against her stomach. She was warm. "Right now, for a few moments… I don't feel it either. All I feel is endless quiet, a cold sort of peace, and God's tears raining down endlessly. Weeping for a broken creation…"

"And beloved children too stubborn to listen to him?"

He smirked. "Yes. And that too."

She smiled. "So. What do my doubts mean to you? Am I a liability now, or just a disappointment?"

He shook his head. "None of those. Had you felt no regret, I would know you had no soul. Had you flown into hysterics, I would have been disappointed. But you are you. You do not push the past aside like chaff and you do not give in when the terror sucks at you. You think, you reason, and you decide how to act. You learn. I feel regret with every one of God's creatures I kill. Somewhere in me, I know it could have been different, that I could be as happy as some of God's oblivious children today, had I only remained blind. I have a soul still, even if it is black."

"You wallow in the hatred," she said quietly, "to push away the sadness and the loss."

"And when the hatred is gone, when the sadness and loss are all that remain in quiet, late-night moments like this, in the silence…."

Her head shot up. "…. You feel pain."

He smiled.

She laughed then, disbelief ringing in her tone. "How many psychologists would have spent thousands of hours trying to wring that out of you?" she wondered rhetorically. "How many profilers will expound for years on your reasons for doing what you do? And all it takes is killing with you, just once, to know it."

Farf shrugged. "Why do you think that is?"

She thought some more, and he watched her. She thought a great deal, but her thoughts did not stay her actions, he had noticed. A bit of tempered experience, but not a total loss of spontaneity. He liked it that she thought like this, and that she was brutally, utterly honest when she answered him. She did not hide things, hoping to conceal the shadows on her soul. That, he decided, was why Schuldich's success rate with her was so low. She was honest with herself, and nothing he could pull out of the depths of her mind to haunt her with was feared enough to hold sway over her. She had no secrets.

"Because I had to see through your eyes," she told him slowly. "The only way to feel what you feel and to be where you are is to BE you. Feel your hate, carry out your rage, and then… and then… understand."

"Then it was not pointless," he pointed out, and with sudden serenity, she smiled at him.

"No, it wasn't. Not at all."

X-X-X