I'd like to start with a huge and overdue thank you to my reviewers (CaffeineTed, Caleb's Raven and my anonymous reviewers). Cheers! If you leave a review I will love you forever. I truly will.

I know you've heard it before... but-

All credit to known characters goes to Joss Whedon and the many talented creators of 'Buffy The Vampire Slayer'. References to 'One Night' by Margaret Clark also included. No infringement intended.

In this story I will delve into the mind of a homicidal maniac. Please bare with me as I try to remain true to Caleb's character, while keeping my own sanity intact. This chapter is so long overdue it's not even funny, but uni is a total bitch. Hopefully the next and final chapter won't be another victim of procrastination... but don't hold me to it.

Also, being Australian, I have used Australian spelling in my work, some of which may seem a little fucked up depending on the individual reader.

Piper Quinn.

xXx

WARNING: This chapter may contain material which will offend anyone with strong religious beliefs - that pretty much goes for the entire story actually.

Sliding Into Apathy. Chapter Four.

"In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our despair, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." - Aeschylus

All our lives we have been told that knowledge is power, that the worst thing a person can be is foolish.

But understand this; If you are not aware of the things that are hurting you, are you truly in pain?

There had been a snake coiled in waiting for me at the church, its diamond head swaying to the sound of my heart beating. But It's presence was unknown to me and therefore I had not, as of yet, feared it.

Through my life of poison, I had not yet built up a tolerance to the snake's venom.

But you are able to go on, oblivious and without fear, until the snake is recognised. It only takes one split second for the gleam of the serpent's scales to catch your eye. Knowledge of threat will hit you like a ton of bricks and you will be ever-changed.

The snake will take many forms, some unexpected and some you should have seen comin' a mile away. Either way, the inevitable bite will be scathing and the poison quick.

Monday.

Elizabeth and I had not conferred over our meeting in the dark. It was far too fragile to be spoken of aloud. I was afraid the moment would shatter, like glass.

If anyone else was to know, said moment would become something twisted and ugly. This church had the ability to break anything of beauty or purity, two things which I had only recently regained my belief in. I could not lose it now.

But my past brought me to a downfall yet again.

I had been a lonely child. Friendless and bleak. The tragedy I had grappled with during those years had filled me with a relentless darkness and it simply left no room for anythin' else.

I had deeply underestimated the impregnable cohesion of a close friendship.

I had simply been making my through the garden surrounding Rivington house, I don't even recall as to why, when I saw the blue-black gleam. Bram.

I thought nothin' of her at first, the girl had barely said two words in all the time she had been here.

But then she turned. She watching me walking past with such ardency that her dark gaze almost burned.

The tiny brunette, who had sat in corners with a painful indifference in her expression, suddenly looked at me with the intensity of the Devil himself.

It hit me like a fucking train.

She knew.

Elizabeth had told her.

/The snake strikes/

The panic should have set in there and then.

I was a priest. A man of God. What I had done was beyond a sin.

But all I could think of was how tainted it had become. Our secret salvation, mine and Elizabeth, had become something sleazy and vulgar. Bram did not factor into this equation, that girl was too empty, too treacherous.

I failed to understand how in all hell Elizabeth could justify bringin' her into this.

God, it made me sick.

I had been walkin' quickly, without thought as to where I was going, and when I looked up, I found myself in the church. Try as I might, I could not tear my gaze from that wooden crucifix.

Had I not been so wrapped up in my own tenebrous thoughts, I might have heard her footsteps. I might have felt her presence.

But, so help me God, I did not.

I did, however, feel her small, cold, fingers travel up my spine.

I flinched, jolted out of my daze.

In all the coldness of the moment I am repentant to say that, just for a instant, I expected to find Elizabeth behind me.

It was, of course, Bram. Her black stare burnin' into me yet again.

I opened my mouth to ask her what she was doing here, what she wanted from me, but words were impossible to form.

Don't touch me! I wanted to say, but still I could not speak the words.

Her shadow had rendered me speechless.

And then...

Her hands slid up her own body slowly, coming to rest at her shoulders, where she began to slip her shirt off of her body.

She simply could not have done a worse thing.

"Stop." I found my voice then. The word echoed around the church.

She blinked, her features hardening.

/The poison seeps into my bloodstream/

And then she was gone, her long hair flashing behind her.

I sat on the bench beside me, it was all I could do to keep from fallin' to my knees.

My clarity was gone. Didn't Elizabeth understand? What had occured between us had given us both something to cling to, something other than the constant, desolate apathy that we faced.

You just can't share somethin' like that. There isn't enough to go around.

And even as a preacher, I knew that there was a time to be selfish.

Not even preachers can escape that human will to survive.

I could not help but wonder who else Elizabeth had told.

I didn't wonder long. The next day I received a message from Father Michaels. Father Marks wanted to see me. He was arriving first thing the next morning. It was made real clear to me that the reason he was blessin' us with his presence was the fact that there was an urgent conversation to be had between the two of us. There had been a complaint.

I nodded, thanked Father Michaels for lettin' me know, closed the door to my room and began plotting the way in which I would kill Elizabeth.