Author's Note: Hello and welcome to the fourth installment of "Cross". This drabble takes place after chapter two and picks up more or less where the movie left off. Before we begin, I would like to thank everyone who read the last chapter, along with those that reviewed, Mythstar Black Dragon, Inwe[z]247, Faith-Catherine, FireChildSlytherin5, Amanda16 and Genius-626. Also, I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to add this story to their favorites/author alerts. You guys rock! I am truly grateful for your support and encouragement. I do hope you enjoy this installment.

Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Priest.

Part IV A Necessary Evil

He met her at the rendezvous point. As she had hoped. As she had wished and prayed for. Priestess kept a respectful distance, let him roll his motorcycle up beside hers and pluck the goggles from his brow before she even dared to look at him.

Priest slouched in the seat, his gloved fingers curled over the low handlebars. Beyond him, near the distant horizon, the sun had already set. It was night. A black, hard night.

"It is done," he said in a voice that betrayed no shadow of emotion, no sign of relief or fear or even joy. His somberness was practiced and controlled, his expression plain. And when he glanced at his companion, the echoing emptiness in his eyes daunted even her.

Detachment. His detachment was painful, a forced break, a separation between what remained of his humanity and what he kept hidden. The yearning. The desire for vital contact.

He has been alone, Priestess told herself, recognizing the paranoid hunch of his shoulders, the rigid arc of his tensed neck. He has been alone for far too long….and so have I.

They should have been together.

She stopped herself there. Gathered what remained of her sense and remembered that there was a reason for their loneliness. It was, above all things, a necessary evil.

Evil. The word resounded within her with dreadful straddled her motorcycle, her nostrils still burning from the copious clouds of billowing smoke that had polluted the site of the wreck, that had risen in steaming spirals from that particular evil. Although miles stretched between her and the charred corpse of a train, she could still feel the breathy heat of the flames on her skin, could hear the stomach-churning sizzle of vampire flesh as it burned and fell to ashes. And this was only the beginning, she realized. Only the beginning of what was to come, another…

"War," Priest said. He braced his long legs on either side of his motorcycle, the wrinkled hem of his black coat fanned out against the back of the seat. "We will have another war."

"I know," Priestess replied and as she spoke, she heard the tenderness in her words, the secret that they had both acknowledged. It was her weakness. Not his, no, but hers alone.

Alone.

"The Monsignors," she said, looking over her shoulder in the direction he had come, over the hills that blocked their view of the hulking metropolis. The skin on the back of her neck prickled even though the air was silky and warm. Privately, she half-wished that Priest hadn't gone directly to the city. The Church now knew what they knew…and that was dangerous.

And sitting there, trapped beneath the thick canopy of silver-blue night clouds, with the vast wasteland open before her, Priestess felt vulnerable. Watched. Stalked by wickedness from both within and without.

She was trapped.

"They may try to follow us," she told him.

Priest lowered his head in a half-nod, his body stooped as he favored his left shoulder. There was a spattering of blood on his black coat. It had dried and caked itself into an earthy brown color.

The color of life, Priestess thought. Not death.

"They will follow us. Make no mistake, we are being hunted now," he said, his voice turning into a heavy growl. Something deep and full that promised vibrancy.

And Priestess responded to it. Her heart thudded and her skin flushed and she heard the cadence of old war cries ringing in her ears. Things were turning, changing. The life that she had lost, the life that had slipped through her fingers and the life that had ebbed with the passing of each day, was rushing back to her.

Some hardened knot in her stomach released. Some tense, indefinable worry. She looked down at her hands and smiled. Smiled.

She'd been working in waste management. Sanitation. A garbage collector. They had turned her into a bottom-feeder. A hopeless little shadow, one of the many millions that huddled together for protection in the city. And now, at last, she was being pulled from the dream into a reality that was sharp and raw but blessed.

Things were turning. Changing. Beginning.

Another war. More evil.

Priestess inhaled, drawing the heavy, dry air of the wasteland into her body, feeling it sear her lungs. "The others," she said. "If the Church pursues us, then they will go after the others. Our brothers."

"Our sisters," Priest added.

There was silence for a moment. And in that space of time, Priestess remembered their faces, sharpened by war, hardened and strengthened, weathered by time and age and glory. Yes, they had all been glorious…for a while, anyway.

"Some are dead," Priestess said. She was surprised when she felt her throat close up. The back of her mouth ached with the threat of a sob. But she wasn't sad. She had known all along that many had died. Many of their brothers and sisters. The ones she had trained with. The ones she had stood with in battle.

It had been one of the twins, after all, whom they had found in Jericho. Crucified. His earthly flesh desecrated.

And his blood had run black. Run with the hue of death.

Evil.

Priestess set her jaw, her lips pulling into a firm, decisive line. "How many are left?" she asked.

"Enough," Priest replied, though even he didn't seem certain. "We will find them first, before-"

"The Church," she finished for him.

More silence. She weighed the quiet in her mind. Judged it. There was a new tension between them now, the comfort of their old camaraderie falling to cinders like the wreck of the ruined train. What remained was uncertain. A faint throbbing. A low, subtle ticking.

Was this evil?

Priestess counted the years, those that she had spent away from him, when it felt as though her body had been torn in two, when she had been lonely, relying upon her fleeting dreams to provide comfort. To restore her humanity.

But it was hard to be whole without him. He was an extension of her soul. He always had been.

"Do you miss them?" she asked, her question guarded. "The others, I mean."

Awaiting his response was exquisite torment. Priestess wondered if he knew what she really meant to ask, if he knew but was too ashamed to say it.

Did you miss me?

Priest grunted, his fingers knotted over his shoulder, his skin a perilous sort of bone-white. "Sometimes," he said. He paused, then added. "We were a part of each other."

It was enough. Enough for her, at least. Enough to keep the evil away for another day. Another night.

Priestess folded her knuckles over the handlebars of her motorcycle, the metal sliding beneath her gloved palms. "We should know where to find them then," she replied.

Priest picked up on her cue. He switched on his own motorcycle and let the engine run for a minute until it warmed. "If they want to be found," he muttered, dropping his goggles back over his eyes so that she could no longer see him.

And despite the pressing urgency of their mission, despite the memory of the burning bodies and the train and the fear of what was to come-another war-Priestess's heart lurched and shuddered.

The weakness was hers, she reminded herself, even as Priest darted off into the night. Not his.

And it was evil. Evil.

They did not get far. Cresting the top of a dune, raised above the height of a deep, bowl of a valley, Priestess heard him fall behind her. Tumble into the sand off his motorcycle. And in the ashy light of the veiled moon, she saw the blood pool around him, an echo of black that only faintly mimicked crimson.

Priestess stopped her motorcycle and glanced back at him. A fallen angel, she mused, aware of how uselessly sentimental she had become. She dismounted, steadying her vehicle in the thick sand before she went to him.

It was easy, oh so easy to take him in her arms. To sin when no one was watching. Perhaps not even God.

Priestess held him like a child, his cheek pressed to her breast, her arm lingering around his shoulders. She held him for as long as she dared, feeling the heat of a promised fever rise from his body. Fresh blood dribbled from his wounds. He was in pain.

Sitting with her legs in the sand, her long coat dusted with silvery grains, she brought her lips close enough to his to feel the steady exhalation of his breathe whisper across her mouth.

Temptation ran through her as a soul-consuming shiver, but she stopped it, stopped it there because it was evil. An unnecessary evil. And the world was wicked enough without another sin.

Priestess looked at his wounds, at the gaping hole in his shoulder and the damp sheen of delirium on his brow and the tense, taut line of his hard mouth. He could not go on, not like this.

Shelter, she reminded herself even as the lure of temptation began to fade. Priest needed shelter. And healing.

But for now, yes now, maybe he just needed her.

The others, Priestess knew, would have to wait.

Author's Note: Thanks so much for reading! If you have a free moment, please leave a review. Feedback always makes me smile. The next installment should be posted next week. Until then, take care and be well!