Author's Note: This chapter actually has a very complicated history. It was included in the original draft of my outline for this fic, but then at the last minute, I decided to take it out. However, at the very last minute, this chapter decided it wanted to be written no matter what I thought. And in the end, I suppose it really needed to be written, if only because the red-haired Priestess needs to have some pertinent back-story before the you-know-what hits the fan in the next couple of chapters. ;)

As always, I have to thank all my unbelievably awesome readers and reviewers, saichick, FireChildSlytherin5, Genius-626, Farren Ouro, Mss Heart of Swords01, R-Bizzle, Lady Krystalyn, Inwe[z]247, aprilrunrunrun, wolflover7 and J-lily. Also, I would like to thank all the fabulous people who have added this story to their favorites/author alerts list. I do hope you enjoy this chapter!

Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Priest.

Part 15 The Apprentice

A few weeks after she was ordained, Rowan was apprenticed to an older veteran for her initial deployment. The apprenticeship system itself was recently developed, implemented only to ensure that young Priests survived their first year in open battle. After that time, however, they were entirely on their own.

From the moment she had learned of the apprenticeship system, Rowan pinned her hopes on only one favorable outcome. She knew, in a dark corner of her heart, in the hidden, almost unacknowledged recesses of her soul, that she would be apprenticed to Priest. In her idealistic mind, the arrangement made absolute perfect sense. Rowan's attachment to him was certainly no secret. Among the circles of the clergy and the novices, it was generally accepted that they were a pair. Their relationship, which for the most part seemed innocent, was likened to the bond between siblings. They were allowed to be brother and sister. They were allowed to be friends. Nothing more. Nothing else.

Rowan herself encouraged the notion of their platonic affection. She pretended to think of Priest as a brother, if only because it was convenient and if only because it served a purpose. The truth, however, was much more dangerous and Rowan knew enough to fear it. She knew enough to hide it.

But she couldn't stop. She couldn't restrain herself from the sometimes overwhelming tide of longing that rushed over her whenever she was with him. And she couldn't keep from dreaming, from wishing that perhaps, someday, he might be hers. And she, she would be his.

Her hopes, however, were dashed very early on when she learned that she would not be apprenticed to Priest. Her idol had just finished his apprenticeship with Priestess and he was not ready, nor deemed worthy to take on a fledging of his own.

But strangely enough, Rowan did follow in his footsteps, as she had always aspired to. The week before he deployment, it was announced that she had been apprenticed…to Priestess.

That hateful woman! Rowan knew then and there that she would never be fully freed of her influence. As much as she had tried to avoid becoming like her, Priestess seemed intent on spreading her poison as far as she could.

The others told Rowan that she should be honored to have been chosen by Priestess, who was very discerning when it came to taking on apprentices and personally hand-picked all those who fought by her side. It was, in the strangest sort of way, a great privilege to have been singled out, although Rowan's past experiences with Priestess's cruelty had taught her enough to be wary of the woman's attention.

But as in all things, she soon learned that the choice was not hers. It was only then that Rowan started to understand the full weight of her vows, the words she had let slip so carelessly from her lips during her ordination. She was bound to something much bigger and much, much powerful than she could ever be. And her sense of individualism, all the little idiosyncrasies that had once made her her were being swallowed up. Devoured. Drained away.

It was like dying, she realized. It was like being buried alive. Rowan, however, didn't complain. She accepted the honor when Priestess chose her. But somehow, she knew, they had gotten to her. Somehow, they had slithered into her thoughts and stolen away her own private treasure. And she would never be Priest's. She would never, ever be his…because she already belonged to them.

Leaving the city for the first time in nearly seven years was more overwhelming than Rowan had ever imagined. Over the course of her stay in the Church's capital, she had become accustomed to the tight little spaces and cells and narrow corridors of her monastery home. Her eyes had grown used to the settled dark and her lungs no longer burned from what toxic fumes came wafting up through the grates in the street. She had learned not to miss the sun and the dry wind and the heat, because the damp was all permeating, a clammy veil that stuck to her body like a second skin.

Although it was uncomfortable and far from ideal, life in the city promised a certain sort of security that assuaged Rowan's childhood terrors. There was safety in numbers and high walls and iron gates. And in her mind, the world outside, the great, war-torn barren Wastelands seemed like a threat, a very real, very terrifying wilderness that stretched on and on into the unfathomable.

Rowan wanted desperately to hold onto the last of her youth and when Priestess first took her down to the monastery's garage, assigning her a motorcycle that would carry her far from everything she found comforting, the first throes of sickly fear fell upon her.

She kept a stiff upper lip, though, as her brother had once taught her, and she pretended that she was happy with her deployment, if only because Priestess was towering over her with a intimidating glare. The next morning, the two of them left, driving straight out of the city gates into the vast, broken world. Rowan herself had had quite enough practice to know to operate her motorcycle with confidence. The vehicle had been designed and developed by the Church's engineers and unlike civilian motorcycles, her bike could reach top speeds and maneuver with only a slight shift of the rider's weight. Common slang had crudely dubbed them 'vamp herders', vehicles that could overtake a vampire pack and follow the oft times uncertain trajectory of the wily creatures.

And as much as Rowan hated to admit it, she did experience a surge of pure adrenalin when her motorcycle hit the open plains, the sand whipping past her goggles with a soft hiss. After riding for a few miles, she felt her determined fear begin to slip a notch and in its wake came the promise of wonder, a wonder that was only further enlivened when she first glimpsed the great stone statues that marked the end of Church lands.

Rowan couldn't help it, she threw her head back joyfully and gawked at the pillars of bleached rock, trying her best to make out the obscured faces of the stern bishops that lorded over plains.

But Priestess, as always, was sharp with her. Swerving her motorcycle right in front of her apprentice's bike, she brought Rowan up short.

"Focus!" she called over her shoulder.

Rowan braked hard to avoid the potential collision, but Priestess only sped off, her taillight an ugly blue beacon in the morning gloom. They rode non-stop that day, and Rowan knew that they were aiming for a settlement somewhere out by the Duncard Mines. The town had once been a thriving outpost, although more recently it had been turned into a military command center when a vampire hive had unexpectedly sprung up only a few miles to the east.

The post was far enough away from Cathedral City and distance itself was a vague concept in Rowan's mind. She wasn't sure exactly how long it would take them to get there, although judging from Priestess's subtle sense of urgency, she felt they wouldn't be wasting much time.

After driving all through the first day, Priestess surprised her by riding straight on through the night. The journey was a trial for Rowan, but her own endurance, as of yet untested, proved to be more than sufficient. Three days spent on her knees in the chapel had toughened her, and she was only slightly fatigued when they stopped to rest on the second day.

Priestess set up the portable solar panels used to charge their motorcycles on the edge of a low cliff and they spent the afternoon dozing on the sand, their heads pillowed on their leather saddlebags.

The silence between them, Rowan felt, was acceptable. Comfortable, even. It allowed her to exist in a world of her own, away from her hated mentor and the empty desert and somewhere that near him, very near him.

But Priestess wouldn't let Rowan be close to him, even in her mind. She simply wouldn't let her.

"You should realize," she said, her hands folded across her stomach as she lay on her back, staring at the sky which was a harsh, deep blue. "We Priests are just as nocturnal as vampires. Rest during the day when you can, fight at night. Do you understand me?"

Rowan turned onto her side, although she did not look directly at Priestess. It was terribly awkward, she felt, being alone with a woman who had done so much to make her young life difficult, who had pushed her beyond the limits of physical and spiritual strength until her soul was molded into something it never should have been. And although Rowan was still intimidated by her, she decided to keep her mouth shut, giving Priestess the cold shoulder she thought she deserved.

Amazingly, the woman smiled, her expression all-knowing, leading Rowan to feel wretchedly inferior. "If you think I'm going to apologize," she said, her jagged nostril dilating as she laughed a little, "you'd be wrong."

"Apologize?" Rowan asked. It took quite an effort to finally loosen her tongue. A part of her was keenly intent on holding a grudge against Priestess. And another, even larger part of her was still terrified of the woman who had so casually wielded cruelty against children, who had seen them starved and beaten and ripped away from their homes. It was disgusting and it was a sin and Rowan almost felt like she wanted to kill Priestess. She sometimes felt as though she wanted to kill her.

But Priestess held all the power yet. Her majesty was potent, as was her obvious disregard for those around her. She moved her head slightly, offering Rowan her crooked, half-smile that was ruined by the long scars that ran from her mouth to her temple. "I won't apologize for being hard on you," Priestess said, "because I was trying to prepare you. I was trying to…protect you. I was one of the first…the first of the Priests and I know things, I know…"

She trailed off, her fingers drumming against her abdomen, her eyes squinting as the wind threw dust and sand at them.

Rowan shifted, shielding her face with her hood. She felt awfully exposed, lying in the open world with only the sun above to guard her.

But if Priestess felt the same way, if she felt alone and abandoned and vulnerable, she never showed it. She never, ever showed it.

Her determination was appealing and the desert air had changed her, made her into a creature of pure efficiency and drive. And for an instant, Rowan almost envied her composure, her strength.

Dear God, she thought, what must it be like to be so strong. So unrepentantly strong.

Wonderful. Maybe it was wonderful.

"He talked about you a lot, you know" Priestess said at length.

Rowan blinked, wishing she had kept her goggles on. Her eyes were burning…from the sand, of course. It was just from the sand.

"Who?" she asked, playing dumb.

Buy Priestess knew that she was dragging her feet. She jerked her chin impatiently in Rowan's direction. "Priest," she said. "When he was my apprentice, he used to talk about you. He used to tell me how much you hated me. And he said he thought I was mad to take you on as another apprentice, that you would refuse to learn anything from me…anything at all. I wonder, could that possibly be true?"

Rowan tried not to show how stunned she was. She tried to repress her shock and the sudden, seething rage that made her mood dangerous. Priestess didn't have the right to talk about Priest. She didn't have the right to infect Rowan's thoughts of him with her bitter tongue.

It was disgusting and it was a sin and Rowan felt, not for the first time, that she wanted to kill Priestess. Because somehow, the woman was taking away the last thing that belonged to her, stealing it away to corrupt it…to corrupt him.

Grinding her teeth together, she chewed over so many unspoken curses and condemnations. But Rowan fought against her anger. It was a deadly sin, after all. It was dangerous. And she liked to think that she was better than such base reactions. Control was paramount and she wanted always to be in control. Priestess had taught her that, oddly enough, and Rowan would show her now that she had learned the lesson well.

She said nothing. She said absolutely nothing.

Priestess raised her eyebrows. Rowan wasn't sure, but she thought the woman looked impressed.

"I don't remember much of my life," she said, her lips spreading a little wider to reveal her teeth, "but I think I spent most of my infancy in an orphanage in one of the cities. My parents must have been killed in a vamp attack, although I once heard that I had a sister. It doesn't matter so much…really."

Rowan stared at the ground, trying her best to ignore the wistfulness that had suddenly risen up in Priestess's voice. She had heard of those orphanages before, institutions run by the Church that were meant to give homes to the orphans of vampire raids. They were miserable places, supposedly. Workhouses. Prisons for children. Rowan wondered if Priestess remembered how horrible the orphanage was, or if she even cared.

"It isn't what you think," Priestess said quickly, as if eager to quell her young apprentice's musings. "I loved the orphanage. An order of nuns oversaw it and they were wonderful. It was like…it was like having so many mothers. They were kind to me and the other children. They played games with us and told us stories and taught us songs. Not all religious songs either, some were secular…old folk tunes from their hometowns. It was a better childhood than most children with both parents have. It was happy. It was blessed…but the clergy came for me when I was about five. That's young, isn't it? That's very young."

When Priestess paused, Rowan felt a faint squirming in her gut, a hint of unease that made her almost sympathetic. Almost. But then she remembered that she had to hate this woman. She needed to hate her.

"They were only four of us in the beginning," Priestess continued. She tapped a finger anxiously on the buckle of her broad belt. "Casper was the eldest and then there was Luke. Margaret, although everyone called her Maggie, and myself. Sometimes, I think the clergy were frightened of us, even though we were only children. They said we had been touched by God. They said we were what they had been looking for. I don't know. It might be true. It might not be. But we were only children, just children. And I don't think they ever realized that we were more frightened than they were."

Rowan found herself grimacing as she listened to Priestess. There were echoes of her own childhood in the woman's words, hints of a past she thought she'd like to forget, although she was certain she'd never be able to. And Priestess herself didn't seem capable of letting go. She didn't even seem willing.

"In those days," she continued, "there was no protocol. No standards for training. We were made to learn everything all on our own. How to fight, how to pray, how to…exist.

No one prepared us, no one told us about what was to come. And then I was fifteen and being ordained. Fifteen. That's young. That's very young, isn't it?"

"Yes," Rowan said simply. "Yes."

Priestess sighed, the sound of the exhalation short, resigned. "But here I am now," she said. "Here I am. And I won't apologize for being hard on you, Rowan. I'll never apologize. If only someone had been hard on me. If only someone had cared enough to make me understand how terrible the war would be. I want you to learn something from me. I want you to understand, Rowan. Do you understand?"

Priestess was laying on her side now, looking Rowan directly in the face, her eyes searching. Rowan flinched under her gaze, furious that she had dared to use her name, furious that she had tried to strike some chord of friendship between them. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right.

She needed to hate Priestess.

"I don't," she said, her fingers curled against the dirt, the gritty sand coating her knuckles. "I really don't."

She expected Priestess to reproach her as she always did. She expected the anger and the rage and a righteous reckoning. But the punishment never came. It never came.

Priestess looked at her thoughtfully. "It's all right," she said and there was the most unlikely note of forgiveness, of compassion in her tight voice. "Someday you will, I promise. Someday."

About halfway through the second night, Rowan got her very first taste of the war Priestess spoke of. As it turned out, they never made it to the command post out by the Duncard Mines. They had intended to pass by Jericho a few miles to the south of the town, but at the last minute, Priestess seemed to change her mind. Why, Rowan wasn't sure, but she later learned it had something to do with a set of vamp tracks Priestess had spotted during their drive.

A little bit before dawn they rolled into Jericho, a large town that sat astride the new railway the Church had built to transport not only coal, but soldiers. When they crossed the town line, their sleek bikes creeping along the hard-packed dirt road, Rowan felt that something was wrong. Her senses, which had been subconsciously attuned over the years to detect the first whiff of trouble, were painfully alert. The air around Jericho had a wretchedly stale smell to it and the odor of smoke seeped into the cool, spring night.

Priestess stopped her bike on the town's main street, her lean legs straddling the vehicle as she stood in the seat.

In the distance, the warm flicker of fire accompanied a sudden volley of screams.

Priestess removed her goggles and hung them neatly on her motorcycle's handlebars. "Are you ready?" she asked, turning to Rowan.

But Rowan, for all her training, for all the hard years spent dedicated to the precise art of war, was still very naïve. "Ready for what?" she asked, her breathing shallow, her heart drumming out a warning in her chest.

Priestess smiled. And then she took off, disappearing down one of the small passages that branched off the main street, an aimless arrow shot by a blind archer. Rowan leapt from her own bike, her hands trembling and she heard the screams again, the long, gurgling wails of agony that provided a discordant symphony to the hellish night.

What am I doing, she asked herself, weakened by the utter panic that had suddenly invaded her tiny body and claimed it as its own. God, oh God, what am I doing?

Instinct told her what to do next and before her mind had registered another conscious thought, she was chasing after Priestess down a darkened alley, the wooden facades of the buildings pressing close on either side like the walls of a coffin. She coughed as she ran, assaulted by some sinister musk that was too familiar, the scent of blood and sweat and slick skin.

Vampires.

They were near by, they had to be. But where was Priestess? Rowan came to the end of the alley, spilling out onto a wider street. She was aware, at once, that her boots were dragging through some kind of sludge, the dirt of the avenue becoming suddenly muddy. Glancing down, Rowan saw that there was a red paste, some blood-soaked sand, stuck to her boots. The corpse of a man lay a few feet away. He was a mine worker and his clothes were stained with coal dust. The bite to his neck was so deep Rowan thought that his head must nearly be severed.

Hungry, she thought. They were very hungry.

Finding her knife by her side, she pulled it from its sheath and plunged further into the black, taking a second passage that she thought might lead her closer to the source of the disruption. The high screams and shattering cries were interrupted every now and then by elephantine roars. Rowan knew the sounds well enough, her ears readily picking up the eager, hunting cries of a vamp pack.

She rounded a corner, trying her best to forget the awkward thumping in her chest which threatened to cut off her breath. In the back of her mind, the prayer they had taught her began to repeat itself over and over again, a steadying chant that reminded her that she had been born for this, that she had been touched by the very hand of God…

Strengthen me in this time of need. You are my refuge and my strength. I do not fear…

"For you are with me," Rowan muttered, finishing the psalm in a warrior's voice that was still touched with the tenuous trembling of youth. She ducked through another passage, the wild chaos of the melee, the heat from the fire drawing ever closer. And then suddenly she was there, standing on the very cusp of the battle, on the edge of her destiny, which had somehow been inscribed into her soul.

There were a few of the townsfolk still left alive and the men wielded guns, their bulky weaponry firing off rounds indiscriminately that only occasionally found a home in a vampire's body. Rowan caught sight of the pack, a dozen or so vampires that were making very quick work of the men, armed or not.

Taking a second, she forced her mind to clear and surveyed the skirmish. Vampires were not berserkers. Their attacks were calculated, their movements surprisingly studied. Rowan knew that in order to get the best of them, in order to turn the tide of the battle, she would have to outthink them first. When it came down to it, strength was mostly inconsequential. Speed, on the other hand, mattered. A quick mind paired with a quick body.

Back in the city, Rowan had killed hive guardians three times her size, the creatures captured from liquidated hives and brought to the Church's training grounds so that young novices could come face to face with the monsters they would one day conquer in open war. Rowan had been fast then and she would be fast now. Fast. Fast. She would be fast.

Looking above her, she spotted an adult vampire, probably the alpha male of the herd, perched on a water tower. Systematically, he jumped from his seat to the balcony of a saloon and then down to the ground, emitting a faint chattering before he launched himself directly at one of the men. The victim didn't even have time to get a shot off before his jugular was ripped out and in seeing him fall bloodless to the ground, Rowan felt anger bloom inside her.

In that instant, in that mere flash of time, she found that her lingering doubts were erased. With the cold weight of her knife in her hand, she darted forward, the blade raised in a shining arc, a missile streaking through the night. It wouldn't be the first time she'd killed a vampire…and God, it definitely wouldn't be the last.

But at the final minute, just as her knife was about to dig into the beast's ribcage, the creature jerked backward, a bellowing scream parting its foul, fanged mouth.

Priestess had gotten there first and she thrust her knife into the vampire's spinal cord, pulling her blade down all the way until there was a long, leaking gash in the creature's back.

The vampire fell at her feet, a writhing mass of slippery grey flesh, its jaw grotesquely distended as it sucked in its dying breath. Priestess raised her leg and stomped down on the creature's skull. Rowan heard a bone-crunching crack and the vampire lay still.

She was surprised when disappointment stole away her precious adrenalin, the intoxicating thrill of promised battle. Rowan glared up at Priestess. She felt, for some indefinable reason, that the woman had taken something from her, something that she had wanted all along…

Something. Something. Him…

And Priestess knew it, because she smiled.

"Faster," she said, as the chaos of the night reigned all around them. "You have to be faster, little sister."

Dawn put a definitive end to the assault on Jericho. Although Rowan and Priestess had themselves slaughtered a good many of the attacking vampires, the few that remained scampered off at first light, bounding into the open stretch of desert where there was no shelter from the sun. Priestess didn't think it was necessary to even give chase and instead, she and Rowan helped the townsfolk pick up what remained of their shattered lives. Each building had to be thoroughly searched and the streets carefully combed on the off-chance that one of the survivors had become infected. What they found, however, were only drained corpses, bodies that had fallen at odd angles, limbs akimbo, a man with his torso hanging over a fence post, a woman with the bodice of her dress ripped, blood on her breasts.

Priestess ordered the corpses burned and a pyre was made in the center of the town. When it was all over, they had piled twenty bodies on the kindling and set it ablaze. The smoke that rose into the milky dawn sky was acrid, a reminder of mortality at its very worst.

Rowan sat on a curb at the edge of the town square, blocking her nostrils with her dark sleeve. There was a spattering of gore on her hands and she hadn't bothered to wipe them clean. A part of her soul had been effectively numbed and as she saw the grieving families clustered around the pyre, a man sobbing openly, a young boy holding his wooden toy gun, Rowan realized that what remained of her had died, had been blown away with the ashes of those poor people…those poor people…

I don't understand, she thought angrily, overwhelmed by the vision of unending, unrelenting violence. I don't want to understand.

Watching the people grouped around the pyre, she caught sight of a lonely woman a few years older than her, a young mother who was clutching a rag doll to her chest and weeping for the child she had lost the night before.

There was no understanding this.

Rowan was about to look away, was about to turn her eyes from the horrible aberration, when she noticed Priestess hovering just behind the mourning mother. After what appeared to be a moment's hesitation, she reached out one arm and pulled the woman close to her in an embrace that was full and real and born from pure sympathy, from the deep ache passed from one heart to another.

The mother cried on her shoulder and Priestess held her there, held her gently while Rowan watched. And they stood there together for a long time, until the fire had burned down and there were only bones and ashes and broken lives left.

She didn't understand. She didn't understand…

Someday, Rowan thought as she looked at the two grieving women. Yes, someday.

Author's Note: Oh my goodness, this chapter turned out so much longer than I ever thought it would. And I know that there are only a few minor clues regarding the "mystery" in this installment, but I do promise that chapter sixteen should shine some very harsh light on the truth.

The next chapter is in the works and should be posted soon. Until then, take care and be well!