Author's Note: Hello and welcome to part 17 of "Cross". Before we begin, I would like to thank everyone who took the time to read the last chapter and those who reviewed, saichick, Inwe[z]247, Mss Heart Of Swords01, FireChildSlytherin5, Lady Krystalyn, aprilrunrunrun, Musik Drache, Lystan, and Jag. Also, I would like to thank all those readers who have added this story to their favorites/author alerts list. Your encouragement and support is truly appreciated. Thanks, guys! I do hope you enjoy this installment.
Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Priest.
Part 17 The Frontier
It took some considerable effort for Rowan to drag herself up the staircase to the top floor of the armory. The muscles in her thighs bunched mercilessly, sending spasms of shocking pain through her hips and into her back. She clenched her hand over the banister and fought against each relentless ache, putting one foot in front of the other until the steps were conquered and she stood outside the clergy's headquarters. Rowan gave herself a minute to catch her breath before she went inside. Resting her forehead on the metal door, she pulled some oxygen into her lungs and spat it out with a sigh. There were grains of sand, she felt, buried beneath her eyelids and whenever she blinked, the world before her disappeared, fading into a tunnel of hazy, tired grey.
It had been a long night. A very, very long night.
Although she had only been deployed to the front lines for two years, the first as an apprentice, the second as a fully-fledged Priest, Rowan felt as though her physical body had jumped ahead in time, aging in leaps and bounds until she was already old. Her spiritual well-being was another matter entirely, her young soul having suffered irreparable damage as her life disintegrated around her, constantly changing, shifting, growing. Existence was chaotic. She lived from breath to breath, relying on each heartbeat that thundered in her breast, fearing the darkness and yet accepting it as yet another facet of her being. It was war. It was death. It was fangs and blood. And yet, it wasn't terrible, it wasn't the creeping horror that stalked her worst nightmares. But it was fulfillment, yes. It was true fulfillment.
It was difficult to accept, but Rowan knew, somehow, that she was content now. Her happiness itself was different than what she had experienced in childhood, those small, prized moments of joy. Adulthood had seen her adopt a sort of resigned satisfaction and purpose. She was yearning and she was reaching and she was succeeding. She was fighting, because that was what she had been meant to do, what God had chosen for her.
And it was enough to make Rowan content. Not happy. But she thought now, at last, she could be content.
Lifting her head off the cool metal, she turned the heavy knob and opened the creaking door. To her immediate relief, she noticed that the square room appeared to be empty. It was the hour before dawn, a time when shifts changed and Priests either reported for duty or crawled back to their lodgings for rest. Rowan was on the downside of her shift, having finished another night on the borders of the outpost, repelling a large hoard of all too hungry vampires.
Things were almost never quiet at that particular settlement, which had the unfortunate distinction of being built between two large, thriving hives. Vampire attacks were commonplace and the clergy had shifted their attention to that front, setting up a substantial military installment at the besieged outpost. The campaign that followed, unfolding over the course of the several months Rowan had been stationed there, was nothing short of a stalemate. The vampires harassed the outpost, the clergy drove them back. The clergy attacked the colonies and were ripped to shreds by scores of hive guardians. And although Rowan still had faith in the Church and her own soldier's prowess, she was beginning to feel as though the war might never end. At least, perhaps, not in her lifetime.
Trudging inside the room, she threw the door closed behind her, looking for a convenient chair to sink into. What she found, however, was Priest, sitting with his back to the far wall, his boots thrown up carelessly on the long table that was always littered with maps and written orders and the occasional Bible. Rowan felt the aches in her legs and her back and her heart begin to lessen.
This, she admitted to herself, yes, this is why I'm content.
"I'm sorry," she said, pretending to speak to the sour, sweat-soaked air and not to him, "but I wanted to be alone."
Priest yawned and rubbed his hand briskly over his close-cropped hair. "Still alive?" he asked.
Rowan grinned. Gallows humor. She loved it. "I don't think the vampires want me," she said, easing herself over to him. There was a free chair by his right elbow, a rickety, low-backed seat, but she took it anyway. "I heard once that Priests taste bad."
"All that holy water," Priest replied. A rare laugh edged his tone and the lines around his mouth were loose and soft. But then his face straightened, his eyes taking on a hard, cold glint that brought Rowan crashing down to earth with all the speed of a falling star. "I heard your detachment had a difficult night," he said, his teeth pulling over his lower lip. "Were there any causalities?"
Causalities. Rowan hated the word. It never failed to send a shiver dancing along her spine. Causalities. Death. Loss.
"Thomas was wounded," she said steadily, her mind flashing with memories of blood and veiled starlight and Thomas's enraged howl when one of the hive guardian's pinned him to the ground. "Not bad," she added, trying to reassure herself more than Priest. "His face will never be the same, though."
Causalities. Torn flesh. Another scar…
"Thomas," Priest lisped the name. Rowan saw him fingering the steel rosary beads that hung from his belt.
She gave him a moment of quiet, let him say his prayer. The silence between them was soft, hallowed, a thing of precious delicacy in a world that had been overtaken by blunt edges and sharpness. Even the dawn light which throbbed against the window panes was heartless, causing Rowan to press her calloused fingertips to her ribcage.
Sometimes, she needed to remind herself that she was alive.
Her breathing was shallow, however, whenever she sat by him. And to her, every stolen second was akin to a miracle. Her journey was coming full circle, ending where it had began, with him…always with him.
During her year spent as an apprentice, Rowan had counted herself fortunate if she saw Priest once a month and their meetings were always in passing. She would spy him from afar, on the opposite side of the chapel, in a far corner of a mess hall, somewhere in the distance, beyond her reach. It was the worst kind of torment. It was a dashed hope and a blighted promise. It was a private desire denied, again and again and again.
Rowan suffered in his absence, although she was careful not to let it show. The year of her apprenticeshi had passed in silent privation and day by day, she had felt her willpower grow. She became stronger. She missed Priest but she maintained her independence. And when the year was over and Rowan learned that both she and her old friend had been deployed to the same outpost, their reunion was sweetened by her own sense of gratitude. They had been apart once, but now they were joined and that alone was enough to secure her peace of mind.
It was the togetherness, she decided, that mattered the most, even when it came at the high price of war and bloodshed. Rowan thought she could cope with the violence, she thought she could even understand it through him. The acceptance had come slowly to her. It had been built up over years and years of childish devotion, that devotion finally hardening into love, setting itself in stone. And Rowan knew then, knew in everyway, that Priest would define her life. Her soul, her spirit would be eclipsed in favor of his, her heart only borrowed, because it truly belonged to him.
Even if he didn't want it. Even if he never, ever took it…
Resolved in her understanding, Rowan sat next to him, enjoying his presence, savoring the sound of his murmured prayers and the way his fingers moved deftly over his rosary beads. She watched the dust motes settle in the morning sunlight and felt the world breathe around her. The night was over. It was finally over.
Priest made the sign of the cross, the beads clicking in his hand. He exhaled once and glanced at Rowan out of the corner of his eye.
For an instant, she thought she saw something familiar in his gaze, something she had found reflected in her own eyes for so many, many years.
I wonder, she asked herself, I wonder if he ever could, if he could ever…
Love me.
And her instinct, her trusted intuition rose up fiercely within her, shouting in a chorus of ringing bells and poetry and soft-spoken psalms. Her heart was beating, full and free and her mood turned dangerous, turned wild, because she was going to ask him. While they sat there together, in that cramped room above the armory, in a war-torn, bloodied outpost. She was going to ask Priest.
Do you love me? Could you ever love me?
The words were on her lips, succulent with the taste of hope. Rowan abandoned herself to youth and folly. She allowed herself to forget that he had a wife and a daughter. She ignored that archaic, stale vow of celibacy and the meaningless implications of what she had sworn so mindlessly. It didn't matter, of course. It didn't matter now when she felt she knew what his answer would be already.
I love you. I can love you.
"Priest," she said, her hand hovering nervously over his. "Priest, I want to know-"
It was the footsteps on the stairs that saved them both. And it could have been God's heavy tread, for all Rowan knew. The sound was ponderous, boots scraping against wood, a hand slapping down impatiently on the banister. The echo of the noise resounded within her soul and Rowan retreated inside herself. For some strange reason, she felt damned, thrown into the fires, torn between the jaws of fate.
She glanced quickly at Priest and wondered if he felt the same.
Probably not, skepticism told her. He'll never feel the same.
The footsteps slowed when the person reached the top of the stairs and the door banged open, bringing with it a blast of wind that was only slightly damp.
Priestess stepped over the threshold. She looked tired.
The air fled the room, leaving the space tight and nervous and laced with the forbidden. Rowan's stomach knotted, slamming into her lungs until she thought she wouldn't be able to draw breath. She sat up straight in her chair. Priest dropped his legs off the table. They were both quiet.
Priestess spared them a single glance, her eyes dull and dark, marred with bruised stains the color of plums. She circled the room once, no longer the predator on the prowl, her imposing figure reduced by strain and doubt and what Rowan felt might be uncertainty. For an instant, only an instant, the woman looked pathetic.
And Rowan herself wasn't certain how anyone in Priestess's position could seem so down-trodden. She was, apparently, the Church's greatest asset. She had a list of solid victories attached to her name and was currently orchestrating the complicated campaigns of the war with undeniable competency. And most importantly, she was keeping her soldiers alive, maintaining her force of Priests even when the war itself had slowed to a dreadful stalemate.
The clergy respected her, loved her, even, and Rowan had cause to be jealous, especially when she realized that she herself owed a debt of gratitude to the woman who had indeed prepared for all the trials of her wretched life. But still, a part of her was glad to see that mortality was taking its toll on Priestess. She was pleased to see that the woman's cruelty and power were not enough to sustain her, that she was just as fallible as any human, just as weak.
Weak.
Priestess rounded the table, her arms hanging awkwardly from her tense shoulders. She sniffed once and rubbed the back of her hand along her nose. "I heard," she said, "Thomas-"
"The field surgeon said he'll live," Rowan replied, knowing enough to get to her feet when she addressed her superior, the movement compulsive, tainted with her own volatile apprehension. "He wasn't infected, either."
"Very fortunate," Priest said, rising as well. "We must thank God."
Priestess exhaled sharply through her scarred nose and rolled her tongue along her teeth. "Don't congratulate yourself," she told Rowan with a quick jerk of her chin. "Any night when you have a casualty is not a good night. The loss is unacceptable. No more causalities, understood? I said no more."
Rowan bristled, instantly feeling demeaned. She hoped that Priestess knew that she couldn't have helped what had happened to Thomas, but in the end, it didn't matter. Priestess doled out guilt just as readily as she passed out their daily orders.
"I understand," Rowan said, even though she was certain she never would.
Priestess didn't look satisfied. She paced. She brushed her calloused fingertips along the tabletop, disturbing her papers and the scattered maps. She looked at Priest and her gaze was deep, determined.
It was as if, Rowan thought, something was passing between them. Unspoken. A thought. An insinuation.
Fear gnawed at her self-resolve and she suddenly felt as though she shouldn't be there. She was intruding. She had stumbled upon a scene that wasn't meant for her eyes, like when she had glimpsed two people cornered in a corridor, whispering, almost touching…touching.
But the moment passed. Priestess resumed her pacing, her long braid swinging down her back as she walked, the plait no longer neat, but frayed. "Why is it, I wonder," she said, "that when I come looking for either of you, I invariably find you both in each other's company. Why is that?"
Rowan opened her mouth to respond, but was immediately silenced.
"Do not answer the question," Priestess snapped. "I didn't ask for answer, did I?"
Rowan said nothing, baffled by the woman's unusual intemperance. Her tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth.
"It is convenient," Priestess continued, her tone low, dark, "that you are both together, now. Very convenient."
Rowan took a step back from her chair. She suddenly realized that her legs had begun to shake and she mentally chided herself for her weakness. After all these years, Priestess still made her nervous, still made her frightened. After all these years.
Carefully, she glanced out of the corner of her eye and saw Priest. His expression was flat, detached. His hands hung by his sides, unclenched. Rowan envied his ease. And she wondered, privately, why he too wasn't frightened.
Perhaps it was because he was much braver than her. Or perhaps it was because, because…
Rowan swallowed. Her heart, it seemed, had nearly stopped beating.
Priestess leaned on the table, her hands braced on the edge. She stared at them both and their was some sense of satisfaction in her gaze that made her look dangerous.
"I received a report this morning from Augustine," she said. "The town is quite populous, which is a draw for feeding vampire packs. Lately, a few people have gone missing, picked off on the fringes of the outpost. Their bodies occasionally turn up a few days later, drained…or they don't turn up at all. There has been no full scale raid on Augustine, but we know enough about vampire behavior to assume that they're only scouting the town. If we don't send someone over there soon, I am almost certain they will be overrun and we'll have lost another outpost."
And human lives, Rowan thought. She remembered the first raid she had witnessed at Jericho two years ago, the bodies piled on the pyre, the smoke. Men, women, children…it was a massacre.
Priestess raised her chin, directing her attention at Priest. "When the clergy found you,"
she said, "you were living in Augustine with your family, yes?"
Priest's brows jumped together. One of his hands curled into a fist. His knuckles turned white, clashing with the blotchy redness that shaded his cheeks. "Yes."
And oh, so much was relayed with that single word, the sentiment, the severed ties, the memory of an abandoned wife and daughter. But Priest bore the pain with his usual determined grace. He dropped his head and looked at his boots.
Priestess flushed. She didn't appear exactly triumphant, but pleased. With herself, maybe. Or with him. "Convenient," she echoed. "We leave before dark." She turned to go.
But Rowan was bewildered. The conversation had slipped by her somehow, had escaped her careful notice. Priest understood and so did Priestess, but she herself was lost. Hating to admit her confusion, she followed the woman to the door, ceding some of her pride in favor of insight.
"Wait," she said, "We are being deployed to Augustine together?"
Priest drew in his breath. Priestess turned on her heel, her annoyance piqued.
"No," she said. "I am going. Priest is going. You will stay behind. We're stretched thin enough at this outpost, especially with Thomas wounded."
Rowan pressed her hand to her stomach. She felt as though she had been pummeled half to death. "Oh God," she muttered.
Priestess made a quiet noise, her ugly, jagged nostril dilating as she smiled a little. "This is simple," she said. "This shouldn't be a surprise. Remember your vow, Rowan."
Remember your vow. Rowan absolutely despised the phrase. It was an admonition laced with guilt, meant only to stain the soul with blame and regret. Rowan thought she remembered her vow, remembered it through two years of blood and death and a war that would not end, that would never end.
She remembered her vow. She remembered it in the way she could still see the look on her mother's face when the clergy took her from her home. She remembered it in the way she sometimes heard Sage's voice, whispering to her in the night. She remembered, she remembered well.
Glancing at Priestess, she felt something new rise in her, the heady taint of rebellion, of revolution. And it was easy to oppose someone who was so pathetic. It wasn't difficult at all.
"You are being cruel," she said, allowing unlikely venom to slip into her words. "You are separating us only because you can."
"Don't," Priest began, but Priestess waved her hand and he fell silent.
"This is unacceptable," she said, looking between them, her gaze poisoned with all her sordid insinuations, the one's Rowan herself had held secret in her heart. "Close," Priestess muttered. "You are too close with him."
But Rowan didn't care. She wanted to be close to him. It was her right, her gift, her one, saving grace.
And then it dawned her. She finally understood. God, oh God, finally.
"You're jealous," Rowan said.
Priestess slapped her. It was a light touch of the hand, meant more to shame than to wound. Rowan turned her head to the side and brazenly offered her other cheek.
"That was for your insolence," Priestess said.
But Rowan was enraged. She felt ready to charge at her, to gore her and spear her and force upon her the same cruelty she had so casually wielded. "I hope you burn," Rowan told her, emboldened by the power of her wild, wild words. "I hope you burn and rot in Hell."
Priestess's eyes went wide and Rowan felt that she probably would have hurt her badly then, would have delivered a blow that was meant to wound and not to shame, but Priest stopped her. He was the sacrificial lamb, the offering, the impenetrable shield between them.
"I am going with her, Rowan," he said, his tone carrying surprising authority.
And Rowan was taken aback, not because he was giving in, but because he had used her name. For the first time…it was the first time.
Why did such a blessing have to come at that a moment? It was a reward, she felt, but it was also a condemnation.
And they were all damned, perhaps. Damned.
But Priestess didn't realize it. Her grin was sad, a manifestation of her own weakness even though she had won. "This is for your own good, little sister," she told her. "I promise."
Rowan said nothing. She waited until the woman was almost out the door, Priest trailing hopelessly in her wake, before she finally spoke.
"I hate you," she told Priestess. It was the last thing Rowan ever said to her.
Author's Note: Thanks so much for reading! If you have some free time, please leave a review. Feedback always makes my day.
Just a side note, I do intend to raise the rating of this story to M within the next chapter or so to cover some upcoming adult situations. However, the mature material will certainly not be graphic or overly gratuitous. ^_^
Part eighteen is in the works and should be posted in ten days. Until then, take care and be well!