Author's Note: You know, I actually had a lot of fun writing Black Hat in this chapter. I didn't think I would, since his character didn't stick out to me while watching the movie, but he really is an interesting guy…in a scary, repulsive sort of way, haha.

As always, I'd like to start off by thanking all my awesome readers and reviewers, FireChildSlytherin5, saichick, Lonely Bleeding Liar, TrinideanFan, aprilrunrunrun, Dr E Mode, MssHeart Of Swords01 and LadyKrystalyn. Also, I would like to sincerely thank all the readers who have added this story to their favorites/author alerts list. The support I've received for this fic has been so inspiring. Thank you! I do hope you enjoy this installment.

Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Priest.

Part XVIII Janus

Water dripped onto her head. The stream was steady, a pitter-patter of chilled liquid on her skull, an echo of cold sweat trailing down her temple. Priestess blinked. The air around her was damp, a powerful contrast to the wretched heat of the Wastelands. It took her mind a moment to register the difference in temperature Damp. Damp. Damp like a crypt. And decay, there was decay also. That rotten stench. That moldy odor of mortality. Priestess felt it seep into her lungs when she tried to take a deep breath. Darkness pressed against her and when she opened her eyes, she was blind, seeing only visions of vague black and shadow. Impenetrable gloom.

She rubbed her eyes once, her fingers slick with mud, and groaned. There was a definite throb in the right side of her head and it pulsed alongside her heartbeat.

"God," she muttered, exhaustion making her voice tremble. "God."

"Yes…God."

It was perhaps the most surreal moment in Priestess's life. Immediately alert, her sedated grogginess giving way in favor of vigilance, she leapt to her feet and tilted her head back as far as it would go. Dizziness came, seductive with the promise of oblivion, but she fought against it. A shaft of muted light fell from a hole about ten feet above her, the beam bisected by the thick slats of an iron grate.

Priestess squinted, ignoring the twinge between her eyes. There was figure just beyond the grate. God, she thought wildly. God….

"This used to be a drainage ditch," he said, his words like rolling thunder, insistent and clamoring with bravado. "I apologize for the smell."

And unknowingly, some secret tension left Priestess's body, if only because familiarity had taken its place. She wasn't frightened. How could she ever be frightened of him?

The green-eyed boy. Yes, she remembered that he had green eyes…once.

"Marcus," Priestess said.

She could almost hear the smile in his voice when he spoke next. "It's good to see you, Rowan," he replied. "You haven't changed at all."

Priestess sighed. A trickle of water hit her left shoulder, leaving a thumb-sized stain on her coat. "I don't think it's fair," she told him, "to be kept in the dark like this. Let me see you, Marcus. It has been a while, after all."

He laughed, the sound rising from somewhere deep in the back of his throat, the growl of a large, hungry predator. "Curiosity is dangerous," he said.

"Do you honestly think that I'm scared?" she asked.

Silence followed, punctured only by the incessant pinging of water droplets on stone. Priestess counted her breaths, inhaling through her mouth to avoid the foul stench. She waited patiently.

Finally, after what seemed like several long minutes, Marcus moved, the heavy folds of his coat brushing against the grate. "All right," he said. A light bloomed, then swelled. Marcus had struck a match. After a moment of rummaging, he produced a lantern and set it squarely over the grate.

"Do you like what you see?" he asked, his amusement wry and nearly self-deprecating.

Priestess perched her hands on her hips, her eyes straining as she tried to adjust to the rude invasion of light.

Marcus maneuvered the lantern, placing it behind him so that it cast an appropriate shadow. His face, she saw, was mutilated, half-burned, flesh peeling away from bone, sinew showing, eyelids swollen. It was like a mask cut in half and she tried to disguise her own astonishment as she looked at him. The right side of his face was burned away, but the left, the left was fine.

"Priest said the explosion wouldn't kill you," she muttered, her voice gripped with frank awe. "But your wounds-"

"A passing hindrance," Marcus said. The lantern light had colored his eyes an uncertain yellow. "It's evolution at its absolute best."

She lowered her chin, turning her head to the side to give him a full view of her expression, which was skeptical. "I don't understand."

Priest, of course, had told her something of Marcus's transformation. He was an altogether new breed of evil, a hybrid between two disparate species. The Queen had birthed him from her own blood, but still, there remained something of humanity in him, a trace of the past that possibly offered redemption. And despite it all, Priestess herself wasn't a cynic. She believed in forgiveness.

Perhaps Marcus sensed her sympathy, for he withdrew, pulling back into the shadows until she could only catch a faint glint from his luminescent eyes. How strange, she thought, to see a vampire with eyes.

"Vampires feed on humans for sustenance, for survival," he said and there was a note of pride in his words, "but I feed only to strengthen myself. You may have noticed the clouds of smoke on your way into town. The few settlers, I'm afraid, we're not enough to make me presentable. But I was respectful. I burned their bodies when I was finished with them. That's how the Church taught us to handle the victims of vampire attack, isn't it?"

"That's blasphemy," Priestess said, although she was unable to be angry at him. Marcus, in a way, had always been misguided.

"So many things are blasphemous," he replied. His fingers rubbed over the slats, sending awkward shadows down into her cell. "I find your belief in the Church blasphemous, as a matter of fact. But do you still believe after everything they did to us? Do you still have faith?"

Priestess did not hesitate. "I do," she said, pleased at how strong the echo of her voice was as it spiraled up towards him.

"You place your trust the Church?" Marcus sounded slightly incredulous.

She despised his scorn. "No," she replied, her knuckles digging into her hips. "I have faith in God."

There was a moment's hesitance on his part, as if he did not dare to mock God so openly. His sudden reticence gave her reason to hope, lighting a faint glimmer in her heart, which had previously been dark. Priestess realized, of course, that her circumstances were far from ideal. In fact, they were downright dangerous. But that did not mean she had to be afraid. And Marcus, yes, that didn't mean that Marcus had to be damned…yet.

"Do you have faith in God still?" she asked, imagining how naïve she must seem to him.

Marcus shifted, his boots scraping obnoxiously over the grate. The shadows lengthened when he finally set the lantern off to the side and leered down at her. Priestess stared up at him and her heart fell a little, just a little, when she saw his teeth.

Fangs. He had fangs now.

Sorrow, laced with the most sincere sympathy, rose up within her. Standing there in the dark, alone, watched, she wondered what it must have been like for him back in Sola Mira as the Queen squatted over his bleeding body and forced her poison into his mouth.

That, she decided, yes, that was blasphemy.

"God," Marcus said, his fingers curling over the iron slats. "I did not bring you here to discuss God, Rowan. There are other things of greater importance we must attend to."

"Nothing is more important than God," she countered. "No one."

When he laughed this time, Priestess knew he was mocking her.

"No?" he asked. "Not even Priest?"

"Priest?" For the first time, fear hearkened to her.

"Yes, Priest." The drawl was back in Marcus's voice. He drummed his fingers on the iron, the cadence uneven, playful almost. "He is more treacherous than God…and that truly is saying something."

Priestess swallowed and dropped her eyes. Mud caked her boots, creating an ugly sheen on the leather. The water stain on the shoulder of her coat had grown now into a sizable patch. The steady drip, drip, drip of the stream overhead continued.

"What does it matter?" she asked, trying to hide the curiosity in her tone. "You have me here, not Priest. Why do you-"

"Rowan," he hushed. "Listen. Listen, listen, listen. There is that noise inside you, that pulse of life. Do you realize that when I mentioned Priest's name, your heart skipped a beat?"

A vicious flush colored her cheeks. Priestess swallowed again. Predator, she thought again. Of course he could hear her heart beating. Of course he could listen to the measured hum of the blood in her veins.

How treacherous her own body was, Priestess realized, selling her secrets to the devil. But she stared at him boldly, nonetheless. She met his gaze and held it. There was nothing to be frightened of, after all. Not even the dark.

"You know," Marcus said, "I never thought you'd be the one I'd find here. I was convinced, absolutely convinced that Priest himself would come. This place means something to him and if he were ever to ask for forgiveness, I think he would find his altar here. There are memories at this outpost, after all. Many memories. But you don't have those memories, do you? Just questions. I'm convinced that you have questions."

"I came to this outpost because I was hoping to have my motorcycle fixed," she said. "You saw my bike, the front wheel is-"

"This is the place we last saw Priestess alive. She was our leader. She had red-hair and a scarred nose."

Priestess's hands fell from her hips and worked themselves into fists. She wondered, vaguely, how fast her heart was beating now. "She's dead." And the words were almost like a prayer when she spoke them, or a charm meant to cast out evil. She thought of her old mentor then, the woman rotting away in a crypt that was similar to this drainage ditch, dead, dead, gone.

Priestess needed her to be gone, but she was resurrected every day. In words. In cold, hopeless memories. In Priest and in Seth and in Marcus. And in her too, perhaps, because she was in all of them. She was the trailing shadow. She was the restless ghost. She was the cross on their foreheads, their condemnation and their damnation.

Priestess's breathing became shaky and she did not bother to steady it. Let Marcus hear her reluctance. Let him see.

"I remember her," she said, feeling as though every word were a weight on her tongue. "She was…cruel."

"Efficient is the word I think you are looking for," Marcus replied. "Practical. But I don't really care what she was. I do, however, care what Priest is."

"You have me here," Priestess said, swaying where she stood. Desperation made her weak and she could sense it, the unthinkable, the horrible secret, the lie, looming over her head, personified by Marcus in his all his vile glory. "I am your captive," she said and realized she had already begun to beg. "What do you want with me?"

Marcus looked off to the side. He showed her the healed half of his face, the flesh knitted back over the bone, smooth and clean. His infallibility, in that moment, was terrifying. "I want you to tell me why you still have faith in Priest," he said, "after all he has done. Why do you follow him blindly? Why do you love him, Rowan?"

A protest rose in her mind, but she couldn't bring it to her lips. The truth withstood her anguish. Priestess looked at her feet again and saw the marks her boots had pressed into the wet ground. "Tell me," she said, every fiber of being straining against denial, "tell me what it is you accuse him of."

Marcus raised his shoulders in a shrug. The leather of his overcoat creaked and creased. "What we are all guilty of," he said. "Sin."

Sin. She closed her eyes, felt the tears there. What sin? Oh God, she thought she might already know…

The Church…they kill those who break their vow of celibacy.

"You may call Priestess cruel," Marcus said. He brought the lantern right up next to him again until the unshielded beam fell directly over him. "You may think she was ruthless, but Rowan, you must understand…she was our champion. Our leader. I can only admire her now because she was so uncompromising of her nature. She knew what she was and she wasn't ashamed of it. She was what we should have been. And Priest, he ruined her. He violated her-"

"Oh God, my God, stop!" Priestess went so far as to put her hands over her ears, but her fingers could not block out the sound of his voice, which droned on and on, dripping down to her, staining, staining everything.

"Please, Rowan," Marcus said and he grinned at her. In the fiendish light, she saw the full length of his fangs. There was blood on his gums. Red. Another stain. "You know God isn't listening to you."

And she couldn't help it. She started to cry then, brokenly, because in her heart, she almost felt that he was right.

Priest, Priest, this couldn't be the secret. This couldn't…this couldn't….

"Do you know how she died?" he asked her, his voice that of the serpent's. When Priestess didn't answer, he leaned forward and pressed his face to the grate so that she could smell the blood on his breath. "In childbirth," Marcus said. "She died in childbirth."

Author's Note: Just a reminder, I will be raising the rating for this story to Mature with the next update, although the adult content will certainly not be graphic or gratuitous.

Thanks so much for reading! If you have some free time, please leave me a review. I adore all feedback.

And I have to admit, I'm a bit excited about the next chapter. It will be slightly different from the previous installments and I have lots of surprises in store. With any luck, I should have it posted in roughly ten days or sooner. Until then, take care and be well!