Author's Note: Hello and welcome to part twenty-four of "Cross". I wasn't sure if I'd have the time to get this chapter posted before the holidays, but luckily, I was able to finish it up. And I certainly wouldn't want to make my readers wait two weeks for an update. ;) As always, I would like to extend my most sincere thanks to my awesome readers and reviewers, Lystan, FireChildSlytherin5, saichick, Mss Heart of Swords01, Lonely Bleeding Liar, and TrinideanFan. Also, I would like to thank everyone who has added this story to their favorites/author alerts lists so far. You guys are the best! I do hope you enjoy this installment.

Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Priest.

Part XXIV Forgiveness

Priestess took advantage of Marcus's momentary distraction. It was a small gift. A window of opportunity and with it came a flash of brilliant hope. Determination took root in her chest, rushing through her body along with the heady release of adrenalin. She set her jaw. She braced her forearms on the dusty floorboards and kicked out her legs. Her boots caught Marcus behind the knees. He was swept off his feet, his head smacking against the lip of the overturned table.

Priestess did not wait to see if he had been knocked unconscious. With a fierce grunt, she pushed herself up, crawling over to Priest who still lay slumped against the wall, rolling his head from side to side. Priestess could see the whites of his eyes, his pupils wildly dilated. She pressed her gritty hand to his jaw and shook him. A thumbprint from her bloodied fingers stained his chin. Priest blinked once, and then seemed to come back to himself.

"We need to go," Priestess ordered. Her voice was low, a pathetic sound that grated in the back of her desert-dry throat. The tremulous roar of the motorcycles was growing closer and she was overwhelmed with the promise of salvation, coming to them through the dusk and despair of their broken world.

"We need to go," she repeated, this time more urgently. Priestess helped Priest to his feet. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, her flesh prickling as she imagined Marcus beginning to stir behind them. She hadn't bought them much time and she wasn't foolish enough to think that she could actually win a battle against him. The red-haired Priestess-Rebecca-had taught her many things over the years, including when to retreat. There was no shame in running away sometimes, as they had in Sola Mira all those years ago. There was no shame in choosing life over the dubious glory of martyrdom.

Only one door led in and out of the room. Priestess used her shoulder to open it, dragging Priest into a short corridor. Her perception of time was distorted and she was surprised to see a cold night sky through the windows on the left-hand side of the hall. Although it was sometimes only a psychological ally, Priestess would have given anything to have just a glimpse of the sun. Her bones ached from the rotten dampness of the drainage ditch and she was keenly aware of just how cramped her muscles had become from crouching in that vent. Priest's weight was heavy against her. It wasn't until halfway down the hall that he regained his senses. Dropping his arm from her shoulders, he glanced behind them to where the flickering light of the smashed lantern still burned.

"He isn't coming," he muttered and started to take a step back in the direction of the control room.

Priestess grabbed hold of his sleeve and tugged. "We can't win this."

Priest pressed the heel of his palm to his bruised head. "Still…"

"We have reinforcements," she promised. "He won't get away."

Priest blinked, his eyes pale slivers in the darkness. "But I came alone," he insisted.

Priestess felt her heart drop a notch. A maddened pulse beat in the base of her throat. "We're not alone," she told him, suddenly glad for the chaotic noise of the approaching motorcycles.

Priest was still dazed, but he lurched forward towards the end of the corridor. Priestess followed him and they emerged onto the outpost's main street. The moon was about half full, giving them more than enough light to see by. The old storefronts and burnt out buildings were painted a marbled silver. The distant windmill, still faithfully churning away at the stale air, looked like some pagan token, a totem erected by lesser heathens to appease what gods they could.

Standing in the middle of the street, with beads of sand sticking to her mud-slicked boots, Priestess felt alone and exposed. She was unarmed, a stranger in this vile, vast desert. Prey for a larger predator. For a moment, weakness assailed her, human instinct pushing her towards flight. But Priestess stood her ground. This was a night of reckoning, she realized. A time when truths became whole and the world looked for a savior.

Priest was only a few paces away from her, scanning the flat horizon beyond the main street. Priestess followed his gaze, squinting. She could easily pick out the neon blue headlights of a dozen or so motorcycles, and she thought she recognized the large, hooded figure that sat hunched on the foremost bike.

Seth. God, oh God, it had to be Seth!

She uttered a faint cry of relief, a hot stickiness trailing down her cheek that could have been tears. Or sweat.

"They're here," she told Priest breathlessly, watching as the bikes wove expertly across the rough terrain. "How did they know to find us?"

"They didn't," Priest replied with resigned harshness.

He pointed to the plains surrounding the outpost, where a vamp pack stampeded towards the road, corralled on both sides by the charging bikes.

And then Priestess understood. There was no miracle in this, only a remarkable coincidence that might very well save their lives…or kill them all.

"Seth rendezvoused with the others," Priest muttered, fingering his daggers. "He must've gone after the vamp pack and driven them here for the kill."

Priestess's mouth went dry. "We're in their way," she said.

Priest said nothing. With a casual flick of his thumb, he separated his daggers and tossed her one. The cold steel was comforting in her hand. She gripped the handle until her knuckles turned bone white.

Priestess experienced only a brief moment of panic. It rushed upon her with all the relentless guile of a fever, pushing the boundaries of her consciousness into delirium. Sweat drenched her brow and the dagger slipped a little in her hand. Her thoughts were hectic, a chaotic clutter of images. She remembered the night Rebecca had first taken her to Jericho, and how real her fear had been then, when she realized that violence was fluid, slipping into the cracks and crevices of humanity, eroding life, bringing death…

Priestess shut her eyes and felt her heart pulsing against her skull. Something else remained within her, alongside the fear, a small spark that lit the blaze of resilience and she stood firm and she stood fast.

Focus.

It had been Rebecca who had first told her that, who had pounded the motto into her mind throughout each hour of torturous training, who had screamed it from the top of her lungs when they were on the front lines, who had whispered it when strength was failing and all hope seemed lost.

Priestess opened her eyes. "Focus," she muttered, feeling the last of her damning fear slip away. "Focus."

The riders had already herded the vampires into the narrow main street and the pack was wild, running helter-skelter down the dusty road, crashing blindly into the old buildings, falling, trampling each other. Their throaty cries warred with the incessant whir of the bikes until all the noises of the night were indistinguishable, jumbled together into one discordant whole that made Priestess's ears ache.

Focus.

She did not wait until the first of the vampires was within reach, but rather, rushed forward straight into the oncoming pack. It was only after she had thrust her dagger into the neck of one of the beasts, severing its slippery windpipe, that Priestess realized she was looking for some manner of revenge. Or redemption. The driving force behind her adrenalin, behind the tumultuous tide of strength and resistance, went beyond her warrior's instincts. In each mindless instant, the need doubled.. Her body moved of its own accord, years of training and muscle memory guiding her each assault. Priestess used her dagger to slice the tendons in one vampire's knee and when the creature floundered, she pulled its head back until she heard a satisfying snap. A large, hulking male swerved around her right flank and kicking back, she managed to drive the heel of her boot straight into the vampire's throat. The beast gurgled and choked, his shriek dissolving into a hissing gasp as she stuck her knife through the thin film of skin that covered one of his empty eye sockets.

The odor of spilled blood made the air rank. Acrid. It was the scent of iron and metal, infused with something more primal, the raw stench of life. Priestess took a single step back, only to realize that she had allowed herself to become surrounded. The grey bodies of the vampires jostled around her, coming close enough so that she could feel the slick touch of their reptilian hides and see the blue-black veins that crawled beneath their skin. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of Priest, who had his back to one of the buildings. He raised his foot and brought it down ruthlessly, crushing the chest of one prone vampire. But it was not enough. The circle was tight around them. The pack, driven into a frenzy, assailed them relentlessly.

Again, Priestess thought of death, but the notion itself was vague, drifting through her mind, a cloud passing over the bright moon. Her mouth tightened in a fierce frown and she pushed her way through the savage surge of beasts, burying her knife in the taut abdomen of one vampire just before the creature could sink its fangs into her cheek. She fought her way to Priest until they were side by side, shoulder to shoulder, with the black promise of mortality bearing down upon them.

Would she be able to tell him? she wondered. Should he know now, in this small space of borrowed time, that she loved him too? Priestess thought of all the little graces he had gifted to her, the instances in her life which were blessed because of his existence alone. She cherished his friendship and she cherished what it had become, a love that had grown, a love that they had both unknowingly nurtured. The burden of that secret almost seemed like a blight to her, a stain that would seep from this life into the next. Priestess did not want him to be uncertain. She wanted Priest to know that he had always been loved. She wanted to give back to him the grace that he had given to her. And she didn't want either of them to die alone, on that fetid night in that haunted town, together, but forever divided…

Priestess opened her mouth. She turned her head to the side and tried to look at him, tried to find the man who was not the warrior, but the lost husband, the deprived father, the boy who had been taken from his home and somehow brought to her.

Why now? she asked herself desperately, even as the pack closed around them, why couldn't I tell him before?

"Priest." She wanted to reach out and touch him. Her hand found his shoulder, her dirtied fingers brushing his neck and he looked at her.

And as her eyes met his, she knew that he only needed her silence.

"I know," Priest said quietly. "Rowan, I know."

And for an instant, she had hope. He had given her hope…

A vampire streaked past her on the right. Priestess caught the blur of fiendish movement in her peripheral vision. She struck, somewhat blindly, and slashed the creature's bicep with the tip of her dagger. The vampire made a low, clicking noise in the back of its throat and seemed to leer at her, strings of saliva dripping from its razor fangs. It took a single step back, hopping to the side. Priestess was almost knocked off her feet when the beast lunged at her. She threw herself to the left at the last possible second, but the vampire still managed to catch her jaw with its knee. Her teeth rattled painfully, blood spurting from her nose, which was certainly broken. Priestess reeled backwards, the ground coming up beneath her. Her senses were jarred and the world exploded around her, ceding to pale flashes of light and whispered echoes. It took her mind a moment to understand the gravity of her situation and she was only slightly disappointed when she realized that death was indeed coming to claim her. Her own body, the temple of her flesh, would be laid out as a feast for parasites, the devil's own leeches.

Vaguely, she thought she heard Priest call to her and she rolled onto her side, her movements feeble, but not passive.

Get up.

Rebecca had said that, hadn't she? Get up. Get up.

How many times had Priestess heard that phrase and despised it? How many times had she witnessed Rebecca taunting a helpless novice with it, someone like Seth, who had been beaten and bloodied and brought to the very brink of life?

Get up. Get up.

Priestess was surprised by the sudden rush of tears to her eyes. You tried, she thought, regretting her misplaced hatred towards the woman she had considered cruel. You wanted to prepare us. I didn't believe you.

Rebecca had promised, in her strange, hostile way, that Priestess would understand someday, that the truth, with all its painful absurdities, would be realized when she least expected it. Lying there, with her cheek pressed against the stinging sand, she knew that she owed a debt to the woman who had carried the weight of the Order on her shoulders for years. And Priestess had dared to hate her for it…oh God, oh God no…

"I'm sorry." The words left her lips as a prayer, a final plea for forgiveness. "I'm so sorry, Rebecca."

She was prepared to die then. Her soul had readied herself, all the loose ends of her life severed and cast away, leaving her as clean and vulnerable as a newborn child. Priestess tried to remember something of the prayers the Church had taught them, but her mind was mercifully blank. The vampire that had knocked her off her feet was circling her body. She took a deep breath and enjoyed the echo of it as it filled her lungs. And she thought of Priest.

The roar of the motorcycle was much closer this time, rising up in the night as a vengeful war cry, bringing Priestess out of her stupor. She saw him then, Seth, plowing through the herd of vampires. When he was near to her, he maneuvered his bike so that the massive back tire lifted off the ground. As it came down, it crushed the body of her attacker. The dying vampire let out a wretched squeal and gore streaked the sandy soil.

The interlude gave her enough time to gather her strength. Priestess tried to raise herself up, planting her elbows in the dirt. Seth reached his hand down to her and she took it, pulling her feet underneath her. She was dizzy when she finally stood, but alive. The blood from her nose had reached her lips and she spat away the taste.

Seth grinned at her. "This wasn't exactly the reunion I was expecting," he said.

"It never is," Priest grunted. He was standing on the other side of Seth's motorcycle, panting.

But Priestess ignored them both. She was swept up in the vision before her, which seemed almost dream-like, a scene that was both familiar and yet so very foreign she almost second-guessed her sight. The rest of the riders had finally arrived in the main street of the outpost and were dispatching, with relative ease, the lingering vampires. At such close quarters, Priestess recognized more than a few of them. There was one of the twins, his brother having recently been killed by Marcus at Jericho. She saw some of the older ones, the Priests who had been teenagers when the Church found them and took them from their homes. And grey-eyed Esther, who was perhaps the youngest, and the only remaining female member of the clergy besides Priestess.

It was with quiet awe that she observed their movements, the calculated thrusts of their daggers. The wild whir of a silver rope dart. Very little had changed, Priestess realized and the notion filled her with a strange sort of comfort. It was a restoration, a resurrection of what had long since been consigned to dust. Fresh tears stung her eyes, and she welcomed the baptism.

My family, she thought, and then, Rebecca, please be proud of us.

Her reverie was shaken, however, by Priest's usual urgency. He had slipped around Seth's bike and was pulling at her shoulder, bringing her back to a reality that was not so dreadful as before.

"We have to find him," he shouted over the wailing shrieks of the dying vampires.

"Who?" Seth asked, his expression somewhat hidden behind his thick goggles.

But Priestess already knew. "Marcus," she told him.

Their reunion was not yet complete.

Priestess was stunned to see that the building that housed the outpost's sewer system was up in flames. But then she remembered the broken lantern and the oil spill which had spread a pool of fire across the control room floor. She looked doubtfully at the tendrils of curling smoke and the eager red tongues of the crackling inferno.

"It's dangerous," she told Priest even as he strode towards the open door on the ground floor. "The building is old, the structure too unstable. We'd never make it in and out."

He didn't reply, but ducked inside the smoky passageway. Seth glanced at Priestess and raised an eyebrow.

"How brave are you feeling?" he asked her.

She could only shrug in response. After a moment's hesitation, the heat from the fire bathing her bruised and bleeding face, Priestess moved into the building. The blaze had only just begun to reach the corridor and she was acutely aware of the cinders which fell from the ceiling onto her hair. The sting of the ashes, however, was nothing compared to the smoke which clogged her lungs. Priestess pulled the collar of her coat over her nose and her mouth, her eyes burning as she groped her way through the dark.

"Priest!" she called. He did not respond. "Priest! Priest!"

She found him in the doorway to the control room where they had last seen Marcus. It was impossible to cross the threshold into the space, the fire having already devoured most of the walls. Priestess watched for a moment as the flames coiled around the old water pipes and valves. The iron glowed red hot and steam escaped through several leaking seams.

Priest was using his arm to block his nose and mouth, his eyes fixed on the spot where Marcus had fallen during their flight.

He was gone, of course. The enigma vanished, his mystery lingering in every shadow of the night.

Priestess latched onto his arm and tried to pull him back. "Another day," she shouted.

For a moment, she feared that he wouldn't listen to her, but then he met her gaze and nodded.

"All right," he said. "All right."

They made a mad dash for the exit, the walls of the building shuddering and crumbling around them, emerging at last into cool air of the quiet evening. The outpost was silent. The moon had already reached its zenith.

Author's Note: Thanks so much for reading! I hope you all have a wonderful, happy and safe holiday. The next installment is in the works and should be posted in ten days. Take care!