Author's Note: Happy New Year, everyone! I'm sorry I'm starting off 2012 with a slightly delayed update. The holidays were hectic, as usual, and I'm also in the midst of a rather intense history seminar which had been taking up way too much time. Please forgive my lateness!

Before we begin, I would just like to briefly thank all my readers and reviewers, ShipsThatFly, saichick, Mss Heart of Swords01, 1993, FireChildSlytherin5, and Lystan. Also, I would like to thank everyone who added this story to their favorites/author alerts lists. Your support and encouragement really means the world to me. I do hope you enjoy this chapter.

Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Priest.

Part 25 Missing

"He's back."

Rowan looked up at Seth, squinting in the unwelcome glare of the fluorescent lights lining the walls of the refectory. She was working her fork through a piece of stringy meat, her stomach sour, the dryness of her lips and tongue giving her mouth a stale taste. Dirt had crawled beneath her cracked nails and she had forgotten to wash her hands before she ate. Her mother would not have approved.

Seth slid onto the long metal bench beside her, his black tunic smelling of sweat and maybe blood. He had just come off his shift on the outer walls of City Seven, where they had both been stationed for the past three months. The metropolis, which based its trade on iron rather than the less profitable cash crop of coal, was small when compared to the hulking might of Cathedral City, but prone to vampire attacks. Before they had arrived, the creatures had taken to scaling the sheer walls and wrecking havoc in the hovels of the poor who lived closest to the city limits. The bodies were piling up rather quickly and Rowan had been tasked with finding the cause of the sudden surge of attacks. After observing the hunting patterns of the local vampires, she had begun to suspect that there was a underground hive nearby. Seth seemed to agree with her, although they hadn't found any concrete evidence yet, after six solid weeks of searching every cave and gully and abandoned mine shaft.

Rowan stared at her meal. The few meager potatoes and slab of dried meat looked even less appetizing slapped on her cold metal tray. She stabbed one of the potatoes with the tines of her fork, only to have the roasted slice crumble, the remnants looking like white curds. A self-pitying sigh rose in her throat. She was tired. God, so damnably tired.

Seth's left shoulder pressed against hers as he rearranged himself on the bench. Shuffling about, he nearly upset her water canteen with his elbow. "Didn't you hear me?" he asked, excitement shaping his normally subdued tone. "He's come back!"

Rowan rubbed her fingers together, exhaustion dampening her curiosity. Sometimes she envied Seth's resilience, which knew no bounds. Several long years at war had not yet made a hardened veteran of him. Rowan, on the other hand, didn't feel quite so lucky.

"Who?" she asked, indulging his enthusiasm just because she liked to see him smile.

Seth rewarded her with a flash of a grin. The fluorescent lights cast wide shadows over his face. "Priest," he said. "Priest is back."

Rowan blinked, and, in a moment of startling stupidity, asked, "Which one?"

"Your Priest." This time, when Seth reached over to squeeze her wrist, he did overturn her metal canteen. A thin pool of water collected in the ridges of the table, dripping down the sides. "Remember? You two were attached at the hip when we were novices. And you were both together on campaign in that wretched Wasteland outpost last summer. He was reassigned with Priestess, went to Jericho and Augustine and then to the larger hives. But the Church finally sent him out here. He's been asking for you, Rowan, since he got back. Aren't you coming?"

Seth was staring at her, sitting close enough to notice the heat that colored her face. Rowan was surprised when emotion, that long conquered foe, roused itself within her. Her eyes suddenly felt warm, her heartbeat pulsing behind her lids. She blinked again and the lights overhead blurred. Her fingertips were wet, resting in the puddle of water from her spilled canteen. She suddenly wished she had taken the time to wash the dust and grime from her hands.

Priest, Rowan thought, allowing the name to ring with all the lofty glory of church bells in her mind. Your Priest.

She was off the bench in an instant, her thighs slamming into the low table, rattling her tray. "Where?" she asked, her voice ragged, lost to every desire she had repressed, every thought and dream she had abandoned when he had been taken from her.

"Downstairs, at headquarters. He says he wants to speak to us."

She fled from the refectory, her half-eaten meal discarded, the echo of her spilled water still pinging off the floor with a liquid echo.

Seth followed her, his presence dogged. Rowan was irked by his curiosity and she quickened her stride, putting a few good paces between them. An insidious ache had begun to gnaw at her empty gut and as she walked, the pain grew, rolled around inside her until it reached her ribcage. She tried to breathe through the discomfort, but her careful common sense had relinquished its control on her body. Her skin was tingling, stung by a thousand tiny shocks. Rowan walked faster. She turned a corner into the main corridor of the monastery she had been garrisoned in and followed the hall down to the chapel, which had been transformed into a war room only because it was the largest space in compound. The walls were a rusted iron here, the traditional stone pillars and columns having long been abandoned in favor of practicality. The statues of the saints, tucked irregularly into the hollowed out alcoves, were likewise sculpted from metal. Rowan secretly hated their plaintive stares, which inspired nothing of faith in her, but only served to plant the seed of judgment.

Yes, she told them, I missed him. I longed for him. But it's not a sin. You cannot make it a sin…

Walking quickly, she missed the first of the steps that led from the hall into the vestibule. Rowan stumbled, her arms failing and managed to catch herself before she fell. And for a moment she stood there, painfully aware of the chapel doors which loomed off to her right. She needed a minute. She needed just one minute.

It had been a long time, she conceded, since she had last seen Priest. Their separation had been agonizing at first, but years of training had taught Rowan to adapt. She had learned to live without him over the intervening months, surviving on bits of gossip and rumor alone. They heard from him, sometimes, when he was with Priestess, stationed at some distant outpost, scouting the hives. Surprisingly enough, Rowan preferred it when she didn't receive his messages. It was better that way, the divide between them solidified, the break wrenching, but appropriate. She wasn't forced to mourn his absence when her heart wasn't tempted with a reminder of him. She could build her life around new rituals that didn't include Priest. She could make herself forget, the way she had been taught to, forget his voice, his rare smile, the way they would sit together, close enough to feel him breathe…

Breathe.

Rowan was disappointed by her intemperance now. She knew she secretly wanted a joyful reunion filled with embraces and ecstatic greetings and maybe, just maybe, a few tears. It would be nice to know that he had missed her, but sentiment was unnecessary. Unnecessary, but not unlooked for…

Seth caught up with her then, his heavy boots clambering down the concrete steps. He paused once before he headed towards the chapel doors, glancing over his broad shoulder at her.

"Are you nervous?" he asked.

Rowan disliked the insinuation in his tone, but she couldn't condemn him for it. She tried to smile. The skin around her lips was tight and she thought her face might crack.

Seth was gracious. A true gentleman. He said nothing as they both headed into the chapel, the great creaking sweep of the swinging doors matching Rowan's unsteady heartbeat.

I missed Priest too much, she told herself, the reproachful gazes of the statues still burning into her back. I shouldn't have missed him at all, I shouldn't have…

And then he was standing there before her, quite unremarkable, a ghost restored to his flesh. Rowan did not hesitate. She took a step towards him and was happy when he extended his hand to her. Their fingers interlocked, the pressure from his thumb nearly crushing her knuckles. He lowered her eyes to meet hers, some muted acknowledgement in his glance. A smile from him. Another from her.

Rowan's heart swelled once more, and then finally settled into an easy rhythm.

He's missed me too, she thought. And just like that, all her wishes were repaid, the distance between them falling away into the realm of memory.

"How are you?" Priest asked.

She was surprised when she recognized his voice so easily. "Well," she said, wondering if he felt the same about her, if he had tried desperately to remember her face, her every feature, as she often had with him.

"Enjoying your deployment in City Seven?" he quipped.

A mild frown. She employed irony. "It's fantastic."

That earned her a laugh, something she warmed to. Priest released her hand and patted her forearm with his palm. His calluses were rough on the sleeve of her coat. "It is good to see you," he said.

Rowan only nodded. The feeling, she knew, was indeed mutual.

She was annoyed when she realized that she wouldn't have a private moment with Priest. Their time together had been stolen by some undefined sense of urgency. With a half-smile, he stepped away from her, gesturing at the pews that had been pushed up against the walls of the chapels. There were at least half a dozen other Priests seated there, scattered around the room. Rowan quickly found a space next to Marcus, his green eyes quick and alive with the energy of his curiosity. Priest alone remained standing in the center of the room. His lean, lanky frame cast long shadows over the cement floor. Looking at him more closely, Rowan realized that he had lost weight, the broadness in his shoulders gone. And pale, he was pale now, the scars on his cheek and neck showing gossamer like a spider's web.

Acid churned in her stomach. Change worried her. She looked at Marcus and saw the intensity of his closed expression. Sensing her eyes on him, he turned to her, giving voice to the faint unease that menaced the darker recesses of her mind.

"I wonder," he whispered, "where is Priestess?"

Rowan's blood ran cold. She knew then what was missing, what was off, what was wrong. The red-haired Priestess had been deployed with Priest. They had been stationed together first at Jericho and then at Augustine, only to end up on an obscure reconnaissance detail up by the northernmost hives.

Rowan blinked. A new ache gnawed at her insides, made her double over and press her fists against her gut. She felt surprisingly insecure, her mild worry transforming itself into a tyrant that lorded over her weak peace of mind. She almost hated Marcus for pointing out the obvious to her. Where was Priestess? God, where was she?

A respectful hush settled over the room as Priest prepared to address them. He was standing before the wide, circular table they usually gathered around to plot campaigns and arrange sentry shifts and revise maps to include the most recent migrations of the vampire herds. But the table was bare of its clutter now. Priest ran his hands over the surface of it, his head bowed. Rowan knew that he was thinking. Waiting. Steadying himself as she had also done outside in the vestibule.

She took another deep breath, suddenly nervous for him.

Marcus elbowed her in the side. "It isn't good news," he remarked, his voice warm and infused with his own sense of predatory mirth, which always came at the expense of others.

Rowan stiffened. She wouldn't reward him with her attention.

After a few minutes, Priest looked up at them. His eyes were blank. His mouth curved in a solemn frown. "The Monsignors," he said, "have sent me from Cathedral City to speak with you. This is not a pleasant errand for me, nor do I think my message will be gladly received by most of you." He paused, his gaze cutting over to Rowan for an instant. "The truth, I'm afraid, is that I have unfortunate news. Bad news. We are all soldiers here. And we are also something of a family."

His words stirred a few stale memories in Rowan. An image flashed through her mind, Sage sitting at the kitchen table back at their Wasteland hovel, his mouth greasy with their mother's stew, the napkin balled up on his lap, forgotten. Rowan ran her tongue along her teeth, trying to savor the taste of the memory. But the vision was distanced from her, only a picture seen in a book. When she looked around her and saw the members of the Order gathered, the notion of family acquired a bit more reality.

Her eyes landed on Seth, his elbows perched on his knees. The twins, not seated together, but across from each other on opposite benches. Esther, who was only seventeen and newly ordained, the cross still red on her brow. Marcus, with his sharp green eyes, those hunks of jade set deep into his skull. And Priest, who had taken on a strange resonance, a hint of authority.

Rowan's heart dropped into her stomach. What was missing from this scene? Who was missing?

And she knew. She knew then. A mother. Priestess.

The silence that stretched over the chapel was fatal, more potent than any death knell. Rowan felt an intense pressure building up inside her chest. Her lungs contracted. She couldn't breathe…

Priest ran his hands over the steel table-top once more, his palms squeaking on the metal. "Priestess is dead," he said, delivering the news with almost no ceremony. His voice was automatic, processed, as if it were being bled through a computer. "She was killed while on a reconnaissance mission in Sola Mira. I was with her. A hive guardian cornered us in the one of the passages. Priestess led him away, distracted him with a flare. As she was running, she became disoriented and fell. I found her by the base of the hive. Neck broken. I gave her last rites. She was buried with honor in Cathedral City. And we should honor her now too, our martyr, with prayer. Let us bow our heads, in the name of the Father…"

They complied, stiff necks creaking, hands folded. Rowan stared at her knuckles as she listened to Priest recite a psalm. Immortality was promised, through faith, through the resurrection of the soul. No mention was made of damnation. Rowan breathed in slowly through her nose, trying to rid herself of the new tightness in her throat. Priestess was gone and she felt empty inside.

Lifting her chin a little, she dared to glance at Priest, heard him fumble only once over the words of prayer. To her, he looked like a pantomime, repeating something he had been told to say. She thought of him standing on a cliff on the side of the hive, the bloody truth laid out a his feet, Priestess, her body appropriately mangled. Had Priest cried for her? Had he struggled to pronounce her last rites? Had he held her hand, even though she was already dead, to feel for some fleeting pulse of life? Had he wished, in the back of his heart, that she would come alive? Had he blamed himself?

The muscles in Rowan's neck ached. She realized that she was withholding a sob, crying not for Priestess, but for Priest. It had been quick, this end. Tragedies usually were. For the first time, Rowan experienced a cold thrill. Mortality had laid its clawed hand on her shoulder, pressed itself deep into her corruptible flesh. How long had Priestess been dead and buried? Had the worms begun to eat her already? Was the martyr rewarded with a final humiliation, her unrepentant strength finally failing as she laid prone in her coffin?

Someone uttered a faint whimper. It was Esther, who had always looked up to Priestess. Seth slung his arm around her shoulder, his own grief decidedly muted. He had never cared for Priestess much after she broke his jaw.

Priest concluded his prayer with the Sign of the Cross. For a moment he stood there, working a muscle in his jaw, his lips moving wordlessly. It was Marcus who spoke for him instead.

"I told you," he whispered, pinching Rowan's side. "I just knew something was wrong."

His fiend's delight was enough to nauseate her. "Stop," she said through gritted teeth. Why was she angry now? What had changed?

Marcus respected her rage. He fell into gloomy silence, although she did not trust the anxious glow that hid behind his hooded eyes.

Esther, who was still touched by the impudence of her youth, rubbed her hand over her nose. "What happens now?" she asked in thick tone. "She was our leader."

Priest turned to look at her over his shoulder. "It has been decided," he said. "The Monsignors have handed down their orders. I will assume Priestess's place and conduct this campaign to its conclusion. But you should know…you must know, this task wasn't looked for. I would rather…I would give so much to have Priestess here instead. She was…worthy...our champion."

"Here! Here!" one of the older Priest's cried from the back.

Rowan thought the noise was inappropriate. She pictured Priestess, their champion, lying facedown in a pool of her own stinking blood. Neck broken, of course.

The contrast between life and death was sickening. She had the sudden urge to vomit.

Priest folded his hands over the lip of the table, his arms braced at strange angles. The way he regarded his audience was surprisingly guarded and Rowan studied his expression.

It's as if he doesn't believe himself, she thought, her sympathy for him very real in that moment. She almost wanted to rush to him and take his head onto her breast, let him rest his weathered cheek near her heart which had, for so long, beat only for him.

He's been shaken, she observed. Badly upset by something.

Although Priest was standing on his own two feet, Rowan thought that the ground might be tilted beneath him. He kept shifting his weight to steady himself. She heard the creak of his leather boots every time he moved.

"I am sorry," he said, offering them an apology that seemed out of place. "I am sorry for this. But Priestess would not expect us to mourn."

And I won't, Rowan told herself fiercely. I won't. I won't. I won't…

"Guard shifts will run as usual tonight," Priest said. His face lost the last of its tepid color as he assumed the mantle of authority, took up Priestess's throne with all the unwillingness of a broken man. "We will meet again tomorrow to discuss future changes. For now, stand firm and fast. Godspeed."

It was finished. The matter dismissed with an almost bureaucratic coldness. As she stood, Rowan briefly thought of approaching Priest, rekindling the communion and unity that had been missing between them during their months of separation. But Seth was talking to him now, had been pulled aside out of the crowd.

Rowan wasn't jealous. She watched for a moment as Priest addressed the man, his head bowed low and close to Seth's ear. Only a few of his words made it back to her.

"The Monsignors," she heard him say, and, "an assignment for you."

Rowan turned on her heel, not anxious to intrude. As she walked out of the chapel with the others, the pressure in her chest exploded. She was thinking of her mother again, but this time, her face had been replaced with Priestess's, a bit of red-hair curling over her cross-stained brow. She held her neck oddly when Rowan saw her, as if it were snapped. And her eyes were sad, no fire in her tears, only sorrow.

Rowan was running then. She broke away from the crowd and rushed down the corridor, passed the statues of the saints, who no longer looked upon her with judgment, but regret.

Priestess gone. Priestess dead. Rowan started to weep, even as she ran. She cried and didn't really know why.

I cursed her to Hell….

Priestess gone, she thought, the words repeating themselves in her mind like some awful nursery rhyme. Priestess dead. Priestess damned.

Author's Note: Thanks so much for reading! The next installment is in the works and should be posted in the next ten days. Have a great week, everyone!