Author's Note: Woohoo! I've reached two hundred reviews! That's so amazing. I can't possibly express how grateful I am. So thank you to all my readers and reviewers, Lystan, FireChildSlytherin5, saichick, Mss Heart of Swords01, Lonely Bleeding Liar and Jag. And if you've added this story to your favorites/author alerts list, thank you as well! Your encouragement is truly appreciated. I do hope you enjoy this installment.

Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Priest.

Part XXVI Ashes and Dust

The fires were wild, a wave of divine glory that swept through the haunted outpost, making light all those corners that were dark, teasing the night sky with a hint of heat that shimmered on the horizon like a mirage. They did not stop the blaze, but let it burn, building pyres on the main street to destroy the scattered, stinking bodies of the vampires. It was the work of the charnel house. It left the hands slick with oily blood and soured the stomach. Priestess did not bother to hide her disgust as she helped to pile the corpses on pyres. The charred flesh already reeked of decay even though the creatures were newly dead. But the wind was gracious, scattering the ashes on foreign plains, where the night buried them under a careless sky, irreverent to both the dead and those that yet lived.

There was very little room for conversation in their work, although Priestess was afforded some measure of grim satisfaction as she labored alongside her fellow Priests. They spoke through their silence. Occasional glances were exchanged. Smiles of recognition. She nodded in greeting to Esther, who had finally grown into a woman with thick yellow hair. It surprised her also when she noticed that several of the older Priests, those who had first been taken as novices when they were teenagers, had started to age, lines stretching the skin around their mouths, the hair at their temples a tell-tale grey. But there was nothing of diminished power about them, no. Priestess marveled at their strength and quiet industry, forged as much through years of training as in the time they had spent in menial labor, unable, like her, to find work elsewhere.

Her stomach was filled with a surge of warmth as she watched them work. She had never realized before how much of a family they were…until they had been taken from her. Reunions were strange things, not looked for, but desired nonetheless. Priestess felt the secret yearning inside her, the loss she had patiently nursed over the years, fulfilled in the space of a few precious moments. It was a miracle of sorts, a reward for her devotion to her brothers and sisters which had never wavered. once.

Cinders burned her exposed fingers as she heaved the last of the bodies onto a pyre. Some of the lower buildings had also caught fire, the blaze from the sewage plant spilling over onto the dry-wood timber of the other structures. Priestess stood back from the pyres and watched the skeletal rafters crumble, remembering what the outpost had once meant to her. Ironically enough, it had been the last place she had ever seen Rebecca alive…

A piteous roar sounded as the ceiling of one the buildings caved in, sending a spray of hot ashes into the air, the embers dancing in the dark like fireflies. Priestess watched the wreck and ruin, unmindful of the pain of her broken nose and the dried blood around her lips. Unknowingly, her hands folded themselves over her heart.

She was cleansed.

It was strange for her to feel peaceful in such a turbulent moment, but peace came and Priestess was too grateful to turn her cheek to it. She let it invade her body, seep through her pores until she was freed from all her tiresome aches and soreness. The rancid smell of the charred corpses blew by her and she smelled only the thick heat of the smoke as it spiraled like incense up to the moon. Each breath was a blessing. Each moment a renewal. She had come full circle. She had made her end a new beginning.

Priest came to her from out of the flickering shadows then, his touch gentle as his fingers lit upon her elbow.

Priestess looked at him, almost ashamed to smile. He had a smudge of ash on his forehead, a bruise rising on his scalp where Marcus had struck him, but his quiet majesty superseded all those small imperfections.

To her, he was still beautiful.

"We have some time until dawn," Priest murmured in an undertone that was barely discernible over the crackling fires. "I thought we ought to talk."

Priestess nodded in ready acquiescence. "I'd like that."

It was hard to find a place not ravaged by the blaze and they ended up walking down the road that led away from the outpost, where the cooling motorcycles had been parked in neat, orderly rows. Leaning on the seat of Seth's bike, they sat in silence for a minute, turning their faces away from the heat of the fire and into the mild, silky air of the pre-dawn desert. Priestess savored his nearness, his hand only a few inches from her thigh. But her contentment was poisoned by what she had learned from Marcus, the terrible truth that had jeopardized her faith in Priest and brought to her a new kind of darkness that was impenetrable.

And she knew that she would carry that darkness within her forever. It was a mark of the past, not easily discarded, and despite her jealousy (yes, she could admit now that it was jealousy) Rebecca's legacy did not deserve to be dismissed. Like Shannon's. Like Lucy's. They were a part of Priest, just as much as his love for her. Priestess could not choose what he held onto and what he let go of. It was not her place. Her duty remained only to him, to his love, which she could bear and return.

Unashamedly, her cheeks no longer stained with an uncertain blush, Priestess reached over and squeezed his hand, feeling the rough calluses and chapped skin, loving the whole of him, not just the bits she found beautiful. Lowering her head, she glanced at the trailing cracks in the sand, the veins of parched earth. She kept some pressure on Priest's hand, the warmth of his fingers making her palm tingle.

"Marcus told me," she explained. "He told me many things. You don't have to…"

"It's better if I do," Priest interrupted. His body jerked. For an instant, the connection between them was broken. "You are the only one I've ever owed the truth to," he continued, his knee nudging against her leg. "I've lied to myself by thinking that I could hide from weakness. Isolation is attractive for sinners. It detracts from guilt, lulls the wretched into false serenity. I'll be honest with you, Rowan, there were times when I was glad for our separation…all those years, they were convenient. I prefer to forget when I can. Her especially. She's the worst kind of specter, not exactly vengeful, but a mark on my soul, a stain that will never be washed away. I don't know how you can stand me. I'm obnoxious in my wickedness."

"Don't-" she began, but he was quicker.

"I am arrogant," Priest insisted, his face schooled by strict self-admonition. "What I did to her, to Rebecca—you know now her name was Rebecca? Yes?-the omission of truth was worse than the sin. The denial…God, I had so many opportunities to confess myself. Even now, you see I linger around the edge of things. I should say it, shouldn't I? We give words power when they speak them. I said that to Rebecca once. It's still true."

Priestess swallowed. She knew what was coming, of course and yet, that old fear awoke within her, fanged, sinister. There was something to be said for avoidance, she secretly agreed. It was a false god. No better than a mirage.

Unable to disguise her grimace, she glanced at Priest and held his gaze. "I'm listening," she urged, a slippery sickness in her gut.

Priest dropped his hand back over hers, his grip tightening until all the blood rushed to her fingertips. "I broke my vow of celibacy with Rebecca," he said, the echo of a sigh behind his words. "It was a mutual decision…a shared sin. The affair lasted several months until we discovered that she was pregnant. The end came, shortly after. She knew more than I did, understood things better, was so much wiser. She knew she couldn't run. That was the worst of it, I think, seeing her realize her own defeat, watching her…surrender to them. She did not ask me to protect her, but she wanted me to turn her into the Monsignors, remove any suspicion from myself. I did what she told me. I was a coward. I think she continued to protect me until the very last, until her love for our child grew more than her love for me. She wanted me to take her away, but I couldn't. I understood then that there was nowhere to go. The Church is insidious in its omnipotence. All-seeing. I left her there, with them. And they were patient, of course. They waited until she had had the child before they killed her. It wasn't a martyr's death, so I'm told. It wasn't glorious. But she didn't suffer. There is some peace, at least, to be found in that."

Priestess listened to him speak, hypnotized by the eager rhythm of his voice, the way he pushed the words from his lips, trying to rid his body and soul of them. When it was over, she sat very still, her heart a mindless echo in her ears, and thought of Rebecca, who had been so strong. Rebecca, whom they had killed…

"How?" she asked, feeling the first stirrings of sympathy for the woman she had only hated. Her revulsion, she felt, was unworthy, a private sin that she wanted to sweep away from her soul. Rebecca had been so many things, but she didn't deserve to be abhorred. Slowly, Priestess managed to untangle herself from her memories and petty jealousy. But forgiveness came too late. Rebecca was only a pile of bones now, unlamented by all…except by him.

Priest closed his eyes for a minute and drew in a breath. A muscle twitched beneath his right eye and the light from the fire was like the dawn on his face, a tawny crimson that colored his flesh with blood shadows.

"It wasn't until a few years ago that I found out," he said. "A guard to Monsignor Chamberlain told me. He was working in the coal mines with me after he left the service of the Church. I could tell he was bitter and he wanted to talk. It took me a while to work it out of him, his reluctance was understandable, I suppose. But such a secret does not weigh lightly on the soul. Murder is pervasive. It taints. And he was still disturbed by it, troubled enough to confess it all to me. He told me he was there when they killed her. He said that they brought Rebecca before the Monsignors only minutes after she delivered the child…she still had blood on her legs. Orelas asked her once to name the father. She refused. They gave the order and one of the other guards put a bullet in her head. Just before she was executed, apparently, she asked if she had had a son or a daughter. I don't know if they told her."

"My God," Priestess murmured. Her head was heavy, the weight of it dragging down her neck until her shoulders and back began to ache. She leaned against Priest and he leaned against her and there they sat, together, lost to a grief that was shared.

A bullet in her head. A mother's final plea ignored. It was an unrighteous death. And it wasn't the death of a Priest, not the end that Rebecca, in all her wild, blazing glory, had ever deserved.

Priestess shut her eyes for a minute.

I cursed her to Hell…

She knew that her guilt was unimportant, eclipsed by the shame Priest himself battled. With some difficulty, she tried to repress that frantic fluttering within her. It was a herald of her own evil, the misconceptions she had wielded against Rebecca, who had been transformed from a dark memory into an innocent. But the past was an enigma to her already. Priest, who remained with her in the present, had had his own innocence damaged. She couldn't imagine what it had done to him, leaving both Rebecca and his child behind. The act was unfathomable and it had changed him.

Priestess dropped her chin onto his shoulder, listening to the hollow rush of his breathing. She wondered if he could sense her pity. She wondered if he knew that her jealousy had ceded to mercy. That was one lesson she had been forced to learn on her own, something that the Church had never dared to teach to its warriors. And true mercy, she knew, came from God alone. It was His singular blessing and it was hers to give now.

Priest shifted, his unease rupturing the seemingly sacred stillness of the moment. His muscles were tense, the sticky warmth from his body seeping through the coarse folds of his black tunic. She lifted her chin off of his shoulder and gave him space. Priest moved, one hand braced on the seat behind him, his elbow bent.

"I wish I could say that I considered telling you before," he said, "but the truth is, I didn't. I was frightened, not of the Monsignors, not of the Church and its impious wrath, but of you, you were the only judge I feared. Sometimes, at night, I would lay awake and imagine what you would say to me if you knew. You were never harsh with me, only sad. But I never thought that you would forgive me…because I can't forgive myself. My mind is still narrow, you see. I am selfish and cannot look beyond my fear. Do you wish now that I had told you from the beginning? Do you hate my lies and deceit that much, Rowan?"

She hesitated. God, oh God, she hesitated. His question hung in the air between them, the heat of it worse than the fire. Priestess looked away from him and inside herself. She remembered her youth and intemperance. She tried to imagine what she would have done, what she could have possibly said…

"I don't know," she replied, the words lodging in her throat. She winced, despising her own indecision. "I don't," she tried again, "I can't look back. You shouldn't either. Regret could destroy us both, if we let it and there is something here, something between us that should be saved, I think. Rebecca would agree. She was terribly practical. She was-"

"She would be proud of you," Priest added.

Priestess blinked. Her eyes were suddenly blurred. "Proud of us all," she corrected.

They sat in silence, let the quiet of the night soothe away what uncertainty remained within them. Priest fidgeted on the seat besides her, his knuckles cracking as he folded his hands into fists.

"Do you want to know why I broke my vow?" he asked her, the words damp with some repressed emotion.

Priestess had never seen him so undone before and she was daunted. Her heart thudded, pronouncing her fear. On her lips, she tasted the ash of the fires.

"It isn't necessary," she said at length. Her reticence frustrated her, challenged her role as Priest's confessor. It was not a duty she bore gladly and yet, she was humbled by his honesty. She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, trying to guess at his reaction, fearing that he would retreat, but praying for a reprieve. The exposed skin above her collar was flushed with the fever of the night. For the first time, Priestess noticed that she had singed her knuckles. She rubbed her fingers against her thighs and nursed the tiny hurt, which somehow gave her strength.

"I know you," she conceded.

Priest raised his head.

"I know your soul," she continued. Her breathing was hectic now. Priestess felt a vein by her temple throb. There was only one question left, one unknown that must be accounted for. Priestess reconsidered her strength, which was at once blazing and resilient, but also fragile and jaded. She hated the paradox and she hated herself for her weakness. But the crossroads loomed, the final mystery unfolding before her. Priestess steadied her soul, not with pray, but with her love from him, which remained, which would always remain…

"I know your soul," she repeated. "And I would like to know your heart. Priest, please tell me…did you love her? Was it love?"

He met her gaze. Only the blush of the fire lingered in the smoke-stained air around them, the breath of the dragon. Priest tilted his head to the side, a sign of acquiescence.

"There were a few moments…" he muttered

Instinctively, Priestess's nails dug into her thighs.

"Yes," Priest admitted. "I loved her."

Aching silence. The dying night settled around them in a great, gauzy veil of obscured moonlight and grey-tinted shadow. Priest sighed once, his hand gripping his neck.

"I do not think you understand," he said at length.

Priestess began to protest, but he stopped her, his finger touching her cheek tenderly, following the smooth curve around her lips. And her voice, quite against her will, died inside of her.

"I'm not suggesting that you are naïve, Rowan," Priest continued, "only that you knew Rebecca differently than I did. We were close in age. We were both adrift. I searched for Shannon in the dark. She searched for love in the light. We came together in a way that was not unexpected, I suppose. I admired her. She respected me. It was quick and when it was over, I was wretched enough to forget her. You must pity her, you see, for what she has become is terrible. She is a memory now. She is the whisper we all ignore. Think of what she meant to all of us once. She has nothing now…not even her child."

Priestess hesitated, surprised to see how his eyes glistened, tears lurking, but not falling. Her throat felt as though it had closed up and she breathed in through her nose, deeply. There was only one thing she could think to say in that moment, something that surpassed her shock and confusion. Touching her fingertips to Priest's brow, she traced the outline of his cross, thinking of Lent and of sacrifice.

"Remember," she whispered, her face so close to his, their fate within reach, "remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return."

The tears did fall then. She saw them on his cheeks and she brushed them away with the pad of her thumb. Her fingers left a greasy smudge on his skin, made her heart smile again.

"I forgive you both," Priestess said, savoring the peace she was gifted, that fragile, blessed union.

Priest exhaled sharply, the sound almost like a laugh. He pressed his forehead to hers, their noses touching. "What else did Marcus tell you?" he asked. "I promise that it's a lie."

She reached over his shoulder and cradled his head with her palm, his hair like bristles against her skin. Ash stuck to his scalp. "No more secrets," she said.

"No more lies," Priest added.

There were very close, she felt, to salvation. She thought of the moment a few nights ago, when he had kissed her and her heart had been broken, not fulfilled. But there had completed the circle now. Come to a place of tranquility within and without and for a short time, the ruined world seemed whole and life was gentle. Priestess knew contentment. And she knew that it would last.

But it didn't. Time turned against them, closed the portal and all too soon, they were interrupted by Seth jogging up the road out of the burning town. When Priestess glanced up, she noticed that he still had his goggles perched on his brow. His skin was slick with sweat.

He did not bother with a greeting, but stopped in front of Priest, his long arms swinging slightly like the blades of a slow windmill. "The town is cleared," he said, sounding a little breathless. "I've been looking for you for the past half hour. I wondered where you'd run off to, Priest. Are you trying to avoid me again?"

Priest, for his part, seemed only vaguely perturbed. "Not intentionally," he replied, his voice stiff.

"Now," Seth said, "now, at last, will you listen to me?"

Priest raised his eyebrows. Priestess had a horrible feeling that some callous reprimand awaited her, but she was wrong to doubt jovial Seth.

"Have you come to chastise me?" Priest asked him outright.

Seth rolled his broad shoulders. "Of course not!" he said. "I hate your suspicion, Priest. It turned you against me the other night, when we sat by the fire and talked. I was only trying to help."

Priest opened his mouth to reply, but this time, Priestess cut him off.

"Insinuations," she said, "are mostly useless…and infuriating."

"Is that your way of telling me to get to the point?" Seth asked, his grin lopsided and more than a bit brazen.

Priestess nodded. "Please."

Seth straightened, his posture admirable. The last of the flames, in all their tawny brilliance, rivaled the sun that steadily rose behind them. "I know where you went yesterday," he told Priest, not a hint of accusation in his tone. "You weren't chasing after that vamp pack, were you?"

Priest scratched his nose, his embarrassment mild. "No."

"Well, it doesn't matter," Seth said. "You were looking in the wrong place, anyway. I tried to tell you that."

Priest finally lost the last of patience. He stood, his boots only a few inches away from Seth's. "Tell me what?" he asked.

Seth looked quickly at Priestess. His smile was almost apologetic. "I know," he said, "where Rebecca's son is."

Author's Note: Thanks for reading! If you have a moment, please leave me a quick review. Feedback always makes my week.

I suppose I probably should tell you, there will only be four more chapters in this story, bringing the grand total to thirty. But don't worry! I have plans for a follow-up two-shot and three-shot and after that, who knows? This certainly won't be my only fic for the Priest universe, I promise you that. ^_^ I think I'm too hopelessly in love with the fandom to quit now.

The next chapter is currently in the works and should be posted in roughly ten days. Until then, take care and be well, everyone!