Author's Note: Another sad chapter, but I promise to make the last one happy. Priestess and Priest deserve it, I think. I've certainly put them both through enough angst and heartbreak in this story. I'm determined to make it up to them. ;)
As always, I would like to extend my most sincere thanks to all my readers and reviewers, Lystan, saichick, Faith-Catherine, Aureleis, MssHeart of Swords01, FireChildSlytherin5, ShipsThatFly, Lune du Minuit, Jag, Mygara-chan, Lonely Bleeding Liar and Yijeni. In addition, if you've added this story to your favorites/author alerts lists, thank you as well! I do hope you enjoy this installment.
Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Priest.
Part 29 Death Knell
Rowan ran her palm across the shelf over her bed. It came away dusty. She frowned, remembering some old proverb her mother had been fond of, cleanliness is next to Godliness. Huh, that was funny, considering her mother had never kept a clean house. The dust from the frequent desert sandstorms always had a way of getting inside their hovel. Rowan recalled the feel of it under her bare feet, that grainy, gritty sensation that rubbed her flesh raw until her soles had developed calluses. There was no sand in Cathedral City though, just those noxious ashes, that silken soot that coated the skin with all the beguiling tenderness of a lover's kiss. Rowan frowned and rubbed her hand vigorously against her pants leg. She had to clean.
It had been a long time since she was last in her cell at the Order's monastery in the capital. Like most Priests, she was often stationed in the Wastelands during campaigns, assigned to those tough little outposts where the sun was strong enough to turn the skin to leather and people survived on tiny potatoes and root vegetables painstakingly grown in plots of soil they kept in their cellars. It was a hard life, but one she didn't object to. Being quartered in the claustrophobic confines of the monastery was worse in a way, the halls echoing with unpleasant memories and the whispers of the dead who would not be forgotten. Ah, if only she could forget…
"You're weak," Rowan told herself. Now that Priestess was gone, she was her greatest critic. Agitated, she knelt on her bed, the thin mattress giving under her weight as she plucked the few items off her shelf and piled them onto the small table nearby. Priests weren't allowed many personal effects and Rowan could count her possessions on one hand. She had a rag doll she had brought from home, the steel rosary the Monsignors had given her upon her ordination and a book of novenas that had belonged to Priest. He had noticed her eyeing it a couple of years back and discreetly slipped it to her as Christmas present. It was on that day that Rowan realized she loved him…and when she began to hope that he might love her back.
"Fool," she muttered. "Stupid, stupid girl."
Her shoulder ached as she reached for the book of novenas. Rowan paused and dug her knuckles into the muscle. She had dislocated her shoulder during the recent attack on Sola Mira, a planned assault that had gone disastrously awry.
The pain from her arm moved down into her chest, squeezing her lungs until she couldn't breathe, until she felt as though she had been buried alive, the tremendous weight of the soil crushing the last of her life out of her. She sank onto her bed, the book held limply between her fingers. It was dark in her cell, like a catacomb, and the air was rank.
Marcus…
There were indeed such things as mixed blessings, although Rowan was feeling too depressed to admit that she had been blessed at all. Her life had taken a sudden, strange turn and as usual, she had been powerless to direct its course…and just as powerless to help Marcus, who had been pulled back into the depths of Sola Mira. They hadn't been able to find his body, either, even after the liquidation. Not a single bone.
Rowan gagged, sick to her stomach. The evidence was too obvious to be ignored. The boy with the green-eyes had certainly suffered a horrible death, a wretched, tortured end.
Eaten alive, she thought and for all her strength, she was not immune to that particular horror. Rowan shivered, drawing her legs up onto the bed and hugging her knees close to her chest. And there she sat, like a child, stripped of all her carefully crafted stoicism. She pressed her forehead against legs and shut her eyes. The dark was frightening, even in the relative safety of her tiny cell. The dark was conquering and all-consuming. The dark had come to claim her…
The book of novenas slipped from her hand and fell to the floor. She jumped when she heard it hit the ground, reality spilling back into the cell like a welcome burst of warmth, like the sun rising in all its glory over a distant horizon. Rowan leaned forward and picked up the treasured item. She flipped through the pages. Her heart was lifted by the familiarity of the prayers and she tried to feel thankful for what she had been given, the miracle that was always looked for, but unexpected nonetheless.
The war was ending.
Rowan closed the book and pressed her palms to the stiff leather cover. An unsettled fear had taken hold of her, the worry irrational, but potent nonetheless. And for some reason, for some strange reason, she felt as though she might cry…
A door opened down the dormitory hallway and closed. Shuffling footsteps followed. Rowan was immediately irked by the intrusion and she considered slamming the door of her cell shut in an act of supreme rudeness. Instead, she hopped off her bed, pretending to busy herself amongst her effects, pushing the small table against the wall with her hip, straightening her blanket. Her hands were numb, though, and they fumbled over her pillow. She dropped the book back onto the shelf and stared at the imprint it made in the dust. Dust, dust…remember, you are dust and to dust you shall return…
"I've been looking for you." The voice was close at hand, rough and low and searching.
He's lonely, she thought and turned around to find Priest leaning against the open door. "You aren't supposed to be here," she said automatically.
Priest lowered his chin in a half-nod. "I know," he muttered, jerking his head in the direction of the hall. "Women's dormitories."
Rowan did not respond, letting the perilous silence stretch between them. She was almost certain that Priest, for all his strict reverence for both doctrine and rules, would lose his nerve and leave. But he didn't. He stood there in the sooty shadows of the corridor, the glow from her single light bulb giving his thin face a skull's cast. He looked on edge, a man teetering between sin and its consequences.
Rowan froze. Her hands worked themselves into tight fists, the knuckles blanched white. Now was when she turned him away. Now was when conscience won out and she chose denial over comfort. But her courage faltered, like his, and she was left only with the phantom of her former strength, worn and weakened, a girl who still kept her rag doll and sometimes liked to dream about things she knew she shouldn't.
Rowan looked at her boots, the toes perpetually scuffed, some sand from the Wastelands still stuck between the ridges in the soles. She decided then and there that she wasn't going to ask him to leave.
"You can come in, if you want," she said.
Priest lingered on the threshold. "I'm too tired to sit," he said. His statement was a paradox, but Rowan knew exactly what he meant.
She nodded.
"You weren't at the funeral Mass," he muttered, picking an imaginary fleck of dirt from the front of his tunic.
Rowan shrugged. "The coffin was empty. It wasn't Marcus you buried today."
"But still-"
"I said some prayers on my own. God doesn't care whether I'm in my cell or in the chapel. And neither does Marcus, I'm sure."
Priest flinched and Rowan instantly regretted her callousness. Without thinking, she closed the space between them with three sure strides and put her hand on his shoulder.
"I want you to know," she said, "that none of us think this is your fault."
"I let go."
"He fell." Rowan squeezed his shoulder, her own arm aching with the effort. It was the only reassurance she could give him, a quiet promise that she hoped would sustain Priest in the depths of his own private torment. She pitied him and his heroics, which were no reward, no balm for the loss they had all suffered.
"Marcus," she said lamely, "would be pleased. He would be happy that we were able to clear Sola Mira." Rowan hesitated, and then added, "Priestess too. It was her reconnaissance, after all, that gave us the intelligence we needed."
Priest's head shot up. The bleached light played across his scalp until his skin looked like bone. "I can't-"
"This is a victory," Rowan said in a rush of breath.
Priest roughly shrugged her hand off his shoulder. "Don't you dare," he said, the threat heavy in his voice. "Don't you buy into their lies-"
"I'm not-" She touched her chest in shock.
"That day in Sola Mira." He bared his teeth when he spoke. "We failed." Priest pushed past her, his body jarring her still tender arm until she had to bite back a groan.
"Priest!" she protested.
"I failed."
"But we won the war." Rowan turned to face him, dizzied by the sudden rush of pain up her bicep.
Priest had dropped down onto her bed and he had his elbows resting on his knees, his hands knotted together so tightly that the veins near his knuckles seemed ready to burst. Rowan thought he was going to deny her, tear apart her logic and reasoning and reveal her for the fool she truly was. But she had somehow managed to strike him down. He wet his lips with his tongue and seemed about to speak, but in the end, he could only clamp his jaw shut, the muscles in his neck strained with tension and what she felt might have been a vain attempt to withhold a sob.
Rowan collapsed against the door, a deep sigh rising in her chest. "My God," she whimpered, her hand pulling at her constricting collar.
It was easy to recognize Priest's guilt, that blot upon his conscience that spread like spilled ink, invading what should have been sacred and sanctified within him. Rowan didn't want him to blame himself for the disaster at Sola Mira, but it was inevitable. As soon as Priest was declared head of the Order after Priestess's death, he had begun making aggressive plans to assault Sola Mira. Rowan had assumed that his ambition came from all the reconnaissance work he had done with Priestess before she was killed and he seemed eager to undertake a new campaign against the hives that had the potential to shake the war from its stalemate. Priest was meticulous in his plotting, his skills as a tactician untested and he proceeded with caution, allotting a small force to penetrate Sola Mira, the rumored sanctuary of the vampire queen. And the offensive itself seemed to make sense, until their team actually entered the hive and found the lay-out more daunting than initially imagined. It was a high-risk mission, of course, although Rowan had her misgivings. Marcus in particular had also been uncertain and more than once, he had implored Priest to turn back.
Although she would never hesitate to defend her friend, Rowan knew that the assault had been a disaster. They were ambushed and quite effectively routed. Marcus had been separated from the group and dragged back down into the Hive. His death, however, had been enough to stir them from their apathy and their second siege of the hive was astoundingly successful. Sola Mira was liquidated, nearly three thousand vampires slaughtered and their queen supposedly along with them. The victory was indeed stunning, a triumph that had a surprising affect on the remaining hives, the vampire population relying on Sola Mira as their main breeding ground to replenish their already floundering armies.
Taking advantage of their weakened numbers, Priest had plotted assaults on some of the smaller hives and before long, the vampire population had been reduced by almost three quarters. The remaining herds were scattered throughout the Wastelands, malnourished and diseased. Without the necessary protection of their hives, they festered in shallow caves, more often than not falling victim to their more ancient enemy, the sun.
There was some talk of rounding up the last of the vampires and isolating them on heavily guarded reservations. Rowan wasn't certain how she felt about that particular idea. Extinction seemed more appropriate to her warrior's mind, although she knew that there was a great deal of debate amongst the senior clergy, who believed that wiping out any species might further disrupt whatever balance remained in their world.
Rowan herself wasn't quite so considerate, but the choice, she realized, was completely out of her hands.
Looking back over the past few months, she couldn't decide how the war had been won. Circumstance had helped, along with Priest's tireless efforts. But even through her optimism, Rowan sensed that their victory had been the result of chance and mere fortune and therefore, was somehow cheapened.
The steel frame of the door was digging into her back, the space between her shoulder blades sore. Rowan straightened. Her weariness was indistinct, a sort of soul-sickness, a malaise that went past her bones and muscles and left her spirit bereft. Priest mirrored her languid disease. He sat stooped and cowed on her bed, a figure of reduced glory stained by his own miraculous victory.
She grinned when she looked at him, her smile poisoned with resignation. "You're a hero, you know," she said.
He rubbed the nape of his neck. "Tell that to Marcus."
Rowan dismissed his cruelty, the defensive reflex he used to battle against the fear that plagued them both. Mindlessly, she crossed her cell and sank down onto the bed next to him. Their shoulders touched, their flanks pressed together and she could feel him breathe.
Close, she thought. Close enough to…
"I think," Priest said, his mouth pinched by a tense frown, "I think that we are all frightened now."
Rowan shrugged. She couldn't admit her worry to him, even though it must be plain to see. Something held her back, the final barrier between them, and she respected her natural reticence.
"Change," she muttered.
"It's more than that."
Rowan was suddenly cold. The clammy air of her cell was hostile and she missed the peculiar blessing of the sun, the harshness of the heat that was unforgiving, but pervaded her body and spirit nonetheless. There was a plain honesty about the sun, about light. Darkness was creeping and chilled. It perverted this moment between them, which should have been sacred but wasn't.
A funeral, she thought. A burial.
Why did this feel like an end?
"It's strange," she said, her breath like frost in her throat. "I hate being back in Cathedral City. I almost…I think I almost miss the front lines."
Priest bit his lower lip, pulling at the chapped skin. His expression was distant, a quiet musing that brought him closer to her if only because she knew they shared the same thoughts. "Me too," he said.
"I never understood this place," Rowan continued. "What they did to us…" She was powerless to stop the memories that rushed back to her, the loneliness of her childhood, Priestess with all her wasted fury, the deprivation, the agony of asceticism.
And in the dark, as she sat there, her hand found his. His fingers closed over hers. It was an automatic response. Pure instinct.
"It's all right," he said, but he was unable to soothe her. Rowan sensed that he didn't believe his own words, that he was just as confused as she was, only he couldn't acknowledge what had happened to him, what was still happening…
"They poisoned us," she said. "They made it so I don't want it to end…the War…what could possibly be left for us?"
Priest let go of her hand and covered his eyes with his palm. For an instant, Rowan thought he would begin to cry and that was a trespass she didn't think she could bear, a violation of her esteem for him.
But when he spoke, his voice was steady, if not soured by an overwhelming fatalism. "I wasn't sure if you'd heard the rumors or not," he said, "but I'm almost relieved you did. I didn't…I knew I couldn't be the one to tell you, Rowan."
Her heart jolted and she felt detached from her skin, as if her soul had flown free from her body. It was difficult to move. Slowly, she turned her head and tried to look at him. The light overhead poorly mimicked the sun of the Wastelands, that great, white heat that burned up the air and left the horizons shimmering with fitful mirages. In the city everything was bare and cold. Reality had sharp, defined edges. Rowan's jaw tightened, holding back her rebellious tongue. She had not heard the rumors, but Priest didn't need to know that. This moment, she sensed, was more for his comfort than for hers.
She managed to nod.
Priest's eyes were watery and pale, not the same fierce blue they were in the sunlight. He was like the crumbled pillars that could be found scattered throughout the desert, remnants of old civilizations that had only the wind and the dead to mourn for them.
Rowan wondered what it was that had made him lose his strength, but she was too frightened to guess. She pulled her thin sleeves over her cold fingers and tucked her hands clos to her neck. "Is it bad?" she asked simply.
Priest picked at the front of his tunic again. His silence was devastating. Rowan's stomach dropped, acid gnawing at her gut.
"I can take it," she assured him, her weak, nervous laugh sounding like a sigh. "I'm a lot stronger than I look."
"Courage," Priest responded, "is cheap."
Rowan was too worried to be insulted. "I have a right to be told," she insisted. "You can't deny me-"
"The Monsignors met this morning to decide the fate of our Order. Rumor has it that Orelas and some of the other senior clergy will argue that we should be disbanded. They'll hand down their verdict at the end of the week. In…in a week it might all be over."
Again, she thought he was going to cry. And if he did, Rowan knew she wouldn't be able to stop herself. She would sob right along with him, become that little girl who would always miss her home and long for the life that she had been taken from. They would hold each other and weep. The moment would be both beautiful and terrible. But such perfect fragility, such unrepentant vulnerability was not meant for her. Anger bloomed within her, a vicious venom and she fisted her hands in her blanket.
"Why?" she could only ask.
"We've outlived our purpose," Priest said numbly. "And you must understand the Monsignors…they dispose of inconveniences. It is the nature of the beast."
And despite her fury, Rowan was shocked. She had never heard Priest speak poorly of the senior clergymen before. His respect for the Monsignors was admirable, an aspect of his piety that she occasionally did not share. Most of the Priests grumbled about the Monsignors now and then, the old men who seemed so out of touch with the War. But Priest himself was steadfast. Virtuous. His seething rage confused her now, seemed so out of place with his reverence and devotion.
She looked at him, unable to restrain her curiosity. Was there a change in him? Was there a crack in his loyalty and faith? Rowan didn't know what she would do if he began to waver. For so long, he had been the foundation of her own faith, a childhood idol turned into the guardian of her belief in the world and their cause. But he was falling now, losing his wings. He had been shaken on his pedestal and would land in the dust beside her, as regrettably mortal as she was, as painfully flawed.
Remember, you are dust and to dust you shall return.
Rowan swallowed, a violent trembling rattling her to the core. Would it be such a loss, she wondered, if he did fall? Instinctively, she reached over and took his hand. Would it matter so much if he lost his glory and became a human again, a creature like her who was just as bound to the threat of sin and the forbidden? It might be better, in a way. It might make him truly hers…
"It's strange," Priest said. He loosened her grip, raising his hand until his palm was fastened over her wrist. Her heart throbbed against his flesh and Rowan realized that it was the closest they had ever come…skin against skin, no denial, no…
"It's strange," he repeated in a low voice that matched the hum of the light bulb dangling overhead, "that we are also faced with extinction. It seems like-"
"A paradox," she answered. Her heart was beating faster. No barrier, no divide, he was sitting there with her, wondrously mortal, hers…
"No," Priest shook his head, and in an instant, denied her. His hand left her wrist, settled on his knee and she was cold. "No, it just seems unfair."
"Unjust," Rowan replied without thinking, choked by her own tears.
This was indeed a good-bye, she realized. She was biding farewell to both him and her hope, that desire her rational mind had long rejected, but couldn't entirely suppress. She was blighted. She was damned. She was left more alone than she ever had been in her life. And her faith, once vested in him, was broken. It lay shattered around them, a victim of the dark and her doubt. Rowan struggled with the unfamiliar pain. Her soul was finally freed from her flesh and she was conquered by the ringing emptiness inside her.
She wondered just how it was that she had lost him. But then she looked at Priest and realized that the fault wasn't hers. He had been taken. He had been stolen away…
"You're right," she whispered, the words like ice on her lips, "we failed."
And together, they surrendered to the inevitable. They sat there in the blank silence, in the helpless gloom and the only sound was from the electricity thrumming through the light bulb and the distant clang of the chapel bells.
Priest stood. "Have hope," he said, his promise a faint hint of the strength she knew was already deserting him.
She still wanted to bolster him, though, be his pillar and pedestal. "Always," she replied and her smile was jagged, pulling at her mouth until she thought it would begin to bleed.
Priest turned to go, but before he could leave her cell, he caught sight of his old book of novenas sitting on her dusty shelf. "I remember when I gave that to you," he said, jerking his chin in her direction. "You kept it?"
Rowan stood, her bed creaking. "Of course." She paused, and then added. "Do…do you want it back?"
He was looking only at her when he replied. "No," he said. "No, it's yours."
Priest left then and Rowan was alone, easy prey for the shadows that lurked and the old ghosts that came to haunt her. She thought of Priestess, falling from the height of Sola Mira. She thought of Marcus being dragged back down into the pit. She thought of Priest, whom she had simply let walk out of that door and leave her life. Because this was a goodbye. This was a farewell. This was the end, her end.
"I'll never forgive myself," Rowan said and she meant it.
In the distance, the brass chapel bells continued to ring out a death knell. Marcus's funeral Mass was over.
Author's Note: Eek! Only one more chapter left. But don't worry, "Cross" will not be the end of this story. I have a bunch of continuation one-shots and short fics planned that I've already started work on. It seems as though the Priest universe has captured me, haha.
Thanks a million for reading! I've been having some health problems lately, plus dealing with an overabundance of course work, but I do promise to have the last chapter posted as soon as possible. It may take an extra day or two, though. Thanks in advance for your patience and understanding. I hope everyone has a lovely week!