GUILT OF THEIR FATHER
Downfall of the King of Babylon
"May the descendants of evildoers nevermore be named! Prepare slaughter for his sons because of the guilt of their father. Let them never rise to possess the earth or cover the face of the world with cities."
—Isaiah 14:20-21
—
SUMMER 1818
Esteban Palóu was turned 19 days after his 35th birthday in Arizpe, New Spain. He was traveling back to San Diego after serving Mass to a group of neophytes, and eager to return in time to catch Father Moya's nightly sermon in the chapel. The Sabbath would be upon them come daybreak and the fresh start to the week would bring them that much closer to the rainy season. The sun had barely set the hour before and his journey was still in its infancy when he, and the two men with him, met their end.
Three days later he regained his faculties, after an agonizing burn tore through him, and did not recognize the lands he was in. He had been taken by a group of red-eyed men who did not answer his questions, did not help him to sate the burn within his throat, and did not utter any hints of kindness. By his seventh day they stopped by a river and he glanced down toward his reflection where he could finally see what he'd become.
His first week as a demon passed him by quickly, and he wept as he acknowledged the reality of the monster he'd become. The very next day he was sold to a man who spent four days experimenting on him, and two other strangers. The first man did not last more than a couple hours. Esteban had learned that night, alongside his captors, what parts of himself could and could not burn.
He'd learned that day, all about the importance of ignition.
By the fifth day, his captors and fellow prisoners were all dead, his limbs had been reattached, his hair had been burned from his body, and he'd spent a quiet, sunny morning trying to piece his face, hands, and feet back together before departing from the base-turned-graveyard.
He did not spare a prayer for the dead.
Esteban did not pray once during the five months it took him to find his way back to California. What good were prayers to God when you had fallen into demonhood? It was only after he arrived back in California that he realized there was no more use for him there. What good was a man of God who could no longer deliver a sacrament? Esteban idled, away from the mission he'd sworn service to but close enough that he could still hear the bells ringing, soothing him the way his meals did not.
It was almost ten years later when a pair of travelers came upon him and coaxed him into accompanying them on their journey. They were a young couple. The man and woman had known each other in their previous lives—their human lives, they called them—but the man had been killed in a battle years before a separate attack claimed her life and all the lives of everyone in the town they'd both been born into.
Silas and Hannah. Esteban ignored the word 'vampire,' knowing well-enough what it meant to be a demon of their breed. But despite the damnation that he faced they were always quick to assure him that they had as much of a soul as those they fed upon.
"A vampire may have taken my life away," Hannah spoke one night, early on in their journey, while they walked through pitch-black waters along the coast, "but humans stole the lives of everyone I ever loved." That night Esteban resumed his rituals as best as he could while they moved up the coast during the night and sat in the Californian sun by day. He prayed, he wrote, and he even served the sacrament of confession to them both with regularity.
After two months of travel up the coast, Esteban married them. Weeks later they were south of Santa Cruz—Esteban had been curious about the secularized mission and wished to, if not at least travel through by nightfall, meander close enough to witness it—when they found Ezra.
He'd been a young man, barely out of boyhood, and had delighted upon meeting them. A boy raised up with faith and who glued himself to their sides as they continued upward through the land as summer fell upon it.
Eventually, years had passed and the four continued to journey together. In passing, another group referred to them as a "coven" and Esteban loudly detested the name when they set off.
"That is what they call it," Silas shrugged where they stood beneath the cliffs, watching Hannah and Ezra swim far out into the water. "Group, family, coven. It all means the same thing."
When Esteban began referring to them as his 'congregation' he suspected that Silas found a sinner's amusement with the declaration. Despite this, none of them ever spoke up in protest of the name. Ezra enjoyed it. The boy talked about the church where he'd grown up, the community that had raised him and his motherless sisters, and the magnificence of God's world with fervent regularity. His youthful innocence was reminiscent of the days Esteban had cherished before he'd taken his vows, running about the countryside between studies and prayers alongside the other boys.
He should have known that this precious ignorance would become their downfall.
Ten years turned to twenty, and after their thirtieth year as a group passed, Ezra began to ask to see the places they'd all come from. They'd travelled up and down the Pacific coast, deep into the high deserts that expanded through the hot, dry land, and had been discussing the risk of traveling further east.
It had always been tricky to wander too far from the area they considered home. Word of land disputes from the area that had once been home to Hannah and Silas had reached them during their northern-most travels. They'd exited the area during a period of relative quiet, but over the years Silas had regaled them with messages from distant friends he still kept in touch with of the devious Benito, a man who, in the last twenty years, wiped entire swaths of their kind from the land. Demons like them.
That had been the first time Esteban heard about the power of the Volturi Kings.
Benito, having pushed too far and risked exposure, had been quickly silenced, as had every fresh demon that had been born in the entire southern half of their continent. Silas had never understood the meaning of the current wars despite having fought in a human one himself. "There is more than enough blood to go around," he explained one night after Ezra had asked for more stories from his friends, and more stories about before. "To create new vampires for the sake of conquering land is selfish."
"They also killed other vampires, too." Ezra pointed out, to which his companions stared toward him, waiting for an elaboration. "Maybe it wasn't just about the blood?"
Hannah had laughed and reached over to brush his loose hair out of his eyes. "You're reading too much," she scolded, always eager to discourage too much imagination in him.
But over the next few years they slowly headed further and further south.
Their first warning had come in the form of a one-armed, one-eyed, raggedy woman. "San Diego is a war zone." She'd looked fresh from a hunt and spat a wad of black hair into the dirt after she'd spoken. Esteban had been disgusted by her crude gaucherie but they'd steered clear from traveling further south, instead heading east.
Over the next two years they met countless survivors and escapees from the battles for blood and land that continued beneath them. After meeting Fernando, a fellow European who entertained Ezra with tales of the Spanish countryside, their second death was marked in stone.
"You must be escaping the wars, too," Ezra took a break while burying their most recent meals to glance up at the light-haired newcomer.
Fernando smiled down at him, a peculiar expression on his face that Esteban had taken an immediate hatred toward. "Why do you assume such a thing?"
Ezra turned back toward the dirt and shifted more overtop the hole. He'd dug too deep again, but Silas always laughed and proclaimed that too much caution couldn't hurt. "Everyone who travels from your way usually is."
"No," Fernando smiled again and shook his head. "I'm not running from anything."
He remained in their company for four more days, paying close attention to Ezra while Hannah and Silas spent some time at night in the nearby city, leaving Esteban alone for longer than usual. Fernando eventually departed, traveling further north, and Ezra grew quiet and serious. A strange focus had taken over him.
When pressed on his change of demeanor he simply explained, "I want to go further south."
Fifty-two years after emerging into his second life, and for the first time since he was a boy, Esteban travelled south of the Rio Grande and made way for the city where he'd first taken his vows.
Silas remained uneasy about their travels, but whenever one of his concerns was vocalized, Ezra was quick to brush the worry to the side with another declaration.
"Fernando said that the armies have to be extra careful now, so they only attack other armies."
"The shores on the gulf are loaded with other travelers passing through according to Fernando."
"Fernando said the only army he's seen on this coast in the past fifty years was run by women," he'd laughed, "so even if we run into them, we'll be okay."
"The human population has soared in the last century! Fernando was happy describing it to me."
Even as the weeks passed, Fernando was a constant presence when Ezra spoke.
Like fools, they all continued southward.
Mexico City had been a beautiful sight in Esteban's youth. He'd been discussing the possibilities of a visit back in the week before his death and the idea of visiting his first home in this foreign country had brought him much peace and delight.
Every morning, every night, and before and after every meal he and his small congregation joined hands, bowed their heads, and murmured prayers of thanks and joy and gratitude. They cherished the heat of the Mexican sun and the changes in terrain as they slowly, but gradually, made their way further south.
One morning they stopped to wait again for nightfall—for the days were once more growing longer and nights were falling short—sixty-five kilometers northeast of Monterrey.
Hannah and Silas snuck off to do what married couples often did, and Ezra had sat himself beside Esteban, curiously quiet in comparison to the jubilance he'd been displaying only hours before. He stared toward the brilliant sun in silence, and Esteban waited.
It was hours before it all ended.
"Father, I've sinned," Ezra spoke sometime not too long before Silas and Hannah returned from their excursion. It was not an uncommon refrain from the teenager, as Ezra often came to Esteban, asking to receive forgiveness for another mistake or lapse of judgement. He was young, and he was oftentimes foolish, but he was a kind, pious, loving boy, and Esteban considered him a close brother.
Esteban hummed, "How so?"
It was several minutes before Ezra spoke again.
"Before he left Fernando told me not to tell you this, but…" his voice drifted off just as his eyes did. "He said that… he told me that he was going to take Monterrey for himself."
Esteban's alarm was not the reaction of a man of God, and when he replied in anger, turning to Ezra with fury, it was beyond his control. "For himself? Was he a general, Ezra? What more did he tell you, boy!"
Ezra flinched but kept his arms wrapped around his bent knees. "He didn't say anything of that sort," his voice was small. He bent his head downward to press his forehead against his knees and Esteban reached out and smacked the back of his head. Ezra flinched further into his knees before his head snapped back up, his eyes scared and remorseful. "He told me that the woman that hovered around the area was a godless witch! That she was the worst kind of sinner you could imagine! He told me he was afraid that if I let you guys know that information than you would not want to risk traveling by!"
"You are correct with that belief."
"He said that… that if we travelled past Monterrey the woman might pay us a visit if she were curious, and that he would use that distraction to rid her army from the area," the words rushed out of him all in one large breath. "He said that once he got rid of her and her newborns he'd be able to take over Monterrey and we'd have a safe place to visit and remain for a little while. He encouraged me to tell you whatever I had to to get you to agree to come down here and…and now that we are hear I fear I've made a mistake."
"A mistake!" Esteban stood to his full height, brushing off his trousers and glaring into the direction Silas and Hannah had retreated. "We will travel north at nightfall."
"I'm sorry, Father."
"Silence." Then, Esteban did what he only rarely allowed himself to do.
The rosary was a fragile, broken thing. It was the only item he had left from his living days, retrieved from his old mission under the cover of night not long after he'd returned to California. Many of the red stones had been crushed on accident, but a length of the prayer beads still remained, as well as the top-most piece of the wooden crucifix. He pulled it from his pocket slowly, forcing himself into calmness as he moved his fingers from bead to bead in silent prayer.
After he'd quietly finished the Apostle's Creed he inhaled steadily, exhaled slowly, and pocketed the item, sitting himself back down at Ezra's side. He apologized. He reached out to clasp a gentle hand on the boy's shoulder. He continued to give him the sacrament of confession and made his penance small.
Ezra confessed the same lies to Silas and Hannah when they returned. Silas had been frightened by the news and Hannah filled with a mighty anger. They remained where they'd stopped for the day, resting against an old stone wall—it appeared to be a part of a dwelling long-ago abandoned and destroyed, sitting solemnly at the bottom of a hill, close to a river that bisected the area in two.
Ten minutes after sunset they turned north and ran.
Fifty-four minutes later, they were running for their lives.
Silas had been the first to be overtaken by the stampede that had given chase and Hannah had been the first to turn and try to fight. This mistake made her their first loss. Esteban turned in time to watch a tall man, face calm and arms too quick to dodge, tear her head from her shoulders.
This had been the first sight Esteban had caught of The Major, Jasper Whitlock.
Silas howled for several seconds but Esteban did not watch his death. Instead he grabbed Ezra by the scruff—Ezra's feet had slowed and his shrieking had drawn the army's attention from their victims to the two surviving men—and continued to tug him forward, running as fast as his feet had ever carried him.
Fear had gripped Esteban's heart. In his head he prayed as fervently as ever, begging God for mercy, asking for forgiveness, pleading for Silas' and Hannah's souls to make it to the Kingdom of Heaven, but requesting that he and Ezra be spared from judgement so abruptly.
Seconds later, Ezra ripped himself free from Esteban's hold and took off back toward the fast-approaching army. Esteban could do nothing but watch, feet still carrying him forward, eyes wide with fear, and dead heart overcome with grief.
They did not immediately kill Ezra. The sound of whistling forced the feet of the army to come to a gradual stop and when they ceased their chase Esteban found his feet slowing against his better judgement.
"More of Fernando's foolish spies," a woman's voice called out. It was barely decipherable over the sound of Ezra' screaming and growling echoing through the plains. He was struggling in the grip of the same man who'd murdered Hannah—shoulder-length blond hair tangled around his dirtied face—whose arm was flexed dangerously where it was positioned around Ezra's neck. "I hope you tell him that his westbound scouts were as short-sighted as his eastbound ones."
Esteban couldn't speak. The woman's voice was shouting from the back of their group. There were at least twenty bodies—mainly men, but a couple of women—that hovered and paced and glared toward him. They wanted him dead. They wanted Ezra dead. They'd killed Silas and Hannah and received nothing for it, no blood, no glory, and still they desired more.
Silas had been right. They had never been demons. These were demons.
Esteban's first glimpse of Maria of Monterrey was watching her push past two stocky, hissing, newborns to swiftly rip Ezra's head from his struggling, writhing body. Esteban cried out in wordless agony as the blond man pulled Ezra's thin arms from his body, discarding the pieces of him to the side as if piling wood together for a fire.
"Go on," Maria of Monterrey turned toward him, barely sparing him a second glance beyond one quick survey. Her hair was pulled back in a series of intricate braids and both her ragged skirts and her exposed shins were filthy. "Tell Fernando you failed. I look forward to feeding him to my next pyre."
Esteban did not scream or argue or claim ignorance. He did not charge and fight and die alongside his family. His urge to avenge his fallen congregation was snuffed out the instant the blond man leaned down, not waiting for the rest of the newborns to scurry out of the way—and scurry they did—and dropped a match on Ezra's prone body.
Esteban watched the fires swallow his young brother whole, watched the man's empty eyes stare back at him as the rest of Ezra ignited, and watched as the woman whistled thrice more. Then, Esteban turned and ran.
He did not stop running for six days. By the seventh, he knew what he had to do.
