Read Chapter 23: The Priest's Confession

The confessional smelled of beeswax and old fear. Camille pressed herself into the shadow of the carved oak screen, her heart hammering against her ribs as footsteps approached on the stone floor. Through the lattice, she watched Father Aloysius move past the pews, his black cassock sweeping like a crow's wing, the scar on his left hand catching the candlelight—a pale, ropey wound that ran from knuckle to wrist.

He genuflected before the altar, lingered a moment too long, and then turned toward the confessional.

Camille held her breath. The door on the other side creaked open. She heard the rustle of fabric as he settled onto the penitent's bench, the soft exhale of a man preparing his sins.

"You came," his voice said through the screen, not a question. "I wondered if you would, after last time. You have a stubbornness I admire, Miss Delacroix. It will serve you poorly tonight."

She pressed her palms flat against her thighs to stop their trembling. "You know why I'm here."

"I know why you think you're here." A pause, a wet sound—perhaps he was licking his lips. "You believe you can stop what is coming. That is the arrogance of the young, the uninitiated. You cannot stop the solstice any more than you can stop the sun from setting."

"The mayor's daughter." Camille's voice came out steadier than she felt. "You're going to kill her tonight. At midnight mass. In front of God and half of Paris."

"In front of God, yes." His voice dropped, took on the texture of oil and honey. "That is precisely the point. The sacrifice must be witnessed by the divine. In the old days, they understood this. Blood spilled in shadow is mere violence. Blood spilled in the presence of the Lord is transformation."

Camille's stomach turned. "You're not a vampire. You're not even one of them. You're a priest who kills for monsters."

"Monsters." The word came out almost amused. "Are we monsters? I have watched this city rot for thirty years, Miss Delacroix. I have watched the wealthy devour the poor, the church turn its eyes from its own flock, the great families trade daughters like horses. The creatures you fear are merely honest about their hunger. I am not their servant. I am their shepherd."

A cold realization crept up Camille's spine. "You found the symbol on Élodie. Her wounds—the carving—that was you."

"I have always been the one." His voice grew older, wearier, as if the confession itself drained him. "The faction you fight believes in the old bloodlines, the eclipse, power seized through ritual. But they are children playing with fire. The mark I carve is older. It is the language of the earth itself, the covenant written in blood when the first of their kind emerged from the mud and asked God why He had made them hungry."

"And you answer them. By killing innocents and calling it liturgy."

"Culling," he corrected gently. "The unworthy. The impure. The ones whose lineage carries weakness, sickness of soul. I have served the true blood for decades, identifying those who must be pruned so that the garden might flourish. The mayor's daughter carries a taint three generations deep—consumption on her mother's side, madness on her father's. She is a broken vessel."

Camille's hand drifted to the small revolver in her coat pocket—Philippe had insisted she carry it, and for once she had not argued. The metal was cold and reassuring.

"Then you know about me," she said carefully. "You carved that message before the steward's body. You wanted me to find it."

"Of course." A small laugh, almost kind. "You are the last thread, Miss Delacroix. The daughter of a suicide, granddaughter of a madwoman who knew too much, great-granddaughter of a woman who bound herself to the very creature that tried to remold the world. Your blood is a river of ruin. But it is also—" He paused, savoring the word. "Valuable."

Camille's breath caught. "You don't want to kill me."

"I want to offer you purpose." Through the screen, she could see him shift, his silhouette leaning closer. "The faction is gone. Its leader is ash. But the work continues, and I am aging. I need an heir. A hand that knows how to find the broken ones, a voice that can move through the parlors and press rooms of Paris without suspicion. You, Camille Delacroix, are the perfect instrument. All you must do is kneel."

The revolver was in her hand before she fully registered drawing it. She rose, pushed against the door of the confessional, and it swung open into the dim sanctuary.

Father Aloysius sat in the adjoining chamber, the screen between them. His face was long and ascetic, gray eyes tracking her with a patience born of decades. The scar on his left hand gleamed in the candlelight.

"You've made a choice," he observed, seeing the revolver. "I hoped for more time to convince you. But I see you are as stubborn as the records suggest."

"The mayor's daughter. Where is she being held?"

"She is where she has always been. In her father's house, guarded by servants who love her and a physician who knows nothing of the blood. She will come freely to midnight mass tonight—they always do—and she will kneel at the altar rail." He smiled, and in that smile Camille saw the full depth of his certainty. "The cathedral will be full. The choir will be singing. And when the host is raised, I will strike the tainted vessel and let the earth drink her line dry."

Camille raised the revolver, leveling it at his chest. "You'll be dead before the first hymn."

He did not flinch. "Will you shoot a priest in his own church, Miss Delacroix? In front of the altar? In front of God?"

"I've shot worse men."

"You have shot no man at all." His eyes flicked to her hand—and her slight tremor. "Your father is buried in unconsecrated ground because I refused to bless his body. You have imagined this moment for years, I can see it in your eyes. The day you would face the man who damned your father's soul. What do you feel now, standing before me?"

Rage, burning like a brand in her gut. But also—a thread of something that wanted to hesitate, to ask him what he knew about her father's final days, whether there was something in the confessional records that might finally make sense of the ruin her family had become.

She refused to let it show. "I feel sorry for you. You think you serve God, but you serve your own hunger. You are just another parasite wearing a cassock."

Aloysius laughed—a full, throaty laugh that echoed in the stone rafters. "And you are just another woman who thinks love will save her from the night." His voice sharpened. "The vampire you keep—Philippe, the eternal marquess—he is mortal now, yes? The bond with his brother broken. I saw it in his face when you fled the sacristy. The lines, the weariness. He is dying the slow death of a man who has forgotten how to age."

Camille's finger tightened on the trigger.

"You cannot save him, and you cannot save the mayor's daughter tonight." Aloysius shifted, and for the first time she noticed the small silver blade resting beside him on the bench, its hilt worked with spiraling symbols that matched the carvings she'd seen on flesh. "But you could save your own soul. Kneel, and I will show you what true purpose looks like."

She fired.

The crack of the revolver split the sanctuary's silence like thunder. Aloysius's shoulder snapped back, a dark bloom spreading across his cassock, and he slumped against the wall of the confessional, eyes wide with shock.

Camille lowered the smoking barrel. Her ears rang. Her hand shook.

"I'm not kneeling for anyone," she said.

The priest's mouth moved, blood spilling down his chin. But instead of pain, his features twisted into something like triumph. "You think—" he wheezed, "—you think I was the only one? The flock is gathered. The shepherd has many hands."

He reached for the silver blade with his scarred hand. Camille fired again, and the blade clattered away, but the priest's dying breath formed a word, low and precise:

"Midnight."

Camille stood in the silence of the empty church, the gun smoking in her hand, the priest slumped before her. Outside, the first bells of evening began to toll—calling the faithful to mass.

She looked at the wound she'd given him, then at the altar clock.

Three hours until midnight.

The mayor's daughter had three hours to live, and Camille had three hours to find her—and she had just shot the only man who knew exactly where the final sacrifice would be made.

She shoved the revolver back into her coat, blood-spattered and trembling, and ran.