Part 22 (2/2)

The priest did not flinch, did not blink. ”Why don't you tell me about it,” he invited.

Alek studied his hands in his lap, the depths of the black coffee in the cup on the floor at his feet. A fragment of the dream, of falling, came to him, then disappeared.

The priest waited; his eyes and his posture spoke of interest and suspicion, but no fear. Invitation. But no judgment. He opened his mouth, then closed it. Again a wave of discomfort washed over him, a guarded feeling like being stalked in an alley when the shadows weren't working to your advantage. He shook his head no. They said confession was good for the soul, but that was a human cliche. Vampires had no souls, or if they did, it was comp osed of a vastly different substance. Confession would do him no good.

The priest nodded as if understanding these things innately. And then again he spoke, but this time his voice was different, deeper somehow, gruff, the voice of bitter wisdom and age, and he said, ”When I was eight years old I drank the blood of my infant sister. That was in 1746. That is my confession.”

Alek swayed to his feet. He felt numbed.

”It is my gift, to conceal,” continued the priest. ”It is the reason the Coven has never darkened the door of this church. Until now.”

He didn't know what else to say. ”I'll go.”

”Don't.” The priest frowned, and Alek saw it then, the endlessly weary creature hiding inside a habit and a human's skin. He reached out with one hand and made contact.

Some object, cold and heavy, was pressed into Alek's palm. A key. ”To this room,” said the priest. He nodded at the angel-faced little prost.i.tute sitting and watching them both with her great dark eyes. Eyes that looked less than brown now. Softer. Greyer. Like kitten fur.

He wondered if he was losing his mind.

”You'll be safe here; the Coven will not find you this night,” the priest said. ”I promise.”

Alek tore his eyes away from Teresa's face. A headache was banging against the inside of his skull as if it were a kickdrum. ”Then--thank you.”

”Do not thank me,” said the priest without a smile. He stood up. ”Only promise me that if you find it, the Chronicle I mean, that you will use it for some good.”

Alek held the stern even gaze of the ancient young man and nodded his head once like a vow taken.

The priest smiled and took his cup and carried it to the door of the office. He started pulling it closed behind him, but Alek said, ”Wait.”

He tilted his head. Catlike. ”Yes?”

”Why help me,” he said, ”if you hate the Coven so much?”

The priest chuckled, a genuine sound. ”We all deserve a little redemption once in a while. Don't you agree?”

The door clicked shut. He heard the click of the inside lock. He turned around.

”You've tricked me all along,” he said as the last of the glamour softened and then disappeared off her figure like a dream breaking up, and he was left staring at this heartstopping beauty with her auburn long hair and sea-green eyes and tinkling, s.h.i.+ning piercings.

”No,” she answered him. ”You did.”

22.

The slayer stood at the frozen midwinter's window and touched the immortal dolphins in their static flight, the twilight somber on his face like a mask, the gla.s.s cold as a bone under his fingertips. His breath plumed in the semidark with his sigh. Booker closed his eyes and heard the harsh, whispered echoes of precocious thirteen-year-old children, chosen brothers, at war with one another: You can't go, you can't!

I can't stay, Book, not now.

Has he given you the Rite of Blood?

What kind of question is that?

Answer it.

That's none of your f.u.c.king business!

Silence.

Then: You never told me.

Book opened his eyes and tore open his tie knot. Hot as all h.e.l.l in here, he thought, watching the steam of his exhalation frost the window pane opaque. He started drawing a little dagger on the pane, was molding the hilt into a form of a dolphin when he finally noticed the hem of his London Fog was smoking.

”f.u.c.king s.h.i.+t!” he hissed and beat the blackening material out, feeling like the biggest d.a.m.n fool on the planet for letting the psi get away from him. G.o.dd.a.m.n walking Zippo, that's what he was. No f.u.c.king discipline...

He almost laughed at that. He was the one always going on about discipline like some f.u.c.king wise-a.s.s Shao- Lin monk, giving Alek all those pained looks about his drinking problem. f.u.c.king hypocrite. Yeah, that's what he was.

Flame-free, he checked the time. After five. Sundown. s.h.i.+t. Somewhere out there in the city Alek was running free or getting ready to. Alek, a rogue. G.o.d, but that was a s.h.i.+ver. Debra had been a rogue. Heather MacNeil with her frequent bouts of lunacy had been a rogue. Not Alek. Alek wasn't mad.

Just headstrong.

Just a fool, he thought, rubbing at his p.r.i.c.kly arms. He undid the garroting tie at his throat farther, then took if off completely, afraid it might catch. What had the f.u.c.king fool done? The Father had given them so much, a home, a brotherhood.

Book knew how it was. In 1958 the Father had stolen Book away from a group of white-jacketed Dr. Jekyll- types who sat him in a room all day and made him set playing cards on fire. He'd been alone back then, the memory of his mother and his little brother Tyrone's scorched bones lying mixed in the debris of their Eastside project still fresh in his mind. No father had ever claimed him, and after a few years Book had pretty much figured out why. His life had been an almost perfect carbon-copy of Debra's and Alek's and Eustace's and Sean's and all the other slayers', the same patterns and problems repeated in gently diverse ways.

But the Father had taken them away from all that. The Father had given them education and a purpose.

Perhaps that purpose seemed strange and violent at times, perhaps they were asked to do things which frightened them, even appalled them sometimes, but it was a purpose, d.a.m.nit to h.e.l.l, and Book knew from hard experience that purpose was what kept you sane in this life, no matter how long it was. He'd seen people, mortal and otherwise, die for less.

Purpose was the glue that kept the ma.s.ses together, his mother once said during the Movement.

Purpose kept you alive, when there wasn't any reason to go on.

The pager in his pocket buzzed him.

He ignored it.

Purpose, he thought.

And what purpose existed behind the kind of insolence and insult Alek was heaping upon the Coven? Book closed his eyes, trying to see through the film of Alek's insane actions, but all he saw these days when he closed his eyes were memories. School. Parties. Slayings. Alek. He saw a big strange old Colonial house, a door swinging open on a cell with this tall, black-haired white Brooklyn-born boy and his sister. A boy with no hope in his eyes. A boy years older than his body. A boy who could have been Book himself. A boy who became his brother, for chrissakes. A boy who believed in their purpose, a boy who sacrificed d.a.m.n near everything for it. Like him. Just like him.

When the device in his pocket persisted after several minutes, a regular five-alarmer this time, he supposed, he took it off and tossed it to the floor. f.u.c.k Doc Sacco, he thought. f.u.c.k them all at St. Vincent's.

He glanced sidelong out the window, the city tinted grey through the hazy blue gla.s.s. He gritted his teeth.

Aberration. That was what Alek was, an aberration, an ungrateful child. There was no purpose to this. It was all mindless pa.s.sion...

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