7.

“This may be tricky,” Nagi said.

“We have to act like we don’t know what’s going on,” Eddie said.

“She’s likely armed with a variety of offensive spells and incantations, most of which she will keep on her person,” Nagi said. “This will not be pleasant. Not in the least.”

“I hate fighting witches,” Eddie said. “It’s a real pain. They can do all sorts of things to you. I started barfing eggs one time. Not pleasant.”

“A shame Vic isn’t here. He might be useful in this situation,” Nagi said.

“We could always call him,” Eddie said. “Or you could, Stacey.”

“Me and Vic are kinda on the outs right now,” I said. “I’m probably the last person he wants to hear from.”

“Maybe you should sit this one out, then,” Eddie said. “Honestly. I don’t mean this in a bad way, Stacey, but you’re kinda. Making this less about business and more about your personal life.”

“Isn’t it everyone’s personal life?” I asked.

“I’m not fucking Vic, last I checked, and neither is Nagi.”

“I admit, he is rather fetching when suitably sweaty,” Nagi said. “Nevertheless. Eddie is right. You’re allowing your personal misgivings to color the efficiency of our investigation.”

“You can’t just kick me out like this,” I said. “Not after all this.”

“You’re the one with the personal problem with Vic,” Eddie said. “We need him. Way more than we need you at the moment. So go sit this one out. Get some rest. It’s nearly dawn.”

“I need to see how this ends,” I said.

“Go home, Stacey,” Nagi said. “Yara. Please escort Stacey back to her home.”

“Yes, Master,” Yara said, from the front seat.

“I feel so betrayed right now,” I said.

“Yes, well, I’d much rather face your disappointment than your death,” Nagi said.

And they got out of the car. I watched them call Vic as we pulled away, and I thought… fuck all of them. Fuck them right in the ear.

“Do you know where Hartshome Cathedral is?” I asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Yara said.

“Can you drive me there instead?” I asked.

“Certainly, madam,” she said.

Brother Al was sitting in the Council Chambers, writing something on a piece of vellum. He paused, dipped his pen in some ink, and then continued writing. I stood behind him quietly, unsure of what to say, unsure how to speak.

“Stacey,” he said, without turning around.

“Brother Al,” I said.

“What brings you here at 5 in the morning?”

“Helping with an investigation. Eddie and Nagi sent me home.”

“Why are you not there?” He did not raise his head from his scratchings.

“I wouldn’t be able to sleep, and I needed some advice.”

“So you come to me,” he said.

He bowed his head and then sat his writing pen down on the side of the parchment. He turned, theatrically, and stared at me. He seemed as if he’d aged twenty human years in a night. His skin was cracked and patchy, and tufts of great white hair sprouted from his ears. A rather unflattering bald spot had cropped up.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Age. Sickness. Weakness. Vampires do not age normally; so long as we are fed a diet appropriate for our cellular regeneration. I have not been able to stomach much of the usual blood of late. My stomach has proven incapable of adequate animal fluid digestion. At the same time, I have vowed myself to swear off human blood. I am caught on the horns of a dilemma, as the young may say nowadays.”

“You drank my blood during the Zombie thing,” I said.

“And do I look the better for it? Or do you see in me the remnants of a great man, brought low by the disregard of his promise to the Lord?”

“Surely you don’t think your aging is because you violated your vows.”

“The Lord is a strange and mighty figure, unknowable to most. All we have are tracings, echo effects of His mighty hands as they move the cosmos. Though I can explain away through biological means my current fall from grace, is it not disrespectful to my faith to search for chemical answers when, in truth, the answer may lie further in my faith?”

“What are you saying?”

“I am a creature of contradictions,” Brother Al said. “A pious clergyman, as much as one can be who thirsts for the sanctity and forgiveness of the Lord for my sins. Yet also, I am composed of shadow etherium—darkness itself, interwoven with my DNA. I am a creature of the underworld, through and through, my existence derived through a curse handed down by the Lord God himself. And yet. Do we who scurry in the darkness—are we cursed forever by our natures to defy God? Or can we find faith, and transform what we are into something more?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“It was rhetorical,” he said. “Of course, you don’t know. You’re some girl who finds comfort through cavorting with the Darkness itself. You chase demons and hope they will quell the hole in your heart that only God himself can fill.”

He waved a hand at me dismissively and then turned back to his notes.

“You’re in a strange mood,” I said. I was trying not to let him hurt my feelings. The way he said it was bitter, filled with despair and self-hate. Brother Al was just conscious of his looks, I knew—and conscious that he was losing any grip on who he thought he was as a person.

“A fey mood, more like,” he said, and he pitched his voice upward. “My thoughts are heavy of late. I feel a weight upon my soul after recent events. I myself distorted the flow of events, in a selfish fit. Maybe I went against the machinations of the Lord.”

“You keep talking about the Lord,” I said. “Are you Christian, Brother Al? Catholic?”

“God is bigger than denominations,” he said. “But essentially. All of existence is a series of knots in the whorl of the Tree of Good and Evil, and the Lord on High sits at the top. There are those of us who are not worthy to step foot in his sacred realm.”

“Is that Topside, Brother Al?”

Brother Al crossed himself.

“The Lord is a transmutational being,” he said. “He will strip all fragments of darkness from you, if you go Topside. He will purify and sanctify your soul, even if you lose who you are in the process. We immortals—so called, at least—we fear this, amongst all things, this lack of consciousness, the idea that in death who we are becomes something more. Long are the days I have been Aleister Tzigany. Long are the days I hope yet to be. And yet… I wonder if in the end. Surrendering to that bleak holiness, that cosmic dissolution, would not be my best bet.”

“What’s stopping you?” I asked.

“My flock. Spreading my message to all creatures of the night. That though we may be composed of dark matter, we are yet capable of God’s Grace, and that we may do the work of God on this earth.”

“You don’t believe in the Imperium’s Moon-Kiss theory, then,” I said.

“On the contrary,” he said. “You mean the old Imperium myth. That there is a Moon Goddess, one who will incarnate upon this plane in some form, and usher in the return of the old ways. No. We creatures of the shadow. We live longer lives than those in the Imperium. Deep are our memories, even if our human brains can only retain so much. We wrote records longer and more ancient than those magic-wielding fools in their so-called Utopia.”

“Tell me about it, then,” I said.

“You must understand the Undead concept of existence. That’s key, I think. We are—as I said—all in a whorl of wood in the holy tree of Good and Evil. All that exists lay upon the tree, in one knot or another, all enclosed within.”

“Are there things outside of it?” I asked.

“Some records say yes,” Brother Al said. “One can learn how to traverse the corpuscles of the tree, to slip from whorl to whorl. At the top of all of existence, there is an existence so foreign to us mere insects that it’s viewed with terror in the branches up high. A great alchemical light, holy and all-consuming, a temple filled with ethereal machines that ensnare the souls of those below, beating all darkness from them. There are some who say that it is Topside’s intention to send its Messengers down the branches, to snag all souls of Darkness, to drag them up high and purify them, to devour the darkness and breathe it back into the universe.

“And yet there are records. Of a Lady, the Moon Goddess. She who protects and watches over this world, and all worlds within the Tree. A compassionate Mother Goddess, whose power alone holds back the creeping white of Topside. She will only awaken into her power by embracing the darkness—and her loving arms will hold back the impermeable, to keep steady the Sun and Moon in the sky, to preserve reality as it is, so that we may feel free to live our lives.”

“What do you think about all that?” I asked.

“As old as I am? I find all things possible,” he said. “I find all things probable, even. There are those who view the Moon-Kissed, as the Imperium would say, as a savior—and those like myself, who believe she is only holding all spiritual creatures at bay from their final transformation into the cosmic.”

“That’s pretty depressing,” I said. “And here I thought I had problems.”

“Let’s call a spade a spade, Stacey. You’re a mess.”

“Thanks for that.”

“Perhaps you have been overly liberal with your affections,” he said. “I can sense your regret at our past liaison. I can sense your disgust with my form. I can sense how much you loathe to be around me even as I look like this. Even as I share my faith with you, your sense of ease with me is replaced with anxiety.”

“It’s not what you think,” I said.

“It’s what I’m receiving,” he said.

“Look, I’m starting to think this whole birth mark thing is too much trouble,” I said. “I don’t have any powers. I don’t have any abilities. I don’t have anything other than a mark on my neck. And I haven’t even let any of you bite me.”

“You are worried, then, that others may perceive your status as an incarnation.”

“Clemenza. She’s the one that’s been spreading the drugs around, the drugs that are melting people. She made sure she told me about The Imperium. Maybe she’s trying to revive it. Maybe she thinks I’m the one. The Avatar of the Moon Goddess, or something.”

“How does that make you feel?” Brother Al asked.

“Like someone who’s pretending,” I said. “Like I’m just a character in a story who is just in the right place at the wrong time. Like there’s this plothole in the story that everyone’s trying to fit me into, but it’s not quite right. Like I’ll have to lose some of myself to be part of it.”

“Then rip it open,” Brother Al said.

“What?”

“If it’s your destiny. Or others think it’s your destiny. You take that hole that they’ve spun for your presence. You get in it. You stretch. You take up space. You do what you must to end the story in the way that only you can. You make that opportunity into something unique for you.”

“What are you saying, exactly?”

“Even if you’re not the character they want you to be, you’re still playing that part they want you to play. Even if you know you’re not what they think, they won’t. They expect you to be someone. So be that person, to them. Use that power they’ve given you for your own good.”

“How would I even start?” I asked.

The chapel doors swung wide, and Yara’s face, smeared with makeup, appeared in view.

“They found the Dragon’s Eye,” she panted.

“Fantastic,” I said. “Kinda busy having a conversation, though.”

“You don’t understand,” Yara panted. “Eddie and Nagi went through an hour ago, and they haven’t heard back from them.”

“What about Vic?” I asked.

“He went in after them, and he hasn’t come back either.”

“All we can do is wait, then,” I said.

“But you’re not getting it,” Yara said. “They’re holding them ransom, whoever it is. A message came through. For you. The kidnapper wants you to follow them Topside.”