Church of the Rod

I can't help but notice the old chapel built into the corner of the overgrown garden as I walk through the estate's twisted gates. The irony of such a building, tucked away at the edge of this nest of shadow, is not lost on me. The plain windows are dark, coated in a thick layer of grime and dust. If any life yet stirs within, I cannot see it. Above the little stone tower's sealed wooden doors is a brass helix, the everlasting symbol of the Almighty. This sigil of divinity and protection is also caked in accumulated muck from many nights of rain, but the hazy moonlight still gleams along its curves like a spattering of silver mercury.

The chapel's tiny graveyard is home to a pathetic trio of beaten, misshapen ghouls, all ragged, once-fine attire and protruding blades of bone. Their rheumy eyes cannot see me at this distance, nor their less natural senses. Old ghouls reaching the end of their physical integrity. A first attempt by a fledgling creature of shadow. Those would be the master and mistress of the house, perhaps? And the third, the manor's head maid? I have no inclination to approach and confirm.

Climbing the leaf-laden path towards the manor itself, between bedraggled trees and neglected topiary, I am set upon by a much heartier cohort of ghouls. They lurch out of the tangled greenery like hunting spiders in the dirt. Their eyes reflect the moon as a brilliant, unnatural red, the shine of a polished ruby. The closest of the creatures have matching red stains on their teeth and under their nails, and they are marked with streaking, burgundy stains like painted sashes on their clothing. I spy a filthy apron on two of them, a pair of thick smithing gloves on another, and a shorter ghoul near the back of the formation has a frayed ribbon of white silk in her hair. Marks of a lost life, and their putrid scent is the mark of a long, long death. And on each of their necks, highlighted by the stubborn ruddiness of their reanimated flesh, the deep scratches of fangs. These will be the missing villagers of Peirch Parva.

This is all a plethora of evidence that the creature residing in Spyrling Manor is in fact a vampire. The same assertion was made in the report filed to the Capital Cathedral, but you never can be certain until you see for yourself. Vampires are not the only threats to compel the deceased into service, nor the only creatures that consume human blood. But the positioning of the wounds, the red light in the eyes, the clumsy gait and animalistic behaviour...

I have never faced a vampire before. I hear they are fearsome. But I have come prepared. My long, leather coat has been greased with an oily draught that repels the umbral spellcraft that the vampire curse brews in its victims, and my boots, breeches and gloves are all tightly tailored to enhance my mobility. I have memorised the fifth and seventh Scriptures of Cleansing Light, and I call the relevant verses to mind now as I pull my wand of polished, sanctified birch from its place on my belt. It is tipped in cold-forged iron to ground its arcane energies and gift it a bit of heft. I raise it high, the brass Almighty helix affixed to the weapon's head aimed at the ghastly entourage.

"Go in peace."

Before long, the path to the manor is littered with silent, peaceful corpses. One, a young man with the earliest hint of stubble on his chin, has tangled himself in a trimmed hedge as he fell, and now he hangs rather ridiculously from the bramble by his collar. I lower him to the earth before I forge ahead.

Spyrling Manor looms over me. Its great, mahogany doors engraved with the von Spyrling family crest, a bird in flight under a checkered sky. All the windows on both storeys of the mighty stone manor are covered by thick, navy curtains, of course. The vampire cannot abide the sun's rays. I touch the chill metal of the door's handle, then tug. Not locked, but the wood creaks out a foreboding timbre that carries deep into the manor. That is well. I didn't come here with the intention of slaying this beast from the shadows. I am a warden of the light, and I will face my enemy head-on. Raising my glowing wand high, I step inside.

And I am surprised to find the tall chamber beyond lit by candles. I lower my wand. The twin chandeliers attached to the ceiling are burning away the dark, all the way along the varnished wood of the floor and its long, narrow carpet of white and blue. The carpet is fitted all the way up the stairs, where it presumably loops around to cover the mezzanine platform above my head. Lovely columns of strong oak line this lower level, holding up the floor above and wreathing the one below in shadow. Doors on the western walls lead deeper into the manor, I assume, whereas those I can see up on the higher level belong to bedrooms or bathing chambers. And on the eastern wall, thick windows covered by silky curtains, nailed into the wood.

The candlelight flickers, and the shadow moves. There is a dark shape now standing half-way up the staircase. Slender and willowy, cloaked tight in black silk. Her dress parts shamelessly up one side to expose a leg up to her hip, and it hugs the top of her bust while keeping her shoulders bare. I spot the subtle slicing and mismatched thread of a tailoring job. This garment belonged to a larger woman, and the new owner has rent it into a more seductive shape.

Creamy skin like fresh milk. Hair so fair as to appear silver covering her shoulders in thick, luxurious ringlets like a winter's scarf. One of her eyes is cloaked secretively behind these magnificent locks. Her other is heavily shadowed by lady's paint, and her lips are red as rose petals. Her gorgeous irises are the swimming blood-red that marks her curse. She smiles.

"At long last, they send a hunter!" the vampire sings with glee. "I was beginning to think myself beneath the church's notice, and that would have hurt my feelings. A male, too? I am so glad."

The vampire grins, her lips full of sharp points. "I can have such fun with men."

Narrowing my eyes, I take in the shapely form of my opponent. My mind scours the memorised report from the Cathedral. This is not Lady von Spyrling, she is too young. And her family had no daughters.

In my hand, the incandescence of my wand spits and flickers. "Your name?" I demand.

"You may call me Carolina," the creature smiles.

Carolina... Not a familiar name. "A servant?"

"A queen." Her one visible eye twitches. I have touched a nerve. She is a servant, then. Or was, until she slew her masters. "A queen undeserving of base questions such as yours, Master Hunter. No, the only question out of your lovely lips should be..."

A flick of her fingers down by her waist, and the firelight overhead wafts dangerously towards extinction. And in the blink of dark, she has moved. A cold finger now presses up beneath my chin from where she stands, inches from my face.

"Dear Mistress Carolina," hisses the vampire with a victorious smile, "how best may I serve you?"

"Go in peace!" I swing upwards with my wand, and my words inspire new, white fire to burn from the symbol of the Almighty.

But Carolina merely laughs. She ducks back from my strike and, in the glare of my spell, she vanishes. I lift the glowing wand high and encourage greater illumination into the hall, and I see her curved form vanishing behind the stairs. Her cackle echoes from the stone and the wood. It fills our arena with mocking sound.

"How fun!" she giggles from hiding. "This hunter has no time for games, I see! He is all action! Come and slay me then, Master Hunter! If you can!"

I aim my wand at the stairs. "Light of Heaven, fill this place!" Twin bolts blast forth from the tip of my weapon and explode into little geysers of white flame on either side of the stairs. The holy light pours into the shadows.

But Carolina is laughing again. I turn to see that she had somehow transported herself up onto the mezzanine above my head. She is dancing gracefully along the platform's polished banister on bare feet, though she pauses on seeing my attention. Giggling all the while, Carolina grips her skirt and flashes me her sex, for she is naked beneath her clothing. I whip my wand around to face her.

As light explodes anew above the upper storey platform, she leaps over my head, spinning in the air so that her bare feet brush the plaster of the ceiling. She grins down at me between the chandeliers. Then, her red eye glows. She flings out her hand, and black daggers of pure shadow rain down on my head.

I lift my wand to meet them. "Holy One, light my path!" The shadow blades hiss into smoke against the shielding glow of my spell. I then thrust my arm upwards and cast the light into a beam of radiance that detonates into sparks against the ceiling. But Carolina has once more vanished into the shadows.

This is not what I expected. Vampires are creatures of shadow. Their host's blood has been alchemied into dripping, oozing darkness in their veins. Ergo, light is their undoing. But Carolina is dancing between the flames of the chandeliers and my own spellcraft alike, and she seems no worse for their touch on her porcelain skin. Have I underestimated her strength?

"I must say, you are not what I expected." Carolina's melodic voice, echoing seemingly from all corners of the hall at once, mirrors my thoughts. "Your spells are those of a simple cleric, like the fat, old man who tended the chapel in the manor gardens. He could conjure such play-illusions as yours, Master Hunter, and I dealt with him in short order. So tell me, if you are just another simple priest of the Whore-lmighty, what allows you to think you can best me? Hm? From where does your courage spring?"

She is starting to suspect. My assessment of this vampire as a serving girl with lofty ambitions and cutthroat conviction caused me to believe she was foolish, as young women of low education often are. I thought I had more time. That was my folly, one I must now correct.

"My courage is the light of the divine!" I declare, raising my wand high with false bravery. "Do you think you can stand against such might, vampire? Then come and test your own courage!"

The birch wood grows hot, I can feel it even through my glove's thick material. The pinpoint of light that roars to life at the wand's tip is enough to send sparkling colour across my vision.

"Almighty! Mother of all!" I bellow. "Seek the sinner in her den and bring her to the light of day!!"

I brace my grip with my free hand around my wrist as whistling arcs of light blast forth from the iron tip of the wand. The manor shakes as detonations of light scatter across the paper coating of the walls, the varnish of the wood, the fibres of the rug beneath my feet. I grit my teeth as my devotion is made manifest into burning illumination. But I also keep my weapon pointed upwards. I leave space for some dark at the foot of the stairs.

And in the corner of my eye, I see her moving predictably into that space. Carolina steps out of the shadow and readies an attack of her own, a long, curved blade of pure darkness. She is right where I need her to be. So I release my hand from around my wrist and drop my wand to face her.

"Be at peace!!" I shout.

And as the pinprick light shoots towards my enemy, I see her lovely face illuminated. An arcane wind ruffles her skirt and tousles her hair enough to grant me a look at a faded scar across her hidden right eye. And she smiles a predatory smile.

"How quaint," she mocks.

The mote explodes. With a rumble of creation itself, it grows outward into a great sphere of unblemished incandescence that wreathes the whole hall in light. The light penetrates the dark behind the steps, the heights of the mezzanine, the rafters of the ceiling. No shadow remains in its all-consuming radiance. I hold my attention on the great, shuddering ball of the Almighty's divine essence and allow it to burn on and on.

Until I hear the seductive chuckle at my back.

"Disappointing," whispers Carolina from the one shadow I neglected to erase -- my own. "Just lights. Nothing more."

Hands on my shoulder and in my hair as she leaps, wrapping her shapely legs around my waist. Then pain. A great, piercing pain in my neck. My mind swims with primal panic. And in that instant, my explosive spell vanishes from reality.

My first vampire. My very first time... It turns out, being consumed by Carolina is not the agony I had imagined, after the initial pinprick pressure of her teeth in my flesh. I had expected a tearing, burning ache as my life's blood spilled into her mouth. Instead, her kiss is soporific and, dare I even think it, pleasant. A haze descends over my vision as I am drained by the creature. A sleepy, peaceful and comfortable haze.

That's it, Master Hunter. Her voice is a whisper in my mind as we are made one by her lips on my wound. There is no need to fight me. Give in. Let me take care of you.

I can do no such thing, of course. I reach up and take a handful of Carolina's splendid locks between my fingers. Still holding my wand in my right hand, I try to pry her ankle from around my waist with my elbow. Carolina chuckles, and I can feel the reverberations of her voice in my very bones. I can feel her smiling lips caressing me, tongue lapping at me. And her voice, echoing in my skull.

There is no need for this struggle, she assures me. Become one with me, hunter. Leave the old-fashioned shackles of your faith behind and come live within me. Let your vitality fuel my body, and you shall know the calm ecstasy of the shadow.

I begin swinging my torso back and forth in a bid to dislodge her, grunting and groaning all the while. I can feel Carolina adjusting her weight on my back to keep from being tossed free, and I am unable to move her even an inch with my increasingly depleted vigour. Her fingers continue to stroke my hair tenderly as I fight for freedom. The squeeze of her thighs is warm and intimate. In my struggles, I slip. I fall to one knee, then the other. And all the while, Carolina drinks me.

Yes! Surrender! she whispers. Give in to me! Let me...

A twitch of her lips around the hole in my neck. Carolina readjusts her hold on me with a puzzled flex of her limbs.

Let me... take you. Hunter, let... Let me...

Her absence is a lightness that almost causes me to tumble. Ashes of black shadow drift through the air around me to mark her vanishing. Then again, at the foot of the hall's grand staircase, as she rematerialises herself. Carolina is leaning heavily on the staircase banister with one hand touching the graceful curve of her neck. She convulses, shoulders shuddering and legs shaking. She turns to regard me with shock and anger from behind her luscious, silver locks.

"What... h-have you... done?" she demands, then falls to a seat on the stairs.

Meanwhile, I am in motion. I push my hand into my long coat and tug free the adhesive patch I readied in the inside pocket. I slap the white bandage over the wound in my neck at once, though the soaking disinfectant stings terribly. I also take out a tiny, glass vial of clear liquid. I tug the cork from the neck and down the bitter fluid in one motion. The sharp taste dispels the haze from my vision at once, though the medicine will need time to recover all of my lost blood. And I'll need all of it, if I am to finish this.

I stand to my feet, and Carolina stares up at me with mortal terror.

"A... p-poison in your veins?" she spits. "Tricky priest! U-Underhanded! Foul play!" Her elbow slips where it is propping her up on the stair, and she glowers at me as she struggles to remain sitting upright. "N-Now, your quarry weakened... you will slay me? You will... s-stake my heart like a g-good little hunter, while I cannot f-fight back?"

I return my wand to my belt. Then I unlatch the belt from around my waist. I tug my breeches down and then step out of them with my boots. I shrug off my long coat. And my penis is hard beneath the hem of my cotton shirt. The medicine is doing its duty. A throbbing erection, ready to play its part.

Carolina's jaw falls open. "You... have got to be jesting!"

In 776, fifteen years before today, the land lived under the sway of a seemingly indomitable bandit lord by the name of Roderick of Crestfall, otherwise known as 'Incubus' Rod. Though the richest families in the bandit's wide territory held to their treasures with shaking, fearful hands, Incubus Rod's reign was not equally feared by all. Many of his victims would stumble away from their encounters with him in disorderly clothing and with dreamy smiles, telling tales of the man's supernatural gifts in the bedroom. To many, the loss of wealth was a fair price for a night in the care of the legendary robber. His reputation even grew so appealing that city governors were forced to set a limitation on travel between the protected towns and cities. But even then, there existed a constant tide of young men and women walking the land with large sums of gold and insufficient protection, asking for Incubus Rod to lay his hands on them.

By 778, Incubus Rod was an inexorable force of anarchistic conquest. But his closest friends would often speak that the man seemed low and despondent on most days. Uninspired. It was all too simple. It wasn't exciting him. When Rod began raiding local churches and abbeys, not for their wealth but for intimate conversation with men and women of the cloth, his allies grew wary that he was losing his edge. Turning from dark to light. But all that uncertainty fell away when, in the Summer of 778, Rod embarked alone for Mt Harmonius, the ancient holy site of the Almighty. When asked his intention, Rod smiled.

"I am going to fuck God," he declared.

Eyewitnesses claim the sky thundered and shone with divine incandescence for three days and three nights following Incubus Rod's ascent up the mountain. None can say for certain what occurred up in the cloudy heights. But on the fourth day, Rod returned to earth a changed man. He was naked, skin aglow with beautiful tongues of white light. His expression was peaceful and his gait slow and patient. He was 'Incubus' no longer. He was serene, calm and compassionate. A man of the Almighty.

Over the next two years, Rod set to work repaying his debt to the land. He gave his vast sums of wealth to the sick and the homeless, the marginalised and the downtrodden. He slowly reformed his army of bandits into the first members of the Brotherhood of Roderick, a travelling band of priests and healers who used the power of the Almighty to cure and mend and lift up the needy. They would dispel diseases and cure curses. They would support and facilitate the restoration of the afflicted.

And one more gift, too, Rod would teach them, to battle the nightmare forces of shadow. A gift given him by the Almighty Herself. A gift appropriate to his former reputation.

That's my church. The Church of the Rod.

Carolina's laughter turns manic as I approach her on the staircase. She knows none of this, I can tell from the narrow dot of her red-wreathed pupil. She will have heard of 'Incubus' Rod, none have not. But like many in this age, she will have dismissed his turn to holiness as a great man made small by a misplaced faith. She will not have heard of the auspicious work his church is performing to quell the creatures of the dark.

"A-Ah, I see now!" the vampire cackles as her heavy limbs try in vain to drag her away up the steps. "This... Th-This is the nature of... the modern church! Hypocrite!" she spits. "Pervert! Deviant! Necrophile!"

I will not be deterred. I have heard all this before. My bare foot comes down on the lowest of the stairs.

Carolina changes her tune as my shadow falls across her. She tries to part her legs with seductive grace, but the paralytic in her system makes that difficult for her. Her sharp-toothed grin is confident, however.

"Come, then!" she taunts, pulling her skirt up and out of the way. Her vagina beckons beneath a nest of silver pubic hair. "You have b-bested me, pervert p-priest! You might as well take your p-p-prize! But know this!" she snaps as I bring myself down to a kneel between her legs. "My body is dead! The only s-s-satisfaction allowed me is the... the blood! Your p-p-pathetic human cock will not b-b-bring me any-...!"

Leaning over her, I take my 'pathetic human cock' in hand and whisper the incantation to begin the ritual.

"Almighty Mother, help me bring light to the depths..."

I slide myself into her. She is wet, thanks to the alchemical compound she drank out of my blood. As my shaft penetrates her, I am briefly blinded by a sudden burst of white light illuminating my shaft. Then gone, hidden inside her. And Carolina's spine arches. Her hands grip the thin fronds of the carpet below her, and a croaking, groaning rattle spills forth from her parted lips.

"O-O-Ohh!!" she grunts. "Ohh... Oh..."

She angles her head down to face me. Her red eye is wide with shock and wonder.

"What?" she whispers. "How?"

I don't bother her with an explanation. Holding to her hips, I push my cock into her a second time. Then a third. In short order, we are rocking together on the steps.

The light of the Almighty is capable of all manner of great wonders. A ghoul may be beyond the salvation of my divine spellcraft, but the blood-fuelled spirit of the vampire yet harbours a stubborn spark of humanity. Carolina, for all her protestations, is still alive in the spiritual sense. And that is enough for my rod, enough to pull her back to the light.

Carolina stares into my eyes as I rut inside her. Her breath is warm against my face, the grip of her thighs around my waist strong and vital. She remembers. She remembers the joy of living.

As do I. It's no sin to enjoy my work, and Carolina feels sensational around my cock. The subtle rolling of her pussy in tandem with my thrusting is precise and expert. The ritual demands that I pace myself and match her progress. But it is hard. She is lovely, and it is hard to recall my purpose.

"H-Hunter..." she sighs. As she rides my thrusting, Carolina lays a hand on the bodice of her dress. One alabaster finger curls into the hem, then tugs. Carolina's breasts pop free of her clothing, soft mounds rising and falling in time with the gentle bucking of her body. As we intertwine, she begins to rub at her nipples with her fingers.

"I had... almost forgotten!" she whispers. "I had almost lost sight of it...!"

Still rubbing at her breast with one hand, Carolina reaches up and sinks her fingers into my hair, just as she had done when she was drinking me. Her head tips back against the stair as she gives in to the pleasure of sex. And her writhing form beneath mine, slender and porcelain, is so beautiful as to almost bring me to a swift conclusion.

Inspired to action, and hoping to draw her closer to climax, I take the hand on her breast and pin it up by her head. Then, leaning in, I kiss her chest with my lips.

"Hunter!" she groans, tightening her grip in my hair. "O-Ohh, hunter!"

Licking and teasing her nipple, I continue to push my cock into her. And the terrestrial thrill of our sex is great enough to deny the ache in my knees and my neck. The curse had made her cold, but I am now warming her with the rub of my body against hers. Our souls, one glowing white and one dark shadow, come together and produce luscious sparks.

"W-Wait..." Eyelids fluttering, Carolina pushes back on my shoulder to cease my momentum. "Wait. We can... do this better."

My training decrees that I be forceful and controlling. I must not give her space to escape me. But Carolina smiles as I search her blood-red eye for ambition, and the pleading crease of her brow convinces me. I pull my glowing cock out of her.

Carolina rolls over onto her front, grunting as she fights the restraining poison in her blood. She plants her knees around mine and crosses her arms two steps higher. Her back is a graceful curve, rising at her shoulders and her rear.

"Please," she whispers, "begin again."

I obey. Holding to her tight waist, I slide myself back inside from behind. And Carolina and I begin to rut in earnest. Her athletic body slaps again and again on my hips as she draws me deeply and forcefully into her pussy. Her exhalations turn from wondrous whispers of breath into sensual moans, notes in a flowing song of joy. A woman in her element. Overcome, I slide a hand around her body and squeeze her breast, and she rewards me with a gasp of pleasure from her rose-red lips.

"Y-Yes, hunter!" she moans. "Yes! F-Finish me!"

Wordlessly, we agree to quicken our pace. I hold her tight in my embrace as I rock against and inside her, and Carolina plants her hands on the edge of the stairs to push herself onto me with greater force. Engorging my rod, staking herself on my cock. I tweak her nipple with my gloved fingers as she eats away at my stamina, my willpower, my self-control. And from my lips, a reluctant exaltation to my vampire partner.

"C-Carolina!" I grunt. "O-O-Ohh, Carolina!!"

I come. The prayer of cleansing that echoes in my mind is crazed and disjointed, and my lips refuse to make the right sounds at the right time. But I can hear the Almighty laughing within me. She hears me, and She understands. I plant my hips against Carolina's rear, and I let the light fill her.

"H-Hunterrrr!!" Carolina's shoulders rise like a cresting whale in the ocean as she lifts herself up on her arms. Her lovely hair spills down across her back. And her pussy drinks my come and the light of the divine with greed. A thirst quenched that no blood could sate. "Ohh... hunter!!"

I can feel her changing under my hands. Carolina grows warm, and her white skin turns peach and ruddy. The spotting of moles and freckles like the stars coming out at twilight along her flesh. And her hair, starting at the roots and flowing outwards, blossoms into silken gold. Beads of sweat alight at her brow and drip onto her shoulders. And fresh fluid oozes around my cock, a wellspring tapped after a long drought.

Slowly, I unsheathe my glowing rod from inside her. On shaking, exhausted legs, I rise up and take a step away from the panting human girl prostrate on the stairs.

"Th-The blessing of the Almighty..." I gasp. "I declare... your freedom... from curse. G-Go in peace."

I draw the sign of the helix on my chest with one hand, then let it drop. Done. I am done. What a relief.

"How is this possible?" Carolina rolls herself over and into a seat on the stairs. She stretches out her long legs and examines the flushed skin on her thighs. Then her hands, her fingers. She touches at her face and the blunt ridge of her teeth. "How has this happened? I was dead. The curse... I was consumed!"

"And now you are reborn," I explain, wiping a gloved hand across my sweaty brow. "Blessed be the Almighty."

"Blessed be..." she whispers, "... the Almighty."

I see tears beginning to well up in the corner of her eye. A chestnut eye, rich as a new forest. I turn away from her vulnerability to preserve her honour. As if that is not my semen staining her pussy right now. My boots and breeches are right where I left them. I begin to redress.

"What happens now?" asks Carolina.

"Whatever you wish, Lady," I reply, still facing away. "You may wish to return to your family, if they live nearby."

"I-Indeed. This place has no food that I know of, and I am ravenously hungry. But my family...? Hmm... Wh-Where are your steps taking you, hunter?"

"To the Capital," I explain. "To the Cathedral, to report my success."

"Well then, might I join you? I have an aunt and uncle in the Capital!"

Fastening my belt around my waist, I turn back to face her. Carolina's smile is wide and hopeful, very beautiful. I find myself mirroring it without meaning to.

"Of course, Lady," I say. "I have food in my supplies, stashed nearby. Do you have other clothes you could wear for a long walk?"

"Yes, naturally." She giggles, and it is a resonant, living, human song. "But I should like to bathe before redressing and travelling. You have made quite a mess of me."

The youthful smile tightens, hardens, into something much more mature. Her fingers play in my saliva coating her bare chest. Carolina grins at me from around her fringe of golden hair, and I look away to tug my coat back onto my shoulders.

"Very good," I say to hide my fluster.

"And when I am done, Sir Hunter," she continues, "might I trouble you for your expert ministrations upstairs? I profess... I still feel the effects of the curse within me. Mayhap I would benefit from a second cleansing."

"Not necessary," I reply automatically as I check the contents of my pockets. "The curse is not a gradient, Lady, it either exists or it does not. Now that we are concluded, there is no need to-..."

"Hunter."

I turn at the sharpness of her voice. Carolina is standing, resting her hand on the staircase banister. She is tall and prominent, drawing attention to her bare breasts and the exposed tangle of her pubic hair in the parting of her misaligned, black skirt. Her frustrated frown brightens under my eyes into an equally sharp smile.

"I insist," she says. "I am yet feeling a little... bitey. Come upstairs and cleanse me."

I swallow. "Y-Yes, my Lady. Of course."

Grinning with pride, she turns and saunters away up the stairs. I watch the back and forth of her hips with a very unprofessional, unpriestly eye. But maybe I'm wrong about the curse. Maybe it is more stubborn than I thought. Best to make sure, as she says.

Before departing in pursuit of Carolina, I move to the curtains and begin pulling them free of the nails that had held them shut. Out on the horizon, the early glow of a sunrise.