"He did all of that?" Greg asked with surprise. "You never mentioned any of this."
Lissianna shrugged and silently wished she had. Perhaps he would have picked up on the fact that Father Joseph suspected she was a vampire. Looking back on it, Lissianna supposed she herself should have realized something was up, but really, at the time he'd had such believable explanations. Besides--as he'd pointed out--until the past week, she'd really hardly known the man as more than someone to say hi to on her way in to work. Though she'd heard a lot about him, and most of it came down to the fact that he was zealous in his devotion to God.
One of the things Lissianna had learned through the centuries was that there was nothing more dangerous than a zealot. She didn't doubt that, to Father Joseph, her being a vampire was the equivalent of the devil himself. Convincing him that she was a "good" vampire was out of the question, but she might convince him she wasn't a vampire at all. After all, his tests had failed.
As if having read her thoughts, he said, "Yes, I did all of that. Imagine my amazement when none of it worked."
"They didn't work because I'm not what you think I am," Lissianna said quietly.
"You bit his neck," Father Joseph responded. "Dwayne was almost faint from blood loss. He's lucky to be alive. If I hadn't come up when I had, you might have drained him dry. You must have heard me approaching."
"No, I didn't, Father," she said with exasperation. "He was faint because he's anemic."
The priest glanced at Dwayne, who looked uncomfortable, but nodded. "Yeah. I am."
Father Joseph frowned, then turned back to Lissianna. "You have been feeding off of the people in the shelter, poor unfortunate souls already down on their luck."
Lissianna shifted guiltily. Put like that it sounded pretty bad. The fact that she'd hoped to be able to help the people even as they unwittingly helped her, didn't really seem to make up for it.
"Look, Father." Greg started forward, only to pause when the priest raised the handgun he held.
"I realize that guns may not do much damage," he said. "But they will do some, and these ones are loaded with silver bullets if that makes any difference."
Lissianna rolled her eyes. "Sure it does, if you're a werewolf."
"Where did you get silver bullets?" Greg asked with amazement.
"1 found them on the Internet," Dwayne explained. "You can get some really cool shit on the Internet."
"Well, whether the silver bullets will work or not, they will at least slow you down so that we can stake you," Father Joseph said, bringing the conversation back where he wanted it. "And stakes--as we all learned the other night-- are quite effective... Though obviously not deadly."
"That was you?" Lissianna asked, suddenly gone cold. "You said you had to test me first before trying anything drastic. I passed those tests, and you still staked me?"
Father Joseph shifted uncomfortably. "I overheard..." He paused and frowned, then asked, "What's the name of the girl who works the night shift when you aren't there?"
"Claudia," she supplied.
"Yes. Claudia. I overheard her telling Debbie that she needed to speak to you to see if you'd switch one of your nights with her this week, but she was having trouble reaching you at your apartment. Debbie said you'd been at your mother's all weekend, but were staying at her house that night, and she'd have you call her the next morning when she got home."
Lissianna's breath came out on a puff. A lot had happened since the staking, and most of it had been rather distracting, but the attack had still been at the back of her head, nagging at her. She'd been sure Debbie couldn't have been behind the attack, but that had left her stymied. It had never occurred to her that Deb might have mentioned to anyone that Lissianna was staying at her place that night.
"I called Dwayne," Father Joseph continued. "He was supposed to go over and see if he could learn anything. He was just supposed to watch you."
Dwayne shifted under the glare the priest bent on him, then took over the explanation, and said, "That's all I intended to do, 1 only took the stake in case I got lucky."
At Lissianna's doubting look, he insisted, "Really. Vampires are usually creatures of the night, and I figured I'd have to wait until you lay down to rest at dawn. I really thought I was going there to reconnoiter, get a feel for the layout of this Debbie's house, figure out which room was yours and which she'd be in when you both went to bed," he said, then suddenly grinned. "But when I got there the curtains were open in the living room and I could see you two going at it on the couch, then moved to the bedroom window when you guys moved the action there."
Lissianna felt the blush from the tips of her toes to the top of her head. It was followed by anger at the idea of Dwayne leering through the window watching their first time together. She forgot such worries when he continued.
"I saw you bite him, and it was all the proof we needed." He smiled like the cat who'd found the cream and went on, "I expected to have a long cold night standing around staring in windows until Debbie came home and you all went to bed. I couldn't believe my luck when you left him in the bedroom and went to sleep on the couch. And then when I tried the sliding glass doors in the dining room and found them unlocked... It was too good to be true." He glanced at the priest and grinned. "Almost like a blessing from God."
"But it didn't work," Lissianna pointed out, directing her comment to the priest. "If it was truly God's wish that you kill me--"
"It was my fault it didn't work," Father Joseph interrupted. "I shouldn't have sent the boy, I should have gone myself. I also should have done more research right from the start. If I had, we'd have been prepared to take proper advantage of the opportunity God presented. Instead, we were still depending on what the movies and books claimed. I hadn't yet learned my lesson."
The priest was pale and haggard-looking from lack of sleep. He obviously hadn't gotten much rest the past week, what with doing double duty by working at the shelter during the day and guarding his flock from her by night. Lissianna knew that sleep deprivation could lead to extreme anxiety and hallucinations amongst other things. Greg was the psychologist, but she suspected that, with Father Joseph, sleep deprivation had caused a break from reality. It must have pushed him over the edge if he really thought God had put her in his path to kill.
"So, like I was saying," Dwayne continued, drawing everyone's attention back to him, "I crept into the house, into the living room, and right up to you and you didn't even stir. But you were on your side and I was trying to figure out how to get you to roll onto your back, when suddenly, you did just that. You just rolled over."