“A pure heart is a blessing. Mostly because it does not require us to tarry after services for this long.”
Butch smiled a little. “Sister, you are right.”
“So speak unto to me.”
“Are you from Italy?” He looked over and found himself wishing he could see her face. “The accent.”
“I am from a number of places.”
“I’m from Southie. Boston. In case you can’t tell from my own accent.” He exhaled again. “And I don’t know if it’s something on my conscience. It’s more like I can’t control the outcome.”
“We never can. That is why our faith is important. Do you believe, do you truly believe?”
Butch took his gold cross out from his shirt. “I truly believe.”
“Then you will never be alone. No matter where you are.”
“You’re so right, Sister.” He smiled again. “And I have my brothers.”
“Then you come from a big family?”
“Oh, yes.” He thought of Vishous. “And I can’t do . . . what I have to . . . without them.”
“So you worry about them?’
“Of course.” Butch rubbed his cross, warming the solid gold with the heat of his mortality. “My roommate in particular. I literally cannot do this without him. He is . . . well, it’s hard to explain. But without him, I can’t go on, and that is not hyperbole. He is integral to me. To my life.”
“It sounds like a close relationship.”
“He’s my very best friend. My other half, in addition to my sh—my wife. Even though that sounds weird.”
“There are many different kinds of love in a person’s life. Tell me, you say that you worry about him. Is this because of your relationship or because he is in danger himself.”
Butch opened his mouth to answer that which had seemed to be expressed as a rhetorical—and then closed things with a clap. As his mind started to connect some dots, he saw a pattern emerge that was so obvious, he should have noticed it before. Other people should have noticed it.
And somebody should have fucking—frickin’—done something about it.
Butch burst up to his feet. “Sister, I’m so sorry. I gotta—I gotta go.”
“It is all right, my child. Follow your heart, it will never steer you wrong.”
The nun turned her head and looked up at him.
Butch froze. The face that stared at him was no one face. It was a hundred female faces, the images shifting on top of each other, blurring into an optical illusion. And that wasn’t all. From beneath the black folds of the habit, a brilliant, cleansing light pooled on the floor, making the prayer stools glow.
“It’s . . . you,” Butch breathed.
“You know, you always were one of my favorites,” the entity said as the faces smiled together. “In spite of all the questions you asked me. Now go, and follow your impulses. You are correct in all of them, especially the one involving my son.”
Between one heartbeat and the next, the Scribe Virgin disappeared, but she left the glow of her goodness behind, the beneficent illumination of her presence remaining for a moment before it faded.
Left alone once again, there was the temptation to replay the interaction, mine it for more clues, bask in the fact that he had been sitting right next to the creator of the vampire race.
That of everyone, she had come to see him.
No time, though.
Shuffling out of the pew, Butch went for his phone as he hauled ass out of the sanctuary and through the narthex. The number he dialed was in his favorites. He prayed that it was answered.
One ring . . .
Two rings . . .
Three rings . . .
For fuck’s sake, Butch thought as he burst out of the cathedral’s heavy main door. V was downtown right now. Looking for lessers. And the Omega wasn’t stupid.
The evil had to know how the prophecy worked because no mortal entity, vampire or human or combination of the two, could survive taking a part of the Omega inside of itself. There had to be a way to get the evil out of a mortal, and there was.
The Omega’s nephew, Vishous, was the key. And surely this was going to dawn on V’s uncle. Any tactician would put the two and two together at some point, and the fact the Omega hadn’t done so already meant the dawn-on-Marblehead, switch of strategy, was long overdue.
“Pick up, V,” Butch muttered as he broke out into a run down the stone steps. “Pick the fuck up.”