5

DAWN HAD ALREADY BEGUN TO DYE THE EASTERN horizon gold when Nick pulled the Cadillac into his warehouse garage. He pressed the control to close the automatic door, shutting out the sun’s stinging rays and plunging the bay into comfortable darkness once again.

Halfway up in the loft’s wobbly elevator, he sensed the steady throbbing of a mortal heartbeat. When he pulled back the door, he found the loft’s shades already drawn, a bilious pink protein shake waiting for him on the kitchen table, and a dozing Natalie Lambert curled up in his black leather armchair. He must have been so distracted driving in that he hadn’t even noticed her car out front.

The temptation to pour the vile-looking protein concoction down the sink while she slept was almost more than he could resist. (“Delicious, Nat. Drank it all down the minute I came in the door!”) Instead, he popped the lid off the clear plastic cocktail shaker and took a cautious whiff of its contents.

Ack!

His very sensitive nose detected cow’s milk, raw eggs, gelatin, peppermint, a trace of steer’s blood – and all of it triggered an immediate gag reflex he could do nothing to curtail. He coughed, and the cocktail shaker smacked the tabletop, splashing some of its viscous contents out onto his hand.

“Oh. There you are.” A yawning Natalie was suddenly beside him. “I wanted to see how your system handled this one. Sooner or later, we are going to find a formula you can tolerate on an ongoing basis.” Noting Nick’s disgusted expression as he shook pink droplets of the stuff off his fingers, she added pointedly, “Preferably without gagging.”

“Yeah.” Nick picked up the shaker and grimaced at the sickly sweet aroma that oozed from it. “Easy for you to say.”

 “All right, so drink up already. You need the protein, I need a blood sample and then I need to go home and give Sydney his tuna fix before turning in for my beauty sleep.”

Nick put the shaker down again, candidly stalling. Well, he could hardly tell her “No thanks, Nat, I’ve already eaten.” Nor would she have been pleased to know just where it was that he’d dined.

Trapped, he lifted the milk shake anew, schooled himself not to inhale, and then forced several swallows of the awful stuff down. The gag reflex betrayed him again before the shaker was anywhere near empty. When the coughing spasms finally subsided, he collapsed onto one of the kitchen chairs and fought valiantly to convince his churning stomach not to send the nauseating glop straight back up again.

He succeeded, but only just.

“I think,” he managed to choke out, “the last one was a little better.”

“A-ha.” Nat appeared to make a mental note of that as she fished the blood-drawing accouterments out of her medical bag. “I’ll need an arm, here, please.”

 Nick took a deep breath, rolled up his sleeve and complied without further comment. He tried not to listen to the blood rushing through Natalie’s veins while she extracted a minute amount from his own.

“Oh,” she said when the deed was done and the equipment already packed away again. “I almost forgot. We got the lab results on LeFebre’s holy oil just before I went off shift.”

Nick looked up at her with interest. “And?”

“It’s nothing but safflower oil. Nothing you couldn’t find in the average joe’s kitchen. No additives or other special properties.”

Except, Nick thought bitterly, that it could burn a vampire’s flesh even through the glass bottle that held it. In his long experience, not even holy water had ever done that. He didn’t doubt that an analysis on that substance would undoubtedly have come back reporting much the same as the one on LeFebre’s oil – nothing but water. Chock it up to the widening gap between science and theology, he supposed, and the utter inability of one ever to explain the other.

“Thanks for running that one, Nat,” he said. “We still think Con Lewis’ death was probably an accident, a kids’ prank gone bad. There’s nothing to indicate LeFebre’s involvement in it. But I wanted to have the stuff checked out...” For my own reasons, he almost said, but he let the sentence trail off instead.

“M-hm. And what about LeFebre himself? Still checking him out, too?”

“Well, he’s not crossed off the suspect list just yet. He’s still the last person to have had physical contact with Con Lewis.”

“He has another one of his healing services scheduled for this evening,” she said. “Apparently, they go on all week long. I arranged for a few hours off to go and see what it is he really does at these things.”

“You don’t have to do that, Nat. LeFebre may not even be a suspect.”

“I know. But there was another reason you wanted to find out more about it, wasn’t there?”

Nick stared at the table. “More than anything else, I’d like to figure out how he knew. How he recognized the vampire so easily, with nothing more than a touch.”

“And you’d like to know if his supposed healing abilities might just include a magical cure for vampirism.”

Her cynicism stung but, guilty as charged, he nodded anyway. “He said he could help me. He seemed so sure.”

Nat closed the latch on her medical bag with just a shade more force than was necessary. “Nick...” She took a breath, perhaps tempering what she’d been about to say. “Nick, trust me. These faith healings are a combination of smoke, mirrors, wishful thinking and circus tent chicanery. I don’t know if a mere coroner’s clinical eye can spot the deception or not.  For your sake, I’m willing to try. But in the end, most of it probably boils down to just what people want to believe.”

“The scientist’s view,” he said quietly. “No mysteries. No miracles.”

“Not if you define ‘miracle’ as a sweeping intervention from on high, no. I’ve seen filmed investigations of these services before. Only the shills are cured of their faux blindness and fake twisted limbs. The rest of the flock might recover from headaches or arthritis or sore throats, maybe even a more serious ailment now and then. But the mind is a powerful thing, Nick. They get better because they believe they’re better, not because an evangelist lays hands on them and conjures up some all-powerful guardian angel out of the ether.”

She sounded ironically like Janette. Even worse, this was precisely the sort of lecture LaCroix might once have delivered. Put your faith in the wrong things, the wrong people, and you had an instant formula for disaster.

 But all of their warnings notwithstanding, Nick couldn’t bring himself to let go of the small glimmer of hope LeFebre’s healing abilities might offer. He knew it was probably foolish, probably useless, probably no real hope at all. But like the people Nat spoke of, he wanted it to be true. He didn’t know why. Perhaps because, in some small part of whatever remained of his mortal soul, he wanted desperately to believe that God hadn’t utterly abandoned him after all.

Just as he’d once hoped against hope that God hadn’t abandoned the faithful in Constantinople.

“Good night, Nick,” he heard Natalie’s voice say. He looked up to see her heading for the elevator. By the time it had started its rumbling descent, he was already five centuries and five thousand miles away.

*    *    *

 He had awakened to anguished cries from atop the city walls.

“God protects us! He will not abandon us!”

“God be with us. Bless not our enemies!”

“God have mercy on us!”

From a watchman on his way to a night’s rest in the barracks, Nicholas learned that today’s attack had been long and unrelenting, bringing Mehmet’s armies so near that mercy crews would dare not venture out this night to retrieve the wounded. The omen of lights on the eve before had so terrified the holy city’s defenders that a procession through the streets with icons, censers and chanted prayers had lasted all morning, until cannon fire had again bombarded the walls and called most of the penitents back to their battlements.

Some of the faithful, however, still lined the streets as Nicholas made his way to the infirmary. They offered up prayers in answer to the cries still sounding from atop the walls, and together, the aura of reverence they created became a thing almost palpable. It assaulted the vampire’s being with all the might of a brandished crucifix, and he fled from it to the alleys and less-traveled byways until he could make his way to the building that housed his wounded charges.

He found Leander waiting eagerly outside the door. “I have brought Kostas, the silversmith,” he said. “It was his mark on the medallion, as you thought.” He placed the small silver disc and its fine chain into Nicholas’ hand. “But he was not very glad to see it.”

“Thank you, Leander. Where is he?”

“Waiting inside. He is angry, Master Nicholas, and convinced that this must be some cruel trick. He says that his son Alexius is dead these twenty years.”

“His son is here,” the physician said, “and very much alive. We will prove that to him, momentarily.”

They went through the door into the building’s wide antechamber, where a short, heavy-set man in a smith’s doublet rose to meet them. “Are you the healer?” he asked at once, and when Nicholas nodded, he rushed on without taking a breath. “What is the meaning of this outrage?” He plucked the medallion from Nicholas’ hand and waved it in the air. “Where did you get this? Do you propose to bring the dead back to life? Are miracles now within a mere physician’s province?”

Nicholas permitted himself a meager smile. “Some miracles, perhaps,” he said, and removed the key from his belt pouch. “Come with me.”

He led them through the main chamber, noting with some sorrow that his aides tended to only nine patients now. There would be no new wounded brought in this night. Perhaps there would be no more at all. When they reached the locked door, he listened for the human heartbeats within. Sure that the Janissaries were not near the door, he turned the key, and stepped into the dimly lit room.

Gaspar and Malik/Alexius stood against the far wall below the high-set window. From the look of it, Gaspar had been trying to reach the tiny opening by climbing on the slighter man’s shoulders. Malik’s pale face showed the strain of their effort, and his wound was bleeding again.

“Alexius...”

Nicholas’ intended reprimand was cut short by Kostas’ entrance with Leander on his heels. The smith strode within an arm’s breadth of the two Janissaries, and for a long, awkward moment, candidly appraised them both.

“Trickery,” he muttered. “Neither of these heathen is any son of mine. Why did you bring me here? Why are they here?”

“He is your son,” Nicholas said. He pointed to Alexius, who had taken a step forward to scrutinize the older man, who bore a face so very like his own. “Look at him, Kostas. You will know it to be true.”

For a few eerily silent moments, estranged father and son stood staring at one another as though nothing and no one else in the room had ever existed. Nicholas harbored the fleeting hope that they might begin talking with each other, but Alexius was shaking his head, obviously fighting back tears.

 “No,” he said. “It is a lie! I have no God but Allah, no father but Allah!” He tore at the blood-soaked bandages covering his wound, sank to his knees and swayed as he began moaning a Turkish prayer. “Allah’in elciligini ifa ettin, vazifeni yerine getirdin...”

Nicholas reached him just as it seemed he might collapse completely,  lifted the man and carried him back to the infirmary cot. The physician had been about to send Leander for more bandages when Gaspar, quiet until now, saw an opportunity and bolted for the open door, shoving Kostas into the wall as he passed. Leander turned and gave chase, only to return within  moments,  breathing heavily.

“He disappeared into the alley,” he panted. “It is too dark to see.”

“Never mind,” Nicholas sighed. “Let him go for now. Have the aides bring more bandaging, Leander. This man’s wound is bleeding again.”

The confused Leander departed again. Kostas was daubing guardedly with two fingers at a gash on his forehead. More of his blood marked the nearby wall. “Heathen swine,” he hissed. “Why waste your potions on the likes of these? You should have let them die!”

Nicholas turned angry eyes on him. “You would kill your own son?”

“Son?!” Kostas wiped again at his forehead, exhaling a short, wheezing sigh. “I have no son,” he said. With that, he threw down the silver medallion, ground it into the dirt beneath his heel, and stalked from the room.

*    *    *

Waiting outside the Spirit of Pentecost Church, Natalie Lambert assessed the crowd flowing in through the large building’s multiple doors.

She saw people of all ages and economic classes, a broad ethnic and racial mix, and attire that ranged from formal to casual grunge. But other than one elderly man in a wheelchair, none of the evening’s flock appeared at all infirm or in need of any particular healing that she could see. There wasn’t a pair of crutches in sight. She watched as a group of jeans-clad teens, in full chatter, headed up the steps and disappeared inside. That seemed out of place. Weren’t most churches these days moldy stone and stained glass affairs attended by a handful of equally moldy, aging patrons? That, at least, was how she remembered church. But then, she hadn’t set foot inside a service since Nana had last dragged her to Easter mass almost twenty years ago.

When the arrivals began to thin out, she made her way inside, and immediately regretted waiting this long to come in. The place was packed. Feeling conspicuous, she went all the way down front and found a spot on one of the mauve cushioned pews there, one of the few spaces not yet taken.

On the inside, the Spirit of Pentecost reminded her of those big circular auditoriums she’d seen on the televangelists’ cable TV shows. All it lacked was a half dozen TV cameras.

She’d barely sat down when the tiered main platform in front of her began filling with three rows of white-robed choir members. These were shortly flanked by musicians in a full orchestra; percussion, bass section and grand piano on one side, horns and strings on the other.

Was this a church service or a Broadway musical?

The choir director and Henri LeFebre, both wearing coats and ties, were the last to take the stage, and at their entrance, the ceiling above them disgorged a large movie screen with several stanzas of a song projected on it. At a cue from the director the orchestra struck up an opening chord, and immediately the crowd was on its feet and singing.

Nat stood, already feeling very much out of place, and pretended to sing along, mouthing the words on the screen as they changed from one chorus to another. She’d never heard any of these hymns before. Somehow she’d expected “Rock of Ages” and “Bringing in the Sheaves.” But these were rather lively songs about praising, about “moving the spirit,” about healing and praying and trusting in God. They went on for a solid half hour while the congregation swayed, clapped and waved hands in the air. So enthusiastic was the crowd, in fact, that it was a little difficult not to get caught up in the atmosphere of excitement they generated. Nat found herself clapping to the upbeat rhythms along with everyone else.

After a while, she started hearing odd sounds above the swelling music from various portions of the auditorium. She stopped clapping to listen, but couldn’t distinguish the individual “tongues” being spoken. They seemed to blend into the whole with a strange, lyrical beauty all their own.

Contrary to what she’d expected from Schanke’s descriptions, no one danced, cavorted or rolled in the aisles. Nat couldn’t decide whether to be relieved or disappointed.

When the music finally stopped and the congregation at last was seated (Nat wished she’d worn flats: after standing for so long her feet were killing her), she braced herself for the inevitable hellfire and brimstone sermon. But no one moved to the pulpit. The choir began yet another song, this one a more sedate, a capella number, and LeFebre came down off the stage altogether to stand at the base of its carpeted steps. Nat spotted one of the tiny bottles of vegetable oil in his left hand.

With no more than this single visual cue, people instantly started streaming down all three aisles, forming orderly lines that stretched nearly to the doors. One by one, they approached the faith healer, murmured something Natalie assumed must be an ailment, and received a drop of oil touched to their foreheads, much the way she remembered getting smudged with a small spot of gray soot on Ash Wednesdays. LeFebre would then place a hand on each person’s shoulder, utter a brief prayer, and release them to return to their pews.

Nat was confused now. Where were all the miraculous recoveries? What about the shouting and crying and the “slaying in the spirit” bit that had supposedly affected Con Lewis? She’d been hoping for the chance to ferret out some adroit con game, like that psychic act she’d seen one fraudulent evangelist use to fleece his flock out of thousands, accomplished by means of a radio ear-phone and an accomplice wife. But there was nothing like that here.

While choir and congregation went on singing and Henri LeFebre went on anointing and praying, Natalie leaned back in the pew and crossed her arms in baffled consternation. From Schanke’s descriptions and from what she herself had seen on television, she’d thought the “slaying in the spirit” business would be going on in spades throughout the service. She’d thought there would be shouting and sermonizing, miracle cures and loud condemnations, dancing and rolling and begging for sizable donations.

She’d seen none of that tonight.

This whole thing was weird beyond any church ceremony she’d ever experienced. But whatever else she might call it, it was definitely not what she’d expected.

Not what she’d expected at all...

*    *    *

“So this vampire bites a rabbi, see, and then he says, ‘That’s funny, you don’t taste Jewish!’ Get it? He says, ‘You don’t taste Jewish.’ That one’s a gasser, huh?” Schanke tapped on the desk in annoyance. “Hellooooo, Nick! Are you listening to me here?”

Nick, who’d been startled out of the report pile doldrums by the word “vampire,” looked across the back-to-back desks at his partner and scowled. “Schanke, that joke is even older than I am.” And you have no idea how ancient that makes it.

“Oh. You heard it already, huh? Well, how about the one where Count Dracula goes to the blood bank and says...”

“‘I’d like to make a withdrawal.’ Yeah. Been there, heard that.”

Schanke looked crestfallen. “Oh,” he said again. “Well, I guess you’ve heard a lot of those, working night shifts for so long. And ’cause of your allergy and all.”

Nick wasn’t sure he liked the direction this was taking. “How’s that again?”

“You know.” Schanke waggled a pencil in his right hand until the rubber eraser tip beat a tattoo on his desk blotter. “Sun allergies? Count Dracula?” He sighed. “Oh, come on, Nick! Don’t tell me nobody’s ever teased you about living like a vampire before!”

“Schank...”

Nick was saved by Captain Stonetree’s timely arrival. “We get anywhere on the Lewis case yet?” he wanted to know.

Nick shook his head. “Could be accidental homicide. Our guess is one of his friends slipped the stuff into his beer as a gag, with no idea it could aggravate his heart condition.”

“Hm,” Stonetree grunted noncommitally. “Any idea which friend?”

“No,” Schanke admitted, “but I think if I talk to ’em each again separately, I can probably wring a confession out of the right one. When they’re together, they cover for each other.”

“Sounds good,” the captain agreed. “I think you should go do that.”

Schanke’s eyes lit up at the prospect of escaping more paperwork. “Right,” he chirped. “I’m outta here.” And in another moment he was, moving faster than a mortal of his size should be able to do.

When he had gone, Stonetree turned back to Nick again. “Anything else on the preacher?”

“Not really. At this point, he’s not a likely suspect.” He had an inspiration then. “There are a few more questions I’d like to ask him, though. About Con Lewis and whether he had any enemies.”

“Okay. Let’s wrap this one up and tie it off with a nice, big ribbon. Go talk to the preacher one more time. Then meet up with Schanke and see what he’s got on the kids. If it’s not a homicide, we don’t need to spend any more resources on it. If your hunch is right about the prank, then juvenile division can take it from here.”

“Right.” Nick stood and rescued his coat from the back of his chair. “I’m on my way.”

He was every bit as grateful for the reprieve from paperwork as Schanke had been. This would give him a chance to rendezvous with Natalie after the church service, to learn what she’d observed about LeFebre’s “healings.” In fact... Nick checked his watch on the way through the precinct parking lot. If he hurried, he could just reach the Spirit of Pentecost Church in time to see the end of the faith healer’s ceremony. Provided, of course, that he could bring himself to cross the threshold.

Three furtive glances around the parking lot revealed the lack of any human observers. A glance skyward, a rush of wind, and the lights of Toronto were at once far below him.

The city’s arteries flowed with moving traffic streams, and a rainbow of colors blazed from its street lights, its skyscrapers, and from all 553 meters of the landmark CN Tower. Nick found the fainter vein of Finch Avenue and followed it until he spotted the church’s arched, cross-embellished roof. But for the symbol that resided there, he might have landed on that roof. As it was, he chose a dark corner of their rear parking lot.

Remembering that crosses had also been carved on the building’s front doors, he immediately began searching for a back way in. Intending to force a door, he was surprised to find one that yielded easily to a mortal-strength twist of its knob and admitted him into a mauve-carpeted hallway that curved away in both directions. He went left, and listened to the hundreds of human voices that could be heard singing on the other side of the curving central wall.

  This is holy ground;
  We’re standing on holy ground;
  For the Lord is present
  And where He is is holy.

Nick reached the front foyer, where three sets of double inner doors stood open, allowing music and voices to fill the vestibule. He could see a capacity crowd inside, most of them standing, singing, and lifting their hands in the air.

  These are holy hands;
  He’s given us holy hands;
  He works through these hands
  And so these hands are holy.

 He moved closer to the nearest doorway, intending to edge quietly inside for a better view of whatever was going on down in front. But the moment his foot crossed the inner threshold, his Beast roared to life and recoiled, a sudden and violent repulsion that drove him back toward the outer doors.

The crosses carved in the wood there repelled him yet again.

He spun away to press himself against a neutral wall, fighting to quell the vampire’s unbidden emergence replete with fangs and blazing eyes.

From within the sanctuary, the song swelled into a repeating chorus.

  We are standing on holy ground,
  And I know that there are angels
   all around.
  Let us praise Jesus now;
  We are standing in His presence
   on holy ground.³

Venting his own fury on the Beast, Nick slowly forced it back into submission. When it was tamed, he again approached the inner door and again tried to cross the threshold.

He couldn’t.

At the brink, the vampire raged back to the fore and drove him away with pain more searing than a flash of full sunlight. Stifling a cry, Nick fell against the curved foyer wall and struggled yet again to repress the infuriated Beast. He didn’t understand this. In eight hundred years he had walked many times upon consecrated ground, from Emperor Constantine’s holy city and Joan d’Arc’s chapel to the local church he and Schanke had staked out just three months ago.

Why should this be any different?

Why was it different?

Before his battle to tame the Beast had completely succeeded, the song inside ended and a peculiar murmuring drifted from the auditorium: several voices at once, all praying in different tongues he didn’t recognize. (What had Natalie called it? Glossolalia?) The vampire recoiled again at the sound, and when the crowd began filing out into the foyer, Nick gave up the fight. He fled through one of the outer doors, not even trying to suppress a gasp of pain when the engraved wood singed his hands.

He had no idea how long he’d been huddled against the thick oak tree just outside the church doors. Once he had banished the vampire, he’d simply remained there with his eyes closed, all but oblivious to the throngs of worshipers streaming from the building behind him.

“Nick?”

The light touch of Natalie’s hand on his arm and the sudden, all-too-tantalizing closeness of her heartbeat both threatened to dissolve most of his carefully-regained control. But he turned and smiled at her gamely, determined to hide all traces of the war he’d just been waging.

Apparently, he hadn’t entirely succeeded. Nat was staring at him with obvious concern. “Nick, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he lied, and promptly changed the subject. “How was the service?”

Her look clearly said that she didn’t believe him, but to his relief, she didn’t press the issue. “In a word,” she said, glancing back at the people still lingering on the church steps, “interesting.”

“That’s it? Interesting?”

“Yeah, well, don’t put me on the convert list any time soon, but I will admit it wasn’t what I went in expecting. There weren’t any miraculous recoveries or sleight-of-hand tricks. No fainting and swooning either. Just a lot of singing and praying. They did pass the collection plate, but nobody gave a two-hour sermon on how the Good Lord would surely call him home if he didn’t raise five million by next Tuesday.”

Nick laughed, but something she’d said disturbed him. “It was a healing service, and no one was healed?”

Nat shrugged. “Well, if they were, they didn’t proclaim it to the heavens. So much for the Elmer Gantry holy-roller act, huh?”

“And LeFebre?” Nick met her eyes in earnest now. “Do you still think he’s a fraud?”

“I think he’s like most of these people – entirely sincere in his beliefs. But Nick, that doesn’t mean he can cure v...” She stopped herself short of saying the word out loud and lowered her voice. “It doesn’t mean he can do anything about your problem.”

“He seems to think otherwise. Right now I can’t think of any reason not to let him try.”

She looked hurt at that, which was not altogether unlike Janette’s reaction the night before. “Medical conditions require medical solutions, Nick. Have a little faith in yourself, in me, in what we’re working to accomplish. You just can’t go chasing off after every slender thread of superstitious hope that comes along!”

Janette had said something very like that, too.

“I have to talk to him,” he said. “About the case. It doesn’t look like Con Lewis’ death was murder, but we have to tie up the loose ends just the same.”

“M-hm.” Those two syllables translated to ‘I see I haven’t convinced you.’ But all she said was, “Just be careful, Nick.”

He nodded, and braved giving her a fleeting kiss on the forehead. “Thanks.”

She seemed startled by his action, although she covered it quickly. “I... uh... have to get to work. Meet you at the loft after shift? I’ll stir up a protein shake with the ‘not so bad’ formula this time.”

“It’s a date,” he promised. “I’ll bring the movie and popcorn.”

That had put a sparkle in her eyes. “See you then,” she said, and startled him in turn by reciprocating the fleeting kiss – this time on the lips.

She was gone before he could comment on the brashness – and the dangers – of her action. So he turned his attention to the more immediate problem of getting back inside the church to see LeFebre. He returned to the back door and again entered the curving hallway. And this time when he approached the doorway that had repelled him scant minutes before, he passed through it without so much as a tingle, coming to stand, baffled, in the aisle on the other side.

This made absolutely no sense! How could ground so holy as to expel his kind in one moment placidly welcome his presence in the next? Unable to fathom that, he turned to survey his surroundings instead.

Beyond the single wooden cross hanging on the platform’s back wall, the sanctuary was completely devoid of all the icons and statuary common to houses of Christian worship in his day. This was simply a building, stripped bare of all symbols save one, without even an altar anywhere on the otherwise crowded dais down front.

St. Francis of Assisi and Oliver Cromwell, to name but a few, would likely have approved.

Only one mortal heartbeat echoed in the room. LeFebre, who had been kneeling at one of many upholstered benches near the platform steps, rose and turned to greet his visitor.  “I prayed you would come back,” he said.

That unnerved Nick for a moment. Did the man know that he’d tried to enter during the service? Or did he mean that he’d hoped Nick would return after their interview in the hotel room?

“I...” Everything he’d meant to say, about the Lewis case, about the danger LeFebre faced in knowing of his secret – all of it fled Nick’s usually-flawless memory and left him stammering like a helpless mortal. “I couldn’t...”

“I know.” Nick found LeFebre’s calm tone almost as unsettling as his words. The man had known that the vampire was out there, trying to come in but forbidden entry by... what?

“Where the body is gathered,” LeFebre explained as though he’d read Nick’s thought, “the Spirit of God descends, and it is...” Apparently unable to find the words he needed in English, he finished the sentence in French. “The Holy Spirit is, to that which dwells in you, inimical.”

The vampire stirred faintly, as though angered by this assertion. Nick drew on its strength to free his tongue and to express something that had only just occurred to him. “You knew about us, didn’t you? Before you ever met me. You knew.”

“Yes.” There was no guile in the faith healer’s response, no thought at all given to concealing the truth. LaCroix would have said that only a fool could be so open, so trusting. “I knew one like you once,” LeFebre said. “Twelve years ago, in Belgium.”

That explained a great deal. It also filled Nick with a tremendous sense of relief. It meant that he wasn’t responsible for Henri LeFebre’s knowledge. Someone else had been, well over a decade ago.

“Did you offer to help him also?” he asked.

“She...” LeFebre looked away, toward the cross mounted high above the pulpit. “She chose not to accept my help. God’s help. She chose to embrace the darkness.”

A familiar tale, though admittedly, few mortals survived to tell it. “You loved her,” Nick said quietly. It wasn’t a question. The man’s emotional wounds were laid bare in the timbre of his voice.

“Yes.”

Nick understood now how LeFebre had so easily recognized the Beast. If this vampire he had loved had taken his blood, if she had drained him to a point near death and had not brought him across... If she had done all of that, then she had left him in the purgatory of a vampiric half-life: human and yet not quite human, pale, sensitive to sunlight, and most telling of all, sensitive to the presence of vampires. Most mortals like this, if they survived, became “hunters,” intent on destroying those vampires they could track down. LeFebre, though, whatever his reasons, had obviously taken an entirely different path.

“You have seen this evil,” Nick gestured toward himself, “first hand. You’ve seen what it can do. All of that, and you never lost your faith in God?”

He couldn’t conceal a touch of envy in that question. Eight centuries ago, the youthful mortal knight then known as Nicholas de Brabant had lost all vestige of his faith on a marauding crusade that had never even reached Jerusalem. A near-fatal wound and what should have been the best years of his young life spent instead imprisoned in his enemy’s dungeons – these things had embittered him still further. The man Janette had seduced into the darkness on that cold night in Paris had borne little resemblance to the brash,  callow boy who, unwilling but obedient, had marched off to reclaim the Holy Land so many years before.

“Au contraire,” LeFebre said in answer to his question. “I have seen evil, yes. But I have also seen the greater power of God.”

The greater power? Nick could almost hear LaCroix’s derisive laughter in the face of such a claim. In the face of such faith.

“I have carried this curse nearly eight hundred years,” he admitted. “The mortal deaths on my conscience could populate large portions of this city. What makes you think you can do anything to purge an evil such as that?”

It was essentially the same question he had asked Natalie Lambert not very long ago. And like Natalie, LeFebre had a ready answer.

“Will you allow me to try?”

“You’re asking me to add one more mortal death to my repertoire of sins, LeFebre. You must know that what you propose could easily kill you.”

“That is possible. But it is also possible that what I propose could free you. Isn’t that worth the risk of one more mortal life?”

Not to me! Those were the three words he should have spoken. Instead, Nick found himself asking, “And what, precisely, is it that you do propose?”

LeFebre smiled with what seemed, to Nick, a simplistic confidence. “Only the laying on of hands,” he said, “and a prayer of cleansing.”

Nick barely suppressed a laugh that would have made LaCroix inordinately proud. “Reverend LeFebre, what you’re describing was known, in my time, as the holy rite of exorcism. It has been tried before upon my kind. Without success.”

“No.” LeFebre shook his head. “Not an exorcism. You are neither a demon nor possessed of a demon, my friend. What afflicts you is an ailment of the blood.” That sounded a bit like Natalie’s analysis. “As well as, perhaps, a certain lack of faith.”

Now he sounded exactly like Natalie.

Nick conceded defeat.

“All right,” he said. “What do you want me to do?”