Chapter 15: The Garden of New Roots
The rain had finally ceased, leaving the island wrapped in a damp, whispered silence. Paul walked back from the church, his shoes whispering through the gravel, the weight of Bev’s confession and his own cold promise sitting in his gut like a stone. The rectory loomed ahead, a dark shape against the bruised sky, but the sight of it, of their home, squeezed his chest with a pain sharper than any hunger.
He pushed the door open. The usual scent—spice, lavender, the vanilla candle Jud burned while he doodled—was gone. In its place was the damp salt of the island and something else, something sour and sad: rotting wood from a windowsill and the heavy, metallic scent of tears.
He stood in the doorway, just observing. The kitchen was tidy, a quiet rebellion against the chaos outside. Clean dishes stood in the rack, and over the faucet hung the colorful, frayed dishrags Jud insisted on keeping, each one a bright memory of mainland thrift stores. The dining table was a landscape of their life together: two Bibles, one with a cracked spine from Paul’s centuries, the other nearly new from Jud’s ordination, lay open and nested among a sprawl of doodle books. A half-finished crossword puzzle lay on top, the pen tucked into the crease. Beneath it, Paul could see the corner of the book where Jud had, one quiet evening, drawn a lopsided heart and scribbled Paul + Jud inside it. He’d framed it with a flower that looked like a dandelion.
His feet carried him into the living room. A nest of blankets lay on the couch, a testament to Jud’s restless nights. Two empty coffee mugs sat on the floor, and papers—homily notes, grocery lists, more drawings—were scattered like fallen leaves. On the armrest, propped up carefully, was the stuffed lion Paul had won for him at a county fair on the mainland. Jud had flushed crimson with delight, hugging it to his chest and muttering, “This is ridiculous, Paul, I’m a grown man,” before sleeping with it every night since.
Paul’s eyes traced the walls. Taped up with deliberate care were Jud’s small drawings—a sketch of the church spire, a cartoon of a grumpy-looking seagull, a surprisingly detailed study of Paul’s own hands folded in prayer. Paul had put each one up, paying a “price” for each—a kiss, a whispered confession of love, a promise—that always made Jud flush and smile through his weak protests. This was their sanctuary. This mess was their liturgy.
Tonight, the silence was different. It was a held breath. From behind their bedroom door, Paul could hear it: not sobs, but the thick, ragged rhythm of someone trying not to drown in air. A raw, quiet agony that vibrated through the wall. It was the sound of trauma breaking the surface.
He approached the door, knuckles brushing the wood with a touch so gentle it was barely a sound. “Jud? Can I come in?”
A whimper. A wet, shuddering inhale. Then a weak, broken noise that might have been a ‘yes’.
Paul turned the knob.
The room was dark, the only light the grey bleed from the window. Jud was a hunched shape on the edge of the bed, wrapped in Paul’s old sweater, drowning in it. He was trembling. He looked up as Paul entered, his eyes swollen, his face a map of utter devastation. He looked groggy, lost in a depression so deep it had physical weight.
“Hey,” Paul whispered, sitting beside him. The mattress dipped, and Jud leaned into the shift automatically, seeking his anchor.
“They called,” Jud said, his voice scraped hollow. It wasn’t the voice of the dorky, earnest priest. It was the voice of the boy who’d been called a freak, the man who’d been used as a tool. “After Bev. After everything. One of them… he wanted to ‘prepare’ me.”
Paul went very still. “Prepare you for what, my love?”
A tear traced a fresh path through the salt on Jud’s cheek. “It’s not a reassignment. It’s not penance. They have a… a place. A remote farmhouse, he called it a barn. Off the books.” His breath hitched. “For people like me. ‘Special souls with unique gifts,’ he said. They bring us there. They bring clients. Special men. Men who pay the diocese a lot of money for… for discreet communion.” He choked on the euphemism. “He said my… my nature would be a particular draw. That I was a natural breeder. That I’d serve a higher purpose by bringing comfort to those in power.”
The words hung in the dark, ugly and final. The church, the faith that was supposed to be a refuge, had calmly, bureaucratically, planned his sex slavery.
“I don’t want to go, Paul,” Jud whispered, the plea so small it shattered something inside Paul’s ancient chest. “I’d rather die here. I’d rather you—”
“No.” The word was a command, a vow, a knife. Paul pulled Jud into his arms, crushing him against his body. He kissed his temple, his hair, the damp corner of his eye. “No. You are not going anywhere. Do you hear me? Nowhere.”
Jud collapsed into him, his body wracked with silent tremors. Paul held him, rocking slightly, murmuring nonsense into his hair—words of love, of protection, syllables that held no scripture because no scripture applied here. What verse could comfort a man being sold by his own shepherds? The system that had offered Jud shelter was the same beast now baring its teeth. The crucifix on the wall was just a shape in the dark.
As he held his grieving lover, feeling the feverish heat of Jud’s skin through the sweater, a different heat awoke in Paul. It started in the pit of his stomach, cold at first, then spreading like black ice through his veins. It wasn’t just anger. It was a crystallization of purpose, a final, damning confirmation. This was the world. This was what it did to beautiful, gentle things.
The hunger that rose in him was violent. But not for blood. Not in this moment. It was a hunger for the men in their dark suits and polished shoes, for the tidy paperwork that facilitated rape, for the pious voices that spoke of ‘higher purpose’. He saw their faces in the shadows of the room. Smelled their cologne over Jud’s scent of salt and fear.
He held Jud tighter, his lips pressed to the crown of his head. “They’re not taking you,” he murmured, his voice low, a new and terrible calm settling over him. “We’re not leaving. And those ghouls are not going to lay a finger on you. Ever again.”
In the dark, Paul’s eyes caught a sliver of moonlight from the window. They glinted, not with tears, but with the cold, ancient light of the hunter who had finally found a prey worthy of his wrath. The love in his heart and the monster in his blood had, at last, found perfect alignment.