Chapter 19: The Barn of Blood and Ash
The white van’s headlights cut twin scars through the midnight fog as it bumped down the dirt lane. Paul watched from his perch, every muscle a coiled spring. It parked in the same spot.
The back doors swung open with a metallic shriek. Two men in windbreakers hopped out, their breath pluming in the cold air. "Let's make it quick," one grunted. "Got a long drive after this." They pulled a third figure from the van, a young man who moved like his bones were stuffed with wool, his bare feet stumbling on the frozen gravel. More followed, a silent line of naked, shivering shapes led toward the barn's black mouth. The scene was methodical, quiet. It made Paul's teeth ache.
Inside the Crockett rectory, Jud was deep in a dreamless sleep, one hand curled around the plush lion’s mane. Downstairs, Bev Keane heard the soft crunch of tires on the shell driveway far too late. She was at the window just as car doors thudded shut. Four figures moved up the path: Bishops Gaines and Hartley, flanked by two bulkier men who didn’t bother with the pretense of clerical wear. Bev’s heart hammered against her ribs. She scrambled for the poker by the fireplace, her hand closing around cold iron as the front door handle rattled, then turned.
“We know you’re in there, Beverly,” Bishop Hartley’s voice called, smooth as oil through the wood. “We’re here for Father Duplenticy. It’s time.”
“He’s not here,” Bev shouted, her voice steadier than she felt. “He’s with a parishioner. You need to leave.”
A key turned in the lock. Her key. Gaines must have had a copy made during their last “pastoral visit.” The door swung inward. Hartley gave her a sad smile. “Lying is a sin, my child.” One of the large men easily took the poker from her grip, his hand wrapping around her wrist until the bones ground together. She didn’t cry out.
“Jud!” she screamed instead, her voice shredding the quiet house. “Jud, run!”
Upstairs, Jud jerked awake to the sound of his name, screamed in terror. Disorientation washed over him, a tidal pull back into every bad memory. Heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs. He clutched the lion to his chest, scrambling back against the headboard just as the bedroom door flew open, framing the two bishops. Their kindly-uncle masks were gone, replaced by a flat, greedy resolve.
“There he is,” Gaines murmured. “Our special lamb.”
Hartley moved first. Jud tried to twist away, but the older man’s grip was surprisingly strong, yanking him by the arm. The plush lion tumbled to the floor. A sound tore from Jud’s throat then, not a scream but a high, wounded wail—the sound of a rabbit in a snare. It echoed through the thin walls of the rectory, a siren of pure anguish.
“None of that now,” Gaines said, grabbing his other arm. They hauled him bodily from the bed. His bare feet skidded on the floorboards. He was too shocked to fight, the old training taking over: compliance might make it quicker, might make it hurt less. They dragged him into the hall, his threadbare t-shirt riding up. One of the hired men threw a coarse blanket over his shoulders, not for modesty, but for easier handling.
Bev struggled in the grip of the thug downstairs, her eyes burning with fury. “You’ll burn for this,” she hissed.
“We’re saving him from himself,” Hartley corrected as they descended, Jud a shuddering weight between them. “From the island’s corruption. From Paul’s unnatural influence.” At the name, Jud did fight, a sudden, wild jerk that almost got him free.
“Paul,” he gasped. “He’s—he’s good. You’re not.”
Gaines backhanded him across the mouth. The crack was obscenely loud. Jud’s head snapped to the side, a line of blood tracing from his split lip. The fight left him in a rush, replaced by a familiar, hollow dread. This is all you’re for, the voice in his head, the voice of a lifetime of sermons and groping hands, chimed in. This is your purpose.
They bundled him toward the front door. But as Gaines pulled it open, he stopped dead.
The path to their car was blocked. Not by one or two people, but by a wall of them. Dozens of islanders stood in the frigid night, their faces grim under the porch light. Warren Flynn held his ancient shotgun loose at his side. His grandson, Lee, clutched a filletting knife. Stella stood with a rusted hatchet. Joe, the store owner, held a wooden mallet. Sarah and Michael from the diner had sharpened kitchen knives. They were fishermen, cooks, carpenters, retirees. Their tools had become weapons.
Bev shoved past the stunned bishops, joining her people. She pulled a small, nickel-plated pistol from her apron pocket and leveled it at Hartley’s forehead. The click of the safety was a punctuation mark in the silence.
“You let him go,” she said, her voice ice. “You turn around, get back in your fancy car, and you never set foot on this rock again.”
Warren stepped forward, the shotgun now resting in the crook of his arm, pointed at the ground just in front of Gaines’s feet. “The lady said let him go. We ain’t asking twice.”
Hartley recovered, puffing up with institutional authority. “This is a matter for the Church! You have no jurisdiction here. Step aside, or you will all be excommunicated. Arrested!”
A brittle laugh came from somewhere in the crowd. “Church?” Stella called out. “You ain’t the church. The church is where Father Jud helps my boy with his reading. The church is where Father Paul fixes the damn roof without being asked.”
“You’re just men,” Joe said, his voice low and rough. “Bad men. And we don’t take kindly to bad men stealing our own.”
Jud, still held between the bishops, was trembling so violently his teeth chattered. He stared at the faces before him—the stern, weathered, fierce faces of people who’d barely given him the time of day months ago. They were here. For him. The concept was so foreign it short-circuited his fear. A small, broken sound escaped him.
Hearing it, Warren’s face darkened. He raised the shotgun, the barrel now aimed squarely at Gaines’s chest. Others raised their weapons—a constellation of steel and intent catching the moonlight. “Last time,” Warren said. “Let. Him. Go.”
Meanwhile, miles away, Paul was moving. While Jud’s wail had echoed on the island, Paul had slid from the shed roof, a shadow unspooling onto the damp earth. He went to the van first, a phantom in the driver’s side. He ripped the ignition wires free with a single pull, spilling their copper guts. The vehicle was going nowhere.
He then went to the high, broken window at the barn’s rear. The smell that wafted out was a complex poison: stale sweat, chemical sweetness from the drugs, fear-sour vomit, and underneath it all, the coppery promise of blood. He slipped inside, landing cat-quiet on a warped rafter.
Below, the two windbreaker men were herding the new arrivals into makeshift stalls. A third man, older, with a pinched face, was making notes on a clipboard. “Subject 23, male, good skeletal structure,” he mumbled. The fourth man leaned against a support beam, smoking. The glow of the cigarette illuminated the white rectangle of his clerical collar.
Paul’s world narrowed to a red point. The restraint he’d practiced for decades, the gentle façade, cracked and fell away. This was not about hunger. This was about erasure.
He dropped.
He landed behind the smoking man. A hand clamped over his mouth, another snapped his neck with a wet crunch. He lowered the body silently to the straw-littered floor. The man with the clipboard looked up at the soft thud. He had time to see a pale face, eyes black and depthless, before Paul was on him. He drove the man’s head into the edge of the stall gate. Once. The wood splintered. Twice. Something gave way with a sickening finality.
The two in windbreakers spun around, reaching for weapons at their belts. Paul was a blur of motion. He caught the first one’s fist, twisted it until the bone snapped through the skin, then sank his fangs into the exposed artery in the man’s neck. The blood was hot, brassy with adrenaline. It was fuel, not salvation. He drank until the frantic struggle ceased.
The last man, the priest, was fumbling with a cell phone, backing toward the door. “Monster!” he squealed.
Paul let the body drop. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yes,” he said, and his voice was gravel and old blood. He crossed the space between them in an instant. The priest swung a pathetic fist. Paul caught it, squeezed, felt the delicate bones of the hand collapse. The priest screamed.
“You know the man on the island,” Paul said, pulling him close. “Jud. You know what your brothers were going to do with him.”
“A commodity!” the priest shrieked. “A blessed vessel! You don’t understand his gift, his nature!”
“I understand he is loved,” Paul whispered. Then he bit down, not on the throat, but on the side of the man’s face, tearing away flesh and muscle. The scream became a gurgle. Paul fed with a feverish, joyous brutality, a holy vengeance for every touch, every violation Jud had ever endured. He drank the man’s life, his memories, his petty cruelties, until the vessel was empty.
Silence, except for the shallow, drugged breathing of the people in the stalls. Paul stood amid the carnage, blood dripping from his chin. The ancient fury receded, leaving a cold, clear clarity. He looked at the frightened, hollow-eyed faces watching him from behind the wooden slats.
He moved slowly now, with deliberate calm. He found a ring of keys on the clipboard man’s belt and began unlocking the stall doors. His voice, when he spoke, was soft, the voice they knew from Sunday Mass. “It’s alright. You’re safe now. No one will hurt you again.”
They stared at him, at the blood on his face and hands. One young woman with gaunt cheeks reached a trembling hand toward him. He took it, his grip gentle. “I have a place,” he said. “An island. It’s poor, and it’s cold, but the people are good. They’ll take you in. You’ll be safe there. No one will ever lock you in a place like this again.”
He led them out, one by one, using the coarse blankets from the van to cover them. He guided them into the woods, away from the barn, toward the stolen sedan. He would need to make two trips.
Back on the island, the standoff had reached its apex. Warren’s finger was tight on the trigger. Bev’s pistol didn’t waver. The bishops, finally understanding their authority was meaningless here, released Jud’s arms. He stumbled forward, and Sarah caught him, wrapping her own coat around his shoulders.
“This isn’t over,” Gaines spat, his face mottled with rage. “You are harboring a fugitive. A deviant. We will return with the law.”
“You do that,” Bev said. “See what happens. Now get in your car. Slowly. And drive to the dock. The next ferry’s at dawn. I suggest you wait in your car with the doors locked.”
Cowed, the bishops and their two hired men edged through the crowd, which parted just enough to let them pass. The islanders watched, a silent, armed escort, as they got into their sedan and drove off, their headlights sweeping over the grim, triumphant faces.
Inside the rectory, Sarah sat Jud on the couch, wiping the blood from his lip. Someone put the kettle on. The plush lion was retrieved from the upstairs floor and pressed back into his hands. He held it, staring at the faces around him, tears finally cutting clean tracks through the grime on his cheeks. “Why?” he whispered.
Warren grunted, leaning his shotgun by the door. “Because you’re ours, Father. That’s all.”
While Jud sipped tea, surrounded by his unlikely guard, Paul was returning to the barn for the second group of freed slaves. Once they were all safely stowed in the car, he walked back to the structure one final time. He found a half-full gasoline can near a rusted generator. He splashed the fuel over the walls, the stalls, the bodies. The smell was sharp and clean.
He lit a match and dropped it.
The whoomph of ignition sent a wave of heat rolling over him. Flames raced up the walls, hungry and bright, painting the night in oranges and reds. He watched it burn, the fire reflecting in his dark eyes. This was a pyre for the men who had worked there, and a funeral for the part of him that still believed he could be only a gentle shepherd.
When the roof caved in and the fire began to die to a roaring heap of embers, Paul found a long, charred plank. He walked to the edge of the ash, where the heat still shimmered the air. He used the point of the plank to write, digging the message deep into the dirt and soot, filling the grooves with blood he let drip from a fresh cut on his palm.
The words were stark, a prophecy and a promise: THIS IS THE WRATH OF THE LAMB. COME FOR HIM AGAIN, AND I WILL BURN YOUR CHURCH TO THE GROUND.
He threw the plank into the embers. Then he turned his back on the smoldering ruin and walked to the car full of silent, watching people. He started the engine, the headlights cutting a path away from the fire, and began the long drive back to the coast, back to the ferry, back to Jud. Many of them are regular humans, their scent of fear and resignation palpable. Others are indeed like Jud, their pheromones a cocktail of delicious sweetness that makes his head spin. They are nothing like Jud’s unique taste though, and he wants these good folks home safe and sound once it’s all over.
The islanders, still gathered in the rectory, saw the first faint blush of dawn through the windows. The immediate threat was gone. But the air still thrummed with the night’s violence, both there and far away, a debt partially paid in blood and fire, waiting for the other priest to come home.