Chapter 1: A Talk
The worst of it was done; the angel was dead, and the rectory had burned with it inside. But all the miracles had stayed. Paul was still young, still handsome, still bright as a vampire. His skin didn’t feel the late afternoon chill, but the ache in his lower back from sleeping on the church pews was real enough. He was tired of it. Tired of the whispers, the sideways looks, the palpable absence where a home should be.
So he’d started clearing the ruins.
He stood in the blackened skeleton of his old home, the air still carrying the ghost of smoke and ozone. Charred beams crisscrossed the stone foundation like broken ribs. He held a tape measure, extended it across a relatively unscorched plank of wood with the confident frown of a man who had no idea what he was doing. He wore a simple white tank top and jeans, both already smudged with ash. The fabric clung a little to the sweat on his skin, and he was acutely aware of how the neckline revealed the hollow of his throat, how the thin cotton did nothing to hide the soft, distinct outline of his breasts or the points of his nipples. It was practical, but it felt exposed.
“Well. Look at the handyman.”
Paul flinched. The tape measure snapped back, whipping against his thumb. He turned to see Bev Keane standing just outside the stone boundary, her hands clasped primly before her. Her smile was a thin, bloodless line.
“Bev. Hello.” He forced a calm he didn’t feel, wiping his sooty hands on his jeans.
“Building a new house of lies, are we?” she asked, stepping closer over the rubble. Her eyes swept over him, lingering with disdain on the tank top, the sweat, his form. “A new rectory. How… hypocritical.”
“People need a church. I need a place to sleep that isn’t a pew,” Paul said, his voice patient. He made himself stop, made himself listen. It was a priest’s habit, and despite everything, the muscle memory held.
“What they need is a real priest. What they got is you.” Her voice dropped, low and venomous. “You took it all from them. Their salvation. Their miracles. The angel offered us eternal life, a pure life, and you killed it. But you? You got to keep everything. The youth. The strength. The pretty face.” She spat the last words. “You’re a demonic slut who got all the power and gifts of being whatever abomination you are now, without having to pay any of the symptoms. No bloodlust? No burning in the sun? Just… perfection. While the rest of us rot.”
Paul’s stomach tightened. He looked away, focusing on a half-melted candlestick in the ashes. “It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t a gift. It’s a… condition. A state of being.”
“Did you fuck it?”
The question hit him like a physical blow. His head snapped up. “What?”
“The angel. Did you spread your legs for it? Is that how you convinced it? How you got all the benefits without the cost?” Bev’s eyes were lit with a furious, religious fervor. “You’re a soulless, disgusting disgrace to the Church. To this island. You parade around in that… that body…” She gestured vaguely at his chest, his hips, “…like it’s not a monument to your sin. You slept with a monster and now you’re its kept thing.”
A tremble started in Paul’s hands, a fine vibration that traveled up his arms. It was the awkward, crawling anxiety of being seen in a way that was both wildly inaccurate and piercingly intimate. Shame, hot and nauseating, coated his throat. He couldn’t form words. He just stood there, trembling in the ashes of his home, feeling more naked than if he’d been stripped bare.
“You okay?”
The new voice was gravel and smoke. Paul blinked, and Riley was there, stepping around a fallen beam. He must have come from the path behind the church. His dark eyes moved from Paul’s pale, shaking form to Bev’s rigid fury, assessing the scene in a second.
Bev didn’t miss a beat. “This doesn’t concern you, convict.”
“Looks like it does,” Riley said, his voice flat. He walked right up, inserting himself physically between Paul and Bev. He didn’t touch Paul, but his presence was a solid wall. “He looked concerned. I’m concerned. So it concerns me. Why don’t you get off your fucking high horse, Bev? You’re not the pope of Crockett Island. You’re just a bitter bitch who’s pissed because you can’t have power over everyone else anymore.”
Bev’s face purpled. Her composure shattered. “You filth. You’re both in it together, aren’t you? A pair of fags, defending each other’s perversions. God sees you! He sees this!”
“Yeah, well, He’s got a shitty view from where I’m standing,” Riley shot back, not raising his voice. “Now fuck off. Before I decide to start rebuilding this place with the nearest available material, which is looking a lot like you right now.”
For a long, seething moment, Bev looked like she might actually spring at him. Then she drew herself up, her lips pressed so tight they vanished. “Abomination,” she hissed, a final, comprehensive curse meant for both of them. She turned on her heel and stalked away, her shoes crunching violently on the debris.
The tension didn’t leave with her. It pooled around Paul’s feet, thick and heavy. He realized he was holding his breath. He let it out in a shaky shudder, and to his horror, he felt the hot prick of tears in his eyes. He looked down, swiping at them with an ash-blackened wrist.
“Hey,” Riley said, softer now. He turned, his body blocking Paul from the direction Bev had gone. “Don’t.”
“I’m sorry,” Paul whispered, the guilt a solid weight. “She’s… she’s not entirely wrong.”
“About which part? The angel-fucking? Because I gotta say, Paul, that’s a new one.” Riley’s tone was dry, but there was no malice in it.
Paul choked on something that was half a sob, half a laugh. “No. About… keeping the… the benefits. While everyone else suffered. It feels like theft.”
Riley was quiet for a moment. He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, tapped one out, but didn’t light it. Just rolled it between his fingers. “You didn’t choose it. Not the end result, anyway. You got dealt a shitty, eternal hand. But you’re still here. You’re still trying. Maybe instead of feeling guilty for not being cursed enough, you could just… be happy you can still stand in the sun. That you’re not a monster. That’s a blessing, whether you believe in the guy handing them out or not.”
Paul looked up at him, truly looked. Riley’s face was weary, etched with a guilt of his own that was decades deep, but his gaze was steady. “It’s funny,” Paul said quietly, his voice rough. “That an atheist is the one defending me. Telling me to count my blessings.”
A faint, rough chuckle escaped Riley. “It’s not for nothing. And for the record, I’m still pissed at you for trying to convert me. For a while there, you really were a monster. But.” He shrugged, a small, tight movement. “You’re also the guy who cares if kids get enough to eat. You’re a good man at heart. Even if that heart doesn’t technically beat. So. Yeah.”
The simplicity of it, the staggering fairness, undid another piece of the knot inside Paul. He nodded, swallowing hard.
Riley glanced at the sad plank of wood, the abandoned tape measure. “You actually know how to do this?”
“Not even a little,” Paul admitted.
“Right.” Riley sighed, put the unlit cigarette behind his ear, and picked up the tape measure. “Okay. First, you’re measuring junk wood. That’s burnt through. See this char? It’s got the structural integrity of a biscuit. You need to start with salvage, not souvenirs.” He moved through the rubble with a confident ease, kicking at beams, testing their solidity with his hands. “I can help. If you want. I did some carpentry inside. Not like this, but the basics translate.”
The offer was so starkly kind, so devoid of spiritual transaction or hidden motive, that Paul could only stare for a second. “You… you would do that?”
“I’m offering, aren’t I?” Riley said, not looking at him, focused on prying a long, serviceable-looking board free. “Beats staring at the wall of my dad’s house. And you can’t sleep on those pews forever. You’ll ruin your back. More than it already is, old man.”
Paul felt a smile, fragile and real, touch his lips. “Thank you, Riley.”
They worked in tandem as the dusk began to bleed into the sky. Riley directed, Paul fetched and held. Riley’s hands were sure, his movements economical. He explained things in short, clear sentences—checking for level, why a certain joint would fail. Paul listened, absorbing the practical knowledge, but more than that, he watched. He watched the muscles shift under Riley’s shirt, the focused line of his brow, the way he could sink a nail in three clean strikes.
The thought came, quiet and unbidden, as he handed Riley a fresh nail.
I should have made him like me.
It was a shocking thought. Unchristian. Deeply selfish. Not the righteous conversion he’d once envisioned, but something private and desperate and human. The angel was gone. That door was sealed. But the wish remained, blooming in the silent, secret chamber of his heart.
It would be nice. To not be so alone. To have forever, and to share it with someone who saw the man first, the miracle second. With someone whose hands knew how to build, and not just destroy.
He took the hammer from Riley, their fingers brushing. A static shock, or something like it, passed between them. Paul didn’t pull away.
“Like this?” he asked, positioning the nail.
Riley’s hand covered his, adjusting the angle. “A little more to the right. Yeah. Now hit it. Don’t think too hard.”
Paul swung. The nail went in straight.