Chapter 9: The Morning After the Beating
The peace had been a fragile, beautiful thing. For weeks, the island had held its breath, then slowly exhaled, accepting the strange new pattern. Riley, unemployed but purposeful, spent his afternoons at the half-finished rectory, sanding windowsills Paul had fitted, brewing coffee that Paul never drank but loved the smell of. Their refuge. Evenings, Paul would walk the path to Riley’s cottage, and they would learn the quiet grammar of a shared life. Who made dinner (Riley, badly). Who washed up (Paul, meticulously). Who stole the blankets (Riley, always). It was mundane. It was a miracle.
Paul had found his passion again, not for a vengeful angel, but for the simple, worn wood of the pews, the whispered woes of his flock. He preached mercy. He spoke of a love that could embrace contradiction. He prayed with the old women who had lost husbands to the bloodshed, and he held the hands of the children who still had night terrors. He became a light again, steadier now, humbler. The people came around. They brought casseroles. They smiled at him and Riley in the market, a smile that held a question but not always condemnation. A tentative, Crockett Island kind of grace.
It made the hatred, when it finally struck, feel like a physical betrayal of the air itself.
It happened after evening prayers. Bev Keane had stayed behind, requesting confession. Paul, ever the pastor, had obliged, settling into the dark, close space of the booth, expecting her usual litany of minor judgments and spites.
She didn’t speak. The door on her side clicked shut. A second later, his own door was wrenched open.
Three men in rough knit masks yanked him out. He fought, a whirl of preternatural speed and strength that surprised them, catching one in the throat, sending him gagging to the floor. But they were prepared, heavy, and driven by a venomous certainty. A pipe wrapped in rag caught him across the kidneys. The world flashed white and red. He cried out, a shout that was smothered by a fist to his diaphragm.
Bev stood before the altar, her hands folded, her face a placid mask of disgust. The men rained blows down. Kicks to his ribs, stomps on his outstretched hands. The crack of metacarpals was a sound he felt in his teeth.
“You have no place here,” Bev said, her voice a dry rustle in the violence. “The word will spread of your hideous nature. Your abomination. Your life here is over.”
Paul curled, trying to protect his head, his body screaming with a pain his immortality could not suppress. A final, savage kick landed at the base of his spine. Something gave way with a nauseating crunch deep inside him. The world faded to a narrow, buzzing tunnel.
They left him there, bleeding dark, thick blood onto the cold stone. His jaw hung loose. His fingers were twisted art. He tried to move his legs and couldn’t. He laid in the silence, listening to the drip of his own ruin.
Time blurred. He was dragged, a sack of broken things, the gravel of the path tearing his back. Then he was dumped. Doorsteps. Light.
Riley opened the rectory door to see a figure sprinting into the darkness and a crumpled heap on the ground. It took his brain three full heartbeats to understand the heap was Paul.
“No.” The word was flat, too small. Then: “Paul!”
He was on his knees, hands hovering. Paul’s face was a swollen nightmare of purple and black, one eye sealed shut. His mouth was open at a wrong angle, leaking a thin trail of black. His left hand was a crushed spider. Riley’s own breath came in sharp, tearing gasps. He slid his arms underneath, trying to be gentle, but Paul made a wet, choked noise that shattered Riley’s world.
He carried him inside, laid him on their bed—the narrow cot that still smelled of them. His hands were shaking so badly he could barely unbutton Paul’s coat.
“Okay, okay, fuck, okay,” he chanted, a frantic mantra. He fumbled for his phone, stabbed at Erin’s number.
It rang twice. “Riley? It’s late.” Her voice was thick with sleep.
“Erin. You need to come. To the rectory. Now.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s Paul. He’s… someone beat him. It’s bad. It’s really fucking bad.” His voice cracked.
A pause. He could hear her moving, the rustle of clothes. “I’ll call Sarah. Is he conscious?”
Riley looked at Paul’s one open eye, glazed with pain, fixed on him. “Yeah.”
“Keep him awake. I’m coming.”
He knelt by the bed. “Erin’s coming. Sarah’s coming. Just hold on, Paul. Just look at me.” He took Paul’s unbroken right hand, cold and slick with blood. He pressed it to his own lips, his forehead, holding it there as if he could pour his own life into it through touch.
Erin arrived within ten minutes, her medical bag in hand, Sarah Gunning behind her, face pale but set. They didn’t flinch at the dark blood. They’d seen it before.
“Christ,” Sarah breathed, taking in the damage.
Erin was all business, her warmth gone clinical, sharp. “Riley, boil water. Tear clean sheets into strips. Now.”
He moved like an automaton, the familiar orders a small anchor in the storm. When he returned, Erin was assessing Paul’s jaw with careful fingers.
“Jaw’s dislocated. Fingers are broken. Ribs too. His back…” She looked at Paul’s eyes. “Can you feel your legs?”
Paul’s eye blinked slowly. Once. Yes.
“Okay. Good. This is going to hurt.”
She braced her hands. Paul’s eye locked onto Riley. Riley gripped his hand tighter. “Look at me. Just at me.”
Erin pushed, a quick, brutal motion. There was a sickening wet pop. Paul’s whole body arched off the bed, a silent scream in his throat. Then he went limp, his eye swimming with tears he couldn’t properly shed.
They worked for an hour. Splinting the shattered fingers, wrapping his ribs tight. They cleaned the cuts, the dark blood welling stubbornly. The back injury was beyond them. “The spine’s fractured,” Sarah said softly to Erin, not looking at Riley. “It’ll heal. Immortality is strange, I suppose. But it’s going to be a long, painful process. He won’t walk for a while.”
Finally, it was done. Sarah left with a promise to return at dawn with better supplies. Erin cleaned up, her movements slowing as the adrenaline faded. She stood at the foot of the bed, looking at the wreckage of the man who had once been her priest, her betrayer, her friend’s impossible love.
“Bev?” she asked quietly.
Riley, still holding Paul’s hand, just nodded. His jaw was a rock.
Erin’s face hardened. “I’ll deal with the church. You stay here. Both of you. Don’t go out.” She placed a hand on Riley’s shoulder, squeezed once, and left.
The silence after the door closed was profound. The only sound was the ragged edge of Riley’s own breathing and the soft, occasional hitch from Paul. The room smelled of iodine, blood, and fear.
Riley let go of Paul’s hand only to fetch a damp cloth. He sat on the edge of the bed and began to clean the blood from Paul’s face, from his neck, his touch impossibly gentle.
Paul watched him. His swollen jaw made speech impossible, but his one open eye was an ocean of apology, of sorrow.
“Don’t,” Riley whispered, understanding. “Don’t you dare apologize for this. This is on them. All of it.” His voice broke. He dropped the cloth and leaned forward, resting his forehead against Paul’s uninjured temple. He stayed there, breathing him in, the scent of pain and familiar skin.
Paul’s good hand came up, the splinted fingers clumsy, and rested weakly on the back of Riley’s head.
They stayed like that as the last of the night bled away outside. The injustice of it was a physical weight in the room. The groove Paul had found, the light he’d become, all shattered into this broken, breathing thing on their bed. There was no moving him to Riley’s cottage now. No domestic quiet. Only this: the vigil, the pain, and the fierce, silent promise in Riley’s touch that he would not leave this spot until Paul could stand beside him again.