Chapter 11: A Confession on the Cliffs
The wind off the water was a raw, living thing, tugging at their clothes and their resolve. Riley’s shoulder was going numb from the pressure of Paul’s head, but he didn’t move. The silence between them wasn’t empty; it was full of the things Paul had just traded away.
“There’s something else,” Paul said, so softly the words were nearly eaten by the gale.
Riley waited. He’d gotten good at waiting.
Paul sat up straight, pulling away from the contact as if it burned. He kept his eyes on the churning black water below. “I’m starving, Riley.” The confession was blunt, ugly. “I have been for days. The thing inside… it thirsts. Constantly. I’m a thrall to it, and to the blood. I’m terrified of taking it, and I’m dying because I haven’t.”
He finally glanced over, his blue eyes glowing with a faint, sickly light that had nothing to do with the moon. “And God help me, I thirst for you most of all. Your pulse, right there.” He gestured weakly toward Riley’s throat. “It’s all I can hear sometimes.”
Riley’s own heart gave a hard, painful thud against his ribs. He swallowed. “So why didn’t you? In all those nights. Why am I still here?”
A broken laugh escaped Paul’s lips. “You’re joking, right?” He shook his head, rainwater flying. “Because from the moment you walked into that confessional and told me you didn’t believe in God but you believed in guilt, I was lost. It’s hard to want to kill anyone. It’s impossible to want to kill you. You’re… you’re good. In a way that has nothing to do with saints or scripture. You’re just good. You burn with it. And it softened the hunger. Loving you did. It became a different kind of ache.”
He looked down at his hands, turning them over as if seeing the potential violence in them for the first time. “I’m sorry. For all of it. For bringing this here. For being too weak to stop it. For loving you when it’s the most dangerous thing I could do to you.”
Riley let the words settle. The horror was there, a cold knot in his gut. But it was wrapped in a terrible, undeniable understanding. He knew what it was to be a prisoner to a thing inside you that wanted to destroy everything. His had been guilt. Paul’s was literal.
“You said at dawn,” Riley said. “Anything vampiric dies. You can’t hide from it. What does that mean for you?”
“It means when the sun cracks over that water, I’ll be standing in it.” Paul’s voice was final. “It’s the only right thing left. Maybe I can draw it out, the angel. Maybe it dies with me. A cleaner end than I deserve, but it’s the play.”
“I don’t want you to die.” The words were out before Riley could temper them, raw and childish.
“I know.” Paul reached over and cupped Riley’s cheek, his thumb tracing the line of his jaw. “That’s the miracle, Riley. That you could know what I am and still say that. It’s the only prayer that’s ever been answered.”
Riley turned his face into Paul’s palm. The skin was cold. He covered Paul’s hand with his own. “Then we have until dawn.”
They didn’t go back to the rectory. It was too exposed, too full of memories that now felt like artifacts from a lost civilization. They found an old, boarded-up fishing shack a hundred yards down the cliff path, its door hanging from one rusted hinge. Inside, it was dry, smelling of damp wood and old netting.
They didn’t speak. Words were useless now. There was only touch, a desperate, silent language of its own.
Paul’s kisses were soft, questioning, as if he was afraid his lips might betray his teeth. Riley answered with a certainty he didn’t feel, pulling him closer, his hands finding the familiar planes of Paul’s back under the soaked black shirt. It was nothing like before. There was no feverish passion, no hungry exploration. This was a sealing. A vow.
Every brush of skin was a memory etched. The scar on Paul’s shoulder from a childhood fall he’d never talked about. The tremor in Riley’s hands as they relearned the landscape of Paul’s spine. The salt on their skin was from the sea and from tears that neither acknowledged.
After, they lay tangled on a pile of musty canvas tarps, the world narrowed to the sound of their breathing and the storm outside. Paul’s head was on Riley’s chest, directly over his heart.
“That’s my song,” Paul whispered.
Riley stared up at the dark rafters. “We need a plan. Before sunrise.”
“The plan is I face it. You get to the rec center, help them hold out. Help Erin.”
“That’s your plan. Mine’s different.” Riley shifted, forcing Paul to look at him. “We fight. Together. We use whatever you have left. We get everyone we can to that rec center, we board it up, and we wait for dawn. And when it comes, you don’t go outside. We hide you in a closet, in a crate, in the damn root cellar if there is one. We see if you live.”
“Riley—”
“You don’t get to martyr yourself. Not after this. We find out. Together.”
Paul searched his face, his eyes glimmering in the profound dark. He nodded, a tiny, surrendering movement. “Okay. Together.”
They dressed in the damp, cold clothes, the intimacy already feeling like a dream. As they stepped back out into the punishing wind, Paul caught Riley’s wrist.
“Before the sun,” he said. “Whatever happens. We find each other first.”
“Deal.”
They moved through the back ways of the island, ghosts in their own home. The main street was deserted, but they could hear things—scrabbling sounds from inside houses, a short, cut-off scream from near the docks, the low, guttural crying of someone who was no longer themselves.
The rec center was a solid, square building of cinder block, originally built for bingo nights and community potlucks. A sliver of yellow light shone from under the steel-reinforced door. Riley knocked, three quick, two slow, a pattern from their childhood.
A eye slot slid open. Annie Flynn’s terrified eye peered out. It widened. The bolts scraped back.
Inside was a scene of desperate refuge. Maybe thirty islanders huddled on folding chairs and gym mats. The air was thick with fear and the smell of stale coffee. Leeza Scarborough was handing out blankets. Sheriff Hassan stood by a stacked-up table, his pistol still in his hand, his face a monument to cognitive dissonance. Sturge’s wife was weeping quietly in a corner. And by the small kitchenette, Erin Greene sat on a chair, her hands protectively over her belly, her face pale but fiercely calm.
Everyone looked up as they entered. The silence was immediate and heavy.
Ed Flynn stood. “Riley. Son.” He didn’t ask where they’d been. His eyes were red-rimmed. “Warren… he didn’t make it.”
Riley felt the words like a physical blow. His brother. Innocent, kind, young Warren. He just nodded, the guilt a familiar, acidic taste. Another death on the watch of a Flynn.
Paul stepped forward, and Riley saw him visibly gather the tattered remains of his priesthood around him. The charismatic presence was still there, but it was cracked, bleeding fatigue.
“Listen to me,” Paul said, his voice carrying without being loud. “The people who were infected in the church… they will come here. They’re driven by hunger now, and by Bev. They cannot cross running water, so the bridge is out. They cannot enter a home without invitation. This,” he gestured to the rec center, “is a public building. It was built for everyone. The threshold is weak. They can come in.”
A murmur of panic rippled through the room.
“So we make it strong,” Riley said, moving to stand beside Paul. “We board every window. We barricade that door with everything that isn’t nailed down. We take shifts watching. And we wait for the sun.”
“What does the sun do?” Erin asked from her corner.
Paul met her gaze. “It burns them. It will burn me, too. It may be the only thing that stops this.”
Erin held his look, and gave a single, sharp nod. No forgiveness, just understanding.
Work began. It was frantic, quiet, fueled by a shared, terrified purpose. They overturned tables, stacked chairs, used tools from the maintenance closet to screw plywood over the high windows. Riley worked alongside his father, their shoulders brushing, words unnecessary.
Paul helped where he could, but Riley saw him flinch whenever someone with a minor cut passed by, saw his jaw tighten with the effort. He was holding on by a thread.
As Riley hammered a board over the last window, he felt a presence. Sheriff Hassan stood beside him, his pistol held loosely at his side.
“They were my neighbors,” Hassan said, not looking at Riley. “Mildred Gunning brought me a pie when I first moved here. Now I’m supposed to… what? Put a bullet in her?”
“I don’t know, Sheriff,” Riley said, sinking a nail. “But the thing that’s in her isn’t Mildred anymore. My uncle found that out.”
Hassan was quiet for a long moment. “Your priest. He’s one of them, isn’t he?”
Riley stopped hammering. He looked Hassan dead in the eye. “He’s fighting it. He’s why we’re all in here and not out there. You’ll have to decide if that’s enough.”
Before Hassan could answer, a sound cut through the low noise of the barricade work.
A voice, amplified by a bullhorn, sweet and terrible as poisoned syrup, rolled over the building from outside.
“Father? Poor, lost Father Paul. I know you’re in there. Your flock is hungry. Your real flock. Come out and lead us. It’s your duty.”
Bev Keane.
Everyone froze. The banging stopped. The crying hitched. All eyes turned to the front of the room, toward the barricaded door.
Paul closed his eyes. When he opened them, the faint amber glow was there, fighting the blue. He walked to the door, put his hand flat against the cold steel. He didn’t speak to her. He spoke to the people behind him.
“Dawn is in four hours,” he said, his voice thick. “Hold this door. No matter what you hear. No matter who begs. You hold it.”
Outside, Bev’s voice dripped with faux compassion. “We can smell them, Father. The unworthy. The stale blood. Let us in. We can make the waiting so much more… pleasant.”
A thud hit the door, not a bang, but a solid, heavy weight. Then another. And another.
They were here.
Riley moved to Paul’s side, his shoulder touching his. He didn’t look at the door. He looked at Paul’s profile, at the brand on his cheek, at the man holding the monster at bay by sheer will.
“We find each other before the sun,” Riley whispered, repeating their promise.
Paul’s cold fingers found his and locked on tight.
“Yeah,” Paul breathed, as the pounding on the door settled into a steady, relentless rhythm. “We do.”