Chapter 4: Blood and Confession
The candlelight seemed to gutter, not from a draft but from the weight of the words. Riley’s hands, which had been stroking the soft linen of Paul’s shirt, went still. He didn’t pull away. He just… froze. The warm, sacred space of the bedroom turned cold and vast, a confessional with no screen.
“A winged angel,” Riley echoed, his voice flat. It wasn’t a question.
Paul nodded against his chest, a desperate, childlike motion. His body was trembling now, a fine, constant vibration. “Its blood. In the wine. In the communion. I thought… I thought it was a blessing. A reversal of decay. For the island. For me.” The words tumbled out between choked sobs. “I was so lost, Riley. I was ancient and my mind was… gone. And it saved me. It felt like grace.”
Riley’s mind, trained by years of prison to detach, began racing. The miracles. Leeza walking. Old faces looking renewed. The fervor in Bev’s eyes. The dog, dead in the street. Poison. Was it?
“You gave it to them,” Riley stated.
“Yes.”
“Did you give it to me?”
Paul flinched as if struck. He tilted his head back, his blue eyes glassy with tears, searching Riley’s face. “At first. When you first started coming to church. You looked so… hollowed out. I wanted to fill you with light. Any light I had.” He swallowed hard. “I stopped. Two weeks ago. It started to feel… possessive. Not holy. I couldn’t do that to you. Not to you.”
A bizarre, grim relief passed through Riley. So his fragile peace, his connection to Paul, that had been real. Not just a chemical of corrupted blood. Or maybe it was. How could he ever know?
“Other changes,” Riley prompted, his detective’s mind latching onto details. “You said other changes. Like being made young again.”
Paul went very quiet. The only sound was his ragged breathing and the distant, relentless shush of the tide against the half-sunk church below. He withdrew slightly, creating a terrible inch of space between them. “I’m not who you think I am.”
“Who are you, then?”
“I was Monsignor John Pruitt.”
Riley blinked. A laugh, sharp and humorless, escaped him. “Don’t. That’s not possible. He was an old man. He’s gone. He died overseas—”
“I didn’t die.” Paul’s voice dropped to a whisper, heavy with a century of weariness. “I got lost. The dementia… I wandered into a cave in the Jerusalem desert. And I found it. The angel. It was… beautiful. And terrible. It gave me its blood. It brought me back. It made me this.” He gestured at his own young body, his face a mask of torment. “I came home. As Paul Hill. To bring my flock this… this gift.”
Monsignor Pruitt. The stern, kind-faced priest who’d given Riley his first communion. Who’d visited his mother after his father died. Who should be dust in a grave. Riley’s brain short-circuited. He was holding him. Kissing him. The man who’d been a paternal fixture of his childhood was now the lover in his arms, his skin warm, his heart beating a frantic rhythm against Riley’s own.
A violent wave of nausea rose in his throat. It was a violation of nature, of memory, of every boundary he understood. His arms loosened.
Paul felt it. He crumpled. “Please,” he wept, the words dissolving into incoherent begging. “Forgive me. I’m so sorry. I’m so lost. Just… leave. Please, just leave me. You should go. You have to go.” He curled in on himself, a broken thing pleading for abandonment as his only conceivable penance.
Riley watched him. The love, a tangled, wretched vine, tightened around his ribs. He saw not a monster, but a profoundly traumatized man. He saw a mirror. He saw someone who had taken a wrong turn with catastrophic consequences, fueled by a desperate, misguided desire to do good. He understood that currency.
He couldn’t forgive him. Not for this. Forgiveness wasn’t his to give; it belonged to Joe Collins, to the whole island, to God if He was even listening anymore.
But he could do something else.
Slowly, as if moving through deep water, Riley reached out. He placed a hand on Paul’s heaving back. “I’m not leaving.”
Paul’s sobs hitched.
“I can’t forgive you,” Riley said, his voice low and raw. “That’s not my job. But I can stay. I can help you. We have to fix this. We have to save them. However we can.” He took a shaky breath. “Even if it means taking their miracles away.”
The words hung there. The promise was monstrous in its own way. To revoke the walking, the seeing, the renewed youth—to tell people the price of their salvation was an eternity as a blood-drinking creature of the night.
Paul uncurled. He looked up, his face ravaged, gleaming with tears. He searched Riley’s eyes for a lie, for a trap, and found only a resigned, unwavering determination. A sob ripped from him again, but this one was different—a release of a loneliness so profound it had fossilized. He nodded, violently, unable to speak.
A practical, absurd question surfaced in Riley’s stunned mind. “What do I call you?” he asked. “Pruitt? Or Paul?”
A pitiful, wet sound that was almost a laugh escaped Paul’s lips. “Paul. Please. I couldn’t… I can’t be him anymore. That name belongs to a dead man. This life, with you… it’s the only real thing left.”
“Okay. Paul.” The name felt the same. The man behind it was now an infinite, terrifying mystery.
Paul leaned forward, pressing his forehead against Riley’s shoulder, his body still trembling. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, over and over, a litany. “I love you so much. I’m so sorry.”
Riley held him. He stared over Paul’s head at the candle, its flame now steady, casting their intertwined shadow against the wall—a two-headed creature, bound in secret and sin. The path ahead was darkness. But for the first time since he’d crashed his car on that mainland road, Riley Flynn had a purpose beyond atonement. It was a terrible purpose. It might damn him further.
He would walk it anyway. With Paul.