Chapter 9: Father Paul's Last Confession
The rectory bed was a raft on a sea of nausea. Paul lay adrift, the sheets tangled around his trembling legs, soaked through with a cold sweat that had nothing to do with fever. Every breath was a shudder. Behind his closed eyelids, the memory played on a loop, not as a thought but as a physical violation re-experienced in his marrow—the crushing weight, the tear of impossible anatomy, the feeling of something alien and potent being forced into him, a violation that had scraped his soul raw and left a dark, squirming seed behind.
He cried silently, the tears hot tracks through the stubble on his cheeks. The urge to simply cease, to let the burning in his veins consume him and be done with it, was a sweet, whispering song. To never move from this damp bed. To never again face the thing that wore him like a suit or the woman who wielded his stolen authority like a blade.
Then, through the salt-caked window, a sound sliced through the haze.
The loud, leathery flutter of vast wings. A familiar, guttural roar that vibrated in the fillings of his teeth. And a woman’s cry—sharp, clear, and saturated with pure terror.
Erin.
His eyes flew open. The room swam. Another sound echoed in his mind, not from outside but from memory: the sound of his daughter Sarah’s laughter, a bright bell in the Jerusalem sun, a sound he’d killed. Sarah was in that church right now. His brave, stubborn girl, standing with the others, trying to protect them from the very horror he’d ushered onto their shores. Erin, pregnant and fierce, was fighting too. And Riley… Riley was facing it all down with nothing but the truth and his own broken heart.
They were standing. While he lay in bed wanting to die.
A low, animal sound of shame and anger ripped from his throat.
He was a forced consort. A contaminated vessel. A walking crime. But he was not entirely empty. There was a sliver of him left, a shard of Monsignor Pruitt, of Paul, of a father, of a man who had loved and been loved. It was enough. It had to be.
With a groan that was part pain, part defiance, he rolled onto his side. Every muscle screamed. The world tilted. He shoved himself up, sitting on the edge of the bed, his head hanging between his shoulders as he gasped. The simple act of standing was a Herculean feat. He dressed with fumbling, clumsy hands—black pants, a simple black sweater, his clerical collar left discarded on the nightstand. He was not going as a priest. He was going as a man.
He did not take a crucifix. He took only the last dregs of his will.
Stumbling through the rectory’s dark halls, he burst out the front door into the chaotic night. The wind slapped him, carrying the distant sounds of panic from the church. He ran, a lurching, unsteady gait, his body protesting every step, the dark seed inside him pulsing with a discordant rhythm. The church doors were open, a maw of light and shadow.
He saw it all in a single, devastating snapshot: Bev, radiant and terrible, holding the chalice aloft. Millie Gunning, Sarah’s mother, her face a mask of tear-stained surrender, reaching for it. Riley, ten feet away, frozen in anguished indecision. The congregation, a tableau of hypnotized fear.
“No!”
The word was a ragged scream, torn from the very core of him. He didn’t recognize his own voice.
He charged forward, a phantom in black, and his hand shot out, not at Bev, but at the cup in Millie’s hands. He didn’t grab it. He slapped it away.
The silver chalice clattered to the wooden floor with a shocking, ringing din. Blood-red wine—thick, too thick—exploded across the planks, a violent splash against the feet of the altar. It seeped into the grain, a dark, spreading stain.
All eyes swung to him.
He stood there, panting, pale as the communion wafer. He looked spectral, ill, his hair plastered to his forehead with sweat, his eyes wide with a terror that hadn’t left them. He swayed.
“Go home,” he pleaded, his voice shaky but carrying. “Please. All of you, just go home. Lock your doors. You can’t be here. This isn’t salvation. This is a slaughterhouse.” He looked at Millie, his gaze desperate. “Sarah needs her mother. Go home.”
The spell was broken. Millie staggered back, staring at the stain on the floor, then at Paul’s horrified face. Confusion erupted, a babble of voices.
Bev turned on him. The beatific mask vanished, replaced by pure, incandescent fury. “You,” she spat. “You weak, sniveling Judas.”
Paul flinched but held his ground, trembling.
“Look at you,” Bev sneered, her voice dropping into a intimate, vicious register. “Your master calls. It hungers. It is displeased. Go to it. Seek its embrace and beg forgiveness for this betrayal.”
A full-body shudder wracked Paul. The command wasn’t just words. It was a key turning in the lock of his flesh. He felt a horrible tug, a compulsion deep in his cells, an instinct to obey the one who shared the blood. His legs tensed. His head turned toward the shattered window, toward the cliffside and the roaring dark where the angel had taken Erin.
“No,” he whispered, tears welling again.
“Go to your master, Paul!” Bev commanded, her voice sharpening into a whip-crack.
The compulsion became a physical pain. A whimper escaped him. His body took a jerking, involuntary step toward the window. Then another. He was crying openly now, fighting every neuron, every sinew, but losing. “I don’t want to. Please.”
“It’s okay.” The voice was calm, close.
Riley was there. He moved in front of Paul, blocking his path to the window. He didn’t attack, didn’t shout. He simply opened his arms and pulled Paul into a tight, unbreakable embrace. He held the trembling priest as if he could physically anchor him to the spot with the weight of his own body. Paul buried his face in Riley’s shoulder, his body convulsing with sobs and the effort of resistance.
Then Riley did something that silenced the entire church. He kissed Paul’s sweat-damp forehead, a gentle press of lips. He pulled back just enough to look into Paul’s terrified eyes, and kissed him again, softly, on the mouth.
It was not passionate. It was a promise. A claim. A seal.
In the stark candlelight, the truth of them was laid bare for the entire island to see. The haunted ex-con and the shattered priest, clinging to each other not as sinners, but as the only two people on earth who understood the specific weight of the hell they carried. It was love, complicated and forbidden, and in that moment, it was the most purely human thing left in the room.
A heavy silence descended, thicker than the earlier fear. Faces registered shock, confusion, disapproval. Old Joe looked away, jaw tight. But no one spoke.
Bv found her voice, dripping with venom. “See? The degeneracy at the heart of this failure! This is the corruption that weakens the flock! This… affection is a disease!”
“Oh, shut up, Bev.”
The voice was tired, flat, and came from the pews. Leeza Scarborough stood up, Ed Flyyn’s hand in hers. “You’ve got a monster doing your laundry and you’re worried about who’s kissing who? Get a grip.”
Annie Flynn rose beside her, her eyes red-rimmed but clear. She looked at her son holding the man he loved, and she took a step forward. “You told us my boy was a sinner beyond redemption,” she said to Bev, her voice quivering but loud. “But he’s the only one who had the guts to call you a murderer to your face. He’s standing there. So I’m standing here.”
Ed nodded, stepping forward with Leeza. “Yeah. That’s about the size of it.”
They formed a loose, fragile line between Riley and Paul and the rest of the congregation—a mother, a healed girl, and a quiet fisherman. A defense not with weapons, but with simple, inconvenient humanity. The line was thin, but it was enough to break Bev’s absolute authority. The congregation remained, no longer a unified flock, but a crowd of individuals waking up to a nightmare, their eyes darting between the stained floor, the defiant couple, and the livid woman at the altar who had just offered them poison.