Chapter 5: The Confession in the Storm
The world had gone silent and roaring at once. The howl of the wind was nothing next to the human sounds outside the thick stone walls of St. Patrick’s basement—screams that cut off wetly, the brittle crunch of timber, and beneath it all, a hungry, chittering cacophony that was not human at all. It was the sound of the flock, unleashed. Bev’s zealotry had lit the fuse, but Paul had laid the powder keg.
Inside the rectory basement, the air was a solid thing. Damp cold seeped from the stones, carrying the scent of mildew and the iron-tinged fear sweating from the dozen bodies huddled in the flickering candlelight. Mildred Gunning prayed the rosary, her fingers racing over the beads, while Ali listened at the blocked stairwell, a fire axe held in white-knuckled hands. The others—Warren, Vince, a couple of Flynn kids—were mere shapes in the gloom, wide eyes reflecting the weak flame.
Paul held the crossbar of the reinforced oak door, his forehead pressed against the grain. Every scream from outside was a nail driven into his temple. He saw it in flashes behind his eyes: Fledglings, newborn and ravenous, their minds wiped to a single crimson imperative. They wouldn’t be cunning like him. They were locusts. And Jud was out there. Jud, who had fought his own demons, who had found a fragile peace, was now battling literal ones because of him.
“We can’t stay here forever,” Warren whispered, his voice cracking.
“We stay until dawn,” Paul said, the command in his voice automatic, hollow. He was a cracked bell, ringing a note that no longer held truth.
Another scream, closer this time. Right outside the church. It was followed by a wet, tearing sound and then a blissful, terrible silence.
That was the sound of his failure. It was the sound of Erin Greene, perhaps, or maybe young Leeza. It was the sound of the home he’d tried to make, being eaten alive.
His hand left the crossbar. He straightened his back, a new, fatal resolve settling in his bones. He would walk out there. He would let them see him, their progenitor. He would draw them to the cliffs, every last one, and he would take the sunrise with them. It was the only calculus left.
He turned, his eyes finding Riley in the shadows. Riley, who was watching him with a ferocious, knowing intensity.
“Bar the door after I’m gone,” Paul said, his voice too calm.
“No,” Riley said.
“Riley, listen to me—”
“I said no.” Riley was across the damp floor in three strides. He grabbed Paul’s arm, his grip vise-tight. “You are not going out there to die.”
“It’s the only way to draw them off! To end this!”
“Don’t you dare.” Riley’s voice was a low, searing snarl, but it cracked on the last word, betraying the terror beneath. “Don’t you dare martyr yourself. Not now.”
The dam broke.
Paul didn’t fall so much as dissolve. His knees gave out and he hit the stone floor with a hard crack, a sob wrenching itself from a place deeper than his ruined soul. It was a raw, ugly sound that silenced Mildred’s prayers. All the carefully constructed composure, the gentle charisma, the mysterious priest—it sloughed off like dead skin, leaving a naked, writhing thing.
“It’s my fault,” he gasped, the words pouring out like poisoned blood. “All of it. I brought it here. The vial… the blood. It was mine.”
Riley stared down, his face uncomprehending. “What?”
“I was the first.” Paul clutched at Riley’s jacket, anchoring himself to the only real thing left. “I was dying. Or… I thought I was. And I had a daughter, Riley. A little girl. She was sick. The blood… it wasn’t just for resurrection. I thought it could cure. I thought if I could understand it, if I could control it… I could bring her back. Make her whole.” He was shaking so violently his teeth chattered. “I failed. The blood was sick. It only makes monsters. And I… I am the original monster on this island.”
The silence in the basement was absolute, save for the distant feast outside. Riley’s hand had gone slack on his arm. Paul watched the understanding dawn, then the horror, then the devastating betrayal eclipse it all. The man he’d laughed with, debated with, the man whose quiet strength had been the first firm ground he’d felt in a century, was looking at him as if he’d never seen him before.
“You…” Riley breathed. “You started this?”
Paul could only nod, tears carving clean tracks through the grime on his face. “I infected Monsignor Pruitt. I buried him at sea hoping it would die with him. But it didn’t. It came back. And I stayed… because I was a coward. Because I saw a chance at a community, at a semblance of peace. And I saw you.” He was begging now, prostrate before the only jury that mattered. “I’m so sorry. For all of it. I will fix this. I swear to you, I will fix it or I will burn with it.”
Riley’s fists clenched at his sides. The anger was a live wire in the air. Paul braced for the blow, yearned for it. Punishment. Deserved annihilation.
But Riley’s face did something else. It fractured, not with rage, but with a painful, reluctant empathy. He saw the centuries of loneliness in Paul’s eyes, the desperate, misguided love for a lost child that mirrored his own for Erin, the self-loathing that was clearly a deeper hell than any Bev could ever imagine. The man was already in hell. This confession was him swimming in its lava.
“You idiot,” Riley whispered, the anger melting into exhausted anguish. “You loving, selfish idiot.”
He didn’t strike. He reached down. He hauled Paul up from the floor with a grunt, pulling the priest’s battered, trembling body against his own. Paul froze, then collapsed into the embrace, great, heaving sobs muffled in Riley’s shoulder.
“You fix this,” Riley muttered into his hair, his own voice thick. “And you come back. You hear me? You come back.”
Paul clung to him, fingers digging into the fabric of his coat. The words were there, the truth that was more terrifying than any vampire. This was the last secret, the last sin. If he was going to burn, he would burn honest.
“I love you,” he breathed, the sound barely audible. A confession for a confession. “I’ve loved you for a year. Since that night in the rec center, when you argued with me about forgiveness. I’m so… so sorry.”
Riley went very still. He pulled back just enough to look into Paul’s bloodshot, desperate eyes. The shock was total. It wasn’t rejection. It was the sheer, staggering weight of the admission, here, at the end of everything.
Paul saw the shock and misinterpreted it. His face crumpled again. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
Riley didn’t let him finish. He cupped Paul’s face, his hands rough and sure, and pulled him in.
The kiss wasn't gentle. It was a collision. A desperate, wholesale fusion of salt tears and choked breaths and a year’s worth of silent, guilty wanting. It was anger and forgiveness, betrayal and faith, all twisted together into something neither of them could name but both understood perfectly. Riley kissed him like he was trying to imprint the feeling, to seal a promise. Paul kissed back like a drowning man finding air.
Faith be damned. Scripture be damned. Hell be damned.
They had this. This one, brutal, perfect truth in the false dark.
When they broke apart, foreheads pressed together, their breaths mingling in the cold air, something had shifted. The anguish in Paul’s chest hadn't vanished, but it had mutated. It was joined by something new, something cruel in its timing, potent in its power. Hope. Relief. Love. A trinity more real to him in that moment than the one he’d preached.
“Survive the night,” Riley whispered, thumb stroking Paul’s cheekbone. “We’ll figure out the rest.”
Paul nodded, a shaky, impossible smile touching his lips. “Just survive the night.”
Outside, the monsters shrieked. But inside, for a fleeting second, they were not monsters. They were just two men, choosing each other as the world fell apart. It would have to be enough to get them through to dawn.