Epilogue One
JAMESON
One year later…
My baby girl slept with her cheek pressed to my cut, her small fist tangled in the leather for comfort. Her soft hair curled along her forehead. Every slow breath moved against my chest. I kept my palm spread over her back, feeling each rise and fall, counting them without meaning to.
The television was on mute in front of me, some baseball game I wasn’t really watching glared back at me. The living room was quiet except for the low hum of the fridge and the clink of dishes in the kitchen where Sadie moved around.
A lot had happened in one year. We had buried Virgil.
We had nearly lost Grace. Hellsing had gone to Hell and come back.
The Scorpions and Croak had taken every chance they could to fuck with our business, probing for weak spots, testing boundaries around the Quarter and the bayou.
We had hit back when we had to, but the tension never fully broke.
And Sinnerman returned. He’d been gone a long time and surprised us all when he showed up at the clubhouse. The last time we’d seen him, his eyes had been hollowed from lack of sleep, and I knew that look in his eyes all too well.
Vengeance.
I couldn’t blame him after what he’d gone through. His entire family annihilated, and we all knew Sinnerman had gone hunting. He had left without a word and honestly, we hadn’t expected him back, which was why Hellsing had gotten the title of Chaplin.
He said he was ready to return but there was something in his eyes that did not match the story he gave me.
Something in his voice that did not sit right.
He said justice had been served. He did not say how.
He did not say what it had cost him. I had seen too many men in the aftermath of revenge to mistake that the Preacher was hiding something dark.
Either way, it all left me with two Chaplains, since technically, I never took his title away..
I looked down at my little girl again. She stretched a little and frowned in her sleep. I smoothed my hand up and down her small back until she settled.
From the kitchen, Sadie’s voice floated in.
“You better not be riling her up in there,” she called. “I just got her down.”
“I ain’t doin’ a damn thing,” I whispered.
A quiet smile tugged at my mouth. I heard the oven door close, and the smell of baked chicken and spices drifted into the room. Home. Something I never thought I would have in a way that did not feel temporary.
My phone buzzed on the coffee table. Before I could reach for it, the doorbell rang.
The baby stirred when I moved. I laid my hand gently over her back and patted until she settled again, then stood slowly, keeping her close to my chest. Her fingers tightened in my cut, but she did not wake.
“Sadie,” I called toward the kitchen. “You expecting anyone?”
“Not unless Bullet decided to bring dessert,” she called back. “Maybe it’s one of the girls. I told Kristin and Scorn to come by for dinner.”
“Doubt Kristin uses doorbells,” I muttered.
I shifted the baby in my arms and went to the door. Hellsing stood on the porch.
He wore that same tired face that had somehow found a new softness around the edges in the last few months. There were new lines near his eyes, the kind that came from actual smiles, not just grimaces.
I opened the door. “Exorcist,” I said. “You lost?”
He huffed a low sound that was almost a laugh. “Evenin’, Prez,” he said. “You got a minute?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Get in here.”
He stepped inside and shut the door behind him. His eyes went straight to the baby in my arms. His expression softened in a way I had not seen often from him.
“Look at you,” he said quietly. “She’s gotten big, huh?”
“Yup,” I answered. “You wanna sit?”
“Only if I don’t wake her,” he said.
“Sit your ass down,” I told him.
I eased down on the couch, settling the baby back on my lap. Hellsing took the armchair across from me. He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely, eyes still on the kid.
“She looks like you,” he said.
“Poor thing,” I said.
He shook his head. “She looks like both of you,” he corrected. “That’s a good thing.”
I watched him for a moment. He had always carried a weight on his shoulders none of us could ever understand. I suppose it was because none of us were waiting for the next demon to crawl out of the floor.
“What’s goin’ on?” I asked. “You didn’t drive all the way out here just to compliment my kid.”
He drew in a breath and let it out slowly.
“Virgil was a good man,” he said. “You know that.”
“I do,” I said.
“He pulled me out of a mess more than once,” Hellsing went on. “Taught me how to stand in front of things that scared me and keep my knees from bucklin’. I would not be here without him. Grace would not be here without him. I owe him my life, and I owe him my family.”
I saw where this was going before he said it.
“How is Grace?” I asked.
He looked up at me then, and the corner of his mouth lifted.
“She’s good,” he said. “Better. There are nights when she wakes up cryin’. There are days when she stares at a wall and I know she’s goin’ through it again. But she smiles more now than she did six months ago. She laughs. She eats. She works at the shop with Seraphine. She bosses me around.”
“Sounds like she’s alive,” I said.
“She is,” he said. “And she’s six weeks pregnant.”
I let that sit there for a second.
“You serious?” I asked.
“Yes, sir,” he said. “We waited to be sure. Doctors confirmed it. She wanted to tell you herself, but she is with her mama tonight, and I had some other business with you, so I figured I’d deliver the news.”
He scrubbed a hand over his face, and I saw the raw joy there, mixed with fear.
“You look like you swallowed a grenade,” I said.
He laughed once, quietly.
“I feel like it,” he admitted. “I am happy.
So damn happy it scares me. And I am terrified.
After everything that touched her. After what Bael did.
There is always that little voice in the back of my head that says it is too good, it will be taken.
I got to shut that voice up somehow, ‘cause she does not need to see it in my eyes.”
His shoulders lowered a fraction.
“She belongs with me,” he said. “I feel that in my bones. And I belong with her. I have been thinkin’ on that a lot. Family. Responsibility. Where I do the most good and where I cause the most trouble.”
Here it came.
“The Church reached out,” he said. “After we took Bael down. Word spread. They heard about what happened. They also heard about what I can do, and they offered me a job. A chance to train new priests and hunters, to guide people who want to fight but don’t know how to.”
“And you want it,” I said.
“I think I do,” he said. “I think it’s my callin’. I have never been good at anything else. I can fix engines and patch wounds, but this… this is where I know what I am doin’. Grace says Virgil would have wanted me to take it.”
“And the club?” I asked.
He looked around the room, at the photos on the walls, at the baby on my lap.
“I love this club,” he said. “You gave me a family when I needed it the most. You gave me a patch, a chair at the table, a place to park my bike where I didn’t have to sleep with one eye open.
But I can’t sit in two worlds forever. I am no good to anyone if I keep pretendin’ I can do both without fallin’ apart. ”
“And Sinnerman is back,” I said.
He nodded.
“He is a preacher,” Hellsing said. “He always was. He can stand in front of your brothers and sing them down from the ledge in a way that I never could. He knows Scripture and he can provide them with the comfort they need without draggin’ Hell through the door every time.
He is better suited to guide them day to day. ”
“You don’t think you can do that?” I asked.
“I think I am the man you call when something is crawlin’ on the ceiling,” he said.
“I am the one who walks into basements with salt and water and comes out busted but breathin’.
That is a different job. I will still answer when you call, Jameson.
I will always come when there is somethin’ unnatural in your yard.
But the patch that says Chaplain on my chest… I think it belongs to him again.”
He fell quiet as I looked at him. Hellsing had never asked me for much.
He had taken every order I gave him in stride, even when he did not like it.
He had walked into fires for this club. Now he sat in my living room, asking to lay down a title so he could pick up a crib and a Bible somewhere else.
“You know what that means,” I said. “You step back as Chaplain and Sinnerman takes your seat at Church, the men are gonna look to him. You sure you can live with that?”
“I can live with it if it means I get to keep my callin’, and if Grace and my kid still get to be a part of this family.”
He looked me dead in the eye. “I came here tonight to give you this,” he said. “Officially. If you will take it.”
He reached up and touched the small patch on his cut that marked his role.
“I will always honor what this club gave me. But I think it is time I step aside as your official Chaplain and let Sinnerman carry that weight.”
I let a beat pass then took it.
“You were a good Chaplain,” I said. “Better than you give yourself credit for. You stood over Virgil’s grave, and you said words that mattered. You stood in that damn witch shop, and you fought like hell. You carried brothers through some dark shit. That will always belong to you, patch or not.”
Something in his chest loosened. I could see it in the way his shoulders dropped a little.
“Thank you,” he said. “That means more than you know.”
“You always got a place with us, Hellsing. You need a bed, you come. You need backup, you call. You need someone to take the kid for a night so you and Grace can remember what sleep feels like, you bring that baby over and drop her on Sadie’s lap.”
A ghost of a smile tugged at his mouth.