Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
Cisco
Ilaunch on top of Mercy, bracing my rosary-wrapped hand beside her head, knees outside her waist. I am a wall of black cloth and feral need, trembling with the effort of not snapping her neck or kissing her until she bleeds.
My bare hand fists her hair and holds her still as I lower my lips to her ear.
“I am not simply a violent man,” I snarl. “I made violence my sacrament. I made it holy. I gorged myself on blood and flesh. I believed I touched God with every drop spilled, every cunt fucked, every—”
“I get the point.”
“You don’t.” I sneer. “There is no end. No point. It is not God who nourishes me when this devil is let out of its cage.”
“What does?”
“Nothing.” I shove off her, move to the end of the bed, and try to stop the trembling need for more of her touch … more of her everything. “But I cannot stop myself from craving. Feeding.”
“But you did stop. After they caught you—”
“They did not stop me.”
She blinks. “Wait. You turned yourself in?”
“I was happy to kill anything with an ounce of evil in its soul.” I stare at the rosary beads denting my skin, shame heating my cheeks.
“I relished it. I would get hard over how much I enjoyed digging through their pain, using my devil to hunt down their sin.” A cruel laugh barks out of me.
“I always found it. Always knew exactly what they tried to hide. I would whisper it in their ear, so it was the last thing they heard before I sent them to Hell.” My chest rises and falls in an agitated rhythm.
“But then one day, Uncle Paolo sent me to a house to teach his enemy a lesson. I stopped asking questions by then. So long as I sensed evil in my victims, I did not care why or who. But when I arrived at this house, and the only person there was a thirteen-year-old boy, I could not kill him.”
“He wasn’t evil?”
I shrug. Laugh once, another twisted, hate-filled sound. “Everyone has a little evil in them.” I force myself to meet her sad eyes. “Even thirteen-year-old boys.”
Mercy looks away, frowning as the impact of my confession clicks. How many innocent lives have I taken?
“In that moment,” I say, “I realized I was so consumed with the need to … do what I had been doing that I couldn’t remember the last time I stopped to ask, ‘How evil is this person really?’ There had been so many that I couldn’t remember.”
“And now?”
“When an addict is clean, it’s amazing how clear that line becomes.”
“So, you went to prison.”
“My uncle tried to get me out. He sent his lawyers and bribed and blackmailed many people, but I refused to leave Blackfriar.”
“And then the Vatican found you?”
“A demon found me.”
Her brows lift. “In prison?”
I nod. “My cellmate was possessed. I sensed the demon take him over.” I shudder.
“That was the first time true evil looked upon my face and was afraid. I had seen it in the eyes of men many times, but this was no man. It wore the skin of one. A priest—Don Bianchi—was giving the last rites to a prisoner in the cell opposite us, across the way. When the demon saw that I recognized it in my cellmate, it fled and possessed Bianchi’s dying prisoner … to escape me.”
“This is how you became a priest?”
“They told me there is no cure for my curse, but they could aim it. With this—” I touch my Roman collar. “With my vows, I would serve only God and no other. And I would find absolution.”
She sits back and folds her arms. “Has it worked?”
“I did not burn at my ordination.” I give a half-hearted shrug, then make the sign of the cross, pull my chain from my neck, and kiss it. Looking up at the ceiling, I say, “He has not forsaken me yet.”
We stare at each other for a long time. She is not so flippant now, and it feels like claws scraping my skin from the inside. Finally, she points out, “Leviathan was not afraid of you.”
“Leviathan was a demon Prince of Hell.” I rub my scruff-covered jaw. “There is a hierarchy. I don’t think much frightens the princes.”
“You’re not possessed.”
“Not that I know of.”
“Then what are you?”
Empty. “You are a smart woman, Mercy. Ask the question that’s really on your mind.”
“I don’t need your permission, Padre.” Suspicious blue eyes trail down my body, then back up again. “Fine. You want to know what I am thinking?”
“Please.”
“What makes you so special that you can single-handedly fight off eight men and live? What aren’t you telling me? What exactly does this curse do apart from sensing evil?”
“You would need to see it to believe it.”
“So, show me.”
My lips curve. “If I did, you’d be dead.”
“Another convenient excuse.” She arches her brow. “Can anyone else corroborate your claims?”
I hesitate. “No.”
“Not even the Vatican? Your friends?”
A sick feeling churns in my gut. “They know pieces. So does my team. No one has witnessed it. They only know about the dead bodies I leave behind, and that I am the only one left standing.”
Mercy doesn’t speak for a long time. Just sits there, the length of her body vibrating with something I can’t name. There’s pain, I think. Empathy, maybe. Or maybe it’s just the edges of a wound that matches my own. I hope.
Dio, this is a sick thing to hope for. But the more I turn it over in my mind, the more I ache for it. I don’t want to walk through life without ever being seen by another person. Seen and accepted. To belong.
Finally, she closes the long gap and sits close enough for me to feel the heat of her body, yet far enough that a cavern has opened between us.
“Why tell me this?” she murmurs. “Why now?”
I stare at the wall ahead until a breeze touches my cheek, reminding me that the window is still open … and I only hear birds tweeting in the wilderness. No buzzing. I close my eyes and sigh, but it feels like my entire body sighs too.
“Because you know what it’s like. To have a hole inside.
To want something that can’t be named. When I’m in the same room as you, it’s—” My throat catches.
How can I explain the way I hunger for her, yet the moment we’re together, it’s a different kind?
“It’s … peace. Or something close. I don’t remember the last time I felt that, and…
” My face twists with the familiar effort to keep it in.
But I’m tired, so I look her dead in the eyes and confess, “I don’t want to be alone anymore. ”
She blinks, shocked. Then a strange softness creeps in, like she’s not sure how to wear it. In that moment, I think my heart bleeds.
Coppery red hair curtains Mercy’s face as she glances down and picks up the blue vibrator from the bed. She rolls the long, veined length between her fingers.
“That first night,” she says, “in the confessional—you said you understood what it’s like to have your body screaming for something you deny. But you weren’t talking about sex, were you?”
I force a laugh. “Dio, I miss sex too. But no, that’s not what I meant.”
“Then what?”
“The curse is worse than that,” I admit. “It is a gnawing, aching hole in my bones. At least you can take care of sex. This … this is never done.”
Unless I’m with her.
I rest my rosary-wrapped hand between us. She picks at the fabric covering her thigh.
We sit. The quiet is wild. Normally, this is where the curse flares, filling me with hunger, envy, the drive to break her and to be broken. But it’s silent. Completely fucking silent except for the birds.
Mercy is close enough to touch.
Her hand slides across the sheets toward me, then stops a breath away, pinkie finger out.
My rosary-wrapped hand mirrors hers, moving, inching closer, pinkie finger out. The space between us shrinks. There’s a second—maybe forever—where nothing exists except the need to close that gap.
Tawny bursts in, tray in hand. She stops dead. Cupcakes, mugs of cocoa with pink marshmallows, wobble in her grip.
We pull apart so fast that my spine cracks.
“I said don’t worry about the cupcakes,” Mercy snaps, bolting to her feet.
“No, you didn’t.” Tawny presses her lips together. “You said bring the cupcakes. Bring extra.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Yes, you did.” She flares her eyes wide. “You said, and I quote, ‘the priest is very hungry.’”
Mercy laughs nervously. “Maybe if something other than cupcakes were on offer.”
“What do you mean?” Tawny’s brows pucker.
“I just … it’s … I caught him hiding from you in the reliquary the other day. You know, when you wanted him to taste-test for evil.”
I almost chuckle at the memory. Seems ridiculous now. Wait.
I pin Mercy with a glare. “You were going to torture me with cake?”
She shrugs. “I mean, it wasn’t a bad idea.”
I let that chuckle out, surprised at how normal it feels.
“You were both laughing at me?” Tawny’s expression is empty.
Mercy’s smile falters. “Babe … it wasn’t like that.”
“You guys always tease me.” Pain twists Tawny’s features into something fearful. “We have to be tough, I get it. But … I never believed you were really being mean until now.”
She drops the tray on the floor. Mugs shatter. Hot cocoa and cake splatter everywhere.