Chapter 24 Sister Francesca #2
Flesh meets flesh as her skin presses to my lips.
I open my mouth and lick her skin, rewarding me with a shiver.
I can’t help but look up into her face, satisfied with the desire I see glittering in her dewy eyes.
When I sink my fangs into the thickest part of her leg, she moans, unaware of the way her hips rock forward.
The distraction of her pleasure lasts for a moment as the first taste of her blood slips along my tongue.
Sweet like grapes, as though picked from the vine.
I know this taste; I have sampled it these last months during her visits.
Realization settles in, and suddenly the world comes crashing down. Francesca has been deceiving me.
Full and luscious, her blood quenches the aching in my teeth, and flows right into my undead heart. Disgust and admiration poison the satisfaction that comes with relieving my hunger, yet I cannot break away.
“Gray?” Francesca moans. Her legs are shaking, and as I glance up, I see the pale pallor of her cheeks. I find her minor discomfort a penance for her deception.
“Naughty girl,” I hum against the inside of her thigh. “You’ve been sneaking your blood into my rations.”
Francesca attempts to pull back, but I keep a firm grip on her leg. I might not be at full strength, but I am capable of making it difficult for her to break free of my hold.
“I should have told you.” Guilty, but guiltless. She wants to appear indifferent. If it wasn’t for her stubbornness and the way her bottom lip is sticking out, I would have sent her on her way.
“You should have,” I agree.
“You wouldn’t have drank any of it, though.”
“You’re right. I wouldn’t have touched any of it.” She blanches at the way my voice hardens. I tighten my grip on her thigh, roaming higher to the round curve of her bare bottom. From here, with my face so close, I could kiss her cunt and taste the rest of her all in one night.
“I only did what I thought was right,” she counters, but her voice trembles.
“But why did you do it?” As much as I want to devour her, I also need to know her motivations. Most nuns are resolute in her devotion, but not this one.
For a long moment, she is silent. “I thought long and hard about it, and I prayed, asking for guidance. None came. I have never felt suited for this role, despite how much I wanted to be the dutiful daughter. But when I saw you for the first time—chained here, beaten and abused—I felt my faith shaken. The others, they called you a demon, talked about how they would end your life after its use was up, and all I could think about was how horrible they were for saying such evil things.”
“They weren’t wrong,” I say. To think that she sees me as innocent when I have lived my immortal life in opposition of that very ideal is astounding. “I am all of those things and more, Francesca.”
“Don’t say things like that.” With her skirt still hitched above her waist, I am unable to take her seriously, despite how cross she is. “They don’t know you, not in the way that I’ve come to know you.”
“And what? You thought that if you treated the monster nicely, if you fed him, he would behave and change their minds? There’s no sense in that, Francesca.
” The last thing I want to do is hurt her.
No, I would much rather feel her curls against my cheeks as slip my tongue along her arousal.
“You can’t change their minds any more than you can change what I am. ”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“Promise that you won’t risk your life for me.” I inch closer to taste her, holding on until she does as I say. “Never again. Not like this.”
“Francesca.” My voice is a warning, the only one that she has before I nuzzle her center. “Promise me.”
“Gray…” Her voice trembles. “Gray I…”
A deep hum vibrates in my chest and into my throat as I nudge her wetted petals open with the tip of my nose. “Do as I say, and I will reward you.”
She doesn’t answer, not right away. It isn’t until I’ve laved my tongue against her tender bud that she finally gives in. It’s a cruel thing to do, to tease a woman, but I had to get my point across.
“I promise,” she breathes
Her conviction settles a war inside of me that was raging from the moment my fangs retreated from her flesh.
I groan, settling my face between her legs, suckling at the sensitive bead of flesh pressed between her heat.
With chained hands, I seek the heated swell of her cunt with urgency and sink two fingers inside of her.
When she comes around my fingers, soaked and panting my name, I feel my hesitations slip away.
She would never risk her life for me, no, but I did not make the same promise.
I was willing to risk what was left of my life if it meant I could have her this way for a few more stolen moments.
After that night, everything between us changed.
When she wasn’t reading scriptures aloud, she was painting their letters against my lips and covering every inch of skin with unspoken words.
At night, we imbibed the other’s flesh, savoring the taste of blood and sweat.
It was reckless, but we knew what precious little time we had.
I did my best to dissuade her from doing anything more than feeding me.
Father Bane might have been absent, but he was sharp.
He would know it if she went looking for something in his personal items, like a key to my confines.
I gave her clear instructions to keep to herself and do as she was told, no matter what happened to me.
Unfortunately, things don’t always work out that way.
“I’ve sent the Sister off to town with the others so that you and I can spend a little time together,” Bane says one day, showing up out of the blue.
He looks… renewed. As if I am suddenly interesting again.
Somehow, his torture this time is worsened by the fact that Francesca will find me in bitter, ruined pieces when she returns.
That morning, he drains me, burns me with the sun from the one covered window in the room, and breaks my bones again, in the same places as before.
Legs, hands, ribs, and fingers. The worst is when he pulls my fangs out, something he hasn’t done in a long time.
His fury is palpable. After he’s had his fun, Bane leaves me in tatters in the church tower, yet again weakened by his heavy-handed tactics.
For three days and three nights after, I do not see Francesca.
On the fourth day, another nun brings me blood.
She comes and goes too quickly for me to catch a glimpse of her face.
No one comes for me until night, but there are two sets of feet instead of one, and the distinct sound of sobbing as one is dragged along by the other.
I am horrified when Bane pushes through the door and throws Francesca at my feet.
“This heathen wretch has been feeding you, hasn’t she?” Bane booms.
Neither one of us answers. He can see our guilt plainly on our faces; he has his answer.
When he pulls her up from the ground by her hair, he exposes the spot on her shoulder where my last bite marks her still.
How foolish of me to forget my own rule.
I had bitten her the night before without thinking about her safety.
I curse myself now for being so selfish.
“What more have you done?” he snarls against her ear.
“Put her down!” I shout. “Put her down, she’s done nothing wrong! It was me, it was all me. I compelled her to do it.”
In truth, I don’t have the strength to compel anyone convincingly.
Despite that, Francesca is a strong-minded woman.
Even if her faith is shaken, her convictions make her who she is.
I would never be able to compel her to do anything.
Bane doesn’t know that, though, and for a split second, he believes me.
“I love him!” she cries out. Her confession, bold and true, rings louder than the church bells ever do.
We are all silent.
“He didn’t compel me. He’s never done anything to hurt me,” Francesca says.
Father Bane is unusually quiet, but his grip on her never falters.
Francesca struggles in his arms, but he eventually lowers her to her feet.
The relief hits her immediately, and hope ignites her face.
She must think that Bane will let her go now that the truth is out.
But I know Bane. I have seen his many faces over our time spent together.
I know the look in his eyes, the set of his brow, and the turn of his mouth better than I know my own.
Bane is a mirror. The demons he wrestles with are as familiar to me as my own. Perhaps that is why he is always so exceptionally punishing toward me.
“You’ve been seduced,” he says.
“No, Father, no. He is kind!” she argues.
It is a fruitless and wasted effort on her part, but still she tries to make him see reason. I can’t fault her for trying.
“I shouldn’t have brought you here. I should have protected you better, sister,” Bane says.
“Father?”
“I will atone for this grievous sin.” The indifference in his voice worries me. He isn’t even looking at her as he speaks, no ounce of empathy or emotion to be seen or heard.
“Father, please spare him,” she begs.
He nods. “Spare you, my child. I will spare you before you are too far damned to see the light of Heaven.”
A flash of silver strikes out from his side, hidden in his robes as it always is.
The same knife he uses to bloodlet me, slices across Francesca’s ivory neck.
Her name crawls up my throat as I watch her eyes flutter and her mouth widen into shock.
She collapses to her knees, pale hands trying desperately to cover the wound.
I thrash against my confines, injuring myself in every attempt to get to her.
But her fight is lost. She falls face-first to the ground, blood puddling around her lifeless body as I scream her name over and over again.
“You and I will carry this loss for the rest of our lives,” Bane announces before gathering her body into his arms. He doesn’t linger any longer and carries Francesca down the stairs, as if she is merely asleep.
Francesca is dead. I scream into the night, long after he is gone.
Finally, when my voice is spent, I crawl as close to what is left of her as I can.
I don’t touch the blood, rather, I try to commit the scent of her to memory.
Images of her would fade over time, of that I was certain, but her blood will always stain me.
For a short time, I held Francesca, yet longer did her spirit linger with me in the church tower.
Bane never comes back to clean up the blood, and when he does return, he finds his plaything unresponsive to his torture.
And so time went on. As my hunger grew, starvation ate away at me. My consciousness fades into sleep and I relegate myself to the church tower prison, accompanied by the smell of ripened grapes.