Damned

Chapter 5: Stained Glass

"Thou mayest choose for thyself,
for it is given unto thee"
(Moses 3:17)

🩸

She no longer had to worry about Octavia.

Cian would surely kill her first.

As familiar and vampire, there was little they could do to be truly apart. He could materialize beside her if he wished. She could feel some of his emotions, and he could sense her danger.

Her adrenaline, if she still produced it in her body, kept her body pushing through the crowded streets instead of carrying her right back home. Danger seemed more enticing than a lecture. She used the dark black veil she wore at the ball to hide her face, as to not deter any humans.

The connection between them could only be snuffed by wearing a chain of garlic around her neck, hence the antiquated and ridiculous myth. The only thing garlic burnt was the hair inside her nostrils from being just downright pungent. She made sure she held the clove placed in a large metal locket close to her chest, but she did not need their connection to know Cian's anger. The only other time she had cut herself away from him was to be spiteful after they had gotten into an argument. He hadn't talked to her for weeks after she had come back, and she played his favorite song on the piano until he broke his vow of silence. Cian promised to follow her in solitude only if she were in danger, as long as she never put herself in harm's way again.

And today, she planned on doing exactly that.

The basilica loomed above her like a burgeoning storm cloud. A single center chapel nave looked down at her with its arms stretched wide. She met the stone faces of saints and wondered if they ever regretted their sacrifice; if their life of pain was worth being born again a martyr.

Serafina pushed back her shoulders, holding the black jeweled rosary in her hand so hard it should have cut skin. If I were human. It would have been a miracle if it did, and still she willed dull metal to breach her.

It was not that vampires could not walk into churches. They weren't demons. There was a time limit to how long an individual could stay on holy grounds. The issue is that no one knew exactly when their time ran out, until their skin burned and flaked off like they stepped into the sun. Rarely a fatal act, but it was definitely something that would alert the Sanguine Council to her whereabouts if it happened.

But, it did not help that the once holy woman had not stepped back into a church since before her un-death.

She remembered the time before, when kneeling and holding her hands tight to her chest was a moment of blind serenity. The world would quiet, and who kneeled to her right and left did not matter. Sometimes the sun would peek through glass, and she felt her mother's kiss upon her cheek.

Her life was now on the precipice of disaster. There was nothing more that she wanted than the reassurance she had before she realized that even if there was a God, he did not listen to her.