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Chapter Text

I've faced the fathoms in your deep,
Withstood the suitors' quiet siege,
Pulled down the heavens just to please you, appease you.
The wind blows and I know
I can't go on digging roses from your grave,
To linger on beyond the beyond.
Where the willows weep and the whirlpools sleep,
You'll find me.

–

1.

Sister Jenna had lived at St. Luke's since her mother died when Jenna was four years old, and in all of those seventeen years, she had only ever seen one outsider visit the two graves at the back of the garden: an agent of the Vatican named Wolfe who made the journey to the outskirts of Rome once a year. They had been coming, Father Callahan said, since the day the gravestones had been erected, shortly after the Battle of London which took place a few years before Jenna was born. As a child, she had been afraid of the agent, a person of indeterminate gender who was perpetually swathed in a dark coat with their eyes hidden behind tinted glasses.

None of that frightened the young Jenna, but the bandages did, wrapped around Wolfe's jaw and lower face like those of a mummy.

Even as an adult, Jenna made herself scarce whenever Wolfe was due for a visit. It helped that they came on the same day every year: the birth date inscribed on the gravestone of Sister Yumie Takagi. Callahan had told Jenna that Wolfe and Sister Yumie had grown up together at St. Luke's, and both had been present at the Battle of London. Yumie had died there, and on her birthday each year, Wolfe came to pay their respects. They never brought flowers or anything else; they only knelt before Yumie's grave for a few minutes, head bowed, before crossing themselves and rising.

Then they paused in front of the other gravestone, head again bowed, but only for a moment and without kneeling. They made the sign of the cross again, then turned and left for another year.

The second grave bore the same date of death as Sister Yumie's, but no date of birth. Also unlike Sister Yumie's, it held no remains because, according to Father Callahan, there had been no remains to inter. Whatever had killed Father Alexander Anderson at the Battle of London, it had decimated his body entirely.

Another child of St. Luke's had perished that day as well, but Enrico Maxwell was interred at the Vatican. Jenna presumed that plenty of people paid their respects to him, considering that he had died an archbishop, but no one save Wolfe seemed to care about Sister Yumie and Father Anderson.

And so Jenna took it upon herself to care about them too. Father Callahan had never met either personally, having only arrived at the orphanage to take over in Anderson's stead after his death; however, he told her that he'd known his predecessor by reputation.

“By all accounts, he was a kind, warm-hearted man,” Father Callahan had said one of the several times Jenna asked questions. “Strict with the children when it came to discipline, but he loved them dearly, and they him.”

He'd taken down one of the orphanage's photograph albums from a shelf in his office and shown her a picture of Father Anderson with Sister Yumie, Wolfe, and Archbishop Maxwell, taken when the latter three were still children. Jenna had first looked at Wolfe with keen interest, only to be a bit disappointed when she couldn't tell much more about them as a child than she could now. The only real difference was the lack of bandages.

Then she had looked at Father Anderson's rugged, unshaven face; his short, rumpled blond hair; his broad shoulders and huge hands resting on Maxwell's shoulders. The sharp scar running from just beneath his left eye, all the way down to his chin—not much more alarming than the cross-shaped scar Father Callahan bore on his own forehead.

After that, Jenna had looked at Father Anderson's smile and wished she could have known him. Like the children who had, she would have loved him, she was certain.

(continued)

Chapter Text

What I fear is lost here.

–

2.

Jenna had been tending the graves for almost ten years, since long before she took her vows, when she saw the child for the first time.

Once a week, Jenna pulled up any weeds that had sprouted, brushed any dirt and spiderwebs away from the stones, and put poison on any of the recurring ant beds that had appeared, while praying for forgiveness for killing some of God's creatures. (And feeling guilty because she actually wasn't sorry in the least. She hated ants.)

Jenna also visited every Sunday to say a prayer for Sister Yumie and especially Father Anderson. She got the impression that Wolfe came each year for the Sister's sake and not the Father's, which meant he had no one but Jenna to mourn him.

Until the child came, thirty years to the day Anderson had died in the Battle of London.

Jenna had gotten up even earlier than usual, before dawn, in order to have time to visit the graves and pray before she would have to leave for Rome with Father Callahan. His Holiness would be marking the anniversary with an address in memorial of those who gave up their lives for the Church on that day, and they would be taking the children to hear him.

After nearly a decade of seeing no one else at the graves save Wolfe, Jenna certainly didn't expect to encounter anyone so early in the morning. Yet as she approached through the garden, she could see in the faint bluish light of the coming dawn someone sitting on the ground in front of the two headstones.

She knew right away that it wasn't Wolfe. This figure was shorter and slighter, with long black hair that reached the grass. As Jenna drew nearer, she saw that the person was a little girl sitting cross-legged rather than kneeling, in white clothes rather than dark. . . and that she was sitting in front of not Sister Yumie's grave, but Father Anderson's.

Jenna's steps faltered as she wondered what she should do. The girl was a stranger to her, not one of the children who lived at the orphanage nor any child she'd seen in the town nearby. A stranger, even if she was a child, had no business being on the orphanage grounds at all, much less in this hallowed space. Jenna was uncertain if she should speak to the child and scold her herself, or go fetch Father Callahan.

However, she ended up doing neither, for when she squinted through the poor light at the girl's still, pale face, Jenna realized that what she'd thought was a strand of her dark hair was actually a streak of blood upon her cheek.

She's hurt! Jenna thought with a soft gasp of concern. Though the sound was barely audible to her own ears, the girl started and turned her head sharply towards the young nun, hair whipping around her.

They stared at one another for a few seconds, Jenna's shock growing when she saw that both pale cheeks were bloodied; then she hurried over to the girl as quickly as she dared while still trying not to alarm the child further.

“Are you all right?” Jenna asked. She meant to kneel beside the child, but the girl swept to her feet before Jenna could. She reached the shoulders of Jenna, who was not very tall herself, and the nun judged her to be around twelve years old. With large, dark eyes fixed on Jenna's face and her mouth flat and expressionless, the child pushed a hand into her pocket and produced a handkerchief, with which she wiped her bloody cheeks. Jenna's own eyes darted over the girl's face, seeking the source of the blood, and found nothing—no injury, not even a scratch.

“Yes,” said the child. This time, Jenna was the one to jump, for the little girl's voice sounded as deep as a man's. Then the girl cleared her throat, and when she spoke again, her voice was like that of any of the girls in the orphanage, save for its American accent.

“I'm fine.”

“You're. . . you're not hurt?” Jenna asked faintly.

The girl shoved the now stained handkerchief back into her pocket and said in a tone of finality, “No.”

Jenna swallowed hard as the strange child continued to stare at her. She felt frightened without quite knowing why and almost ran for Father Callahan after all. But then she scolded herself and took a deep, steadying breath as she thought, She's only a child! What's there to fear? And I shouldn't drive her away, or ask Father Callahan to do so. Maybe she isn't hurt, not physically anyway. . . but she wouldn't have been sitting here at Father Anderson's grave for no reason.

She can't have known him—he must have died long before she was born. But perhaps one of her parents grew up here. Maybe she's the child of one of those children who loved him.

Thinking that, Jenna's fear receded, and she smiled at the girl. Those intent dark eyes widened, lashes flickering over them in surprise before the child regulated her expression.

“So is this when you tell me to get lost?” she asked in a rather sardonic tone. It struck Jenna as funny—in her experience, almost-teenagers tended towards dramatic rather than deadpan—and she barely held back a giggle.

“No, of course not,” she replied instead.

Still looking at Jenna steadily, the girl said, “But I don't belong here.”

“You do if you're here for Father Anderson.” Jenna turned to look down at the headstone. “No one else comes for him, except for me.”

The girl kept quiet, but Jenna decided to wait it out. She was glad she did when, after a moment of silence, the child asked softly, “Did you know him?”

“No, he died several years before I was born,” Jenna said. She meant to leave it at that, and perhaps ask the girl what connection she had to the priest, but somehow, she instead found herself relating what she'd never told anyone else. “I wish I could have known him, though. From what I've heard, he was a wonderful man. It seems. . . unfair that no one else comes to his grave. There's a person from the Vatican who comes sometimes, but I think they come for Sister Yumie here, and Father Anderson is more of an afterthought for them. He—he deserves better. I—”

Then she broke off, suddenly aware of her own rambling. What am I doing, telling a stranger these things—a child, no less! It's sinful enough that I pass such judgments silently. I shouldn't speak them aloud!

Yet the girl replied, “He does deserve better. You heard right. He was a wonderful man.”

Jenna glanced at her to find that she'd turned towards the grave again as well. Her face was almost as white as the oddly formal and most un-child-like pants suit she wore, and it bore a frown as if she was passing judgment right along with Jenna.

She speaks as if she knew him, Jenna considered, but that's impossible! She's far too young!

She opened her mouth to ask after all just why the girl was there, but the words died on her lips when the child looked up at her again. The light had brightened and strengthened around them as the sun drew closer to the horizon, and now Jenna could see clearly the wide eyes fixed on hers.

The irises were red—red with a fuchsia tint creeping into it around the outer edges.

Don't ask, those eyes seemed to be saying.

Don't ask. You don't want to know.

Jenna again felt a thread of fear and wondered if she stood face to face with a demon child like in some silly horror movie. . . but then she once more admonished herself not to be ridiculous.

A demon wouldn't speak so of a priest, with reverence and praise. And a demon wouldn't come sit beside his grave and—and weep. That must have been what I saw on her face, tears. . . . It was only some trick of the poor light that made them look dark, like blood.

This child couldn't have known Father Anderson, but she came here to mourn him, all the same—just as I do.

She loves him, all the same.

Just as I do.

Jenna smiled at the girl again and said, “You can stay as long as you like,” before turning back the way she had come. She probably didn't have the right to make a promise like that, not without knowing how Father Callahan would react, but it turned out that it didn't matter anyway.

“I won't stay long,” the girl said. “The sun's coming up.” Jenna didn't know what that had to do with anything, but again, she didn't ask. She didn't look back either as she crossed the garden and reentered the building, even when the girl called one last thing after her.

“But thank you all the same, Little Sister.”

(continued)

Chapter Text

And I die, and you sigh.
And so the nightmare rides on.

–

3.

Sister Jenna ran into Father Callahan only a few minutes later. When he asked if she'd been out to pray at the graves, she told him the truth: “I was going to, but someone else was at Father Anderson's grave—a little girl. I came back in to give her some privacy.”

She expected the priest to express surprise at her revelation, but not such an intense reaction as he gave, his vivid blue eyes widening as he reached out to grasp Jenna's shoulders, almost hard enough to hurt.

“A visitor to Anderson's grave—and it wasn't Wolfe? You're certain, Sister?”

Staring up at him in bewilderment, Jenna murmured, “Yes, of course. . . I spoke with her. She was sitting in front of Father Anderson's headstone—just sitting there, until I disturbed her. She looked like she might have been eleven or twelve, and I'd never seen her before. I'm certain of that too.”

“What did she say to you?” Callahan persisted, still holding her in a firm grip.

“She—well, first I asked if she was injured, and she said no,” explained Jenna. “I thought I'd seen blood on her face when I first approached her, but I suppose it was only tears because she had no wounds. Then she asked if I wanted her to leave since she didn't belong there, and I told her no, she could stay to mourn Father Anderson, because he had no one else. She asked if I had known the Father, and we talked about him for a moment. . . then I left her there.”

Callahan's eyes had drifted from hers as she spoke, and now he seemed to be looking at a point above the shorter Jenna's head, without seeing anything.

“Is that all that transpired between you?” he murmured after a moment, finally letting her go and returning his gaze to her upturned face.

“Yes, other than her saying that she wasn't going to stay long.” Jenna paused, then added as her own eyes drifted away in thought, “Except. . . as I was leaving, she thanked me, and she called me Little Sister. Not just Sister, but Little Sister—but she was both younger and smaller than me.”

But Callahan didn't seem even to hear her, for he was already turning away, towards the back doors that led to the garden.

“Start getting the children up and dressed, Sister,” he said over his shoulder. “I'm going to look around, just in case the girl is still out there. And if you see her again, send for me immediately.”

“Yes, Father,” Jenna called after him, yet she was certain the strange girl was already gone.

–

Presumably, Jenna had been right, for Father Callahan seemed like his usual self on the way to Rome, and he didn't mention the child again. She thought that was the end of it and had half-forgotten the girl herself by the time the Pope's address was over and she and the other Sisters were attempting to wrangle the children back to the bus for the trip home.

But then as she was about to board, Father Callahan pulled her aside and asked her to wait a moment. He got onto the bus, and through the windows in the door, Jenna could see him speaking to one of the other nuns. Then, to Jenna's amazement, Callahan got off again and took her arm, turning her back towards the building as the bus doors closed and it drove away.

“Father, what—” Jenna began, looking back over her shoulder in alarm at her departing ride home.

“Don't worry, we'll get other transportation later,” Father Callahan said. If he meant to be reassuring, he wasn't, because of the distracted way he spoke. Once inside, he came to a stop and looked down at her for a few seconds before going on quietly, “I've reported what you saw this morning to one of the bishops, and he's expressed some concerns. He asked to meet with you before we return to St. Luke's.”

Jenna tried to speak and only made an embarrassing squeaking noise at first before she cleared her throat and stammered, “A—a bishop wants to meet with me? But I, I told you everything that happened with the little girl. I don't think there's anything else I could tell him.”

“He wishes to speak with you all the same.” Father Callahan's expression softened a little, and he touched her shoulder again, gently this time. “It's all right, Jenna. I'll come with you, and you can just tell him what you told me. Don't be intimidated. Bishop Makube is very gregarious—a little. . . intense, but gregarious. And after all, a bishop is still just a man, just a human being like you and me.”

“Yes, Father,” Jenna mumbled.

Father Callahan's injunction not to be intimidated did Jenna little good. It didn't help that when Bishop Makube was ready to meet them, Wolfe was the one he sent to fetch them. Jenna could just make out the agent's eyes through their tinted glasses, keen eyes that seemed to be scrutinizing every inch of the young nun's face. Encountering Wolfe up close for the first time, Jenna saw through gaps in the bandages wrapping their own face the purpose for the strips of fabric: Wolfe's lower cheeks had been ripped away by some old injury, perpetually baring their teeth in a skull-like grin.

Jenna felt a jolt of shock when she first saw Wolfe's mouth, yet she then exhaled slowly and fixed her own dark eyes back on the agent's, steadily.

I've never been repulsed by the children with disfigurements who come to the orphanage, Jenna thought, and adults deserve that respect as well. Like Father Callahan said, we're all human beings.

What remained of Wolfe's lips parted in surprise as Jenna's gaze returned. The agent asked in a heavy German accent made less intelligible by the impediment of their injury, “You're the one who saw the child at Father Anderson's grave?”

“Yes,” said Jenna with a bob of her head.

“Hm. I've seen you at the orphanage,” Wolfe returned after a moment. “You tend the two graves?”

Jenna nodded again. “That's why I happened to come across the girl. And normally, I wouldn't be out before dawn when she was there, but I had to go early since we were coming here today. I always pray for Father Anderson on the anniversary of the Battle.”

Wolfe again seemed surprised as they questioned, “You. . . pray for Father Anderson? You didn't know him, did you? You look too young.”

“No, I didn't know him, but I. . . .” Jenna trailed off, now dropping her eyes since she not only felt a little silly but also worried that Wolfe, who had known him, might be offended. Still, she decided to finish, looking back up into the tinted glasses: “I wish that I could have known him. I feel close to him.”

Wolfe moved their mouth into a different position, and it took Jenna a few seconds to realize that they were smiling, as much as they could smile, anyway. They asked, “What's your name?”

“Jenna.”

“Mine is Heinkel. Thank you for taking care of them, Sister Jenna,” the agent said quietly before turning away with a gesture at Jenna and Father Callahan to follow. “Bishop Makube's office is this way.”

Jenna felt far more at ease even when they'd reached the office, and Heinkel knocked on the door, then opened it when a voice with an equally rich accent, this one Italian, called, “Sì, entrate!” Heinkel went in and held the door for the other two to follow them in.

Then all of Jenna's anxiety returned in full force when she laid eyes on Bishop Makube, who stood up behind his desk and favored her and Father Callahan with a broad smile.

Intense, Father Callahan had described him. Jenna found the word inadequate. Makube was not especially tall or broad, not too much larger than Callahan himself, yet his presence somehow felt overwhelming even with the expanse of the desk between them when Jenna timidly approached one of the two chairs before it. Heinkel closed the door and moved around the desk to stand in back of the bishop, up against a picture window overlooking a striking view of Vatican City.

Like Father Anderson had been, Bishop Makube was scarred; however, different from Anderson's smooth scar, Makube's was jagged, running from his hairline all the way down past his jaw as if some monstrous creature had clawed his face open in the distant past. Makube appeared to be in his late fifties or early sixties judging from the lines on that face and the iron grey hair he wore slicked back save for two curling strands that fell forward from his brow to hang on either side of his face. Jenna thought of an ant's antennae and held back a grimace.

Despite the smile—Gregarious, Father Callahan had said—the bishop looked exceptionally smug, something about the crook of his eyebrows and his low-lidded eyes. Those were an unusual copper color and piercing as they regarded first Jenna, then Callahan who had come to stand beside Jenna before the desk.

“Ciao, Padre Callahan,” Makube said smoothly before switching to English. “It's a pleasure to see you again.”

“Likewise, Bishop Makube,” replied Father Callahan. He put his hand on Jenna's shoulder and gave it a surreptitious squeeze for which she was grateful. “This is Sister Jenna, who saw the child at Father Anderson's grave this morning.”

Makube turned back to her and said, still with the smile, “Ciao, Suor Jenna. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me.”

As if I had a choice! Jenna thought before she could stop herself.

She had better control of her mouth than she did her thoughts and replied with only a slight stammer, “I-it's an honor, Bishop Makube.”

Then, to Jenna's horror, Makube glanced at Father Callahan and said, “If you'll excuse us a few moments, Padre? I'm sure you understand the delicate nature of this situation.”

Callahan's grip tightened on Jenna's shoulder for a second before he let go and responded as he must, “Yes, of course. Jenna, I'll be right outside when you're finished.”

“Yes, Father,” Jenna mumbled, silently despairing as he withdrew.

“Please, sit down,” Bishop Makube offered as he sat himself. Jenna lowered herself into the chair beside her. Unable to meet the bishop's eyes as she had Heinkel's, she looked at his hands instead where they rested on the desktop. Makube wore white gloves, each marked with text and the insignia of an unusual cross with a triangular top. The right glove read, “JESUS CHRIST IS IN HEAVEN,” while the left read, inexplicably, “SPEAK WITH DEAD.”

Jenna flicked her eyes back up to the bishop's smiling face and thought that if anyone would dare to speak with the dead, it would be this man.

“Just” a man, Father Callahan said, but he's not. He's not “just” anything—he's dangerous, Jenna decided. And why is he so concerned about the girl I saw? What's so “delicate” about the “situation”?

“Now, Sister, can you tell me everything that occurred this morning?” Makube asked in a tone that might have been considered gentle coming from anyone else. “I'd like to know exactly what you saw when you approached Father Anderson's grave, and everything you and the child said to one another.”

After a brief prayer for courage, Jenna related the entire story as she'd told it to Father Callahan. She almost didn't mention the girl's strange reference to her as “little sister” since Callahan had paid it no mind, but Makube did say he wanted to hear “everything.” The bishop listened to it all with his oddly colored eyes intent upon her, gloved hands folded on his desk. His smile had faded so that his wide mouth was set in a neutral expression, and his face didn't look so smug now. Jenna actually preferred the smug look; this one was somehow even more unnerving.

What must he look like when he's angry? she wondered once she had finished her narrative and fallen silent. God help anyone unfortunate enough to find out!

Makube remained silent as well for a moment, still looking at her. Jenna felt her cheeks warm under his gaze and wondered if he thought she'd lied or not told it all. But then the smile unfurled over his pale lips once more, as if he'd put it back on like he would his vestments.

“Prego, Suor Jenna,” said the bishop. Then, to Jenna's amazement, he glanced over his shoulder at Heinkel Wolfe standing guard behind him and asked them, “What do you think?”

Heinkel drew in a breath and let it out again, audible even to Jenna as it snaked through their bared teeth. Then they replied, “I think Hellsing's trump card is back in play, Chief.”

Jenna understood nothing about that cryptic response, but Makube's eyebrows lifted and he gripped the arms of his chair to turn it enough to the right for him to look at Heinkel directly.

“Realmente? Non la draculina, quindi?”

At the word draculina, Jenna felt her flush deepen and a crawling sensation move over her skin. She had never heard that precise term before, but she could guess what the feminine form of “Dracula” meant: a female vampire. Perhaps Bishop Makube assumed that speaking in Italian would keep Jenna from comprehending what he said, but although she ordinarily spoke English, she hadn't spent the majority of her life in a Roman orphanage without picking up enough of the native language to understand such a simple phrase: “Not the draculina, then?”

The bishop thought this girl at Father Anderson's grave was a vampire? Jenna wondered. Why in Heaven's name would an educated man of the Church believe in a fictional monster? And why would he think such a creature would visit the grave of a priest?

And Makube had said not “a draculina” but “the draculina,” as if he knew of a specific female vampire who'd mourn Alexander Anderson when he had no one else to sit at his grave.

Meanwhile, Heinkel was replying, “No. Not the draculina—the trump.”

Makube made an amused and skeptical noise before persisting, “The trump. At his grave?”

“Yes. At his grave.” Save for the shifting of their jaw and the flutter of the bandages around it, Heinkel did not move as they spoke, flatly and without emotion. “Chief, you weren't there that day. You didn't see what I saw. He wept. He wept as Father Anderson left us. . . and then he kissed the ground where Anderson had lain.”

Jenna had what she guessed was the rare privilege of seeing naked surprise cross Bishop Makube's weathered face. He dropped his head for a moment and seemed to be looking at his left hand still resting on the chair's arm. . . the hand or the glove that sheathed it.

Speak with dead.

“What course of action do you recommend, Heinkel?” Makube murmured after that moment of silence.

“Let the child grieve,” Heinkel said without hesitation, “like I grieve for Yumie—like we grieve for Enrico. Father Anderson deserves that much.”

At the name “Enrico”—Archbishop Maxwell, Jenna presumed—Makube's gloved hand clenched over the arm of his chair. Only Jenna saw, for Heinkel stood on Makube's other side, and his face gave no tell of emotion.

He's not just a man, Jenna thought, but he still is a man. Father Callahan was right after all. A bishop is still a human being. . . and so is Heinkel, no matter what they look like. Both of them feel as deeply as that little girl does—as deeply as I do.

“All right,” Makube said in reply to Heinkel. “I trust your judgment. Our course of action will be to take no action—at least for now.”

By the time he'd turned his chair back to face Jenna, the smile was back on the bishop's face.

“Thank you again for speaking with me,” Makube told her pleasantly. “If you should see the child again, or if anything else out of the ordinary happens, please inform Father Callahan as soon as you can. He knows how to reach me.”

“I will, Bishop Makube,” Jenna murmured as she stood, thankful to be dismissed. She looked up at Heinkel over the bishop's head and said shyly, “I'll take care of Sister Takagi's grave until your next visit.”

Heinkel nodded, and Jenna thought they might have smiled again, though she couldn't be certain.

Bishop Makube's smile, on the other hand, was still quite evident, and it remained in Jenna's thoughts as she and Father Callahan were chauffeured home by a Vatican driver.

He wears it like Heinkel wears the bandages, she decided. Jenna might not know what the bishop had meant by “the draculina” and “the trump,” only able to surmise that the girl she'd met must be the child of a man who'd wept and kissed the ground where Father Anderson died.

Nevertheless, Jenna understood far more about Bishop Makube himself than he ever could have guessed anyone would.

(continued)

Chapter Text

So may you come with your own knives,
You'll never take me alive.
With all the force of what is true,
Is there nothing I can do?

–

4.

That night, Jenna dreamed that she was flipping through the photo album from Father Callahan's office, the one that held the picture of Father Anderson and the three children. Now, however, that picture wasn't there, and those that did fill the album were all of the same subject: a monstrous black dog standing in front of a white picket fence, with the sign of the Cross marked over its chest in crimson fur.

The Jesus-dog, Jenna thought for no reason.

The dog had wild eyes and terrible teeth, and it frightened Jenna simply to look at it.

Yet she couldn't look away. At first, she had thought all the photos of the beast were identical, but as she stared at them, she realized that in each, the dog's position was slightly different. It was walking along the fence, with each motion captured in a photograph like the frames of a film.

Jenna continued to flip the pages of the album, slowly, and watched the dog stalk along the fence until she saw, with growing fear, that it was turning from its path, towards the camera. Towards her.

With her heart pounding and her mind screaming at her deaf fingers to stop turning the pages, Jenna followed the dog's motion as it completed its turn to face her head-on, lowered itself to its haunches in preparation, then sprung with its mouth opening to show teeth sharper than knives. Each subsequent photograph brought that fierce mouth closer, and she thought, It's going to eat me. It's going to come right out of the last picture in this album and eat me up!

And yet her hand—trembling though it was—gripped the edge of the last page and lifted it before pausing. The front of that page bore four photos, the bottom right one showing the teeth so close that she knew that the next picture would be the final one, the one from which the dog would leap as soon as Jenna turned the page. As loath as she was to do it, she felt an almost overpowering sense of urgency, as if the dog itself were commanding her to sic it upon her, to bring about her own destruction.

Hurry.

Jenna's eyes fell closed, and she cringed tearfully with a hopeless whimper. There was no escaping the beast, nor its voice, relentless and inhumanly deep, crying out in her head with ever-increasing mania.

Hurry, hurry, hurry, HURRY!

Silently, Jenna's lips formed an answering scream of terror: What are you?! You're a monster!

Then her eyes flew open and she gave a soft gasp, as if awakening from a dream though the dream didn't end there. Yet her fear did, falling away from her and leaving behind that weird feeling, the one you can only say what it is in French.

Deja vu. Already-seen.

This is someone else's nightmare, thought Jenna, even as the dog's voice calmed in her mind, no longer calling exultantly but instead speaking with condescending disdain.

Oh. So that's what you are, boy. A worthless, good-for-nothing lump of flesh.

Jenna gritted her teeth, and her numb hand turned the page over with her eyes wide open. . . .

. . . To fall upon the final photo, pasted in the middle of the final page. It too was of the dog—but not lunging up at her, not so much as growling. Instead, the beast was sitting calmly, some distance from the camera, and looking into it as if the dog were looking through it, at her. Its eyes were red, with a hint of fuchsia at the edges.

She stared back at it for a few seconds before whispering, “You are a monster.”

Don't pity him, Little Sister, said the dog. A pathetic Type Three, your Father Callahan would call him. “Artificial.” But you, you're the real deal—just like me.

“No. I'm not like you at all,” murmured Jenna. “I know that no one is worthless in the eyes of God. Who were you to judge your victim? You didn't even know him. To someone, he may be worth everything.”

Jenna exhaled sharply and let her hands fall away from the album as she looked back at the dog, her whole body feeling limp and tingly with her relief that it was staying where it belonged—trapped in another world.

The dog said nothing else. After a moment, Jenna lifted a hand once more, intending to close the album on the beast's black face and red-to-fuchsia eyes, but she awoke before she could.

She lay on her back in her narrow bed, face turned up to the ceiling but seeing nothing through the dark except for those eyes, in her memory of the dream.

Her eyes were that color, Jenna recalled. That little girl. . . . I guess that's why I dreamed about the dog having eyes like that—and why it called me “Little Sister.” Just like she did.

And yet, I remember feeling like the dream wasn't really mine, that I was trapped in someone else's nightmare of that dog. Whose?

Despite feeling a bit silly since it was just a dream, Jenna closed her unseeing eyes and said a prayer for the man whose terror she'd felt, whom the dog had called “artificial”. . . just in case. She prayed that the Lord would spare him from his fear, and bless him with the one who knew his worth and let him know it too. Just in case.

As drowsiness began to overtake her once more, Jenna mused, The dog said Father Callahan would call him a pathetic “Type Three.” What did that mean? Was it nonsense my unconscious invented, or something Father really said once, and I've forgotten?

I'll have to ask him in the morning. . . .

But by the time Jenna awoke again just after dawn, she'd forgotten the dream of the dog entirely, not to recall it until the little girl returned to Father Anderson's grave one year later.

(continued)

Chapter Text

I can't go on,
Digging roses from your grave,
To linger on beyond the beyond,
Where the willows weep.

5.

About six months after Jenna saw the girl, she planted rosebushes at Sister Takagi and Father Anderson's graves, one for each of them. Jenna had always liked roses, particularly red ones. If asked why, she would have shrugged and laughed and said, “I suppose because they're pretty.” But that wasn't why, not really.

Jenna couldn't have said why even if asked; she didn't know how to put into words the feeling a red rose evoked in her. It was the feeling that the rose meant something important which she couldn't quite remember, like when a word is “on the tip of your tongue.” It was a little like deja vu (that feeling you can only say what it is in French) but at the same time like jamais vu, its opposite. Not already seen, but never seen. . . when something familiar seems suddenly and irrationally unfamiliar.

Once when she was a teenager, when Father Callahan had scolded her for doodling roses all over her math lesson, Jenna had tried to explain it all to him. When she'd fallen silent in embarrassed frustration, he'd said gently, “It's all right, Jenna. I think I know what you mean.” He'd looked down at her messy drawings and murmured, “I think I know how you feel. In Catholic symbology, a red rose represents martyrdom, and that's part of it. But I also feel some. . . some lost significance that I've forgotten. Something to be protected above all else, something which once meant everything.”

He raised his scarred, ruddy face back to hers, ever pale save for the roses of her own which sometimes bloomed in her cheeks, and said with a resigned smile, “So yes, I know how you feel. . . but please, keep your mind on your lessons. No more roses where math problems should be, all right?”

Jenna had smiled too and promised no more roses. Father Callahan turned to leave her to her work, but then he stopped and spoke again.

“In Transylvania, there is a folk tradition that the thorns of wild roses keep vampires away. Maybe that's the significance of the rose we've forgotten.”

Jenna had frowned. “I thought that was garlic.”

“Garlic too,” Callahan had said with shrug. “But roses smell better.” They'd smiled at one another again; then he'd walked away.

And so Jenna had planted red roses at the two graves. She supposed the symbolism of martyrdom was accurate considering that both Sister Takagi and Father Anderson had given up their lives for the Church, but she really planted the roses for that feeling they gave her.

Already seen. Never seen.

Something to be protected above all else.

Something which once meant everything.

On the thirty-first anniversary of the Battle of London, Jenna again visited the graves just before dawn, wondering if by some chance the child would be there again. She was, for Jenna came upon her pulling up the blooming rose bush on Father Anderson's grave by its hapless roots.

“No, don't!” Jenna cried as she ran to the girl and dropped to her knees beside her poor rose bush. It lay toppled on its side, anchored only by a few roots while the rest dangled bare over the pit of soft dirt the child had dug with her fingers crooked like claws. She wore gloves now stained in brown streaks with dirt and red spots with her own blood where some of the thorns had ripped both the white gloves and the white flesh they concealed.

Assuming the girl was vandalizing the grave site out of mischief, Jenna turned to her in righteous anger. . . only to have it deflate into bewilderment when she saw the girl's face. It too was smeared with blood, but not from thorn scratches. The blood was streaming from both her eyes, eyes wide open and uninjured.

I was right, Jenna thought numbly. When I saw her last year, first I thought I saw blood, then I thought I saw tears. I was right both times.

This girl cries blood.

“Did you plant them?!” the girl shouted at the nun before Jenna could fully process her realization. “Were you the one who planted fucking roses here?!”

“Please, calm down!” Jenna begged, choosing to ignore the child's profanity. “Yes, I planted them. I don't understand—what is it? What's wrong?”

The girl stared at her, thin shoulders heaving with her anguished breaths. Then, slowly, she sat back on her haunches, straightening her stained fingers as she released the roots and then dropping her hands in her lap.

She made no move to clean the blood from her face as she had last year, and after another few seconds, Jenna felt in the pocket of her habit to find her own handkerchief. She hesitated to touch the child, but when she reached out and the girl did not draw back, Jenna gently wiped the bloody tears from her pale face.

“Why did they upset you, dear?” the nun asked in a voice she kept as gentle as her touch. “I'll dig the bush up and replant it somewhere else, but please tell me what's so bad about roses. Did Father Anderson dislike them? Is that it?”

“I have no idea,” the girl said bitterly, “but I dislike them. I hate roses.”

Jenna thought that the girl's personal preference was a poor reason to get rid of the roses. . . until it occurred to her that they were there due to Jenna's personal preference. Like the child, she had no idea how Anderson would have felt about them.

“All right. I'll move the bush then,” she assured the girl.

The child turned her head back towards the roses, but Jenna saw that her eyes were looking past them, at Anderson's headstone.

“It's not the blossoms so much that I hate,” she muttered after a moment. “It's the thorns.”

“Well, I don't know anyone who's particularly fond of thorns,” Jenna observed humorously, trying to lighten the girl's mood. “But Father Callahan says they keep vampires away, at least.”

The girl turned back to her with an incredulous expression then, to Jenna's amazement, threw back her head and laughed heartily.

“Some vampire expert he's turned out to be!” she chuckled before lifting her head and looking intently at Jenna. “At the moment, I'd say that thorns attract vampires.”

Jenna inhaled sharply through her nose as she suddenly remembered the discussion between Bishop Makube and Heinkel Wolfe one year ago:

Not the draculina, then?

No, not the draculina—the trump.

She hadn't been thinking of that when she mentioned vampires just then, but as she stared back at the girl before her, it came back to her.

A draculina, Jenna thought with a suppressed shiver. Last year, I wondered if she is a demon, but. . . could she be a vampire? In those old movies where Christopher Lee played him, Dracula cried tears of blood when he was impaled. Maybe that's what vampires. . . do.

. . . Except Heinkel doesn't think this child is a draculina. She thinks she's “the trump.”

Jenna didn't even know what a “trump” was, exactly, just that it had to do with playing cards—maybe a winning card, or something like that. This pale, weepy girl with her scratched and bleeding hands didn't look like a winning card.

Suddenly, the girl asked, “What do you know about Anderson, Little Sister?”

“Oh,” murmured Jenna, shaken out of her reverie. “Not much, I'm afraid, just what Father Callahan has told me. He said that Father Anderson was a kind man of strong faith, and he loved the children here. He was strict with them and swift to punish misbehavior—but I think that was because he loved them and wanted to protect them from sin. I. . . .”

She trailed off and looked thoughtfully past the rose bush too, at the headstone marking Father Anderson's empty grave.

“I feel like he was probably hardest on those he loved the best.”

The girl made a soft sound Jenna couldn't translate. Then she was quiet for at least thirty seconds before asking, “Do you know how he died?”

“Only that he perished in the Battle of London, for the sake of the Church. I don't really know much about the Battle at all—they didn't tell us much in our lessons, just that a lot of people died, and about the Nazis and how the Church opposed them. So I guess he died fighting Nazis.”

“No,” said the girl crisply, “he didn't. Father Anderson died fighting a monster—not Nazi trash, but a literal monster.”

“A. . . monster?” Jenna stammered, and the girl gave her a rather bitter smirk.

“Oh yes. Your Vatican has done a fine job of covering it up, but there were lots of monsters in that war—both man-made ones and real ones. It was a real one that Anderson fought. . . a real one that took his life.”

Jenna dropped her eyes to the torn roots of the rose bush as she wondered, Monsters? Monsters. . . like vampires? This child can't really know any more about the war than I do, but—but what if she does? What has the Vatican hidden from us? The way Bishop Makube and Heinkel talked. . . it sounded like they know about the monsters.

And when I told Father Callahan about this child, he was so alarmed that he reported it to Bishop Makube immediately.

. . . Does Father Callahan know about the monsters too?

It was too much to contemplate at once, so she forced her thoughts back to Father Anderson.

Raising her face to the girl's, Jenna said softly, “I guess that means the monster won.”

“Hah,” breathed the child. “No, Little Sister—the monster definitely lost. Anderson died and went to Heaven. The monster had to go on living without him.”

–

Jenna went to fetch a shovel to finish digging up the rose bush, and by the time she returned, the girl was gone. Jenna moved the bush and replanted it in another spot along the garden wall, and when Father Callahan inquired about the change later that day, she said she'd decided to plant something else at Father Anderson's grave instead.

She did not tell him that the child had returned.

–

When the girl visited Father Anderson's grave the next year, a cluster of desert lilies was blooming from the bulbs with which Jenna had replaced the rose bush.

“Why Easter lilies?” the child asked Jenna. Jenna had worried that somehow lilies would offend her just like roses did, but she only seemed mildly curious about them.

“They do look a lot like Easter lilies, but they're actually desert lilies,” Jenna told her. “I chose them for what they mean: 'Do not forget my promise.' When I started taking care of Father Anderson's grave, I promised him I'd look after it for as long as I live. I want him to know I'll keep my promise.”

The girl looked up at her, wide-eyed, then returned her gaze to the lilies as bloody tears welled up in those expressive eyes.

“I didn't keep my promise,” she muttered. “I promised him I wouldn't cry anymore.”

(continued)

Chapter Text

Sister Jenna in The Little Sisters of Eluria graphic novel

The coarse tide reflects sky,
And the nightmare rides on.

6.

Heinkel Wolfe paid their annual visit to Sister Takagi's grave about two months later. After the two met at the Vatican, Jenna had ceased to be afraid and hadn't avoided them on their next visit, nor did she on this one. She was waiting at the graves when Heinkel arrived, and she withdrew after greeting the agent to give them privacy.

Jenna didn't expect to see Heinkel again until the next year, but they sought her out within a few minutes, presumably after finishing their prayers for Sister Takagi and Father Anderson.

“Did you plant the flowers?” Heinkel asked her. “Roses for Yumie and lilies for Anderson?”

“Erm, yes. . . .” Jenna braced herself for another outburst about the blasted flowers, but Heinkel only nodded.

“They're nice. The lilies made me think of something—have you ever been to Maxwell's grave?”

Jenna murmured, “You mean. . . Archbishop Maxwell? No, I haven't. Isn't he interred in a private cemetery in Vatican City? I wouldn't be allowed in, would I?”

Heinkel said with a shrug, “I could get you in.” They turned their face aside so that Jenna saw a hint of their eyes past the sides of their tinted glasses, although she couldn't have said what color they were. Jenna didn't even notice the perpetually bared teeth below them anymore.

“I suppose you have no reason to visit it,” they muttered, “and it's foolish of me to be so sentimental even to think of it. But Yumie and Enrico and I. . . we grew up here under Father Anderson's care, and we were always together. And even after us kids became adults, I thought we'd always be together, the four of us. That was foolish of me too, I guess, but it still feels wrong that Maxwell's grave is elsewhere. He should be with Yumie and Anderson on Earth. . . as he is in Heaven.”

Jenna smiled and told Heinkel, “I knew you all had grown up here. Father Callahan told me, and he showed me a picture of you as children with Father Anderson. If you loved Archbishop Maxwell, then I do have a reason to visit him.”

Heinkel nodded and said tersely, “He was like a brother to Yumie and me, so I did love him. I still do, in spite of—everything. I don't know that he knew it because I was never good at showing it, but I hope I'll be able to tell him someday.”

“Of course you will,” murmured Jenna, a little awkwardly. She believed in Heaven yet had always had difficulty understanding it, and others' easy assurance that it was the place where you saw all your lost loved ones again. To her, the idea of Heaven was so grand and mystical that it felt weird to hear people talk about “coming home” to their late friends and family, as if everyone had simply moved house without you and was waiting for you to catch up.

“Heh,” Heinkel breathed between their exposed teeth. “We all believed we were damned—not because we didn't serve God, but because of how we served Him. But then, as Father Anderson died. . . .”

They turned their face back towards Jenna's, and she assumed they were looking into her eyes through the glasses.

“He heard the laughter of children, his children. He had to leave us and go to them, he said. And then he—” To Jenna's amazement, Heinkel's voice broke before they finished fiercely, “He called Maxwell's name, Jenna. Maxwell was already dead by then, and Father Anderson saw him in Heaven, waiting for him. Yumie was killed soon after, and I know she's with them now too. I'm the only one left. If I hadn't heard Father Anderson say what I did, I'd have no hope for salvation. I couldn't have gone on.”

Jenna's skin had broken out into goosebumps and her heart was beating faster by the time Heinkel fell silent.

Father Anderson saw them, his children. . . waiting for him, she thought in amazement. And for the first time, though what Heinkel had described wasn't really much different that anything else Jenna had heard people say about Heaven—for the first time, such a reunion didn't sound like moving house at all. It sounded as grand and mystical as Heaven itself, maybe because it would have to be for someone like Heinkel to believe in it.

Or maybe they believe in it not because of the grandeur and the mystery, but because it was Father Anderson who witnessed it. He must have been an honest man, and he wouldn't have deceived anyone even to comfort them as he lay dying, so Heinkel can believe in it.

And so can I. Mother will be—

Before Jenna could finish the thought, Heinkel changed the subject in a more normal tone: “You said there's a picture of us? Do you mind showing it to me? I'd like to see.”

“Oh, of course! There are several albums of photos from over the years, in Father Callahan's office,” Jenna explained. “Please, come with me.”

Father Callahan was at his desk when Jenna came in, and he seemed startled to find Heinkel in her company. As Jenna pulled down the album—now filled only with ordinary photographs of people, none of monstrous Jesus-dogs—he politely inquired after Bishop Makube.

“He's the same as always,” Heinkel said so dryly, Jenna had to bite her lip to hold back a laugh. “It looks like he'll become Archbishop Makube soon, though.”

“Please give him my congratulations. I'm sure he's thrilled—he's been waiting a long time,” said Father Callahan.

Heinkel shrugged. “I suppose, but he's never said much about it. Makube's a very patient man—until he's not. He can afford to be.”

Then they turned to Jenna, who passed them the photograph of Father Anderson with them, Yumie Takagi, and Enrico Maxwell. Heinkel smiled as they looked down it—their rare and terrible skull's grin that gave Jenna no terror at all. She smiled herself to see it.

“You could tell even then that we were going to be trouble one day,” Heinkel observed as they returned the photograph. “Father Callahan, would it be all right if Sister Jenna returned with me to the Vatican? I'd like for her to see Maxwell's grave, since she's seen the rest of them. I won't keep her out too late, I promise.”

Something about the way they said it put Jenna in mind of the old black and white movies she liked to watch, where a boy would take a girl out on a date after making that exact promise to her parents. The dates always ended with a goodnight kiss.

Jenna, who had never been on a date nor kissed, blushed.

“Yes, of course it's all right,” Father Callahan replied with a chuckle. “I can get along without her for one day, anyway. Have a pleasant time, both of you.”

Before leaving the office, Jenna replaced the photograph album on its shelf, yet she slipped the photo itself into her pocket to take with her. Perhaps archbishops were still human beings too, but she suspected she was going to have a hard time thinking of Archbishop Maxwell as such, standing before some elaborate monument in Vatican City. She thought it might help if she could look at the picture of him from back when he was just Enrico, just a boy who was going to be trouble one day.

–

Heinkel had driven their own car out to St. Luke's, and they drove back to the Vatican with Jenna in the passenger seat. Neither of them said much, Jenna too nervous to think of anything to say, and Heinkel streamed music from their phone through the car stereo's speakers.

Jenna was gazing out the window and paying little attention to the music, her mind occupied with wondering why the lilies on Father Anderson's grave had made Heinkel think of Maxwell. However, the first line of a new song made her start and her dark eyes widen.

Hey Little Sister, what have you done?

Little Sister, Jenna thought as prickles of recognition—like tactile deja vu—danced over her face. What that girl calls me. . . what that dog called me, too.

The singer was a man, his words rapid and rhythmic like the dog's in her dream (hurry hurry hurry hurry). The music was like that too, a quick beat like that of her racing heart, as the singer leveled increasingly bitter questions at Jenna:

Hey Little Sister, who is it you're with?
Hey Little Sister, what's your vice and wish?

It doesn't mean anything, Jenna told herself, just a song someone wrote about his actual little sister, probably. But it sounds just like her, the first time she spoke to me and she sounded like a man. I didn't notice at the time, but that's what the dog sounded like too—bitter and full of disdain, just like this.

Maybe it really was just a song about some guy's sister, maybe it really meant nothing, but Jenna felt them through it all the same: the girl, the dog, the man. The man who had wept and kissed the ground where Father Anderson died, and the girl who was still weeping more than three decades hence.

Hey Little Sister, what have you done?
Hey Little Sister, who's the only one?

I've been away for so long.
I've been away for so long.
I let you go for so long.
It's a nice day to start again.
Come on, it's a nice day for a white wedding.
It's a nice day to start again.

There is nothing fair in this world, girl.
There is nothing safe in this world,
And there's nothing sure in this world,
And there's nothing pure in this world.
Look for something left in this world.
Start again!

When the song had ended, Jenna swallowed hard and ran her tongue over her dry lips before asking Heinkel, “What was that song? I've never heard it before.”

“Hmph, I'm not surprised,” Heinkel replied. “Way before your time—it came out when I was a teenager. Almost fifty years ago now.” They paused then muttered, “Christ, it makes me feel old, thinking about it like that.”

Jenna once more had to bite her lips, this time to hold back the question that rose to them: You were a teenager fifty years ago?!

Heinkel went on, “Anyway, it's by a guy named Billy Idol, called 'White Wedding.'”

“Oh,” said Jenna faintly. “Um, thanks.”

A moment later, she glanced surreptitiously at the profile of Heinkel's face as they drove. Their age was as indeterminate as their gender. . . and yet Jenna had never seen a sixty-five year old with so few wrinkles before.

–

It turned out that whoever Heinkel was, they really could get Jenna deeper into the heart of Vatican City than she'd ever expected to go, as far as the small private cemetery where Archbishop Maxwell's remains were interred. Jenna had toured the Vatican Grottoes where the popes were laid to rest, yet tourists weren't allowed here. She and Heinkel were the only visitors at Maxwell's grave, or any of the others.

They both looked up at the elaborate monument to the archbishop—which had an arrangement of Easter lilies placed before it, explaining why Anderson's lilies had reminded Heinkel of Maxwell. Jenna agreed silently with Heinkel that it wasn't right that he'd been laid to rest apart from his friends. . . nor was it right that Maxwell merited such a lavish memorial complete with fresh flowers, while Sister Takagi and Father Anderson had only small stones behind a little orphanage, where no one visited but Heinkel, Jenna, and the girl who wept blood. . . where the only flowers were those planted in the dirt by Jenna's small, ordinary hands.

There is nothing fair in this world, thought Jenna.

Heinkel murmured, “Back when we were kids, when that picture of us was taken. . . if someone had told me that Enrico would die an archbishop, I would have laughed my head off. Every time one of the other kids picked on him—and most of them did—he'd go off on a rant about how he'd be someone important one day, and they'd all be sorry, but I don't suppose I actually believed him. He kept saying it even when we grew up, after Yumie became a nun, and Enrico became a priest, and I became—”

Jenna listened with baited breath.

“—what I am.” Heinkel glanced at Jenna's face then snickered through their exposed teeth. “Heh, you were hoping I'd say 'a priest' or 'a nun,' weren't you?”

“Oh! No, not at all,” Jenna said hastily even though she knew she was blushing.

“You're a poor liar, Sister Jenna,” chuckled Heinkel. “You can no more control that expressive face of yours than that curl of hair that's always sticking out of your wimple.”

“Oh!” repeated Jenna, this time in resignation as she reached up to tuck back into place the wisp of her black hair falling over her forehead. “Always that one to devil me. . . .”

Heinkel said more gently, “And it's all right, I'm not offended. If you want to know if I'm a man or a woman, then I'm a woman. When I came to the orphanage, I was a girl to Father Anderson and Enrico and Yumie—and I think I was still a girl to Father Anderson the day he died, no matter how many years had passed,” she observed fondly. “But I was a woman to Yumie at the end, and that's what I'll always be.”

Jenna nodded quickly, still embarrassed and still blushing but understanding all the same.

It was a man that promised Father Anderson he wouldn't cry anymore, and a girl who breaks that promise every time I meet her. The form we take makes no difference—maybe someday, I'll be something else too. . . but I'll still be me.

“Would it be all right if I prayed for Archbishop Maxwell?” she asked Heinkel. “Like I pray for Sister Takagi and Father Anderson.”

Heinkel said yes and left her to it, telling Jenna she'd get her a car home when she was ready. When she was alone, Jenna knelt before Maxwell's grave and looked at the lilies and tried to think of what to say to God. Despite what she had told Heinkel, praying for the archbishop wasn't like praying for the others at all.

Then Jenna remembered the photograph she'd brought and pulled it out of her pocket to look at it instead of the flowers. Heinkel was right: all three of the kids looked like trouble. Heinkel and Yumie appeared to be quarreling over something, and Father Anderson was smiling anyway, but Maxwell—Enrico was looking straight at the camera. He was a pretty child with platinum hair and striking violet eyes, and he was smiling too. . . but the smile was devious, suggesting that the boy who looked like a little angel on the outside was more trouble on the inside than both girls put together.

Even in the few years she'd been caring for the children at St. Luke's, Jenna had known a couple of little angels like that herself, and she smiled too thinking of them. Maybe she didn't know how to pray for an archbishop, but she knew how to pray for the children she loved.

And I would have loved you too, you devious little creature, she thought, like Heinkel and Yumie and Father Anderson did. 'The form we take makes no difference'. . . so even if you did become an archbishop, you were still you.

Even though you really are an angel now. . . you're still you.

She closed her eyes and bowed her head, but she only got as far as thinking, Our Father— before a heavily accented Italian voice sounded from right behind her.

“What the Hell are you doing here?!”

Jenna yelped. When her eyes flew open and she scrambled to turn around on her knees and look up, she found Bishop Makube looming over her with his coppery eyes blazing and no smile anywhere in sight.

She said a prayer after all, but not the one she'd intended: Before, I thought God help anyone who met him when he was angry—so God help me!

She began to stammer an apology, but upon studying her face, Makube's relaxed until he no longer looked angry, only slightly bewildered.

“Oh, it's you, Suor Jenna,” he interrupted her. “Perdonami.”

“I-I'm sorry if I shouldn't be here, Bishop Makube,” she finally got out as she stood.

“No, no! Don't apologize, please!” Makube said, his smile appearing as if he'd conjured it. “It's perfectly all right. I will again ask what you're doing here at the Vatican, but only to satisfy my curiosity. Has that child returned to Father Anderson's grave?”

Jenna told herself that the child hadn't returned that day, so she wasn't actually lying to a bishop.

“No, Bishop Makube, Heinkel—Wolfe brought me. She came to visit Sister Takagi today and asked if I'd like to come here, because the lilies I planted on Father Anderson's grave reminded her of. . . of Archbishop Maxwell.”

She faltered because when she'd said the word “lilies,” Bishop Makube had looked downwards, and she'd followed his gaze to the flowers he was carrying in one gloved hand at his side, which she had been too flustered to notice until now. Easter lilies.

“So I'm here praying for him,” Jenna finished a bit weakly.

“I see. Then it was very kind of you to come.” When Makube spoke, Jenna looked back up at his face and found him looking at her again, still smiling. “I'm sorry for disturbing your prayers, Suor.”

Jenna quickly assured him, “You aren't! I was just beginning.”

“Ah, well, I'll only be a moment so I don't delay you.” The bishop swept past her and, to Jenna's amazement, knelt before the memorial vase full of white lilies. Holding those he'd brought in the hand proclaiming “SPEAK WITH DEAD,” Makube plucked a few others out of the vase with the “JESUS CHRIST IS IN HEAVEN” hand. As far as Jenna could see, the flowers Makube removed weren't the least bit wilted, but apparently they weren't fresh enough to meet with his approval.

“You say you planted lilies on Anderson's grave?” Makube asked conversationally as he worked, like it was perfectly normal for a bishop to be arranging flowers on his knees.

“Oh—yes, Bishop, only they're desert lilies instead of Easter,” Jenna explained. “They do look very similar, though.”

Placing the fresh flowers he'd brought into the vase alongside the ones which had passed his inspection, Makube questioned, “Why did you plant desert lilies, in particular?”

It was the same thing the little girl had asked, and Jenna gave the same answer: “For their meaning—'Do not forget my promise'—because I promised to care for Father Anderson's grave.” She hesitated, wondering if it was proper to question a bishop, but then asked anyway. “Did Easter lilies have a particular meaning for Archbishop Maxwell?”

For a moment, Makube remained silent and Jenna fretted that it really hadn't been proper to ask. However, he then replied, though more quietly than he'd spoken before, “They were his favorite flower. Of course, Easter lilies also have all kinds of symbolism for the Church—purity. . . and the hope of a new beginning.”

There's nothing pure in this world.
Look for something left in this world.
Start again!

“But really, I only put them here because he loved them.”

Makube had finished with the flowers, and the discarded blooms lay on the ground beside him as he knelt there at the archbishop's grave. He didn't seem to be praying, for his intent, low-lidded eyes remained open. Jenna waited quietly, though, just in case.

She was considering slipping away when Makube suddenly scooped up the rejected lilies and stood, all in a brisk, efficient way unlike how he'd just spoken. He smiled down at Jenna once more and said, “I'll leave you to your prayers. Thank you again, Suor Jenna. You may stay as long as you like.”

Jenna saw straight through the smile and thought, He doesn't believe there's anything left in this world even worth looking for.

Impulsively, and not sure why she was doing it except that it seemed like the right thing to do, Jenna held out the photo still in her hand and stammered, “Um, Bishop Makube, I—I brought this picture of Archbishop Maxwell when he was a child at our orphanage, with Heinkel and Sister Takagi.”

“Oh?” Despite the disinterested way he said it, Makube took the photo from her swiftly and studied it, his smile shifting almost imperceptibly into something more genuine.

“Hah,” he breathed after a moment. “He looks as a child exactly as he did as a man—except for the hair. He grew it out long, down to his waist, and he was very vain over it. I used to quote I Corinthians 11:14 at him, but he'd only laugh. It was the one thing I could never get a rise out of him over, because his hair was the one thing he was self-confident about. . . and likely because I've never been able to tame my own, as you can see.”

Makube looked from the photo to Jenna, still smiling as he made a very Italian hand gesture in the direction of his gunmetal-grey hair, the two antennae-like strands framing his face and the shorter ends of the rest of it sticking up.

Jenna laughed, although the laughter turned into a flustered sigh when Makube turned the gesture towards her forehead and observed, “It looks as if you can sympathize.”

“Oh, not again,” Jenna mumbled as she poked her wayward curl back under her wimple for the second time in the space of half an hour.

Makube made to give the photograph back to her, and, once more impulsive, she offered, “You can keep it, Bishop Makube.” She had no business giving away something that didn't belong to her in the first place, but her pity for Makube overruled her better judgment. When he looked at it. . . that was the first time I've ever seen him with a real smile, she thought.

But Makube demurred, shaking his head as he held the picture out to her.

“Grazie, but no. It belongs at the orphanage, and no matter how little he changed, I did not know Enrico like this, as a boy. I knew him as a man.” As Jenna took the photo back and tucked it into her pocket, Makube muttered, “I wouldn't want a photo of him with Anderson, in any case.”

“Oh,” Jenna mumbled. She couldn't imagine anyone disliking Father Anderson, but Makube clearly did.

Is he jealous? she wondered before blushing almost as hard as when she'd imagined going on a date with Heinkel. Bishop Makube had clearly cared deeply for Archbishop Maxwell, but Jenna had no business speculating on the exact nature of his feelings. . . even if a bishop was, as Father Callahan had said, still a human being, still a man.

Yet once again, her face—as stubbornly wayward as her curl—betrayed her curiosity, and Makube could see it as clearly as Heinkel had.

“You wonder why, don't you, Suor?” he observed. The bishop regarded her thoughtfully for a few seconds then went on, “I should not tell you, because I know you must hold great reverence for Father Anderson since you care so dutifully for his grave. Yet for that very reason, I will tell you—not that I wish to tarnish his memory needlessly, but you should know the truth. Anderson killed Enrico.”

Jenna's mouth fell open for a second before she stammered, “But—but wasn't Archbishop Maxwell—” She almost said “torn apart” and corrected herself just in time. “—killed by a mob during the Battle of London?”

Makube shrugged and replied bitterly, “Technically, yes, but it was Anderson who deliberately caused it to happen. Anderson did die a martyr for the Church, and because of that, the Church omits his betrayal from its histories. But denial of the deed does not erase it.”

Jenna's eyes drifted from Makube's scarred face to the lilies he'd placed on Maxwell's grave as she recalled what Heinkel had told her about Father Anderson's final moments.

She said that he called Maxwell's name, that he was waiting for Father Anderson in Heaven. She said that she still loves Maxwell, in spite of everything. . . and he must still love Father Anderson. In spite of everything.

Meeting Makube's gaze again, Jenna said as gently as she'd speak to one of the children, “Archbishop Maxwell forgave Father Anderson. Heinkel said—”

“I know what Heinkel heard Anderson say as he died,” Makube interrupted her briskly. “I believe that's what she heard—I even believe he was speaking the truth, so yes, you are correct. Enrico forgave him his treachery. But he forgave him once they were together in Heaven. Here and now, alone in this world, I cannot.”

The bishop drew a long breath as if to steady himself, then turned away to leave the grave though he paused at Jenna's side and rested his hand—the one not carrying the dying flowers, the one proclaiming “SPEAK WITH DEAD”—on her shoulder.

“But please, Suor Jenna, don't let the inability of a weak, sinful man to forgive stop you from caring for Father Anderson,” Bishop Makube said quietly. “He is worthy of your love and compassion. . . and so is Enrico. Thank you for your prayers for him.”

(continued)

Chapter Text

All you have to do is run away and steal yourself from me,
Become a mystery to gaze into.
You’re so cruel in all you do,
But still I believe, I believe in you.

7.

It was the next year, on the thirty-third anniversary of the Battle of London, that Jenna realized the little girl wasn't growing up.

When Jenna came upon her sitting at Father Anderson's grave just before dawn, the white face which turned up to hers still looked no older than eleven or twelve—still the face of an almost-child and not the face of an almost-woman it should have become by now. Even Jenna, aged from 21 to 24, looked a little older to herself. Father Callahan, now nearing his mid-fifties, looked older too.

However, Jenna was not surprised that to find that the child was still a child. She had done a lot of thinking over the past year, thinking about the monster who slew Anderson, the man who wept as Anderson died and then bestowed his kiss too late upon the ground, and the girl who was still weeping even though Anderson had told her not to cry.

A girl who looked no older than twelve still weeping after thirty-three years, the whole lifespan of Jesus Christ.

But if they are one and the same, Jenna had wondered on many nights as she lay waiting for sleep to come, why did it take thirty years before she came here to mourn him? Where was she for those three decades, that she couldn't come? Because I think she would have come, if she could have.

Jenna had also wondered about the dog. She had not seen it again in her dreams since the night after she'd met the girl, three years ago, and she thought that perhaps it was entirely an invention of her subconscious. Her mind could have pulled its eyes and the way it called her “Little Sister” from her encounter with the child; and it surely had taken the concept of the photograph album from real life, then filled it with pictures of a cross-marked dog rather than nuns and priests and children.

When she recalled what the creature had said about Father Callahan and the “Type Three” vampire, Jenna told herself that it was mere nonsense her subconscious had constructed, just as she'd first suspected. Father Callahan had never said anything to her about “Type Three” vampires. The only thing he'd ever said to her about vampires at all was the old Transylvanian folk belief, that the thorns of roses kept them away.

No, the dog was only something my brain made up, Jenna had thought the night before the child's fourth visit. It wasn't her—or him, them speaking to me through my dreams.

But the next morning, as Jenna approached and the ageless girl looked up at her. . . for an instant, Jenna saw not that calm, pale face but a feral, dark one with those same eyes burning within it. Not two of them but hundreds, and hundreds of sharp white teeth, and she flinched back with the terror she'd felt in her dream: the terror of someone else at another place and another time as he gazed upon a horror almost beyond what his brain could comprehend.

The same horror which now sat at the grave of the priest it had loved, a little girl again once the instant had passed and the vision vanished. A book lay in the grass beside her.

Jenna relaxed, exhaling a shaky breath, and thought, They are one and the same. The man, the girl—and the dog.

“Good morning, Little Sister,” said the girl. She had returned her eyes to Father Anderson's grave by the time Jenna knelt on the ground beside her, but those eyes snapped back to the nun's face when Jenna spoke without a reciprocal greeting.

“Who was he?” she asked.

“Hmm?” The girl arched a black eyebrow. “Who was who?”

Jenna drew in another breath then replied, “The man you ate. The one you called an artificial Type Three vampire, and told me not to pity. Who was he?”

For a second, the red-to-fuchsia eyes widened, but then they narrowed again with pleasure, and the girl smiled.

“Oh, so you remember,” she said.

“Who was he?” Jenna asked a third time.

The girl shrugged and replied, “Just who I said he was: an artificial vampire. I told you there were man-made monsters in the war, and he was one of them. . . a worthless excuse of a man who gave up his body to the Nazis' experimentation, thinking they would turn him into a vampire even more powerful than the real deal—the Type One—so that he might finally amount to something. Spoiler alert—he didn't. His body proved useful eventually, but only as a disposable tool, a means to an end. The man himself was worthless, like I said.”

“And I said that no one is worthless in the eyes of God,” replied Jenna fiercely. All her empathy for this mourning creature couldn't overrule her disgust.

The girl's eyes flickered open wider again as Jenna met them. She no longer smiled, yet when she spoke, it was with quiet admiration.

“You are brave, Little Sister,” the child said. “Shy and fearful on your own behalf, but brave for the sake of those you bless with your love. You speak for your beloved when they cannot speak for themselves. . . even those you never knew. Tell me, how does one earn your compassion, the way Anderson and the rest have?”

The rest, thought Jenna. Father Anderson and Father Callahan, Archbishop Maxwell and Bishop Makube, Heinkel and the man this child calls “worthless”. . . I do love them, not as a woman loves—that kind of love I'll never know—but as a child of God loves His other children, as He commanded. Except—there are so many people I don't love, so many that I am tempted to hate. . . I fall so short of what He asks of me.

Aloud, she murmured, “One doesn't. Love and compassion shouldn't be earned, they should be given freely, but I'm not—I don't, not to everyone like I should. Don't think that I'm anything special. . . that I'm brave.”

“Hmph, you're too hard on yourself, that's what you are,” said the girl with a hint of her smile returning. “I've seen your bravery, seen you ring your Dark Bells even as you quaked with fear, for the sake of one you loved. 'Just a dog,' he called me even though I saved his sorry hide killing my own kind, as you did then. . . and I still do, now.”

Jenna frowned in puzzlement. “When? In another dream, one I don't remember?”

“You could say that,” replied the child with a shrug. “There are other worlds than these, Little Sister, and what is real in that one may as well be a dream in this, for all the good it did either of us. Before I came here to Anderson's grave, I wandered for three decades looking for myself, and looking for him. I never found him—but there, I found you. You were just like me. . . and yet, as you said yourself, you're not like me at all.”

Is she crazy? Jenna wondered, not for the first time. Then she told herself, No. What I know is true—that she is a man and a girl and a dog, one and the same; that she is a vampire; that she loves Father Anderson in a way that transcends all of that—the two of us meeting in some other world is no more insane than any of that. And it explains why it took her thirty years to visit his grave!

I only wish I could remember that world and her, “just a dog,” and him, the one whom I loved. . . as a woman loves. I must have.

Jenna turned from her self-centered thoughts to something else the girl had said, that she had wandered looking for Father Anderson and never found him.

“I know where he is,” she said aloud. “Father Anderson, I mean. I know where you can find him. Heinkel—someone told me what he said as he lay dying, that he had to go to his children. . . .”

“I know. I heard him.” The girl's voice was flat and grim. “But we'd always sworn that we'd meet again in Hell, or in limbo—that's purgatory to you, Little Sister. So I'd hoped that I'd find him again, somewhere, no matter what I heard him say. Thirty years isn't a long time to the likes of me, but it was long enough to kill that hope.”

She turned her head to look at the desert lilies blooming on Father Anderson's empty grave as she said quietly, “Anderson's in Heaven, stolen away from me forever. His way of punishing me for my sins—or God's way. Because you'll tell me that God is love, and maybe that's true. . . but God is cruel. Sometimes He makes you live.”

When one red tear slipped from the corner of the child's eye to run down her white face, Jenna pulled her handkerchief from her pocket and reached out to wipe it away. The girl jumped as if startled but kept her eyes fixed on the flowers.

“It isn't forever,” murmured Jenna. “To our perspective, yes, God may seem cruel, but I do tell you, God is love, and He forgives. Someday, you can keep your promise to meet again.”

“Ha,” the girl scoffed to the lilies. “The way to Heaven stood open to me once, and I turned my back on it to make my own way here on this fallen Earth instead. There's no forgiveness for that.”

Jenna told her, “Where there is repentance, there is forgiveness. Father Anderson forgave you, didn't he? If he told you not to cry, doesn't that mean he didn't want you to suffer?”

The child did not reply, but her pale lips parted and a shaky breath hissed through her sharp teeth.

“And I forgive you,” Jenna went on gently, “for what you did to the man you call worthless, and for everything else. So if it's possible for us two flawed human beings to forgive you, how can you say it's impossible for God? All you have to do is let go of your pride and ask.”

The girl responded to none of it, not in words although her long, dark lashes trembled over her strange eyes. Instead, she said something else when she finally turned to face Jenna again.

“I do have your compassion, don't I? Even I.”

“Of course.” Jenna meant to smile at her, but the look of utter bewilderment on the child's face almost moved her to tears. With the impulsiveness that plagued her, as it had once plagued her in another world until it killed her, Jenna leaned forward, took the girl's face in both hands, and kissed her forehead between the strands of black bangs that fell over it as her own black curl was forever falling over her brow.

Wayward like its mistress, at the moment a bride of Christ who now whispered to a vampire who had rejected Him long ago, “I love you, my Little Sister.”

The girl's skin felt cool to her lips, and Jenna pressed her fingertips to them as she sat back, blushing at her own boldness though not regretting it. The child still looked at Jenna with bewilderment for a few seconds, but her eyes then softened as her own lips curled in an equally soft smile. Bearing that expression, she was beautiful, and Jenna could see the love in her gaze.

Did he ever look at Father Anderson like this? wondered Jenna. And if he did, how could Anderson not understand that he loved him? If she shows me so clearly with her eyes that she loves me, as a sister loves, surely he showed Father Anderson all the more that he loved him. . . as a man loves.

“I brought you something,” the girl said suddenly. She closed her gloved hand over the hardbound book lying at her side and held it out to Jenna. As the nun took it, the child went on, “It's a book of poetry, by Robert Browning. Did you ever have to read him for your lessons?”

“Um. . . oh, yes, sort of. Father Callahan used to read 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin' to us,” Jenna recalled.

The girl grinned, which was a little startling after her somber mood. “Oh, so you got the nicer version of the story—not the one where the piper leads the children into the river and drowns them all like the rats.” She laughed outright at the horrified look Jenna gave her. “But no, he pipes them off to paradise—or else to Transylvania, where according to Callahan, their descendants grow wild roses to fend off Count Dracula with their thorns!”

Jenna had forgotten about that part of the poem and absurdly wondered if an interest in Transylvania was why Father Callahan preferred it to other versions.

“Anyway,” the girl continued, “that one's in there, but I marked another one I believe you'll like more. Read it, and you can tell me what you think about it, next year.”

She spoke playfully, so Jenna responded in kind, “All right then, I will! I'll leave you alone now—stay as long as you like.” The offer was merely rhetorical, Jenna knew, as the girl wouldn't be lingering. The sun was almost up.

Jenna got to her feet and brushed the grass off her habit, then turned to go inside. However, the girl called after her, “Little Sister!”

Jenna paused and looked back. “Yes?”

Still seated on the grave, red-fuchsia eyes turned up to her, the child said, “His name was Luke—like the saint this place was named for. Luke Valentine.”

Jenna opened her mouth to say, “Whose name?” but then shut it again. She already knew.

“At least I remembered his name, even after all this time,” added the girl. “No one else ever could.”

Jenna told her, “I'll remember it. Thank you. . . Little Sister.”

–

That night, Jenna dreamed what began as a nightmare.

Her mother was newly dead, having brought Jenna to the orphanage to be cared for just before the cancer eating away at her dissolved the last of her life. . . except in this dream, Jenna was an adult and instead of St. Luke's, she had arrived at a convent.

As she walked in, the room she entered seemed to be a calm and peaceful place with open windows covered by gauzy curtains, which did not prohibit the sunlight or a fresh breeze from wafting in. It looked like a dormitory, the walls on both sides of her lined by beds made up with clean linens, and Jenna wondered if this was where she was to sleep.

She was greeted by five nuns, older than she by some years, whom she knew to be her new sisters. They wore snow-white wimples adorned with tinkling silver bells, and matching habits bearing the sigil of a rose on the breast, embroidered in scarlet thread.

There is a folk tradition that the thorns of wild roses keep vampires away, Father Callahan had said.

(At the moment, I'd say that thorns attract vampires.)

Are they my new sisters, though? Jenna asked herself as she squinted at the other women's faces. She was unable to see them clearly, as if they changed and shifted subtly with every motion. They seem so familiar, like I already know them from somewhere. . . . Did I live here before, with them? Am I coming home?

Sure enough, the eldest who stood in the middle flanked by two of the others on each side greeted her, “Oh, thanks be to God! The baby has been returned to us, nearly the spitting image of our sister her mother whom we loved well. Welcome home, Sister Jenna.” Her voice sounded kind superficially, yet Jenna could almost hear a thread of mocking sardonicism through it.

Yet Jenna heard herself reply, “Thankee, Big Sister,” the strange accent and stranger words falling from her lips so naturally.

Sister Mary—for that was her name, Jenna suddenly understood—smiled with a horrible false sweetness. Another of the Little Sisters stepped forward holding out a stack of folded white garments.

Sister Coquina, thought Jenna.

“I've brought your habit and wimple, freshly washed!” she chortled. “So ye can make yourself decent again.”

Jenna reached for the clothing and found herself dressed instantly in a wimple and rose-embroidered habit like the rest. She looked down at herself in mild surprise then lifted her head to look at Sister Mary when she spoke again.

“Now don your bells, girl,” Big Sister said, all false affection gone from her tone. She pointed to one of the otherwise empty beds, upon which lay a headdress of tiny bells. At first, Jenna thought them identical to those the other Little Sisters wore, but as she drew closer, she realized that they were a darker metal. Not silver as bright as the faux sweetness of the others' voices but a color darker than pewter though not quite black.

When she hesitated, the one called Sister Louise cooed, “The dear departed left the Dark Bells behind when she ran away with ye. They burn us to touch, but if you're your mother's daughter, they'll suit ye well!”

Jenna took up the headdress in both hands and draped it upon her brow, over her wimple. When she touched it, the bells sounded with a richer tone than the others' tinkling. From the corners of her eyes, Jenna thought she saw something moving along the floor in response to the noise, but when she turned her head to look, nothing was there.

“Now she's decent,” Sister Louise said to the woman next to her, Sister Tamra. “Still pretty as a picture, though!”

“Ooh, yes!” the other squealed. “Almost as pretty as the pretty man yonder! Maybe they'll make a match!”

“Journeys end in lovers' meeting,” said the last of them, Sister Michela. “'Tis true, the end of baby's journey to come back to us—and the end of his journey too!” All of them except for Sister Mary twittered like birds with laughter. Or cawed like crows.

Sister Mary looked Jenna over then lifted a hand and flicked a finger in the direction of her forehead.

“Make your hair tidy,” said Big Sister, and Jenna bit back a sigh as she tucked the wayward curl into place under her wimple. The elder nun favored her with a thin smile and continued in the tone of false affection, “And now ye must be famished, poppet, after so long away. 'Tis what killed your mother, her refusal to feed, so to be sure she didn't see that ye were fed, neither. You're fortunate she brought ye back to us in time.”

My mother didn't starve to death! It was cancer. . . wasn't it? Jenna remembered her mother kissing her goodbye outside the orphanage, tears streaming down her gaunt cheeks, and that was the last Jenna saw of her. . . .

And yet it wasn't, because she also remembered her mother falling to her knees and then her face outside the convent, screaming in agony as her body shifted and changed and broke apart into a thousand tiny pieces—pieces that scattered and yet still danced at the edges of Jenna's vision, in time to the chiming of the Dark Bells.

Jenna blinked back tears of her own, at the same time becoming aware that she was famished with a gnawing hunger unlike any she had known before. Sister Mary gestured more widely, towards the far side of the large, open room.

“Go and sup,” she said, “so the rest of us may feed. We've waited to give you the first taste of him, to show how glad we are to have ye home.” Big Sister said this last in an almost sing-song tone, and Jenna thought that she and the others were not so much “glad” as vindicated.

“Yes, we're faint with hunger!” Sister Coquina said, the others echoing her.

The first taste. . . of him. The horrible words echoed in Jenna's ears even as she moved down the room past the rows of beds. Her hunger compelled her, demanded it.

Only one of the beds was occupied, almost all the way to the far wall. As Jenna drew near, she could make out the dark form of a man in black lying there. His arms were extended outwards, almost in a pose of crucifixion, and held in place by slings of pale cloth tied to a ceiling beam overhead. No such slings held his legs, and when she reached the bed side, she realized why: he had none. Both had been sheared off at the thighs. The remnants of his black pants hid the stumps, but streaks of blood on the once pristine sheets told that the wounds were fresh.

How has he not bled to death? Jenna wondered in horror, made even worse by the fact that she could smell the rusty-iron scent of his blood. . . and it smelled delicious.

She dragged her eyes up his body to his face, standing out white in stark contrast to his black clothing and shaggy hair. He was pretty, as Sister Tamra had said, but his face was pinched with pain, and his eyes were open wide as they fixed upon her. His pallid skin was as white as the habit Jenna wore, and his eyes as red as the rose embroidered on her breast. . . .

As red as hers, the girl who came each year to kneel at Father Anderson's grave.

Because they are hers, thought Jenna while a heavy sick feeling warred with the hunger inside her. This is him, the man who loves Father Anderson.

“No!” she said in a low voice. “I won't—I won't feed on him!”

The other Little Sisters had gathered behind her, and they giggled.

“Ooh, we were right!” cried Sister Michela. “Baby loves him already!”

“Love at first sight,” Sister Coquina crooned. “Go on and have your first kiss of him, Sister Jenna! Then we'll all have kisses.”

Sister Mary commanded more stridently, “Feed from him! You've never supped with us before, prideful girl, but you will now—or you will starve. You may wear the Dark Bells, yet you are still one of us. Denying that will not change it.”

Then, to Jenna's amazement, the man in the bed smiled and whispered in a deep voice—the same voice she'd heard from the girl that first day—too low for the others to hear: “Big Sister's right, draculina. You are what you are, and there's nothing you can do about it. So drink my blood and come into your full powers—Little Sister Jenna, my No Life Princess!”

Even though her heart recoiled at the thought of drinking his blood, Jenna's mind told her, If he wants me to do it, it can't be wrong. And as they say, I am what I am—the form we take makes no difference, and I will always be me: the real deal, Father Callahan's Type One vampire, draculina. . . in this dream, this world, and any other.

She bent over him, leaning down between his suspended arms as she breathed deeply the scent of the blood congealing from his severed legs. Jenna had never kissed nor been kissed before, and her lips touched a man's flesh for the first time when she put them to his neck then parted them to press her teeth—sharp teeth—against his skin.

Just as the tips of her fangs were about to pierce it, her heart, her wayward vampire heart, recalled what he had said to her only that day in the voice of a little girl:

I've seen your bravery, seen you ring your Dark Bells even as you quaked with fear, for the sake of one you loved. . . . I never found him—but there, I found you. You were just like me. . . and yet, as you said yourself, you're not like me at all.

Jenna's closed eyes flew open, and she pulled back and straightened up with a gasp, leaving the pale skin intact.

I am what I am, and I will always be me—but that me is what I say it is, not them!

“No! I won't!” she growled out loud with a hard shake of her head. . . ringing the Dark Bells for the sake of one she loved.

The other Little Sisters clustered at her back, hovering like vultures, gasped too. Jenna turned to them and saw their true faces clearly now, ancient and sagging with blood-red eyes as hideous as his were beautiful. Sister Mary, glowering, took a step towards the bed, but Jenna shook her head again fiercely, and Big Sister drew back at the sound of the bells.

As the glamour had fallen away from the Little Sisters, so too had it fallen from their convent, and Jenna saw it for what it really was: just a fairly small, shabby room with a few rickety beds clothed in tattered sheets. The things she had seen scuttling in the periphery of her sight were now closing in, surrounding the other sisters and the bed to pause and wait just out of reach. They were a dark tide of insect-like creatures, some of them surely those into which Jenna's mother's body had disintegrated. . . the can tam, the doctor bugs who answered the summons of the Little Sisters' bells, and especially Jenna's own.

“Auuugh!” a voice yelped from the bed. It was still a deep voice yet not the one which had whispered to her, and Jenna turned back to find that the glamour had fallen from the man on the bed as well. He wasn't the vampire at all but a man with spectacled green eyes and long blond hair spilling all around him as he pulled on his bound arms in a panic. He too was pretty, yet even more gravely wounded than the illusory vampire; his white suit jacket was torn in a dozen blood-edged slashes, as if something had cut right through it into his skin. His legs were still severed to bloody stumps, and he wept as he stared past Jenna at the other Little Sisters in terror.

Then his wild eyes flicked to Jenna, and he all but wailed, “Where am I? What are you monsters doing to me? Why does this keep happening?! How many times do I have to die?!”

The sense of fear in his voice was intimately familiar to Jenna, and when he said monsters, she recognized who he was.

What have the monsters done to him? she wondered in sorrowful pity as she again bent over the bed—not to go for his neck this time, but to clasp his anguished face in both hands as she had done the girl's earlier. He flinched at her touch and whimpered aloud when she kissed his brow too.

“Shh, Luke,” she murmured as she drew back enough to look into his fearful eyes. “It's all right. I won't let them hurt ye anymore.”

At the sound of his name, he blinked in bewilderment then relaxed the slightest bit. But Sister Mary snarled from behind Jenna, “Don't make such bold promises ye cannot keep, vowless girl! If ye won't have him, we will!”

Luke whimpered again, but Jenna spun round to shout at Big Sister, “Ye won't! I won't let ye!” A ripple seemed to pass through the waiting can tam as Jenna said more calmly, “We won't let ye. Now go, or I'll have 'em on ye.”

And they were gone, as instantaneously as Jenna's habit had dressed her. Her need for them past, the can tam scattered, retreating into cracks in the floors and walls. Jenna turned back to the crying, shuddering man on the bed and sat down on its edge, reaching down to stroke his sweat-damp hair back from his face.

“I won't let 'em hurt ye anymore, Luke Valentine,” she repeated. “Not them, and not him either. Be still, dear, and just breathe.”

His confused eyes dropped closed as he obeyed, his breathing slowly steadying and deepening. Jenna kept stroking his hair.

After a moment, Luke opened his eyes again and looked up at her as he whispered, “It still hurts. . . everything hurts.”

“I know, I'm sorry. It will be over soon,” Jenna promised. For a moment, she considered ringing the bells again and calling back the can tam. The doctor bugs couldn't regrow Luke's severed legs, but they could heal the lesser wounds and ease his pain.

Yes, and they'd scare him out of his wits too, she told herself. He's dying regardless, and I can't stop it. He shouldn't die covered in insects and screaming.

Jenna stood again and reached for the sling tied around his left wrist, tugging ineffectually at the knot in the hopes of releasing Luke's arms to make him at least a little more comfortable.

“Cut them down,” he said, his voice a bit stronger than before. “There's a knife on my belt. Or there was. . . I guess it's still there. I still had my gun—” He broke off, wincing, and mumbled, “Oh God, my gun, he made me fire it—put his wires in me and used them to make me pull the trigger, over and over—”

“Shh, no, don't talk about it,” Jenna said quickly as she pushed up Luke's suit jacket to find the knife in a sheath on his belt. Although it still burned with hunger, her stomach turned to think of what must have happened—razor sharp wires dug into Luke's flesh and tendons, maybe down to his very bones, and used to manipulate him like a marionette on strings.

His body proved useful eventually, the girl had said. A disposable tool, a means to an end.

Was it he who did this to Luke? wondered Jenna. Or could another be so cruel?

She used the knife to slice the fabric of the left sling, and lowered that arm gently to rest on the bed. After freeing the other arm as well, Jenna tucked the knife back into its sheath and sat down again, returning her hand to Luke's face and stroking his cheek. His eyes had fallen closed again, but he turned his head to press his cheek into her hand.

“Who are you?” he whispered. “And how do you know my name? Are you an angel?”

Jenna exhaled in a soft laugh. “Nay, not me. Someone told me your name, Luke. Mine is Jenna.”

Luke nodded faintly then winced before more tears seeped out from under his lowered dark blond lashes. Jenna didn't know whether he wept from physical pain or emotional when he mumbled, “I'm afraid. I keep dying, over and over, and every time is worse than the last. Y-you say it will be over soon, but—but I'll only wake up somewhere else. . . hurting more. . . and more alone. Jan—”

Whatever he'd been about to say dissolved into a sob, and Jenna leaned down to slip both arms around his broad shoulders, hugging him to her breast.

“Shh, no, don't ye cry,” she soothed him, the way she would soothe a distraught child at the orphanage. “You're not alone, Luke, Sister Jenna's here.” He lifted both arms, at the same time groaning with the pain of moving them, and clutched her in a convulsive embrace. Jenna rested her cheek against the top of his head and petted his hair.

Journeys end in lovers' meeting, she thought. Not just romantic lovers, either. . . the other kinds of love matter just as much.

When Luke's crying had finally calmed, she murmured, “Who is Jan?”

“M-my brother,” Luke breathed shakily. “My little brother. We—we were supposed to be together. That's why we became vampires. . . so we would be always be together. B-but—I died without him. Alone. And every time I wake up again, he's never there. Jan's gone. . . stolen away from me forever.”

She said Luke let the Nazis experiment on him so he could “finally amount to something,” Jenna recalled, but that wasn't true. That wasn't the reason at all.

She whispered to the dying Type Three vampire what she had told the Type One who was still very much alive: “It isn't forever. Soon ye will meet again.”

Luke lifted his head to gaze up at Jenna with blood-shot eyes, through glasses streaked with tears.

“Do you really believe that, Sister Jenna?”

She smiled. “Aye. Don't be afraid, Luke. He's waiting for ye in the clearing at the end of the path.”

For the first time, he smiled, but then he cringed in pain once more and gripped her tighter, pressing his face into her shoulder.

“You—if you're hungry, you can take my blood,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “I'm dying anyway, so go on and eat me! If I come back again, maybe—maybe it'll be inside you instead of him. You'd make a much better Master.”

His blood smelled so sweet, and again, Jenna's mind cajoled, He told me I could, so it isn't wrong. This time, though, it was easier for her to resist.

“No, Luke,” she murmured. “Thankee sai, but no, I won't. I won't become one of them this time, even if it means I'll die too. Now be still, dear, and rest.”

Luke did, relaxing in her embrace. Jenna could feel the tension dissolve from his body, and then his body began to dissolve too—not as her mother's had, with an agonizing disintegration into the can tam, but into an insubstantial red and black mist which began with the remnants of his legs and swept upward.

Jenna looked down into Luke's face to see with alarm that tears again streamed from his closed eyes. But then he smiled and with pure joy in his deep voice, cried “Jan!”. . . calling out to his brother as Father Anderson had called to Archbishop Maxwell and his other children.

“Journeys end with lovers' meeting,” Jenna whispered. Luke was gone by the time she spoke the last word.

She awoke, lying in her own bed with her arms empty, embracing nothing. Jenna folded them over her chest, clutching herself as she began to cry. Maybe she could be brave when she wore the Dark Bells on her brow in the presence of someone she loved, but here and now, her head was bare and she was alone.

Dear God, how much of it was real? she prayed as she wept. Those horrible Little Sisters, those vampires—were they real? The girl said, “There are other worlds than these,” so in some other world, was I one of them? Was I a monster too?

Jenna's tears finally slowed, and she sniffled. She shook her head against her damp pillow, and heard in her mind the echo of the Dark Bells.

No, I wasn't a monster. I'm not a monster now. Maybe it was only a dream, or maybe it was real, a glimpse of another life where I took another form and where this world is the dream.  But I'm not a monster either way.

Jenna thought of the ancient leering faces and burning eyes of the other Little Sisters—and then she thought of Luke Valentine's joyous smile as he lay dissolving in her arms.

Even with all the awfulness of it, I hope it was real—or at least real enough that I shared his dying dream and comforted him as he passed. . . that for a moment before he found his little brother again, I was his Little Sister.

(continued)

Chapter Text

I can't go on.
I'm alone, as I'll ever be.
I linger on beyond the beyond.
Where the willows weep and the whirlpools sleep,
You'll find me.

8.

For several days, Jenna forgot about the book the girl had given her; then almost a whole week after the child's visit, the nun came across it in her nightstand drawer where she'd hidden it, lest anyone happen to see it in her room and ask where it had come from. She didn't want to have to lie.

She felt guilty for neglecting to keep her promise to read the poem the girl had marked for her—guilty, but also curious as to which poem it was, and why the child thought she'd like it. Jenna finally had time to read it that night, after all the children were in bed and she had retired for the evening.

Sitting up in bed by the light of her bedside lamp, Jenna opened the book to where the girl had placed a bookmark of sorts. . . merely a scrap of paper with something sketched on it in red ink. Jenna squinted at it for a moment before discerning that the drawing was of a human eye, raised Heavenward in its socket. A single teardrop hung suspended from its lower lid.

It had been colored in with the red ink, making the tear look like a drop of blood.

Jenna shivered and put the paper aside on the nightstand before turning her attention to the chosen poem, titled “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.” A footnote informed her that a “childe” was a young nobleman in training to be a knight.

It was a long poem with numbered stanzas, written in somewhat archaic language. . . Almost the way I spoke in that dream about Luke and the other Little Sisters, Jenna thought. Perhaps that was why she felt she would better understand the words if she read the poem aloud instead of silently, hearing and speaking the words as well as seeing them.

“My first thought was, he lied in every word. . . ,” she began in a murmur.

The poem told in the first person how the protagonist—presumably the titular “Roland”—was on a quest to find said Dark Tower, which Jenna presumed would prove successful judging from the spoiler of a title. She wondered if this particular poem had resonated with the vampire because Roland reminded him of himself.

For, what with my whole world-wide wandering,
What with my search drawn out thro' years, my hope
Dwindled into a ghost not fit to cope
With that obstreperous joy success would bring,
I hardly tried now to rebuke the spring
My heart made, finding failure in its scope.

Jenna paused and thought, His world—or worlds—wide wandering, his search drawn out through years. . . his dwindling hope that he will ever see Father Anderson again. Is this how she feels when she comes to sit at his empty grave each year? Excited to have failed, because after searching for so long, success is too much to contemplate, and she can't go on?

And yet, a few stanzas later, she read, “I might go on; nought else remained to do. So, on I went.”

On Roland went, and Jenna went with him, through heartbreaking memories of friends he'd loved and lost, through a barren wasteland ravaged by war as he sought his purpose and his obsession: the Dark Tower. Why he sought it, what it meant, whether the Tower itself was the goal or something that lay within it. . . the poem didn't say.

It's like the rose, Jenna mused, the rose Father Callahan talked about. . . the rose embroidered on the breast of my habit, in my dream of Luke. “Something to be protected above all else, something which once meant everything.”

The Tower could be anything—it could be everything. To Heinkel, the Tower is Sister Takagi. To Bishop Makube, it's Archbishop Maxwell. To Luke, it was his brother. The Dark Tower can be a beloved person, it can be Heaven, it can be a cause or an ideal, a rose or a lily. It's what Billy Idol meant by, “Look for something left in this world.” The Dark Tower is whatever means everything to each of us, whatever each of us is seeking.

To this vampire, the Dark Tower is Father Anderson.

. . . What is it to me?

Having no answer, Jenna read on. Roland finally found the thing he sought, the Tower around which he had shaped his whole life like the hills that surrounded it.

What in the midst lay but the Tower itself?
The round squat turret, blind as the fool's heart,
Built of brown stone, without a counter-part
In the whole world.

Roland saw the hills bearing down on him by the light of the setting sun; he heard the names of his lost friends and their miserable fates. Jenna's breath came faster as she spoke the lines of the concluding stanzas, for she too could see the oppressive hills, and hear the accusing cacophony. She could feel the crushing pressure of Roland's guilt that he alone had survived, that he alone had reached the Tower. . . that almost everyone he had ever known and loved had fallen in order that he might make his way.

That sometimes, he had let them fall.

There they stood, ranged along the hill-sides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all.

And yet. . .

And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew.

Jenna's voice broke, and the final line blurred in her vision. She didn't need to read it anyway; she knew what it said.

She closed her eyes and breathed, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came!”

–

Little Sister Jenna had been one of them, one of the many who had fallen in order that Roland might make his way to the Dark Tower.

She had helped him escape the clutches of the other Little Sisters; she had fled at his side knowing that she would share the fate of her mother who had also tried to leave, for in that world, she had fed upon men as she had in her dream refused to feed upon Luke Valentine. As the girl at Father Anderson's grave had said, Jenna had killed her own kind for Roland's sake, and she tried to again when Sister Mary pursued them.

Yet the can tam had not come, no matter how fiercely she rang the Dark Bells.

Roland had tried too, tried to choke the life out of she who had none, but it was the dog who ended Big Sister. . . also killing his own kind.

As Jenna shook her head wildly to ring the Bells, she and Roland both heard a savage growl from somewhere above them. Sister Mary heard it too, and they all stared as the dog launched himself from the rock upon which it stood. For a second, as he descended from on high just as he had almost leapt from the photograph in Jenna's dream, time seemed to stop, and Jenna saw him clearly: the sharp teeth, the cross on his furry chest.

And his eyes. . . those eyes. The same crimson-to-fuchsia eyes boring into her that sometimes gazed serenely at her beside Father Anderson's empty tomb.

Then time moved again, and the dog crashed into Sister Mary and ripped out her throat with his teeth, his vampire fangs sinking into her vampire neck and killing her before she could kill them. In that way, the dog too was one of those who helped Childe Roland on his way, but Jenna knew it was not for Roland's sake that he acted.

Nay, it was for the sake of she whom he would call his Little Sister in another world than this, one like him and at the same time so different.

She had not known it then, and she had asked Roland what the creature had been.

“It was a dog,” Roland had replied. “Just a town-dog.”

She had asked why it had come.

“Ka,” was Roland's only answer. Ka means fate, destiny, what people speak of when they say with a shrug, “It is what it is.”

But it wasn't ka that made the dog come. It was will, God's will—and his, the will of the vampire who killed one of his own so that another of his own could live a little longer.

Roland had moved on, and Jenna went with him for as far as she could. . . not far. As she said to him, “We're strong in some ways, but weak in many more.” When they stopped to rest, he'd kissed her—first the wayward curl of her hair that persisted in escaping her wimple even in another lifetime, then her lips as a man kisses a woman. It was Jenna's first and only kiss in that world, and in this one.

Exhausted from his ordeal with the Little Sisters, Roland had fallen asleep even as he kissed her. Jenna had pulled back and sat watching him for as much of the night and her life remained. He seemed to dream, for his handsome face (he'd looked a little like a young Clint Eastwood, she thought now) contorted and his limbs twitched in his sleep.

Likely he'd dreamed of his Dark Tower. Perhaps he'd dreamed of the dog as well, as Jenna later would.

She wondered if he'd dreamed of her.

She'd watched him as long as she could, until the sun crept up over the horizon and she felt herself begin to come apart just as her mother had done. Tears had filled her eyes and then crawled out of them, made not of water but of can tam.

Jenna was glad Roland slept on and did not see, even though it meant she could not bid him goodbye. Luke Valentine had seen the same thing happening to the vampire who killed him, as he changed from man to dog: can tam like centipedes falling from his dissolving body as Luke screamed in horror and revulsion. Now, remembering, Jenna thought she could not have borne to hear Roland cry out what Luke had: “What are you?! You're a monster!”

She had screamed herself, wordless and agonized, and the Dark Bells had rung with the thrashing of her head as she writhed and convulsed and then disintegrated into a legion of the doctor bugs who would ultimately scatter and themselves perish out there in the desert. Yet even reduced to a multitude, Jenna had remained faintly aware of herself, aware enough to bid Roland goodbye after all.

“I love you,” she'd called to him as he awoke, though she knew he couldn't understand. He heard no words, only the can tam singing.

They, she stopped when he called her name.

“Jenna?” Then, once more: “Jenna?”

She thought she could not answer, but when Roland had picked up the discarded Dark Bells and shook them, Jenna found that she could. Exerting what little of her control remained, she gathered herself before him once more, though only as hundreds of disparate can tam. Again, she thought she could do no more. . . and again, she found that she could when Roland shook the Bells a second time.

As the dog's will had brought him there to that world in search of the priest he loved, Jenna's will had brought the can tam closer together, contorting into a single shape before the one she loved: the shape of a wayward dark curl.

“Roland,” the can tam sang, and Jenna believed that this time, he understood. His already pale face blanched further, and the Dark Bells fell from his hand to the ground with a final chime.

Then Jenna had let herself go, and let him go too, that he might go on to his Tower. As the can tam scattered and went their separate ways, her last thought had been one she would later think again in another world.

The form we take makes no difference—maybe someday, I'll be something else too. . . but I'll still be me.

–

The next morning, Jenna brought the book of Browning's poetry to Father Callahan in his office and showed him “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came.”

“Father, have you ever read this?” she asked.

“Hmm. . . I believe so, but it was a long time ago. Although the title's familiar, I couldn't tell you what it's about,” mused Father Callahan. “Why do you ask?”

Instead of answering the question, Jenna implored, “Would you read it again? Right now?”

“Well, I suppose I could if it's that important.”

“It is—at least, I believe so,” she murmured. “I want to know what you think of it.”

Bemused—and possibly a bit amused—Father Callahan nodded and took the book from her. Before he began to read, however, his eyes fell on the scrap of paper with which the vampire girl had marked the poem. He looked at the eye symbol drawn on it for several seconds, then asked quietly, “Jenna, where did you get this book? I don't recognize it from our library.”

“It—it was a gift,” Jenna stammered. “A gift from a friend.” She doubted Father Callahan would accept that response, considering that she had little contact with anyone outside the orphanage. Surely he would ask with whom Jenna could possibly be friends.

But he didn't. Instead, Father Callahan read the poem as Jenna stood to the side of his desk and fidgeted. He read silently until he reached the final line, which he spoke with his husky voice soft.

“Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came!”

After that, he again sat without moving or speaking, gaze fixed upon the page. Jenna waited until the priest lifted his ruddy face with its forehead marked with the scar of the cross, to her pale one with her own brow marked by a single dark curl.

“You say, you want to know what I think of it, Sister Jenna?” he asked.

She nodded then clarified, “What do you think it means? And what do you think happened afterwards, after—after Roland finally reached the Tower?”

“I don't believe that matters,” said Father Callahan. “The quest is what's important—he says it himself, his heart leapt when he considered that he might never find his way to the Tower. That's why Browning ends the poem where he does. Well, and perhaps because it's better that we readers don't know what happened next. What Childe Roland finds within the Dark Tower is probably best left to our imaginations, since anything Browning described would likely disappoint us.”

“But don't you want to know?” Jenna asked beseechingly. “Don't you wonder if what he found was worth the lives of everyone he loved, and worth the pain he went through to lose them?”

She had her trembling hands clasped in front of her, and Father Callahan reached out to take both in his own while he gently replied, “No, dear girl. I don't want to know, and I don't wonder. When we give up our lives willingly for the sake of one we love—as Christ gave up his life for each of us—there's no question of whether the pain was 'worth it' or not.”

The priest squeezed the nun's hands as he quoted from the poem, “'I saw them and I knew them all.' The people who laid down their lives for Roland's sake—he didn't forget them, Jenna, and so they were with him all along. Perhaps he even spoke their names to the Dark Tower, before he blew his horn and announced his own.”

–

When Jenna next met the girl at Father Anderson's grave, on the thirty-fourth anniversary of his death, she said, “I read Browning's poem that you marked for me. And the rest of them too.”

“The rest don't concern me,” returned the child. “What did you think? Did you like it?”

Jenna didn't know how to answer that. She'd read the poem again and again. No more memories had come back to her, only more questions, and she still wasn't sure whether she was glad or regretful for what the poem had given her.

Finally, she said honestly, “I don't know. It's bittersweet.”

“The poem?” asked the girl. “Or the memory?”

How does she know? wondered Jenna. How does she know that I remembered. . . him?

“Both,” she said aloud. “But. . . I guess the sweet outweighs the bitter. Knowing that Roland finally reaches the Dark Tower. . . I'm happy for him.”

“Hmm. It's all well and good for Roland, getting what he was after. We can't all be so lucky.” The girl made a huffing sound and turned her head to glare at Father Anderson's gravestone with narrowed crimson-fuchsia eyes. “Not so grand for everyone he killed or let die along the way.”

Jenna told her, “I asked Father Callahan to read the poem, and he said something about that. At the end Roland remembered everyone he had lost, so they were still with him. . . all the way to the Tower. He felt them all around him. Father thinks that maybe Roland even said their names before it, to honor them.”

The girl's head whipped back to face Jenna, dark hair flying around her white face before it settled on her shoulders. She challenged, “Did he? I don't know, I wasn't there. Did he speak Callahan's name? Did he speak yours?”

“I don't know,” murmured Jenna. “I wasn't there either. But I hope he did.” The way I spoke his, as best I could.

“Well, what if he didn't?” the girl all but sneered. “What if you were just a girl to him, as I was just a dog? What if he forgot you?” She paused, drew a ragged breath, then demanded, “What if he said someone else's name instead of yours?!”

Tears started in Jenna's eyes to consider it: that despite all she had given up for him, despite her love, Roland hadn't thought of her at all as he faced the Dark Tower. . . that he had spoken the name of another girl, one he'd loved better than herself.

And then she remembered what Heinkel had told her when describing Father Anderson's final moment: He called Maxwell's name. Now Jenna understood why the girl had asked her such bitter questions, not to hurt Jenna but to seek her empathy.

Jenna blinked away the unshed tears and replied, “If he did think of another instead of me, it breaks my heart, but I still don't have any regrets. I sacrificed for him because I loved him. Even though he left me behind and went on with another in his heart, I'm glad to have loved him all the same.”

When the girl gave her an incredulous look accompanied by another huff, Jenna gave her a slightly watery smile in return and reached out to squeeze the child's gloved hand, as Father Callahan had squeezed her own.

“Like I said though—it breaks my heart, and I'm sorry yours is broken too.”

The girl dropped her eyes, but she did fold her fingers over Jenna's and hold on tightly as she muttered, “Yeah, well. I might not think too highly of your Roland, but I feel for him on one account. He may have honored the memory of those he lost, but he still had to go on without them. Maybe he's the loser after all, Tower or no Tower.”

“Yes.” Jenna repeated the girl's own words of the year before, “Sometimes God makes you live.” She hesitated, then cupped the child's chin in her free hand to lift her head so their eyes met. “Thank you for what you did for us. You could have stood by and let Sister Mary kill me and then him, but you didn't. Maybe to Roland you were just a dog, and he gave you no thought as he stood before the Dark Tower, but I thank you for the both of us. And I promise, I'll always remember you.”

The girl smiled with the soft look of love in her eyes that Jenna had noted before.

“Then I should thank you as well,” she said. “One day, you and I will part for good, and make our separate ways alone. Knowing that you'll remember me will give me the strength to go on. And I will always remember you as well, Little Sister. Whatever waits at the end of my path. . . I promise that as I stand before it, I'll speak your name.”

(continued)

Chapter Text

I've faced the fathoms in your deep,
Withstood the suitors' quiet siege,
Pulled down the heavens just to please you,
To hold the flower I can't keep.

9.

Three decades passed, and each year, the girl returned to Father Anderson's grave. Each year, Jenna grew older. The girl did not.

Upon the sixtieth anniversary of the Battle of London, the thirtieth anniversary of the girl's first visit, Jenna was fifty-one years old. Much of her black hair was streaked with grey, but her wayward curl had remained dark, so far. Her face didn't have too many lines yet either, so when she was wearing her wimple with only that one wisp of hair visible, Jenna looked a few years younger than she was.

Father Callahan had aged as well, aged and grown old. He still resided at the orphanage and continued serving as a priest, but upon his eightieth birthday, he told Jenna that he feared he would soon be incapable of managing St. Luke's himself. He asked if she was willing to take his place, and she gladly agreed.

Like the girl, Heinkel still made her pilgrimage each year to visit Sister Takagi's grave on the latter's birthday. Jenna thought that perhaps she had aged a little since the day she'd driven Jenna to the Vatican; her lisping voice rasped a bit more than it used to, and when Jenna looked at Heinkel in profile, she could see faint crows' feet at the corners of her eyes, behind her dark glasses. Yet Jenna herself now looked older than Heinkel Wolfe did, and she never asked why.

Bishop Makube had, as Father Callahan had predicted, become Archbishop Makube not too many years after Jenna first met him. She had only seen him a handful of times since, most recently over five years ago on one of Jenna's rare trips to the Vatican. He seemed to have aged as little as Heinkel had, and of course Jenna couldn't ask him why.

On the ride back to St. Luke's that evening, she recalled what she had thought after her first meeting with them: The way Bishop Makube and Heinkel talked. . . it sounded like they know about the monsters.

Now, Jenna mused, Maybe they are the monsters. They aren't vampires, they seem to be human beings. . . but they're not human beings like I am, or like Father Callahan. They're something more. I think Father Anderson was something more too.

So just where is the line between man and monster? And who decided that the creatures on one side of the line deserve to live, while those on the other deserve to die?

Jenna had not dreamed about the dog again, nor the other Little Sisters, nor Luke. In fact, her dreams seemed quite ordinary to her, and she decided that she had remembered and learned all she needed to know.

She tried her best to forget Sister Mary and the rest, but she kept Luke's memory alive in her heart. Jenna had sworn to the girl that she would remember Luke Valentine's name, so once a year, she said a prayer for him as she laid one of her desert lilies (do not forget my promise) at the feet of the orphanage's statue of the saint for whom both it and Luke were named. Knowing neither the day of Luke's birth nor the day of his death, she did this on St. Valentine's Day each year, the anniversary of the martyrdom of the other saint whose name Luke bore.

She kept Roland's memory alive as well, at first rereading Browning's poem so often that the book's spine cracked where its pages lay, and their edges grew worn and tattered. Yet she read “Childe Roland” less and less frequently as the years passed; for the past decade, she'd only read it once each year, the night before the girl would come back to Father Anderson's grave.

Jenna spoke Roland's name too, always reading the last line of the poem aloud: “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came!” But by now, her memory of him and how she'd loved him seemed distant, almost as if it had been one of her dreams.

Jenna's memory of the dog, however, remained fresh. It was rekindled each year when she looked into the eyes of the girl at the grave.

–

Sixty years after Alexander Anderson had died by the hand of the monster who loved him, Jenna got up a little before dawn with “Childe Roland” still fresh in her mind after having read it the night before. Her feet ached as soon as she stood up from her bed—plantar fasciitis, the doctor had said. She was supposed to stretch the arches of her feet each morning before she got up, but she always forgot.

Jenna dressed quickly and went out to the garden soaked in the slanting blue light that always filled it just before the sun rose. The young girl in white was already seated before Father Anderson's grave when Jenna reached it, and the nun sat down beside her. The child had her head bent, long black hair falling over her shoulders down her back.

Before Jenna could even greet her, the girl said quietly, “I won't be back.”

Having no idea what she was talking about, Jenna asked in bewilderment, “You won't be back where?”

“Here. I'm not coming back next year.” She paused. “I won't ever see you again.”

“What?” Jenna breathed with a pang in her heart. “Why—why not?” She wondered if the girl for some reason wanted to avoid her, for Jenna couldn't imagine that she no longer wanted to honor Father Anderson.

The girl sighed and lifted her head to look at the priest's gravestone a few seconds, then turned it to fix her pinkish-red eyes on Jenna's face.

“I've always said that you are like me, but different. This is one of the differences: you were born a vampire in that other world, and somehow, in this world, you've become human. But I was born a human being and chose to become a vampire. You and your ilk cannot be killed by a human hand, not permanently. . . but that's the only way I can be killed.”

“I. . . I don't understand,” stammered Jenna when the girl fell silent. “Do you think somebody's going to—to kill you?”

The girl replied, “Yes. At my request. Another way we're different—as a vampire, you belonged to yourself, but I have a Master. A human Master. She is an exceptional woman whom I love dearly, and the only reason I came back to myself after thirty years spent wandering, was to come back to her because she needed me. I have a darling servant too who was still a fledgling draculina at the time, but she's come into her own by now and no longer has need of me. And soon my Master will no longer need me, either. She's an old woman now and in ill health. She won't live much longer.”

The child glanced at Father Anderson's grave again as she said, “In the hundreds of years since I first tasted blood, I've only found two human beings worthy of taking my life. He was one of them. I would have given him my heart. . . but he made the same mistake I did. He gave up his humanity, and so I refused to let him kill me. I took his heart instead.”

The girl turned back to Jenna and finished, “The only other worthy human is my Master. I would count you among them as well, Little Sister, except I don't believe you could do it. You're human now, but your true self was not. And even if it would work, in spite of that. . . you couldn't bring yourself to kill me, could you? Even if I made myself look like the monster I am rather than an innocent child, you couldn't kill me, even at my behest.”

“No,” Jenna whispered. “I couldn't. I love you too much.”

A faint smile flickered over the girl's lips before she continued, “Therefore, once my Master is dead, gone to where I cannot follow, I would have no choice but to live on and on. And I couldn't bear it. I could live without him—” She gestured at the gravestone. “—for her sake, but without her, with no one else to need me. . . I would go mad with despair.”

“Maybe your draculina doesn't need you anymore, but I do!” cried Jenna.

“No you don't, not really,” said the child. “You're not a fledgling anymore either. . . and if you remain human, one day you'll die too and I'd still have to keep living a life with no meaning. So if I am to die, I must do it now, by my Master's beautiful hand while she is still able to grip her rapier and thrust it into my accursed heart.”

Tears welled in Jenna's eyes as she stared at the girl in misery. Even if they only met once a year, she knew she'd feel the other's absence almost as keenly as she still felt her mother's.

“Please don't cry,” the child murmured. She pulled off one of the gloves she always wore and brushed the tears from Jenna's cheeks with her bare fingers. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry it has to be this way. But you're strong—far stronger than I am. You can carry on without me.”

Jenna clasped the girl's hand and held it against her face, willing back her tears.

“A-all right,” she said past the burning ache of weeping in her throat. “I will miss you, and I'll n-never—never forget you.

“Thank you.” The girl's fingers curled to cup Jenna's cheek. “Before I go. . . there's only one way I can repay your kindness and compassion, if you'll accept it.”

When Jenna shakily asked, “How?” the child let her go and grinned broadly, revealing sharp white fangs between her pale lips.

“Let me revive your true self. All the powers you had in that other world—the power of the can tam and the Dark Bells—they can be yours again. Your powers, and your youth. . . and what passes for immortality on this fallen earth, for there is no Childe Roland in this world to sacrifice you to his Tower.”

Jenna's heart beat faster with each word, with the dream-like memories of her other life they conjured. . . and then it felt as if it stopped, when the girl changed.

For an instant, Jenna saw a glimpse of what Luke Valentine saw as he screamed, “You're a monster!”: a black miasma filled with crimson-fuchsia eyes. Then with the blink of her own eyes, it was gone, resolved into the figure of a man seated before her, where the girl had been.

His eyes were the same, as were the white of his skin and the black of his wild mane of hair. That framed the handsome face Jenna had seen in her dream of the Little Sisters, before their glamour had fallen away to reveal Luke's face instead.

In the deep voice Jenna had heard thirty years before, the first time the girl spoke to her, the vampire said, “They call me the No Life King, so before I go, let me awaken your true nature—my No Life Princess! Let me give back what this world has taken from you.”

Those memories that made Jenna's heart race filled her head. But then she pushed them away and shook that head slowly as she told him what she had told Luke in that long-ago dream.

“No. Thankee sai, but no.” She took a deep breath to steady herself, then looked up into the vampire's face with a gentle smile as she tried to explain, “This is my true self, my true nature. There may be other worlds, but I'm truly human in this one. And nothing has been taken from me—I'm still me. Whatever forms we take, whichever worlds we find ourselves in. . . we're still us.”

The vampire's eyes widened slightly, as if he'd really believed she'd agree to be turned, but then they softened and he smiled back.

“See? You are stronger than me,” he murmured. “Human beings are truly magnificent, and I admire you for choosing to remain one. And I think you're right. You will always be you, my Princess—magnificent in any form.”

As the girl had put her hand to Jenna's face, the man brought Jenna's to his. He kissed her fingertips with his pale lips, and when Jenna gasped, he raised his eyes to look at her questioningly.

“He. . . Roland kissed me like that,” she breathed as that particular memory came to her for the first time. “I burned my fingers, and he kissed them. I'd never been kissed before, and it made me cry.”

The vampire lowered her hand in his and asked with another smile, “And you've never been kissed since?”

“Um, he—he kissed me one more time. I asked him to kiss me on my mouth, as a man kisses a woman. . . and he did,” Jenna mumbled, turning her head away in embarrassment. “But that was the last time. No one has ever kissed me in this world.”

“Hmm.” The man let go of her hand in order to grasp her chin and turn her face back to his. “Well. That's one other thing I could do for you before I go. . . 'as a man kisses a woman.' If you want me to.”

Gazing up into his lovely face, Jenna almost said yes. Yes please. But then, as if God Himself had put the words into her mind to save her from temptation's clutches, Jenna remembered Heinkel telling Bishop Makube, “He wept as Father Anderson left us. . . and then he kissed the ground where Anderson had lain.”

“Have you kissed anyone like that, since the Battle of London?” she asked. “Since the kiss you gave Father Anderson, after he was gone?”

Those red eyes widened even more that time, and Jenna saw the vampire's throat work as he swallowed so hard, she could hear it. Yet he didn't ask how she knew what he'd done, and after a few seconds, he relaxed again with a fainter smile than before, now rueful.

“No. No, I haven't.”

“Then again, thankee sai, but no,” Jenna told him. “I've had my kiss already. . . and you've given yours.”

“Yeah. I guess we have,” he softly agreed.

The sun was rising by then, the blue light brightening into white. Seeing it hurt Jenna's heart, and she said sadly, “I suppose this is goodbye. I know you don't like the sun.”

“No. To me, the dawn is terrible. . . but beautiful too,” murmured the vampire. “Something I long for, and something that can never be mine. Seems like the rising sun is always the last thing I see as I end one life to begin another, so I think I'll watch it come up tomorrow morning. And this time, I'll never see it set again.”

“I'll miss you,” Jenna said once more. “But I promise, I'll take care of Father Anderson's grave for you, for as long as I live.”

The man nodded and reached out to pluck one of the desert lilies growing on the grave, then handed it to her as he said, “I'll keep my promise to you too that I made all those years ago, about saying your name.”

Jenna managed to smile despite her sorrow. “And whenever I reach my own Dark Tower, wherever it may be, I'll speak your name to it too, dear. I promise, I'll never forget you.”

The vampire somewhat lifted the somber mood when he snorted with a suppressed laugh. “In that case, I'd probably better tell you what my name is. You can't say it if you don't know who I am.”

“No, don't tell me!” Jenna said quickly. “You don't need to—I already know who you are. You're my Little Sister.”

The man abruptly leaned forward, clasping Jenna's face in both hands, and pressed his lips to her brow—bestowing his kiss upon the dark curl there instead of upon her lips. When the vampire let go and sat back, it was the young girl who smiled at Jenna with love in her red eyes and a single tear of blood running down her white cheek.

“Goodbye,” she said to Jenna, “Little Sister.”

(continued)

Chapter Text

10.

The next year, thirty-one years since the day she first met the girl, Jenna went to Father Anderson's grave just before dawn. No one was there.

Jenna dropped to her knees on the grass before the headstone, put her face in her hands, and wept for a moment. Then she sniffled back her tears and wiped her eyes with her handkerchief before lifting them to the humble marker. It occurred to Jenna that for all the years she had spent tending Father Anderson's grave, she'd never truly thought of him as a real person. Even after hearing about him from so many—Father Callahan, Heinkel, Archbishop Makube, the vampire who loved him—Jenna had persisted in treating his memory the way she'd treat that of a saint, someone quasi-mythological and far removed from her own existence by hundreds of years.

But he did exist, in this very place. . . not so long ago, really, Jenna thought. Father Anderson was a real human being, as real as Father Callahan. She said he gave up his humanity—but I think he gained it back, when the vampire took his heart. Father Anderson died a human being, and he didn't die alone. Heinkel and Sister Takagi and the vampire were there as he died, and so were Archbishop Maxwell and his other children, beckoning him to Heaven.

Just like Childe Roland, Father Anderson saw them all and he knew them all as he died at the foot of his Dark Tower, and told him not to cry. He was human in the end, and that's how I'll think of him, from now on.

The touch of a hand on Jenna's left shoulder made her start. For an instant, her heart soared with hope, but when she looked up, it was Father Callahan who stood behind her.

He squeezed Jenna's shoulder gently and said in a quiet voice, “She's gone, isn't she?”

Jenna stared at him with widened eyes as she breathed, “You. . . knew?”

“Yes. Of course.” Father Callahan chuckled and dropped his hand. Roses blooming on her cheeks, Jenna faced the gravestone again and lamented what a fool she was. Of course he knew. Of course Father Callahan had kept watch for the little stranger who'd infiltrated his orphanage that morning so long ago.

“I never told Archbishop Makube,” the priest added, “not after that first time. I never even looked for her after the second time she came, a year later. But I assumed she kept coming back, since every year on this day, you rise a little early and come out here to Father Anderson's grave. If she had caused trouble, it would have been different. She didn't though, so after a lot of prayer, I decided to let the two of you be.”

“Do you know what she was?” mumbled Jenna.

The answer came from behind her, “Yes. Makube told me.”

Still incredulous, she asked, “And you let her be? Knowing she was a monster, knowing she was the one who'd killed Father Anderson—you let her be?”

“Yes—and so did you.”

“But that's different. . . .” Jenna reached out to brush one of her lilies' petals with her fingertips. “I'm not—”

When she broke off, not knowing how to explain, Father Callahan prompted, “Not a vampire hunter?”

Some vampire expert he's turned out to be, the girl had said.

Jenna swallowed hard, but before she could say anything, the priest continued, “Neither am I. Not anymore. A long time ago in a different world—though one very much like this one—I failed, Jenna. God sent me to fight a monster, and I failed miserably, because my faith was too weak. I ran away a coward and spent nearly all the rest of my life cursing myself for it. I thought God cursed me for it too, punished me for it by taking away someone I cared for very much—killed by the monsters I was too weak to face. A far more painful punishment than letting them kill me instead.”

God is cruel. Sometimes He makes you live, the girl had said.

“And I thought He punished me with this.”

Jenna glanced up to see Father Callahan brush the cross-shaped scar on his forehead with his fingertips.

“But He wasn't punishing me,” he went on. “He was preparing me to redeem myself. He led me to another world and placed me in Childe Roland's path to the Dark Tower.”

“Roland—you knew him too?” cried Jenna, feeling her heart pounding beneath her habit. Just the night before, she'd read the poem again, whispering aloud Roland's cry of unhappy triumph: Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came!

Father Callahan said, “Yes. I didn't remember for a long time, not until you asked me to read Browning's poem. But in the years since, it's come back to me, some of it at least. I remember enough of that life. . . what I've told you, and how it ended. Once more, God sent me to fight the monsters, for the sake of Roland and of the Tower. And that time, I didn't run away.”

He smiled and reached out his hand again, this time to push back under Jenna's wimple the curl on her forehead.

“I don't know what happened to him,” Father Callahan murmured, “but I think Roland must have come to the Dark Tower, and. . . reset things, somehow. Maybe that means he succeeded in his quest—or maybe it means he failed. Either way, God granted me the chance to start over, in this world where things have happened differently. And He gave you that chance, too.”

“But the scar. . . how did you come to have it in this lifetime?” asked Jenna, although she thought doing so might be rude.

Yet the priest only replied mildly, “I was born with it. It had become a part of me in that world, and so it's a part of me now, in this one. Even in this lifetime where I am a different man. . . I'm still me. But back to the child—why isn't she here today?”

“She's dead,” said Jenna hoarsely. Her voice wavered as she faced the tombstone and clarified, “Truly dead. Last year, she said she was going to ask her Master to take her life. . . that it was her last chance to escape this world.”

“I see,” said the priest. “I'm sorry, Jenna.”

Jenna stammered, “I—I told her once that she could go to be with Father Anderson. . . that God would forgive her for turning her back on Him, if she'd only ask. Do you think I lied to her, Father Callahan? Can vampires go to Heaven?”

“We have all turned our backs on God, at one time or another,” Father Callahan replied, “for we have all sinned and fallen short of His expectations for us. No, I don't think you lied to the vampire, Sister Jenna. As for where she is now—I can't say. You would know far better than I whether she was able to lay down her pride and turn her face towards God once more.”

The priest rested his hand on Jenna's shoulder again for a few seconds before walking away, leaving Jenna alone at Alexander Anderson's grave. Her eyes slowly drifted from the tombstone down to the desert lilies she'd planted before it.

“I don't know,” she murmured. “But—I think that you might have, for Father Anderson's sake if not for your own. For his sake, and the sake of your Master. . . and for mine, maybe. I hope so.”

The sun had begun to rise, the coming of the terrible dawn the vampire had both hated and craved. Its first reddened rays reached over the garden wall and fell upon the lilies' white petals, like blood spilling over white skin.

Jenna recalled the symbolism of the flowers: Do not forget my promise.

At the same time, for no reason, she thought of a line from “Childe Roland”: I might go on; nought else remained to do. So, on I went.

Jenna smiled and bowed her head, and her curl slipped once more from beneath her wimple to fall upon her brow.

All right—then I'll see you again someday. I'll see you again when you come to meet me in the clearing at the end of my path, my No-Life King. . . .

. . . My Little Sister.

–

And so the nightmare rides on,
And the nightmare rides on
With a December-black Psalm.

So the nightmare rides on.

–

End

Jenna in the graphic novelization of The Little Sisters of Eluria