Page 27 of The Sinner and the Priest: Part 1

But then she does it again, harder, and this time I feel it. The pain. It travels up my leg, burrowing deep. The void inside me snarls and snaps, hungry for more. Demanding she give me more.

I am two steps to the hatch before I see the shadows growing darker in the room and realize it is not me moving my feet.

“Back in your cage,” I growl to the hungry devil.

Before it grows a voice, I return to the louvers in time to see Mercy stepping away from the window, chest heaving, head bowed. For a second, I think she’s about to cry, and a surge of defiance hits me.

“No.” I grip the louver, bottle clinking. “You are not weak. I won’t allow it.”

She paces the room, restless, angry, hips swaying seductively. I want to tell myself this is just biology, that I am a man like any other. This is just the liquor going to my head, but it isn’t true.

She called herself dirty as if it were a badge. She listed every reason I should hate her, every reason I should never want her, and how she would make me forsake everything. She said it with relish, as if daring me to try. Like she needed to win the argument so much that if I surrendered, she’d be left with nothing.

But my hunger has never been satisfied by flesh alone. My craving is for her brokenness. The thing about her that calls to me most is the thing I see when I look in the mirror. Not the thing that calls from me, but the aching and lonely thing trapped beneath it.

Standing here, in the space once occupied by a priest who failed these women, above the church where I hear tales of bravery and selflessness, I see the tragedy laid out before me with crystal clarity. Mercy has given her life and her eternal soul to protect innocent strangers. Her organization is on the brink of collapse, and instead of abandoning it and finding freedom, she has only become more dedicated to her cause. She willingly walks the path to Hell so that others are saved.

She is the good thing I wish I were. Bella figura, in the flesh. She just doesn’t know it yet.

I sink to the floor, my spine grazing against the stone. I wince at the burn and lift the bottle to my lips, but the whiskey is gone. Empty. And the spider in the corner is still watching.

“Judge all you want,” I slur. “You’re the one who eats your lovers.”

That makes me snort, which makes me laugh, which makes me want to break the empty bottle and bash out my own brains, because here I am.

Still hungry.

I wake up at dawn on the bell tower floor with a tongue tasting like it spent the night licking concrete. My spine feels fused to the cold. Every muscle aches, reminding me that I am a thirty-nine-year-old man with a violent past.

Before my mind is fully awake, I roll onto my stomach, straighten my body, and lie face down with my arms outstretched. Hard stone presses against my forehead, ribs, and hips. It smells of whiskey and mold, but I stay there, praying without words, a dead weight of nothing, until the rigid cross of my body feels less like a man and more like the unyielding surface beneath me.

Only then do I rise.

Downstairs, I check the time on my phone—barely after five a.m.— but another update request from Rome has already arrived: Status of assets Wesley and Ezekiel?

I toss the phone on the couch and shuffle into the tiny bathroom via the door behind the desk. Originally installed to keep the Sinner’s extracurricular activities secret from the abbey, it isn’t big. A quick, freezing-cold shower wakes me up. When I’m done, I towel down, shave, and check my appearance in the mirror over the sink.

I felt the devil move last night and need to be sure the sigils and bindings are still intact. First, I check my back by looking over my shoulder at my reflection. The Madonna takes up the main real estate with her sorrowful heart stabbed by a stiletto. San Michele Arcangelo’s wings span my shoulders, protecting her … and failing. Her heart still bleeds. It was one of my first tattoos. Apart from my prison tattoos, the ones on my front are more hopeful.

I face the mirror. Across my hips, above my belt, is the Rite of Exorcism in Latin. Covering my pectorals and abdomen is the centerpiece—San Michele Arcangelo defeating the devil, driving his sword straight down from my sternum toward my navel, where it pierces the serpent’s head trapped beneath his foot. The same serpent coils out from a haloed Memento Mori skull’s eye socket. It’s all caged within an enormous pentagram, a protective Seal of Solomon.

I put my hands on my head to view my triceps and sides. The gothic typed words Sangue Amaro are among the ornate, twisted, and curling ribbons on my left arm. Omertà is on my right. Bitter Blood and Silence, old family mottos. Twisting my torso, I check every bead of the rosary spilling down my left side, ending with the crucifix piercing between my ribs, making me bleed the way He bled. Almost every patch of skin on my body is tattooed. Sigils, prayers, prison numbers, and exorcist glyphs fill gaps between major pieces. Even the burn scar under my ring finger is stamped with a crucifix.

As if sensing my attention, thin spikes of shadow ripple outward from beneath the ink. Ice skitters up my spine, and I clench my fists, tensing with the sheer force it takes to will the hunger to obey and settle. It’s been bolder these days, testing its cage.

It knows I am tired.

Tempted.

Hungry.

I double-check every line of ink to see if the shadows hiding beneath have grown or changed shape. The little spikes of darkness peek out like the horns of a thousand hidden devils, but they are no different from how they looked a few weeks ago. Good.

“You picked the wrong man to mark,” I mutter and walk out into the main oratory, where my black, long-sleeved shirt hangs over the desk chair. “I will fight you to my dying breath.”

Moving to the mirror on the vestment press door, I pull the stiff, clean fabric over my shoulders and watch the devils disappear as I slide each button through a hole with methodical precision. Click. The second. Click. The third. Click. The rhythm is a metronome against the silence in my head.

I dress into my pressed slacks and tuck my shirt, sliding fingers around my waistband. Twice. Belt, socks, and then polished shoes are next.