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“He burned all of William’s hair off!” Henry bellowed.
I snorted and then clapped my hand over my mouth. That shit was funny. William spent a lot of time on his hair. I braided mine or threw it up in a bun for monster hunting because some of them were little bitches who pulled hair. William always showed up with shellac in his hair from all the product.
Saul took one look at me and cracked up. I couldn’t let Henry know I was here, so I was trying not to explode with laughter. Caleb and Solomon started laughing too.
“It’s not funny! He could have been killed. William is an asset.”
Caleb, Saul, and Solomon were much bigger assets than that twat and Henry was plotting their deaths, so fuck him. Henry was having a sputtering testerical mantrum because we couldn’t stop laughing. And I was trying to hold my laugh in because I wasn’t supposed to be here.
“All of his body hair is gone, and they had to leave him in the Ninth Ward naked to bring clothes back!”
Oh.my.fuck. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. The Ninth Ward would have big opinions about a naked priest in their neighborhood. I bolted for my bedroom and fell on the bed laughing. Pan tore into the room like a black lightning bolt and crashed into my chest. I squeezed him as we both laughed.
“Think if we went to the Ninth Ward, we could find someone who filmed his walk of shame?”
“If they wore their frocks to the job, they aren’t going to mess with that. The Ninth Ward would have known that guy was a vampire and wouldn’t have tried to stop them, but one of them probably would have filmed it. Even the kids know not to post that kind of thing online. We can ask later.”
Caleb burst into the room and slammed the door behind him. He was way more energized than I’d ever seen him. It was a good look.
“Henry hung up on us. The more he tried to tell us how it wasn’t funny, the more hilarious it got. The Ninth Ward kids knew what they were doing there, but didn’t appreciate that it was them and not the Flame. They filled water balloon with piss and mayonnaise and pelted them with it on the way out.”
Yeah, that sounded about right. I generally had no problem if a monster moved into the Ninth Ward and I needed to take care of it. They worked with me and I had a good bit of friends there.
“Pan and I were talking about seeing if someone filmed it. Unless they’ve moved, I’ve got some friends with kids in that neighborhood I can ask. Rainer lives alone and is retired. He’s turned one of his bedrooms into a movie room with a projector screen. Pretty sure he likes you enough now to invite you to his actual house. It’s a duplex and I live next door.”
Caleb started stalking towards me. What the fuck was he doing and why was he looking at me like that?
“What about you? Do you like me enough now?”
“That sounds like a dangerous question for a celibate man, Father.”
Caleb grabbed me and kissed me again. That man didn’t kiss like he’d been celibate for who knew how long. He took my breath away and unlike other men who kissed me like this, Pan wasn’t cock blocking me. The last time I got kissed like this, Pan chased that man halfway up the block. Caleb knew he was a Hellhound, so Pan would just have to let out a little growl.
I could also stop kissing him back and ask him to leave. I knew he would if I asked. I wanted to, but I also very much didn’t want to. Holy shit, the best kiss of my life really shouldn’t come from a fucking priest.
Caleb pulled away and my lips were still tingling.
“I’ve been wanting to do that again since the first time.”
“I thought you were hexed and out of your mind?”
“Only at the start. After I got hexed, I couldn’t really participate in jobs and mostly became a mentor and confessor. I’ve listened to priests talk about their doubts and watched several of them walk away. That was never me. I knew the Church had some problems, but my faith never wavered.
“My faith in my god is just as strong as ever, but my faith in men isn’t too great right now. All three of us are questioning staying in our roles. We’re just thinking about it now, but we can still serve God without being connected to a religion.”
I sighed and pulled away because my intention with these guys wasn’t to destroy their entire world.
“Listen, Solomon will be happy as long as there are books and art. Saul would make a great mental health professional or just talking to people. He likes that and people love him. You love this life. You like the danger and you think monster hunting is fun. I can’t see you happy doing anything else.”
Because I didn’t. They chose Saul because he was big and strong. Solomon was chosen because he was a scholar and could speak so many languages. Caleb was a natural leader, but he enjoyed it more than Solomon and Saul did. It wasn’t the killing he liked. It was the danger.
“Is there some sort of Flame law that says outsiders can’t join?”
“Is that what you want? There’s no law. You say some words and sign your name in the local book. It’s completely different from how you handle things and you’re going to butt heads with your old coworkers on jobs.”
“I know. I’ve already gotten several of your sigils tattooed on me. Venatio Daemonum is a secret organization. The Pope knows about it and only a few bishops and cardinals. The Pope, the bishops, and the cardinals know absolutely nothing except what they’ve read. They’ve never been in the field before.
“I could tell them what you’ve told me and what we’ve personally seen until I’m blue in the face. They would call me a heretic and excommunicate me. Those priests in the field? They know me and they’ve seen things. Not all of them are like William. They won’t listen to you or any other Flame member, but if I end up on the same job, I have a better chance of convincing them there’s another way. If all of Venatio Daemonum is saying the same thing, they will have to listen.”
