The retired priest's residence looked not unlike a university dormitory – utilitarian and architecturally undistinguished. Two multi-storied wings extended from a central tower that overlooked a large courtyard. Spotlights illuminated the cross affixed to the peak of the tower.
Kat drove slowly past the residence and parked several streets away. At this hour there were no pedestrians. She stepped out of her Range Rover and retraced her path back to the residence. The heels of her boots echoed in the deserted street. A cold, unforgiving wind gusted in the tunnel created by the vacant buildings on either side of the street, whipping Kat's long black hair behind her. The moon rode low in the heavens, appearing and then vanishing behind scudding clouds.
Not for the first time, Kat questioned the wisdom of her plan.
Since Britt and Damian had been cured, Kat had felt dangerously unmoored. The simple symmetry, comfort, and predictability of her life with Damian had been thrown into disarray. Fate had a way of doing that – blindsiding you when you least expected it and then laughing as you stumbled along a new and unexpected path. She could almost hear the laughter. How could a succubus expect comfort, after all? That she had enjoyed any was remarkable enough.
For the life of her, she could think of no other way that she could have acted. To save Damian, she essentially had to sacrifice her relationship with him. It put her in mind of that odious declaration -- if you love someone, set them free. Bullshit, she thought, and as if to prove it, her life reeked of it right now.
She didn't blame Damian. Hell, she'd be lying if she said she wouldn't similarly embrace the happiness that had been offered him. However, Damian's understandable preoccupation with Britt had left Kat bereft of the anchor she had relied on for eons.
She ducked into a dark alley. Scraps of newspaper and candy wrappers eddied by the hulking dumpsters that sheltered scavenging rats.
At first, she fought the self-pity that threatened to engulf her, knocking around the old farmhouse alone and venturing forth to feed only when her nature demanded it. She tried to convince herself that her selfless sacrifice for the one she loved was a reward in itself. For a saint it might be; for her it wasn't. As the days passed, the melancholy she barely disguised had evolved into vague anger and then into unfocussed rage.
When Damian was home, he studiously concealed his own exhilaration, which just enraged Kat more.
Through it all, the rage intensified.
Kat knew herself well enough to recognize the growing need to lash out, to direct her rage somewhere, but felt powerless to prevent it. No, not powerless. Unwilling. She needed the cleansing of a righteous conflagration.
She'd chanced upon the first in a series of newspaper articles just before Britt had made her appearance in the kitchen that morning. Britt, fully recovered, heart-rendingly beautiful and innocent and blessedly ignorant of what had awakened within her. Try as she might, Kat couldn't muster up even a vague dislike for this woman. She'd been pulled into a demonic liaison against her will and had borne the pain and uncertainty with remarkable strength. No, Britt was perfect for Damian. It was too bad that she was perfect for Kat too.
When Britt had kissed her that morning, the memories of what they had shared had come back in a flood. It would be a chapter she might revisit later in life, when time had dulled the memory. As it was, the kiss underscored the impossibility that the three of them -- Britt, Damian, and Kat -- could share their lives with each other equally. If you love someone and all that crap....
The impotent despondency that Kat had felt at that moment found its focus in the subject of a newspaper article. Yet another disgraced priest had come to light, one in a long and loathsome procession of clerics who preyed on the young, vulnerable, and innocent. In short, a predator.
She'd circled the article in red, not quite knowing then what she'd do with it, but knowing that it was significant. Over the next few weeks, she voraciously researched this priest. Perhaps fate was again playing a game and setting her on another path. As her anger grew, she willed for her path and the priest's to intersect.
In the alley, Kat shimmered and lost substance, growing almost invisible. She would now appear as a phantasm, a hint of movement that had haunted the peripheral vision of humankind throughout the ages.
This would be an old-school visitation.
Kat swept up the remaining distance to the residence, pausing by trees, hulking skeletons now bereft of their leaves. She projected into the residence for activity. There was none; the residence slumbered.
Kat thought it would have been difficult to locate the priest's room, but it wasn't. She stalked the silent halls, projecting into rooms as she went. She rejected those rooms in which the occupant transmitted unease or disgust at the man who now shared their domicile. So much for Christian charity. Eventually she found a room that was thick with the miasma of despair and fear. She ghosted through the halls once again to be sure.
She stood before a door. This was the room.
Behind this door slept one who had betrayed trust and defiled innocence more thoroughly than any demon could.
To the ignorant, such a person might be seen as an ally in the cause of evil. Kat knew differently and seethed in disgust. She, at least, would remain true to her nature.
She suppressed the fury that now seeped around the edges of her control and eased into the room.
In the bed, twisted in the sheets, the priest whimpered as an unearthly cold swept the room.
* * *
The moonlit room was modest. It contained little more than a dresser, a bed, and a night table on which lay a well-thumbed bible. It was an appropriately nondescript room for the barrenness of the soul who resided in it.
Kat noted the crucifix on the wall and shook her head.
The priest twisted in his bed.
"Sleep, father," whispered Kat. I don't want you awake yet, she thought.
The priest grew quiet.
Kat regarded the figure, half disbelieving that such corruption could reside in such an innocent, grandfatherly shell.
Kat hovered over the bed and reached down to draw back the blanket. The priest flailed for the covering as the cool air of the room eddied around him.
"Shh."
Her ethereal fingertips trailed up his inner thigh to brush his flaccid member.
"You know you want this..." whispered Kat.
The priest responded to Kat's touch.
"...blessed release."
The priest's hand inched across the bed to his groin and slipped under the waistband of his pajamas.
"That's it."
How weak, thought Kat. Still caressing the very thing that had wrought such suffering.
"I can help you, father."
The priest moaned pitifully.
"I want to help you."
* * *
Even in sleep, the priest could not escape.
He knew he should be strong, rise up to the challenge the Lord presented to him, but he knew himself. He was weak, unworthy. He couldn't fight it.
The dream came to him, as it always did, like an unpleasant houseguest he had no courage to turn away. It was a dream that would taint his days and set him on a quest for absolution that would inevitably fall short.
He grasped himself.
"I can help you, father."
Half asleep, he pried open an eye. The room was dark and he was alone. A dream. Just a dream. He drifted off again, surrendering to whatever his fevered unconscious threw before him.
"I want to help you."
"Help me," he whispered.
* * *
Kat felt ill, revolted by this piece of human carrion that she had targeted.
Why am I doing this? she thought. Was it her job to haunt this man as he haunted the thoughts of his victims? Was this justice?
She overcame her revulsion and exposed the priest's hand as it weakly fondled his organ.
