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“So be it. If you change your mind, hijo, I will be here.”
“Thank you,” John says softly, “but…”
When they reach out at the same time Lisa almost cries. John’s hand is cool and sticky with congealing blood and larger than she remembers-then again, it’s been years. She can feel him shaking. She slots their fingers together like muscle memory and tightens her grip until the minute tremor envelopes both of them. The older priest’s eyes flick down. His mouth furrows slightly, tapping his shotgun against the tarmac like he wants to comment. She stares steadily at him until he looks away and wishes them well.
The inside of John’s car looks the same.
“I can drive.” She says firmly, bullying him-cautiously-into the passenger’s side. She adjusts the seat, the mirror, trying not to linger. The upholstery still smells like sandalwood.
She pulls into the road. She might need directions eventually, but for now the road only goes one way. The town has been largely cut off from the outside world by some odd, supernatural urging. The tarmac is cracked and old, and John winces at one particularly rough pothole, holding his side gingerly. It reminds her, with a rush of guilt, of his battered state.
“The emergency room-”
“No!”
“You’re hurt!”
For some reason it makes John look away. “It’s not all my blood. I will be fine until we get home.”
At some point the sun had set. Light from the streetlamps slants in and slides away, and in the sudden glare it’s obvious that his black cassock is drenched in blood, and that his clerical collar is somehow pristine. No one person can lose that much blood and live.
He catches her stare before she can school her expression. The light swings by. Both of them deer in the headlights.
“I’m sorry,” he gasps, recoiling, breathing hard and fast, “Lord, I’m sorry-Lisa-”
“What?”
“I killed today.”
She jolts. John’s face contorts in misery. His hands go absently to his wrists, scratching and scratching at the mottled skin there before moving on. Lisa only just remembers to park them messily by the side of the road. Before the car stops shuddering, she’s already pulled his forearms towards her, keeping him from clawing at the dried gore on his cheeks. “Hey, hey. It’s okay.”
Do demons bleed? She thinks about Alu, and how whatever leaked from his eyes and mouth turned black and flaked away like ash when John banished him.
“People, Lisa,” like he’s reading her mind. He says it vehemently; as if he’s worried about properly conveying the depths of his sin. “The cultists that were in the basement.”
“Gary injected something-” he bares his neck, showing her the wound. It’s bruised splotchy black and yellow, spreading down to his Adam’s apple. Anger roars hot in Lisa’s stomach. That vile man-no, demon. She squeezes bracingly. “I didn’t want to, I swear to God, but it felt like I did, all I could think about was the hole in Amy Martin’s face…there was blood on my teeth from how hard I was smiling.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” she says fiercely, “They would have killed you without blinking.”
“I hunted them down. They were people, I don’t even know how many. REPENT was written on the wall when I came to, in blood. Some part of me knew.”
His eyes glitter with grief and shame like broken glass. He hurt over this, maybe more than any of the horrors he had faced, and Lisa aches because she doesn’t know what to say. Throughout their lives, she’s been the mess, the seminary dropout, the one who swears and smokes and bounces between cities and girls. Every wound scars until the pain is a faded memory-painful to touch, stinging at odd times, but bearable. She used to mourn the softness, begrudge every bitter truth she had to learn to survive.
John had always hated to let scabs close properly, picking and picking until they bled anew.
Her twin has been divorced and institutionalized. He still has the same perfectly neat side part that makes him look a little bit like a scolded child when he cries. He’s been excommunicated but still wears his cassock. He blames himself for what someone else forced him into.
Sometimes, it baffles her how little John Ward has changed in thirty years. Like time had frozen him, gentle and self-flagellating, where she last let him go.
“Please don’t hate me,” he mumbles. “I know I have no right to ask forgiveness of-of God, but I can’t lose you as well.”
His voice doesn’t break, but a single tear slips out, silver and round on his cheek. She catches it with a thumb, smoothes it aside as softly as she can. Delicacy was never her strong suit, but he needs it now, badly. To be handled with care.
“You saved me. You saved me even when we hadn’t spoken in years and you knew the danger better than I did.”
“Almost too late! When I saw the demon’s eyes behind yours…”
“Just in time,” she concedes. “And you didn’t let him hurt you through me, which would have been the worst thing I could imagine.”
“If I died, there would be no one left to stop the Sabbath.”
“Right. You also saved the entire world from demonic overlords, which should count towards something,” she jokes lightly. “And…you chose me over that old man. I had thought for sure you would go with him...but you don’t know how…”
Happy. Relieved. Hopeful that they had been blessed with a miracle. A chance to start over.
“Thankful,” she decides. “Thank you for choosing me.”
“Well, you are slightly prettier.”
She laughs, startled. His lips twitch. It’s the closest thing to a smile she’s seen so far. Her heart leaps.
“I know that He forgives you. And so do I.”
“I’m afraid that I can’t forgive myself so easily,” he admits, but it’s okay. They have time now. She holds his face and he lets his eyes close in relief.
“Don’t be afraid,” Lisa whispers.
The leather seats smelled like sandalwood.
Lisa hated them for a very long time: sandalwood, rosewater, old wooden pews. Even as the years passed and her recollection of those years blurred beyond recovery-John shut down whenever it was brought up, whenever someone recognized their names and asked too many questions. She dreamt of being lost among endless cornfields, their papery stalks bisecting the stars, and never of Miriam Bell. Yet some part of Lisa remembered, and shunned any reminder of their childhoods and of Snake Meadow Hill Church. She smoked. She dressed in suits and men’s hunting jackets.
When John decided he wanted to become a priest, the smells of his new church clung to him like perfume. They stuck fast to the inside of his beautiful new car, as if making up for the cautious, nerve-ridden way he handled it. Lisa would have made fun of him mercilessly for how slow he went were it not for how her heart flipped whenever they came within two feet of a cyclist.
On the way back from the dealership they rolled slowly through the town, sleepy from summer heat. She put her window down and stuck her head out like a happy dog, cheering.
John begged her to put her seatbelt back on, but the helpless, terribly pleased grin he couldn’t contain only fueled her excitement. Lisa ran a trembling hand over the crazy bright shine of the passenger’s side door, and thought to herself that she could endure the smell of sandalwood forever, if only to keep this impossible, bright freedom.