Keeping a hand on the old wall, Sally hurried back to the old stone buildings, warming a little as she got out of the wind and could run as fast as a dark misty night and a thin flashlight beam would allow.

Back into the courtyard and through that inner wall and back to that unreal cluster of stone beehives where a standing man held a gun –

She sucked in breath to shriek, crouching to fling herself at the man. Then she saw it was only one of those stone saints.

A moment later, she found the duffel, pulled out a bag of chips and some beef jerkey and ate ravenously. The fast walking and the scare had warmed her so she didn’t need more clothes.

She looked around with the flashlight to be sure she wasn’t leaving any garbage behind to desecrate the place. She knelt, put her hand on the wet grass between the paving stones and saw again an image of the men (there were no women) who had lived here so many years ago. Simple tillers of this almost barren soil, fishers of the sea below, survivors through intense stormy winters, they had been good devoted men, living lives of simple and humble prayer in a world where Christianity was only a few voices crying in the dark.

They wouldn’t have approved of Lavinia, a lanky left-handed polyamorous Jewish lesbian from New York. They wouldn’t have approved of Sally either, a bisexual Chinese atheist. Had they ever heard of China here at the farthest edge of the old world? Would they have known what a bisexual was? There must have been homosexuals among them, Sally couldn’t believe they’d lived completely without sex.

They’d been good souls in spite of their narrowness. But Lavinia was a good soul too, and their church had had the power to rob her of humanity, to make her as evil as they would have thought she was.

And their church was the church of the Inquisition and the Ku Klux Klan.

And of Sister Amanda. How did you hold all these truths in the same hand?

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“We’re going, we’ll leave your humble home in peace,” she muttered. “But I wish you’d been able to let us shelter here. I wish you could see Lavinia as she truly is.”

When she got out to the walkway beside the wall the swirling mists parted and for a moment she saw the heaving sea hundreds of feet below. Dizzy, she leaned against the wall. When she felt Lavinia’s cold arms, she relaxed into the embrace – but razor teeth snapped and she jerked away, exhausted and miserable.

Still, she worked to bring Lavinia back again. She mashed palms against both sides of Lavinia’s face, yelling, “You’re Lavinia. You traveled in Europe with someone named Poky,” but thinking, how can I live with someone who tries to kill me every other day?

Hopelessly weary, she kept going as Lavinia’s human face returned with a fresh wave of self-disgust and horror. “You bought a leather jacket with a raven, and a quote from Wagner. Fliegt heim ihr Raben.”

At that Lavinia sank to her knees and pressed both hands to her breast, face working. Sally knelt cautiously with her, reminding herself that Lavinia couldn’t help what she was. This wasn’t like KerriAnne.

Lavinia whispered “Ravens, ravens, Fly away home, Valhalla’s on fire, your gods are all gone…”

Ladybug, ladybug…. Right before Lavinia flew them so heart-stoppingly toward Germany, Sally had felt her sister’s presence, not as the drug addict adult but as the little girl who had wept over the poor ladybug. A few moments later Lavinia had muttered some combination of words from the Wagner opera and that same children’s rhyme.

Still clutching the raven emblem, Lavinia rose to her feet in that eerie vampire surge.

Sally snatched the stake from her belt but Lavinia only nodded approval. “Good. Keep it ready and follow me.” As if nothing had happened, she glided toward the doorway.

“What are you doing?” Sally hissed, scrambling after her. Lavinia didn’t stop and something inside Sally snapped.

“Come back here, you selfish bitch! You weren’t going to do this shit, remember? Tell me what you’re up to or –”

Sally ground to a stop before saying or get out of my home and my fucking life!

Lavinia turned and raised her hands like a crook at gunpoint. But her words were the right ones. “Sorry, tiger, it’s just I know how to be in that church whozis whatzis now and I forgot to keep you in the loop. I’m really sorry.”

Sally swallowed, then nodded. “Okay,” she said. “I’m keeping close behind you with a stake ready.” Though what would she do with it, kill Lavinia? Could she? “Keep up a stream of smart-ass New York patter so I know it’s you.”

Lavinia’s vampire teeth managed to gleam in the dim light as she grinned. “Good enough. Follow up, now.”