We walked back to Urziceni, and this time, the forest did not seem so dark and forbidding. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking, but...

But, you know what? No. For once in my life, I chose to believe things were as good as they seemed. Because despair would serve no purpose. If the worst were to come, it would come. I could not change that.

We walked back to pops' house, and he unlocked the gate for my friends to enter.

'Go,' he said. 'We won't be long. Just prepare things, as we agreed.' My friends nodded, and moved to walk through, but not before Bianca chastised me for losing my clothes, again. She quickly spun me a new change of clothes, and this time, I didn't look like I was going to perform on the 1st of December.

They walked through, Luci having to crouch and turn sideways, and Alex trying to float through the gate, only to bounce off the protections. I smirked at that, and pops looked at me with concern.

It was then I noticed that the Fourfold had neither walked through, nor returned to wherever her superiors needed her. She was still with us.

'Pops?' I said softly. 'I think there's something-rather, a couple of things, that we need to talk about.'

He nodded. 'Of course, David. Just follow me, please.'

It was about halfway through the trip that I realized we were walking to the church. The Fourfold was walking behind us, not because she couldn't keep up, but because, it seemed to me, she wanted to keep a respectful distance. Not spoil the moment between pops and I.

Someone tell the Goetia guys their hellbound are starting to grasp nuance. They're evolving, I tells ya!

We reached the church, and pops took out another key. There were no services being performed at the moment, past midnight as it was, but pops always had access to the church. You never knew when the local priest needed a little bit more bang for his buck.

Pops pulled the heavy doors open, shoulders cracking with the strain, but he didn't ask for help. He knew I'd only burn my hands by trying. This church was believed in by enough people that just being inside would make me writhe in pain.

I knew. It happened the last time I came here, to pray and ask forgiveness for what I'd done to myself, and what I'd become.

I followed pops into the church, which, to my surprise, was not dark. A golden gentle light filled the chamber, coming from no lightbulb or candle. I tried to find its source, even as my eyes twitched and blinked rapidly in pain.

I looked at him questioningly, and he just shrugged, smiling. 'Perhaps He is trying to enlighten us.'

The Fourfold entered the church too, to my slight surprise. I had no experience with hellbound, but what I'd heard and read about them painted them as being as vulnerable to holy power as me, if not more so.

And the Fourfold housed not one, but three demons inside her flesh.

I looked at her dubiously, but, if being in the House of God pained her, or even made her uncomfortable, she showed no sign of it. Her face was as blank as when we first met.

Pops took out another key-I always tell him to just get a keychain, but he's worried that way, somebody can steal all his keys at once- and started heading to the chancel. At my questioning look, he just said he wanted to do this properly.

And that was how a strigoi was left alone in a church with a woman and three demons, in the middle of the night.

You could make good money writing bad smut about this.

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The Fourfold just stared forward blankly, an almost bored look on her face. If you saw her on the street, you couldn't tell she had more demons than the average teenager.

'So,' I said, after the silence became awkward. 'Ca-Will tell me about yourself? Yourselves?'

Caught myself this time, you Exorcist extra.

One corner of her mouth briefly quirked upwards, seemingly the closest she ever came to smiling. 'Do you want to learn about us, or our work?'

I know a trap question when I hear one. Sometimes. 'Both?' I asked hopefully.

And this time, she actually smiled. It was freaking ghastly. No wonder she did it so rarely. 'It's good to want things. But, information about us is classified.'

'You told me one of...your selves is immune to all but brute force. In the forest,' I pointed out.

'We said untouchable, not immune.' She was still smiling, and I was contemplating whether to tell her to stop it or not. It would probably be a nice change of pace from what she heard from her colleagues. 'And there are many demons who could be described like that. If you do not know the Name, the nature is useless.'

'When did you and Constantin talk?' I asked, changing the subject, because we were clearly going nowhere. 'When we met, he implied you two had already arranged things, but I never heard or saw him talking with you.'

'We have worked with Constantin in what you would call the past, though we were lesser then. We have fought together many times, for we shared enemies, and still do. After you hanged yourself, Constantin contacted us through the usual channels, because he values our expertise. If your companions had failed, we would have thrown ourselves into the task of saving you.'

'Because you owe Constantin a favour?' I was shooting in the dark, but I couldn't see any other reason.

Any other plausible reason.

'No,' The Fourfold said. 'Because we do not.'

I hoped pops would return soon, so we could stop torturing this conversation.

Fortunately, he did, and this time, he was in his priestly habit. I raised an eyebrow at that, and he sat down on a chair, gesturing for me to come to him.

I hadn't done confession since becoming a strigoi. I dared not to, lest God perceive it as mockery, but...but, if He wanted to strike me down, He could do it now.

He did not.

I knelt, and Constantin and I spoke softly. I told him of my friends' attempts at saving me, and the eventual success, but he already knew that.

So, I told him about Andrei, and Alex, and how I had ended up on his doorstep. He had not known, but he warned me not to bear Andrei ill will. If a man foolishly commits a sin, he should not compound it by attempting to fix his mistake when he does not know how.

I gritted my teeth, and nodded.

I told him of my descent into despair, of my failures in my human life. He knew, of course, and had known even before I'd first told him, over a decade ago, but I...I felt the need to unburden my soul.

And I had one. I had one. Not in the sense that I was a spirit bound to my own corpse, but in the sense that I though and felt like a human.

And as I spoke, my flesh healed.

'In the end...' I said with a smile. 'I think I didn't escape the grave-not truly-until tonight. Because I did not believe I could, so I could not rise from it.'

'Then let us thank God, my son,' Pops said. 'That it was a shallow grave.'