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The dregs of his whisky-tinted ice melted in its glass upon the bedside table. The last cube cracked in its diluted bath, punctuating his nightly prayer.
“Dómine Deus noster, diúrno labóre fatigátos quiéto sopóre nos réfove–” Father Quinn Rourke muttered under his breath, calloused hands buttoning his nightshirt. “ut, tuo semper auxílio recreáti,” He prayed in someone else’s chamber, in a foreign seminary, in a cursed city across the ocean. “ tibi córpore simus et mente devóti.” The room was small and plain, as they always were, scarcely larger than its own closet. The glass of mostly-gone whisky will be the mark he leaves behind, as the brother who cares for this room will have no clue how to remove the water-stain from the wooden tabletop. “Per Christum Dóminum nostrum.” (Rub a little bit of olive oil and salt into the wood. It's a trick I learned from housekeeping.)
“Amen.”
Goodnight to this city and its evils who never sleep.
The door shut behind him. Father Quinn whipped his head around. The bedroom door was closed and locked, as it had been since he retired for the evening. His gaze slowly turned to the closet, now shut, sealing away his cassock and guns. Blocking his way was a tall, lithe man; a white gloved hand lovingly locked away his tools of veneration.
“Father Quinn–” said the man, an old and unknowable thing in a bellhop’s uniform. “--I had only heard rumors that you practice this ritual nightly, but to see you perform it in person, it is remarkable indeed. When did your heart drift away from your prayer, was it years ago? Or was it absent from the beginning?” His words were taunting and curious in equal amounts.
A smirk ticked up in the corner of the Venator’s mouth.
“How many kills did it take?” the Doorman asked.
“Bold of you to venture this far out of your hive,” hissed Venator.
“Please do not slander The Baroness in that way,” signed the Doorman, rolling his eyes. “Especially in such lavishness as this.” He gestured broadly to the humble room. “You should visit some time, it would be safer there than here.”
Venator stood. He found himself balling his fists, even without any stakes to grasp.
“It’s a bad idea for you to willingly corner yourself like this, Doorman,” He spat the title like a curse. “You’ve surely come here to get yourself killed, because I can’t fathom anything else as foolish as that for you to do.”
The Doorman stepped forward. Such an ancient entity masquerading as a minimum wage laborer. He mirrored the smirk on Venator’s face, oblivious to the danger he put himself in.
“Nothing of the sort, Father Quinn. I want to know your reasoning as to why you stay here, with the church?”
Venator took another step back. He squared his shoulders. There was no abomination in this world he could not destroy. He held fast onto that idea in his head.
“I protect humanity from those who seek to destroy it.” he said.
“‘Those who seek to destroy humanity’ is a horribly vague answer, Quinn,” The Doorman taunted. “By that line of thought, you can use your cause to justify anything from slaying a neonate vampire to bombing the Stock Exchange.” He chuckled coldly. “But you and I both know you would prefer the former to the latter. It’s easier.”
Venator’s eyes darted around the room. He counted no less than eight things that could be used as makeshift weapons in grabbing range, not including the knives he had shoved between the mattress and the box spring.
“If The Lord is testing me this evening, I must hand it to Him that he has sent his silliest dressed illusion in His attempt to break me. Otherwise, I demand you leave, demon, while you have your excuse of a life,” Venator growled. He knew ‘demon’ wasn’t the right word. Demons were creatures who willingly turned away from The Lord. His intruder was something born without the need for good and evil; human morals were as alien to him as he was to us.
The Doorman lit up. A genuine smile spread across his face, like a child told he will be receiving ice cream soon. He managed to close the gap between himself and the priest. The Doorman was in arm’s reach of the Venator, and he could see the muscles in Father Quinn’s neck tense beneath the skin.
“You aren’t a subtle man, Quinn. How positively loud you are in your devotion. No, what you simply call ‘devotion’. You’re loud because you’re convinced your God will listen to his most persistent followers. Your persistence is most admirable, I will say. Especially one who does not expect (and usually will not get) answers in return.”
The Doorman traced Venator’s shoulder with one gloved finger.
“You could have ambiguity from a God who you can’t guarantee will hear your prayers, or satisfaction from one you know is real and will listen to you.”
“You are testing me.” Venator stated. He was no longer addressing The Doorman.
“Oh good! Now we’re getting somewhere. I think we MUST be addressing the elephant in the room. While you may be the Venator in the Order of St. Benedict to call upon, there’s no denying your weakness to hedonism. Sure you have your surface-level vices like tobacco and–” The Doorman gestured to the glass of mostly-water-slightly-whisky on the bedside table “--alcohol. Even your fellow Men of the Cloth are hesitant to address your most blatant sin. It matters not to them since they benefit from it.”
Venator said nothing, unaware he was baring his teeth like a dog. His fingers brushed the hilt of a knife he stashed away earlier.
“You adore violence, don’t you, Father Quinn? You positively live to shed blood under the guise of dispatching humanities evils, yes? No cigar nor top shelf liquor will truly be your drug of choice when you relish in dumping as much adrenaline into your nervous system as possible.”
“You will stop.”
“That’s one of the sins, yes? Wrath? Becoming a Venator for the Vatican seems like a very good excuse to exercise…” the bellhop stopped and grinned widely, his gaze bore right into Venator’s soul. “No! Indulging in your lust for violence. You’ve postured yourself as an almost mythic figure. You embody fearlessness the same way you embody your God. Except: The thing with humans is that fear keeps you alive. It’s a built-in failsafe to keep you from sticking your noses in places they don’t belong. But not you, Quinn. You’ve taken your fear and swapped it for pride. That’s another one of those sins. Yes, in the short term it produces results. You wear those results on your face. You’re a legend as a slayer of evil but when you believe the lies you’ve told yourself, that’s when all the fear you’ve thrown away will catch up to you. I’ll be among the few laughing at you.”
The priest closed his eyes. He will end this night on His terms and no one else’s.
“Noctem quiétam et finem perféctum concédat nobis Dóminus omnípotens,” he muttered. His compline prayer will suffice in place of a proper consecration.
“Tonight may be a quiet night. But what about the others? May I ask Father Benjamin, or Father Seamus, or Sister Siobhan, or your very own Abel?”
The Doorman leaned in uncomfortably close. His breath tickled the priest’s neck.
“How fitting you did that to Abel. You may as well take the name ‘Cain’.”
A flash of silver glinted through the air, bisecting the space between them. The godling jerked back. Something red fell to the ground; a lock of hair had been cut from The Doorman’s forehead. His coy smile remained fast. Father Quinn grabbed his intruder by the lapel and pinned him to the door; he threatened the point of the knife millimeters between the bellhop’s eyes. A thin line of dubiously human blood seeped from the bridge of his nose.
“I do not care what you are. If you do not leave now, you will not have a body to leave with.” The Venator’s voice boomed with a passion that could shake walls.
The Doorman relaxed.
“Now I have my answer. You lost your heart when you became ‘Cain,’” he said.
“Get the fuck out of here.” Venator pointed the knife to the door. His intruder’s hand fell upon the handle like the priest put it there himself.
He unlocked the chamber door. The world beyond was one inhospitable and alien to the Venator. The Doorman slipped through with only a smile and a simple wave goodbye.
The moment the door shut, Father Quinn grabbed the knob, flinging it wide open once more.
Beyond the threshold was only the quiet hallway of the seminary. His fingers absently motioned the sign of the cross, knowing that it wouldn’t prevent an encounter like this again.
Tomorrow, he would need extra coffee to make it through morning prayers.