Page 70 of The Sinner and the Priest: Part 1

“But you did stop. After they caught you⁠—”

“They did not stop me.”

She blinks. “Wait. You turned yourself in?”

“I was happy to kill anything with an ounce of evil in its soul.” I stare at the rosary beads denting my skin, shame heating my cheeks. “I relished it. I would get hard over how much I enjoyed digging through their pain, using my devil to hunt down their sin.” A cruel laugh barks out of me. “I always found it. Always knew exactly what they tried to hide. I would whisper it in their ear, so it was the last thing they heard before I sent them to Hell.” My chest rises and falls in an agitated rhythm. “But then one day, Uncle Paolo sent me to a house to teach his enemy a lesson. I stopped asking questions by then. So long as I sensed evil in my victims, I did not care why or who. But when I arrived at this house, and the only person there was a thirteen-year-old boy, I could not kill him.”

“He wasn’t evil?”

I shrug. Laugh once, another twisted, hate-filled sound. “Everyone has a little evil in them.” I force myself to meet her sad eyes. “Even thirteen-year-old boys.”

Mercy looks away, frowning as the impact of my confession clicks. How many innocent lives have I taken?

“In that moment,” I say, “I realized I was so consumed with the need to … do what I had been doing that I couldn’t remember the last time I stopped to ask, ‘How evil is this person really?’ There had been so many that I couldn’t remember.”

“And now?”

“When an addict is clean, it’s amazing how clear that line becomes.”

“So, you went to prison.”

“My uncle tried to get me out. He sent his lawyers and bribed and blackmailed many people, but I refused to leave Blackfriar.”

“And then the Vatican found you?”

“A demon found me.”

Her brows lift. “In prison?”

I nod. “My cellmate was possessed. I sensed the demon take him over.” I shudder. “That was the first time true evil looked upon my face and was afraid. I had seen it in the eyes of men many times, but this was no man. It wore the skin of one. A priest—Don Bianchi—was giving the last rites to a prisoner in the cell opposite us, across the way. When the demon saw that I recognized it in my cellmate, it fled and possessed Bianchi’s dying prisoner … to escape me.”

“This is how you became a priest?”

“They told me there is no cure for my curse, but they could aim it. With this—” I touch my Roman collar. “With my vows, I would serve only God and no other. And I would find absolution.”

She sits back and folds her arms. “Has it worked?”

“I did not burn at my ordination.” I give a half-hearted shrug, then make the sign of the cross, pull my chain from my neck, and kiss it. Looking up at the ceiling, I say, “He has not forsaken me yet.”

We stare at each other for a long time. She is not so flippant now, and it feels like claws scraping my skin from the inside. Finally, she points out, “Leviathan was not afraid of you.”

“Leviathan was a demon Prince of Hell.” I rub my scruff-covered jaw. “There is a hierarchy. I don’t think much frightens the princes.”

“You’re not possessed.”

“Not that I know of.”

“Then what are you?”

Empty. “You are a smart woman, Mercy. Ask the question that’s really on your mind.”

“I don’t need your permission, Padre.” Suspicious blue eyes trail down my body, then back up again. “Fine. You want to know what I am thinking?”

“Please.”

“What makes you so special that you can single-handedly fight off eight men and live? What aren’t you telling me? What exactly does this curse do apart from sensing evil?”

“You would need to see it to believe it.”