We walk on, Michel still holding my arm, and finally, about two hundred feet inside the park, I see two people under a fir tree, facing each other. Neither is a vampire – vampires have a strange color in the dark due to their body temperature. I glance at Michel – he looks like a stone angel in a graveyard, his skin different shades of grey in my night vision, his blue eyes grey, his pupils huge in thedarkness.
"Just a couple of druggies exchanging a needle," he says, leaning down close to me, whispering in my ear. "We have to go deeper. Take care with what you say to me. Remember vampire hearing is very acute. Anyone in the park will hear what wesay."
He slides his hand down my arm, his fingers threading through mine. We pass the pair and go farther into the park, stopping at a bench beside a path leading to a clearing in thetrees.
"Sit here for a while," he sayssoftly.
I sit beside him and he places his arm around me, pulling me closer, turning to face me while his eyes move over the landscape behind me, so we look like a vampire-human couple instead of a pair of Council Agents on a training mission. Of course, we'reboth.
As I scan the park around us, a question rises in mymind.
"If scientists were able to develop a cure for vampirism, would you take it?" I say, whispering. I look up at his face when he doesn't answer rightaway.
"There'll be no cure, Eve," he says and looks down at me. "It's not just a disease. You might be able to alter it, but it won't goaway."
"No," I say and shake my head. "It is just a disease. It's likely just a set of mutations that are passed through shared blood, like HIV. Maybe some kind of retrovirus that alters your DNA, turning you into avampire."
"It's not just a mutation," he saysfirmly.
"I don't believe that religious drivel," I say and sigh. "Remember I'm anatheist."
"Remember I'm apriest."
"Ah, but you left thepriesthood."
"Not bychoice."
I exhale heavily and close my eyes, trying to feel drugged, but my experience with drugs is prettyminimal.
"So if you could, you'd become a priestagain?"
"Withouthesitation."
That hurts me. "You don't mindcelibacy?"
"I hate it. A priest has to makesacrifices."
"I think celibacy is wrong," I say, wanting to argue with him. "It's unnatural. Humans are meant to besexual."
"What's natural? Bach is unnatural, if you mean evolutionary development. Humans are unnatural. We don't need to play piano or compose beautiful works of music. We do because we're metaphysical. We create ourselves, we escape our biology, we mold ourselves into what we want to be to reach a higher plane. Celibacy is just one way of exerting control over desire so you can channel it for otherpurposes."
"Why aren't you celibate now? If you were, you could channel all that desire into accomplishing your mission," I say, trying to besaucy.
"Eve of a thousand questions…" He takes my chin in his hand and leans down and kisses me. "I am celibate," he says, his lips at my ear. "I havebeen."
My body responds to that revelation, a surge of something going through me. He'scelibate?
I pull away and look in his eyes. "I didn't know. I thought you wantedme."
"I do." His face becomes serious once more. "I try to live my life as a priest, even if I'm not officially one. I pray, Eve. I worship. I ask for forgiveness. I'm hoping forredemption."
"What do you have to ask forgiveness for?" I say softly, thinking how God should be asking forgiveness for making him a vampire. He just shakes his head and looks away fromme.
"I was very bad, Eve. I have much to atonefor."
"That's why you ripped out pages of themanuscript?"
"Part of the reason,yes."