The Damned by Nancy Holder, Debbie Viguié

Ireland with him. She could still do the fightin’ and brawlin’ if she had a mind to. But they could get away from all these misfits and, y’know, also lead a semi-normal life. Maybe eventually even have a little superbaby kid. If she was a girl, they could name her Maeve, in honor of his sister. Maeve Sofia.
    S ALAMANCA
A NTONIO, H EATHER, AND F ATHER J UAN
    The plane had taken off.
    Jenn was gone.
    Now Antonio sat in front of Heather’s cell, empty of prayers, filled with worry. From the school’s lost and found he had picked up a paperback copy of a novel about a girl who had fallen in love with a vampire. There were a lot of such novels, more than ever now that the Cursed Ones had revealed their presence to mankind, and he felt a strange sort of enraged tenderness as he turned the pages. This was not their reality, but Solomon and the others had exploited this romantic yearning to their advantage. So many young girls wore those bat-and-heart necklaces now. Would their vampire “boyfriends” drop the act at some prearranged signal, ripping out their throats?
    Because that’s what we do , Antonio thought. We rip. We don’t sweetly pierce and gently drink. We attack. We drain.
    We kill.
    “Hasn’t the Church banned that one?” Father Juan asked, chuckling, sitting beside him.
    “Do you think Jenn’s read it?” Antonio mused. He looked through Heather’s bars. She had pulled a blanket over herself and lay inert, as if she were sleeping. But vampires didn’t sleep.
    “If you’re asking me if Jenn thinks it adds to your allure, trust me, she doesn’t,” Father Juan said bluntly. “She wishes you weren’t a vampire.”
    “So do I.” Antonio closed the book. “I think the people in this book are very sweet. He struggles every day to be worthy of her. And she expects it of him.”
    “Vale, vale.” Father Juan cupped Antonio’s cheek. “Antonio, you’re old and yet filled with youthful idealism.”
    Antonio cocked his head. “And what of you, Padre? How old are you?”
    A silence fell between them. Antonio looked hard at Father Juan. He saw the same face as on the images of St. John of the Cross—the saint whose name in Spanish was the same as his own, de la Cruz. A priest who gazed into crystal balls and swung pendulums over tarot cards. A child of God who left flowers in the woods for the Goddess. Antonio had followed him, watched him honor her and call himself her devoted son.
    “Are you the saint?” Antonio asked sharply. “Are you here because these are the end times? Are the angels coming to help us?”
    “Better, perhaps, to ask yourself what you are,” Father Juan replied.
    Then Heather started screaming. She threw off her blanket and leaped to her feet, spinning in a circle with her head thrown back. Her shrieks pierced Antonio’s ears; then she raced forward, flinging herself against the bars, wailing.
    “There! Blood! She’s there!” Heather screeched. Her voice was inhuman. She sounded possessed. But they were her first words since her conversion.
    “She’s there!”
    “Heather,” Antonio said, as he and Father Juan rushed forward. Antonio reached for Heather’s hands, but she thrust herself backward, landing hard on the floor. She kept screaming.
    “A bad dream?” Father Juan said.
    “We don’t dream,” Antonio reminded him. “We don’t sleep.”
    “No, no, no, no!” Heather cried, arms outstretched again, backing away as she stared at the ceiling. “Dantalion!”
    Father Juan and Antonio traded looks.
    “What about Dantalion, Heather?” Father Juan said calmly. “Can you tell us?”
    She screamed.
    Antonio opened the cell and stepped in, shutting the door behind himself. Cautiously he approached her. She didn’t seem to notice him, only continued to scrabble away from him.
    “Listen to me, to my voice,” he said. He crouched over her, holding her chin in a viselike grip. Her eyes jittered from left to right. He exerted his influence,