Isle Voletta
1999

      "You dance well to the music in my head, Father..."
      The two forms cut an odd silhouette against the backdrop of votive candles, one edging a few inches taller than the other that lay slumped in the initial figure's grasp.  The softest murmur of a hum played through the darkness of the church as the quiet click of heels accented the strides of the one leading this macabre dance.  To the right the vampire and the priest stepped, their weights shifting under Giacomo's whim.  To the left they moved with a grace beyond grace as the off-key hum of some forgotten melody played through the darkness.
Father Antonio Feradas was too close to death to care what the monster had to say.  The confession had been unusual to say the least...the words of the vampire beating through the priest's ears with the slowing of his own heart...

      "Forgive me Father for I have sinned..."

      "Mmm...y'know there was once a time that I knew innocence."  Giacomo's voice was cool as it lilted through the darkness, the duo of figures continuing to sway to the music in his head.  The touch of a frown drifted through those lips of garnet as he paused for a moment and caused the Father's weight to loll with a shrugging of his own shoulders.  "I don't think I can remember that time though..."
Giacomo's voice fell almost melancholy on the ears of the dying priest, the Padre only paying mind to the slowing of his heart and the memory of his last confession...

      "..it has been thirty-five years, one month, and twelve days since my last confession.  It was hot that day...or maybe it wasn't.  I really don't remember or want to.  All I know is that I was dying.  But...it wasn't the glorious death I had imagined -- starved, aching and showing my parents what they had done to their firstborn.  No...it was miserable and squalid.  It reminded me of who I was...but gave no inkling to what I was to become...."
      "And what was that my child....?"
      "Your murderer."

      "So tell me, Father.  How many Hail Marys should I say to absolve myself of my sins?  A hundred?  A thousand?  Ten thousand?"
      Pausing a moment in the dance, Giacomo lets his gaze flicker downward toward the dead weight of the priest.  Father Feradas could give no answer to the question.  He couldn't give an answer to any of the hundreds of questions that flurried through his mind as death drew closer.  But that was alright, he rationalized.  A monster such as the one with him...they deserved no answer.  They deserved no pardon and most importantly they deserved no salvation.  For a moment the Father felt a wickedly delicious notion of having been avenged.  He was merely being released from this earth...the man before him...this...Giacomo St. Sebastian...would be bound here forever and ever amen.
      That thought...and that thought alone...made his passing almost sublime...

      The blood ran hot down Giacomo's chin, spattering on his shirt -- the life's blood of Father Feradas being lost in the darkness clinging to the vampire.  The confession was through and with it, so was the Father's time upon this earth.  His own would continue.  For a while he would languish.
      Possibly.
      More than likely he wouldn't.  The vampire would simply leave the man where he lay and turn his back on the God that turned His back on him.  It didn't matter.  Nothing really matters, after all, does it?

      The Father's weight slipped from Giacomo's arms as the dance ended and his question remained unanswered.  For a long moment he simply looked upward at the writhing form of Jesus.  No expression dared touch the perfect apathy he sported expertly.  He only allowed the mask to crack as his right fingers moved to touch his left shoulders, that gaze of liquid obsidian never leaving the carved form of the Christ.
     
      "In Nomine Patris.  Et Filii.  Et Spiritus Sancti.  Amen."
     
      The faintest ghost of a smirk tripped through the corner of those garnet lips as Giacomo shook his head silently and made his way to the door.