(An excerpt from one of my WIPs, Martuk … The Holy: Proseuche, the sequel to the full-length novel Martuk … The Holy)

“God forgives,” the voice assured me from the shadows.

No, he wouldn’t comprehend it at all.

I smiled, then, hearing her again, the Waitress. Teasing, flirting, crying, cursing, her voice echoing from hours ago.

“You’re so funny,” she had laughed as we sat knee-to-knee at a famously cramped restaurant on the Rue Saint-André des Artes, the tourists seated in a room to the right, the French locals in a more spacious room to the left.

“You’re so wonderful,” she had slurred, her tongue thick with expensive Bordeaux as she slipped her hand in mine, the streets dark and quiet as we walked.

“You’re so … ,” she had whispered, the thought unfinished as her hand snaked between my thighs, the car speeding along the quay, the scent of her lust in my nose, her breasts warm against my arm, her breath kissing my cheek, the vast, leafy shadow of the Bois de Boulogne rising in the distance.

“I lied,” I finally offered the Priest, committing yet another sin.

Silence.

“You’re human,” came the tentative cinnamon-scented response.

“You’re a monster!” the Waitress had screamed as she ran, her hand clutching its twin to her chest, the blood pump, pump, pumping down her dress as I spat the orphaned finger to the leaves at my feet.

Shall I tell the Priest this? That I can still taste her blood on my tongue? How the crunch of her slender bone between my teeth excited me? Or how she ran and I followed? Should I breathe this between these slender strips of polished wood? How she darted behind a tree before I rushed forward, startling her, trapping her?

No. This sheltered, naive little man would never understand why I let her run again. Or how the chase invigorated me. How hopelessly addictive her terror was. How her tears delighted me. How the Darkness so very much enjoyed the thrill of those last moments of her life. His mind could never wrap itself around the thrill of catching her, trapping her, torturing her, her eyes wide, the snot dripping as she sniffled and sobbed.

He could never know the power of fear.