Author's Note: Yes, here I am with a massively late update. I'm sorry I've been so remiss lately. Dealing with my health issues and the surgery has left me depleted and, in the meantime, I'm pretty sure my muse has run-off to somewhere warm and tropical without telling me. I really wanted to have this chapter posted much sooner because I love writing this story and I love the support/encouragement I receive from all my fantastic readers, but RL has been demanding so much of my attention and strength, I just haven't had the time. Will you please forgive me? ^_^ Either way, I do hope you enjoy this installment.

Disclaimer: I claim no ownership of Priest nor any of the characters associated with the movie/manga.

Part Two Savages

Priest hated Jericho. It was a lurid town of factories centered on the railroad line, a place of human refuse where refugees from the outposts sought shelter and where exiles from the cities sought a place of sanctuary away from the ever probing eye of the Church. The streets were narrow and crowded. The air tasted of soot. And every evening, the refinery smokestacks belched fire into the sky, coloring the heavens a hellish, streaked red that made him think of the apocalypse, of the absolute end of an already broken world.

It was easy for Priest to despise the town. It was easy for him to abhor the place which would become her Gethsemane and the site of his Judas betrayal.

And yet there was something insidiously redeeming about Jericho, from a military standpoint, at least. The town had been built on a slightly raised plateau about twenty miles from the largest hive, Sola Mira, and easy access to transportation through the railroad made it ideal for positioning an army. Near the end of the war, it had become the unlikely headquarters of his Order, the place where humanity would at last be saved, and she, yes she, would fall.

Not from the heights of Sola Mira, as the Church would report. Not from glorious battle into martyrdom.

Jericho was the place Rebecca where would fall, tumble from grace, his idol of strength slipping from her cracked pedestal, his lover committing herself to a sacrifice like the virgin offerings of the heathen years before, although she was no virgin.

And the fault, of course, was his.

The night had been hot, his face slicked with an ugly sweat as he finished his patrol of the borders of the town. He did most of the patrol on his motorcycle, his path criss-crossing with several other Priests who were also assigned to sentry duty. Because of Jericho's relative proximity to Sola Mira, only the most trusted veterans of the Order were assigned that particular patrol. Priest stayed on duty for at least sixteen hours out of the day, ever vigilant, and when he returned to his quarters at nightfall, unspent adrenaline often kept him from sleep.

Most of the crowds and workmen made it a habit to clear the streets by dusk. Families shuttered themselves tightly behind barred windows and steel doors, even though Priest knew the civilians were relying on the Order for protection. The responsibility was a precious one and he felt the weight of it when he passed through the town, the few children looking up at him with scared, hopeful eyes, the mothers trying to hide their shaking hands, the fathers grim and tight-lipped. Priest realized that he could give all he had to this town and it still wouldn't be enough. War demanded too much of his all too mortal body…and he was weak.

He ducked down a side-street and climbed two flights of a staircase that was precariously nailed to the side of a house, giving access to the building's upper storey. Even though situated on the vast plains of the Wastelands, there wasn't much room in Jericho. The townsfolk had learned to stack their houses like church spires, the floors of the buildings narrowing the higher they went. It had an odd affect on the skyline, making the outpost look ever so slanted.

Priest himself was quartered in one of the smaller houses. His landlord was an aging widower who still took shifts as a railroad conductor even though he was retired. Priest saw little of the man and he was happy for his privacy. His secrets, of course, required solitude.

Opening the door, he paused on the threshold to shake the red dust from his boots. He saw the very crook of her elbow hanging off the edge of his bed. Priest kept the door opened behind him, as if he intended to flee and leave her alone in his room. But he knew, somehow, that she'd always be waiting for him.

She stirred, dropping one foot onto the floor as she righted herself. It was like watching someone come out of a trance.

"You're late," Rebecca rasped when he finally shut the door and trudged into the room. Her hair had fallen out of her braid, framing her face in an odd way so that she looked as though she were wearing a veil.

"I left my bike near the guard post," he said, shrugging out of his hooded over-tunic. "It's too tricky, navigating the tight streets in town. And it makes an awful lot a noise. A racket."

"Silence is for the dead," she replied. She was looking up at him with her ruined face.

Priest tried to remember if she'd ever told him the story of how her nose had become so scarred. He doubted she had, though, otherwise he would have never forgotten it.

Another secret, he told himself. And they had so many! Some kept from each other, the rest hidden from the world.

A hard knot tightened in his chest, forcing him to unbutton his collar so that he could breathe. There were no secrets, however, kept from God.

The room was hot, the air pungent with stale sweat and the slightly bitter smelling dust that blew in from the Wastelands. Priest dropped down in the chair next to his small table and turned up the lantern. Bruised-looking shadows spread across the walls. His quarters were cramped, only a little bigger than his cell back at the Order's monastery in Cathedral City. There was the bed and a chair, a table that was narrower than the breadth of his body and an out of place dresser that he would have liked to have moved, except that it wasn't his room, really, only borrowed from the old widower who didn't even seem to notice that he had a tenant.

Priest felt confined whenever he had to be in his room, where there wasn't even a window to look out over the street or let any sunlight in. Without thinking, he turned up the lamp again, hoping to crowd out the dark.

Rebecca blinked and shielded her eyes as if she were standing out in the desert at noon. The little well of flesh at the base of her throat pulsed with her breath, her skin a strange sallow color that was neither burned from the sun nor exactly pale.

Sickly, Priest told himself and he knew enough of disease, had seen epidemics like measles and cholera race through some of the smaller outposts and fill their little churchyard cemeteries in a fortnight. It happened often, when people were packed too closely together, like sheep herded against a predator.

"I didn't mean to fall asleep," she said with a yawn. "And I didn't mean to wait for you. Don't think I was waiting for you."

"No," he replied, trying to believe her lie, because it was a lie, really. Over the past few months they had become dependent upon each other, sharing a weakness that was confirmed every time they made love.

Priest could feel his muscles tensing at the thought. Even now, he was surprised at how quickly and easily he had broken his vows in favor of a few fleeting moments of pleasure and oblivion. He had his reasons, of course. His longing for Shannon, his loneliness, his anger at a life that seemed misspent, even though he was doing God's work. And Rebecca, he felt, must be searching for something beyond her narrow existence, although he didn't have the heart to tell her that she wouldn't find it in him.

Not yet, anyway. Not for a while. Not until, perhaps, they were caught.

He was suddenly cold, his guilt adhering to him like a second skin. Priest shivered as he thought of what the others might say, Seth and Rowan and all the novices who were still waiting to be ordained. He had disappointed them in some way by tarnishing their idol, by debasing Rebecca and himself only because they were needful creatures.

God, oh God, what am I doing?

Rebecca shrugged her shoulders. Her spine undulated sleekly beneath her dark cassock like a snake's. Priest was reminded of the Garden and Eve and the threat of temptation, which loomed over them like the heavy branches of that oh-so-dangerous apple tree.

But Rebecca wasn't anything like the seductive serpent. Sensuality did not come easily to her, as he knew when he sweated and strained above her, losing her somehow in their wild groping struggle for pleasure and release, their quick, hectic couplings that were more of a mockery of love than a reprieve from loneliness.

"Did you get something to eat?" she asked, her tone vaguely maternal.

His empty stomach clenched. "I don't much bother with the mess hall," he replied, thinking of the crowded, communal dining hall that the Order had appropriated in the basement of Jericho's only church. He liked to be alone when he could, or, rather, he liked to be alone with her. Rebecca knew it, of course, and it seemed to make her happy. And that was dangerous.

God, oh God what am I doing?

Rebecca smoothed out his pillowcase with the palm of her hand. The little act of feminine domesticity disgusted Priest. He hated how easily their lives had fallen together. He hated the simplicity of sin.

"Report?" Rebecca mumbled, as if she were only remembering why they were actually holed up in Jericho.

Priest, glad to be treated like a soldier once more, obliged her. "Some vamp tracks up by those caves in the northeast. I thought a female might be nesting there, but vampires usually don't breed this time of year, unless they're rogues cut-off from their hives."

Rebecca made a soft noise in the back of her throat.

"And what's more, there's been no attempt at a nighttime raid. We only had that skirmish two weeks ago by the railroad line down south. It seems like none of the herds are hunting. Either that, or they're starving themselves out in the Wastelands,"

"Or they've become disciplined," she interrupted. Her eyes shot up to him, the whites threaded with the red webbing of broken capillaries. "Does it bother you to consider that vampires might be like us…that they share with us the desperate struggle for survival? The Church tells us that our souls are what separate us from them, but maybe even that isn't enough to give us the advantage."

"You're implying-" Priest began, but was silenced by her sour grin.

Rebecca rose from the bed and crossed the tiny room. She took his hands in hers, studying the creases in his palms, her own calloused fingers rough against his knuckles. "I don't care for insinuations," she said. "I'm not implying anything. My doubt is real enough. Sometimes, yes sometimes, especially now, I wonder if this war will ever end."

Priest was stunned by her question. As the leader of the Order and one of its oldest members, Rebecca wasn't supposed to consider such possibilities. Her doubt assailed him with all the fury of hellfire. "You shouldn't say that," he warned.

"But we all think it-"

"We give words power when we speak them." Priest gripped her wrists, shook her once.

Rebecca was limp, her loosed braid dangling against one sagging shoulder. "I was only fifteen when I was ordained," she said, repeating the words that somehow always sounded like an admonishment, although he wasn't sure who she wanted to feel guilty. "That's young. That's very young, isn't it? And I'm tired, God be damned…I have a right to be tired."

Her profanity shocked him. Priest let go of her wrists, disgusted for an instant. "No," he said, "we none of us have the right to be jaded."

"We're human."

"We're Priests."

"Is that why I'm here tonight?" she asked.

His jaw tightened and he felt the repulsive desire to strike her. Having been raised under the auspices of the Church, Rebecca had no guile. He hated her innocence. He hated her frank naivety when it came to matters of complex morality. She could only see what they were doing as wrong and it infuriated him that she was too irresolute to stop it.

"Don't pretend to be so righteous," she drawled. "I know you better than that. I know the cracks and crevices of your soul…how wicked we all really are, how flawed. But aren't we pitiful, really? Did you honestly think your life would be this way?"

Priest tried to respond. He meant to denounce her blasphemy, which was all the more shocking to him because it came from her. She was supposed to believe. Of all people, she was supposed to have faith.

But then he thought of Shannon and Lucy…how his life should have been.

Rebecca looked away from him and sighed, the profile of her ruined face poignant, so tragic. Priest did not know who he pitied more, himself or her. He had had a chance to live, at least. But she had been deprived. She had been singled out. She had been the victim of whatever injustice the Church was guilty of. And God would not be forgiving.

His heart welled with love for her, not the kind that he had shared with Shannon, but an acknowledgement of Rebecca's wretchedness and their mutual unhappiness, which had created something singular between them. It was not so much redemption as it was salvation. It was not so much a communion as a reunion between their two scarred, savage souls.

His hands found their way to her shoulders, his thumbs resting against the hard knobs of flesh that marked her collarbone. She had unbuttoned the top of her cassock, a faint trail of sweat twisting down her throat as her breathing became hectic, shallow.

And then Rebecca shivered. She trembled at his touch, her gaze softening, eyes fixed on the floor. Priest quickly turned the lamp down and suddenly they were alone together in the dark. With his hands on her shoulders he could feel her suppressed sobs and he sank down on the floor beside her, gathering her in his arms.

"What hell," Rebecca stammered, her voice lonesome and frail in the dark like the cry of a wounded animal, "what hell we live in and live through."

"It is the price we pay for strength. It's the price we pay for God's blessing," Priest muttered, unable to offer her any comfort because his own heart was pierced and bleeding. Shannon…Lucy…our lives…our dream that could have been so different.

"Oh God," Rebecca said. "Oh God, oh God, Priest, how can you believe that we are blessed?"

Without meaning to, his grip tightened on her shoulders. "I believed in you," he ground out through gritted teeth. "You taught us to, Priestess. Singing your psalms every cold Sunday in the chapel. Ripping children away from their mothers because the Church ordained it. Starving us, beating us, marking us with your cross and…"

"And for what?" Rebecca asked suddenly, pushing herself up onto her knees until they were eye to eye.

Priest felt as if he'd had the wind knocked out of him. He sat back on his heels and stared at her, his superior in nearly everyway, and was frightened by her doubt.

God, oh God what am I doing?

"Rebecca," he said her name to ground them both. With the palm of his hand, he cradled her chin, his fingers splayed against her cheek, dangerously close to that ruined nose of hers.

Her eyelids drooped and she looked off to the side, her expression wistful. "I was only fifteen when I was ordained," she repeated. "That's young. That's very young, isn't it?"

The night closed in around them. Priest would later realize that it was one of the most intimate moments of his life, sitting there with Rebecca, bearing their raw and wretched souls to each other so that the pain was nearly exquisite.

He kissed her, his lips finding the moist corner of skin at the far edge of her mouth. His hands had roamed to the unbuttoned collar of her tunic and as he pushed the shirt from her shoulders, Rebecca seemed to shrink away from him, an artless lover still beholden to her virgin's shame. The air between them was thick with the smell of oil from the lantern.

Priest leaned forward, intending to bury his face in her loosed hair but Rebecca stood. She took his hands and brought him over to the narrow bed and there they laid, there they grappled and twisted and turned and clutched at each other so fiercely, their sweat-slick skin like pale stars in an otherwise decadent darkness.

It was ritualistic behavior, Priest told himself as he moved against her, no, as they moved together. Rebecca's hair was scattered on the muslin pillowcase, her face that was not Shannon's straining with tears and perhaps some of that elusive weakness that he had always hoped to find in her.

But her body was unfamiliar to him yet, despite the instinct of their many couplings. There was nothing of the pliant female about Rebecca, her flesh did not give, but coiled and bunched over her taut muscles. He lowered his lips to her navel, his tongue following the path of her hip bone, all the while counting the myriad striations on her skin, the scars that were superficial at most, but worn with something of careless pride.

And it was in that moment, the breathless space between effort and release, that Priest finally understood her doubt.

God, oh God what am I doing? He asked himself frantically. And then, God, oh God, what am I?

Flawed, he reasoned, but not wicked. Lonely, but able to love. And there was the distinct possibility, that together, in the dark, their bodies fitted and pressed to each other's like melting wax, that he might be able to love her. Rebecca, not Shannon. Because her name was Rebecca…

Rebecca.

He called her name, near the end.

They sank into oblivion afterwards, the two of them, twisted in the sheets. Priest had his shoulder pressed against hers while she absentmindedly twirled a dried strand of her hand between her fingers. She was breathing deeply, her chest heaving. Priest watched her breasts rise and fall. His eyes trailed along the length of her body, which somehow seemed fleshier to him, a little weight now present in her usually sleek hips, her hollowed bowl of a stomach pressing out in a rotund little hill. And her breasts, the skin pulled tight with small, nearly iridescent stretch lines near the aureoles.

Priest sat up suddenly, cold fear striking him. He glanced at Rebecca's face, which despite their rigorous lovemaking, had not lost its strange, sickly pallor. Something was…something could be wrong…

Accidently, the side of his hand swiped her lower abdomen, gliding over the swell of skin, that primal sign, evidence of her femininity now realized just as if she been ordained.

Ordained a mother…

Priest choked, his head slamming back against the headboard with so much force the entire bed shook.

"What is it?" Rebecca glanced up at him with true concern. "Priest?"

But he couldn't look at her. Closing his fists over his eyes, Priest began to pray.

God, oh God, what have I done?

Author's Note: Thanks so much for reading! Well, we've had a glimpse into Priest's relationship with Shannon and Rebecca, so I guess that just leaves, oh yeah, Priestess! Don't worry, I didn't forget her. The long-awaited Priest/Priestess chapters are coming up next. Hopefully it won't take me quite so long to update this time. ;)

If you have a free moment, please leave a review. Feedback is my lifeblood. Until next time, take care and be well!