Title: Judas

Author: WhyIsARavenLikeAWritingDesk

Universe: Priest, 2011

Rating: T – M

Characters/ Pairings: Black Hat/OC

Disclaimer: Priest is not mine, because if it was then Karl Urban would have won that ending fight.

Summary: A former Priestess gets dragged into help the Priest, Priestess and Hick rescue Lucy. Things go downhill when the woman realizes that the kidnapper, Black Hat, is actually her thought-dead secret lover.

Eden gasped and shot up out of her bed. Her pale hands grasped at imaginary blades, her back painfully straight. Her auburn hair had come loose from its braid and fell around her too-thin face. She hadn't had a dream like that in a long, long time. Not to say that she didn't have nightmares; she most definitely did, but not that dream. Not that dream. She had long since tried to push those events from her mind.

The pale woman slowly, very slowly, relaxed from her defensive position in the middle of her bedroom. Bare feet slid over the rough, wooden floors and her arms fell back to her sides. She glanced at the clock sitting by her bed, a mere mattress on the floor. 2:37 AM. There was no going to sleep, not after that dream. Habit almost had her reaching for her rosary and a match to light a candle for her retched dreams, but she stopped short. Eden had abandoned her faith a long time ago.

She grasped at her robe, a ratty thing that had been worn from years of use, and pulled it over her shoulders. The familiar weight was pleasant over her scant night clothes. From beneath the robe Eden changed from her nightgown into a pair of leather pants and a worn button down shirt. The cuffs were rolled back and she placed the ever-present arm guards over her skin. She lined the guards with several knives and, for some reason, felt the need to pull her chain blades out of hiding. Once the chain was wrapped around her torso, from right shoulder to left hip, Eden set out from her middle-of-nowhere house to the closest town. Jericho.

She arrived just after dawn.

Since the end of the war, Eden had never seen so much carnage. Blood dripped from every surface, bodies strewn about, hacked and torn to pieces. Nothing moved. There was no wind. It was almost as if nature itself was too afraid to invade this battleground. Eden wasn't so afraid.

The redhead moved slowly, watching every shadow, every crack and crevice big enough to hide a mouse. Something screeched. A building gone too long without repair finally bending under its own weight. The dirt under her bare feet thumped and even the woman's heartbeat was too loud, as if waiting for something. She stopped, her body moving on complete instinct, like she was back in the high points of the war. A familiar thud, thud met her ears, the sound of muffled boot steps in the sand.

Eden chose a hiding spot quickly. The thudding got louder and grew closer and the woman drew up the hood of her robe around her face, blending in with the rusty buildings around her. A body moved into the open, a live body. A man. Tall, young, obviously not well trained in stalking prey, if his heavy foot falls were anything to go by. An ion rifle was pressed to his shoulder as he scoped only what was in front of him. Eden sighed; people today couldn't be patient and anticipate too save their own heads. He kept walking, oblivious to her presence.

He passed her fairly quickly, never looking back, for if he had, he surly would have spotted her. Eden felt her feet slide over the sand and she stood to the man's back, knife pressed to his throat before she herself could even register the actions.

"Name your game, stranger," she hissed softly.

"And what game am I meant to play?" he ground out, obviously not pleased to have been snuck up on.

"Any you wish so long as it shows intention. Why are you here?" she demanded.

"Just passing through," he growled.

"Just happen to pass through on the day after a vampire attack? What's to say you're not a familiar fresh off their fangs?"

"Well for one, I'm not bleeding."

"And for another, he's with me," a voice from behind her said.

"Only one person has ever been able to sneak up on me," Eden said, blade not faltering in the least. "Hello, Gabriel."

"Eden, I'd appreciate letting him go. I might actually need him."

"Truly? You couldn't have found someone that didn't hunt like a drunken cat?"

"Drunken, maybe, but a cat none the less," the Priest quipped.

"Fair enough," she said, letting the blade slide down the man's throat before removing it completely and stepping away.

The man whirled and trained his gun sights on Eden. She sighed wistfully and watched the barrel almost hopefully.

"I wouldn't stop you if you pulled the trigger," she said quietly. "A little peace would actually be welcomed."

The man almost dropped the gun in surprise. Who in the world offered themselves up to be killed?

"If you want to die so badly," Gabriel said, "do it by your own hand, Eden."

"But I'm a coward, don't you know? I have been for the last ten years."

"Are you still mourning? Let him go; he's with God."

"He wouldn't be if the church had a brain instead of power hungry fools that ran the show!" Eden snarled. The still unnamed man backed away in shock. Eden's hazel- blue eyes flashed and it was all she could do to stop herself. Whether she was stopping herself from attacking the priest or crying in the street was yet to be decided.

"Are you done?" Gabriel asked.

"No, damn it! I am not done! I would rip those fuckers to pieces and feed them to the vampires if only I had the chance!"

"What the hell is going on?" the unnamed man asked.

"This is Hicks, a sheriff from a few towns over," Gabriel said to the woman. He turned to Hicks and said, "This is Eden, the only Priest who has ever willingly broken her vows and turned her back on the church."

As the sheriff gawped, Eden hissed, "And I'd do it all over again and worse if it meant he was still alive."

Eden, Hicks, Gabriel, and the Priestess, Esther, stood on the cliff overlooking the train tracks. Eden had been dragged along against her will until Esther finally told her that they were doing this against the church's will.

"Remind me why I'm here again?" Eden said.

"Because if we don't stop that train then the cities will be consumed by vampires," Gabriel said.

"Why is that such a bad thing?" she questioned. "Why would I fight to save the very church that has taken everything I loved away from me?"

"Because the people are innocent," Ester said.

"People are never innocent," Eden said darkly.

"What about Lucy? How do we save her?" Hicks asked.

"Lucy?" Eden asked, eyes wide. "Lucy? This is about Lucy? How dare you, Gabriel! How dare you condemn me in other's eyes when you yourself are doing the very same thing! I abandoned my vows for someone I loved and was scorned and abused because of it! Yet here you are, doing the very same thing, under false pretenses because you will not admit the truth!"

"What has he got to do with Lucy?" Hicks asked. "She said he was just her uncle she never got to know very well."

"Oh and the truth comes to light!" Eden shouted, enraged.

"Hold your tongue, Eden!" Gabriel commanded.

"Or what? You'll feed me to the vampires like you let them feed on him?"

Gabriel visibly flinched and Esther sighed. The still-true Priestess looked at Hicks and said, "He's Lucy's father."

"What? No. no. I knew Owen Pace. He was Lucy's father."

Gabriel shook his head. "The church came for me when Lucy was just a few months old. I had to go. The girl needed a father."

"Now everybody knows," Eden said. "You're just as selfish as I am."

Eden and Gabriel rode side by side to the train. The woman watched as Gabriel abandoned his bike in favor of the train and couldn't help the nasty feeling curling in the pit of her stomach. She hit the nitro on her desert cycle and shot ahead, letting the bike fall back before she too jumped to the train. Landing slightly off, Eden had to pause and hang from the ladder to catch the breath that had been knocked out of her. She took the last few steps and hoisted herself onto the roof of the train. She hadn't been prepared.

The face was familiar, though the bright yellow-orange eyes were not. Down to the scar on his left cheek, he looked no older than he had that day ten years ago.

"Gabriel," she whimpered. "Gabriel, tell me it's some demon trick that takes the shape of what you long for most. Please, tell me that's what it is."

The man on the opposite side of the train car looked at her in astonishment, his cool lost for the first time in years. His lips moved, a whispered word that never reached them. Eden placed a hand over her face and knelt, unable to have this heartache reawakened.

"Tell me he's not real," she begged. "Tell me I'm seeing things. Tell me the man I loved and lost is not this man."

"Would it be so bad if I was?" the black hatted man asked Eden.

"No," Gabriel said. "This is not the man that was taken from us, all those years ago."

"Us?" Eden asked, enraged once more. "Taken from us? Who was he taken from and who was the one who gave him away?"

"When you left me to the vampires all those years ago," the man said, "I heard her screaming. Screaming my name. And it wasn't the pain of those vampires ripping me to pieces that ate my heart out, it was that screaming. Even like this, when nothing can harm me and nothing poses a threat, I still wake up from nightmares of nothing but her screams."

Eden sobbed, though tears had yet to run down her face.

"What happened to you?" Gabriel asked.

"After the vampires dragged me back down and they each had their turn tearing me to pieces, their Queen came to me and she shared her blood with me. Within that night I was healed and I knew the truth of the church. Of the Priests. You abandoned me, left me to die, took my mate from me! So I waited and I grew stronger and I finally knew what I was. The first human vampire."

Eden moved towards the man, but Gabriel held her back. She struggled, but he held fast. The man she longed for growled, deep in his chest, at the way the Priest blocked his mate from him. Eden finally forced her way out of Gabriel's grip and rushed into the waiting arms of her long lost lover. She threaded her fingers through his dark hair and buried her face in his neck, inhaling his scent for the first time in ages.

"Michael," she whispered in his ear. "Michael. My Michael. Mine."

She continued to chant his name like a prayer, like it was water on the tongue of a long-thirsty man. Michael wrapped her in his arms and for once couldn't care if he was struck down right then. He had his mate, his Eden, back in his arms and he was never letting go again.

"I tried to find you," he whispered. "But no one knew where you had gone and then I got news that you had moved out to the desert and had died. That almost killed me, right then. I almost just let the queen have me. But you're not dead."

"No," she said. "I'm right here in your arms and I'm never leaving again."

"For the moment you'll have to, I'm afraid. I need to take care of some minor problems first."

"Leave him alive," Eden said. "Leave them all alive. Lucy too. You can kill them later. For all I want Gabriel dead, I know what it's like for a girl to grow up without her father. Give them time together, and we'll take our time together. Lead the army into the cities and let me watch as you tear those church fuckers to pieces."

"I've always loved you," Michael grinned. "When this domination is over I'm going to take you before the queen and you're going to share her blood and I am never letting you out of my sights again."

"It will be lovely," Eden smiled.

Michael crushed their lips together and Eden felt the first bite of his fangs over her tongue and she only held him tighter. She might never be out of Michael's sight again, but her was never leaving her arms.