8 SACRIFICE 

“If John fed on one of our human servants, or a rat or even a milk cow on the estate farm,” Adrienne continued, “his essence as John, the man I love, could not be fully restored. He needs blood that is a close DNA match to his own human blood, his father, mother, a full or even a half-sibling. It is not possible to take his blood or your blood and store it, and the three days is necessary so that the blood I drew from him has been completely absorbed and changed by my own body. However, I am not completely off the menu. I am there because I have been his lover of six years. We even made love on our first date, Robert, you, I now know, fully understand how utterly hot a man he is.”

“And I perfectly understand how hot you are, my dear,” I smile, “even though you are not at all my type.”

“Yes,” she snorts as she giggled, “but as frequent lovers for years we have regularly exchanged bodily fluids, and we vampires feed on more than simply blood. John has been sustaining me so well that I haven't touched a drop of blood from the time we met until three days ago. If he drained me now, he would achieve almost full restoration of his existence, but at the cost of his eternal love and lost forever would be the children he desired so much to spawn. He would indeed not be the John we all know and love but would be driven by grief to be a monster that cannot die, yet cannot live with himself. However much it will kill my heart, I would rather he was a husk in the coffin and I exist and endure the knowledge of what I had to sacrifice in order to save our children.”

Pauline’s eyes grew larger as Adrienne expanded her explaination, and the full horror of her fate became clear to her.

“How long does John have?” I ask as I pull my phone from my pocket and flick through the unread messages until I find the one I want.

Adrienne consultes her watch, “Three hours and fifty-three minutes. The draining of the victim only takes a matter of moments. Why? What does the time matter? It seems obvious to me that the choice is clear and you would have to be grandfather to John's children.”

“I see.” I say, as I read the note from the diocesan office, summarizing aloud, “‘Reverend Darren Greensward, Minister of Tanglewood, was flown into your local airport by my office, and checked into Room 208 in the Skyline Motel at 8.30 earlier this evening.’” I turn to Adrienne, “He thinks he is attending an interview for a permanent position at your church here first thing in the morning. He caught the last possible flight in. I was going to confront him in the morning and beat out of him the release of his hold on my wife. Apparently, Pauline advised him by phone of the death of his son three days ago, but I am reliably informed he told Betty Jones, one of his current lovers, that the death meant nothing to him.”

“No!” cries Pauline, “You can’t have found out all this after our conversation early this afternoon, you can’t!”

“No, Pauline, my dear, but I have known Greensward was your lover before you found him cheating and you began going out with me, the good Christian former alter boy who would never cheat and was destined to go places within the clergy,” I say, my mind calmer than I ever expected at this showdown, “I accepted you as my wife because you were the perfect cover for my shortcomings as a … man. You were beautiful, charming, a caring mother and wife, and I heaped as much affection on you as I could, except that you couldn't give up the cheater, could you? When Greensward made you pregnant, you passed John off as my child, but a public person can never hide secrets from a curious and determined congregation still loyal to a previous minister who they once took to their hearts. Quite a few of the kind-hearted and a couple of the more malicious parishioners told me the truth, and, when DNA tests came into common use I confirmed my fears.”

“You knew all along?” Pauline sobs.

“I shared you with Greensward all these years and sacrificed the sin of pride gladly. I hated it and I am sure it was common knowledge among your flock, and I could not deny the titters at my expense between the pews, but I did love you as far as I was able, Pauline, on an emotional level. I was bitterly disappointed when you didn't follow me to the Bishop’s Palace, and Greensward was appointed in my place as your Minister. I hoped that when you left his curacy that I still had a chance and patiently waited. When I heard John had died, I released all my gathered evidence about Greensward to your Bishop, I wasn’t going to stand for that creep moving in with you. If he hasn't already.”

“No, he hasn't. I do love you Robert, I grew to love you during our time together. I know Darren has always had this hold over me but, living openly with a lover? I would never do that to you, to knowingly embarrass us all among the parishioners we grew up with. But, now Darren wants to retire, leave his parish and move in with me in my vicarage. I couldn’t do that to my congregation and still be able to preach the values of marriage from the pulpit, so I resigned my position too. After the divorce I have no idea how or where I will live.”

“He is not retiring, Pauline,” I inform her sadly, “Greensward was forced to resign or be sacked. He has had a string of affairs, ruining the lives of a number of couples’ lives in our old parish. His own Bishop is a fool and covered up Greensward’s moral failings for far too long. With the evidence I sent him when I heard John died, it has finally forced his Bishop to hang him out to dry. This afternoon, after you sprung the divorce on me, I offered to take Greensward off their hands and provide him a living, calling in a favour from the Bishop of this diocese.”

“We can be at the Skyline in half-an-hour, and still have time to get back if he’s not there,” Adrienne says, as she strides briskly to the door, barking an order to the servant standing there, sending him off running to the dining hall. Within a couple of minutes, four burly cousins come in and bundle John, who bellows like a beast being dragged from the square meal he desired so badly, through the door.

“We’ve got this covered, Addy dear,” grunts Gareth, “you stay here and patch things up.” Gareth and Sylvia follow John and the party, but not before kissing their daughter in farewell and squeezing the shoulders of both Pauline and I, wordlessly offering us hope that together we’d get past this mess of transition.

In the silence, amid the candles guttering in the disturbed air of that ante chamber, Pauline asks in her small voice,“What happens now, Robert?”

“Either we’re both going to be parents to our lovely son again, and doting grandparents to those two vampire babies, the first of many I suspect, Sweetheart,” I say, “or it will come down to you being the one making the sacrifice for once.”

THE END