Better off Undead

Chapter 52: God Told me to Kill

For a long moment, the woods were disturbingly silent. Everyone stood stock still, staring at Eli as the words of his revelation sank in.

"That's... that's impossible..." Amber started to protest, but her voice was quiet, meek.

Gabriel rubbed his cheek and started to say, "Eli, I don't know..."

That was as far as he got before Eli started shouting. "Shut up! Shut up! You lying bastard! You killed that vampire. You came prepared to kill that vampire. There's no way you could have done that unless you already knew about them! You bastard!"

As he shouted he once again resumed trying to pull himself free from the arms retraining him. This seemed to snap some of the others out of their shock and they tightened their grips to hold him in place.

"What the hell are you talking about, Eli?" Aliyah demanded. "You're the one who killed the vampire."

"No!" Eli hissed with such force that spit flew from his mouth. "Not just now! I'm talking back at that town. When me and the others had been taken hostage. Our captor was a vampire. But none of us knew that at the time. None of us knew that any such thing even existed! But Gabriel here joined the rescue party, something very odd for just some preacher man to do, and he came prepared. He came with a wooden stake, and immediately drove it into the creature's heart. Any one of us would have shot it in the head. But he stabbed it in the heart with a wooden stake."

Aliyah and Mac exchanged glances, and then everyone turned to stare down at the preacher.

"Gabriel...?" Aliyah prompted, as though she were too afraid to even voice the actual question.

"I... I don't..." Gabriel started to protest, shaking his head as he stared from one person in the group to another. It didn't take him long to realize no one was really buying it. He stopped and his shoulders drooped as he let out a long sigh of defeat.

"Fine," he said, rising to his feet. "You got me. I knew about the vampires before any of you did."

"Why the hell didn't you tell us?" demanded Eli, the only one of the group mentally prepared to respond to this revelation.

"Because..." Gabriel began, but his voice trailed off as he again looked between each member of the group. He took a deep breath and let it out. "Because I wasn't supposed to."

"Are you even a real preacher?" Daina asked, coming around from behind him to meet his gaze. "If you had married me and Daniel, would it even have been binding?"

Gabriel scoffed, and when he spoke again, there was a tinge of annoyance in his voice. "Yes, I am a real preacher. I am a fully ordained Catholic priest. But preaching is somewhat... incidental to my purpose in the church. I... I belong to a secret sect. One that has known of the existence of vampires for a thousand years. Though, we never actually called them vampires. We called them demons. We are the order that fights back the demons and restores God's light to His creation. We are the reason that the vampires hide in caves hibernating. Every now and then, one wakes and cannot resist the urge to rise and feed. I was chasing one of these through Texas when the outbreak occurred. I believe it was the same one you are speaking of, the one you saw me kill."

Gabriel paused and for a moment there was quiet. Eli couldn't believe what he was hearing. He glanced around to the others, and saw that they had similar levels of disbelief readable on their faces.

"Why would you keep this a secret?" Jay asked. "The vampires and the order?"

Gabriel shrugged. "Old rules of the church. My understanding is that they did not want to cause any panic among the flock, especially considering we seemed to have the situation under control. And we did have it under control. Until Paul and his compatriots unleashed this Hell upon the earth."