Ten years. Ten Christmases left behind. Ten sets of young ones sent out into the world to falter or soar, live or die. Ten years of feeling his faith wither with each child he had to bury, feeling the darkness surge and fester in him as he heard the sobbing of alter boys in the office of Father Andrews the pastor. Ten years of a growing conviction that he was leading the worship of a god that had died.

With a sigh, he crossed himself, banishing the blasphemy from his mind more out of reflex than genuine belief. He was too tired to feel anything other than a vague sense of guilt. Shaking the feeling off, he absently touched the silver cross around his neck, then went back to touching the flame to each wick. In the beginning, he had thought the hundreds of candles around the church were merely an extravagant waste. Now he blessed them. The repetition was often his only comfort.

Soft voices raised in a familiar tune snuck in around the edges of his mind. He recognized them absently as the children’s choir, preparing for their performance at mass. That would explain why they were endearingly, ever so slightly off key. Before he realized what he was doing, he was singing quietly along, adding his own plea to the already plaintive song.

O Come, O come Emmanuel,
And ransom captive Isreal…

He wondered sometimes, in the silent dark privacy of the rectory, how many of the children had suffered in this church. How many had pleaded for some sort of divine rescue, only to get no answer as they were hurt, broken by the same hands that held the Eucharist only hours later. It frightened him.

That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appears…

Footsteps on stone warned him a moment before the pastor himself appeared from behind the altar. The candlelight made his shadow waver and stretch across the white ivory, staining it.

Matthew’s training screamed against such ungenerous thoughts. His experience made him draw away into the privacy of Mary’s chapel, hidden in the shadows beside the altar. Cupping the flame with his fingers, masking it, he settled back to wait for the other man to leave. At the moment, pretending to respect him would make his skin crawl.

Father Andrews, thankfully, seemed too involved in preparing the altar to notice him. His face grave, he began to slowly fold the altar cloth in the proper way with gnarled, shaking hands. That done, he bent carefully, his lips moving silently as he laid his forehead against the cold marble.

O come, thou rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan's tyranny…

The heavy doors at the front of the door came shut with a bang like a gunshot. The pastor didn’t twitch, but Matthew started at the sound, turning towards the doors. His vision was blocked by one of the pillars in front of the altar, but his heart was suddenly pounding in his ears. His hands, cupped around the candle, were suddenly trembling. Blowing the flame out, he set the candle down and, carefully, lowered himself to his knees. Something in him was screaming for him to stay down.

“Bless me, father, for I have sinned.” The voice rang out clear and strident, like blasphemy in the nearly silent church. “It’s been… hell. I don’t think I’ve ever had confession, come to think of it.”

From depths of  hell thy people save
And give them vict'ry o'er the grave…

Andrews raised his head, the look on his face disdainful and cold. “May I help you, sir?”

“Actually, yes. You can.” Any warmth drained out of the man’s voice like blood from a wound. “Are you Father Andrews?”

“That I am.”

There was silence. Wary, Matthew crept forward just enough to see past the pillar, and froze.

None of the paintings done of the Angel of Death had looked anything like the man now standing in the aisle between the pews. No angel wore black leather dusters, canted ever so slightly to the side by something in a side pocket, or boots that left scuff marks in the house of God. No angel was supposed to smirk like that, a predator with cornered prey.

Yet somehow, Matthew knew. All the paintings had been wrong.

Moving with an odd, rolling sort of grace, the man in black made his way to the front of the church. His eyes, too dark to look like anything but shadows in the flickering light of the candles, locked on Andrews as he walked. His voice, low with the faintest tinge of a drawl, ran through the church like sudden thunder. “I’ve received some complaints about you, Father.”

Andrews’ lips twitched nervously in his calm mask, but his voice betrayed nothing as he replied, “I have mass in half an hour. This is hardly the time to discuss this, my son.”

“And I’m hardly your son. Vow of chastity, and all that.” Taking the first step up to the raised platform of the lectern, the man paused to eye the bible that lay open on its pedestal. His lip curled slightly, and he shook his head. He reached out and shut the holy book with a sharp bang. As Andrews stiffened, the man looked up at him with something approaching a smile. “I hate to mess up your doilies and stuff, but this can’t wait.”

“What do you want from me?”

“Now there’s a loaded question.” Looking to the side suddenly, the man frowned into the shadows beside the altar. Matthew swallowed convulsively, sinking further down. The man tilted his head, an oddly animal motion, then passed him by. Matthew could only hope that his gasp of relief was muffled by the cloth over his mouth. “I think we can start with a confession.”

Andrews’ eyes narrowed to hard slits, and he backed up a step. That was a mistake; the man’s smile widened. “You can’t absolve me.”

“No. But I can give you penance.” With a sharp, quick motion, the man moved up the last three steps to the altar. Andrews made a sound in his throat, trying to edge away, but the man traced each of his moves with his own. Leaning against the altar, the man gave him a smile that was more a baring of teeth. “Let’s start with the altar boys, shall we?”

Paling, Andrews stammered, “I-I don’t know what you mean-“

“Lies, Father Andrews?” The man jerked his head up at the crucifix that hung above them, staring down with glass eyes. “Right under the eyes of the son of God?”

Andrews swallowed thickly. “I… I never hurt them…”

“No, you just fucked them up for the rest of their lives. Nothing serious. How many of them did you touch, Andrews?” When Andrews just stared at him, the man lashed out, knocking over the candelabra beside the altar to the floor with a clatter. “How many?!”

“Thirty!” Andrews snapped finally, furious and terrified at once. “Only thirty.”

Matthew felt his stomach drop. Thirty. He had thought it was only ten, if that many, but thirty…

“’Only’ thirty?”

“I tried to stop-“

“Obviously not hard enough.”

“They asked for it!”

The man made a hard, scornful noise. “And you call yourself a man of God.”

Andrews kept going, oblivious. His hands shook on the altar, the motions getting jerkier with each second. “They tempted me. Tempted me away from the path. Devils…”

The man moved. Reaching across the altar, he grabbed Andrews by the collar and pulled until their faces nearly touched. In a soft, almost feral hiss that Matthew had to strain to hear, he spat, “Children, Andrews. They were just little children, and you fucking took that from them.”

Andrews choked, clawing at the man’s hands. With a disdainful look, the man dropped him and began to reach for whatever had been resting in his jacket. He paused before he could draw it out, however, realizing that Andrews didn’t stop choking.

Gasping raggedly, deep whoops of air, Andrews thrashed weakly on the altar as he grasped at his throat. His face was purpling from the lack of air, his eyes bulging. With a convulsive motion, he raised his head to stare at the cross. Impossibly, his eyes got wider. Head falling back to look at the man, who was watching with a slight frown, Andrews made a groaning noise that was meant to be a scream. Then his hand fell to the altar, knocking over the cup of Communion wine. With one last halting, choking heave, he shuddered and was still.

The man waited for a moment, still regarding Andrews with a look that was more curiosity than shock. Finally, with a shrug, he reached out and pressed his fingers none-too-gently to where the pulse would beat in Andrews’s throat. After a minute, he grabbed a handful of the fabric covering the altar, threw it over Andrews and shoved the whole bundle unceremoniously to the floor. Looking up, he smirked faintly at the crucifix, crossed himself and gave the statue a mocking bow. That done, he turned his back and, without a second glance, walked out.

Matthew could only watch in horror as the Communion wine dribbled down the white marble like blood.
---
God, he hated the suburbs.

Bart sighed, stepping out into the dark parking lot. Snow fell softly on him, and he brushed it irritably away. At any other time he might have been more tolerant, but not tonight. Making this kind of trip without even getting to kill someone didn’t put him in a good mood. At the moment, all he wanted to do was collect his money, go home, and possibly watch ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’. He really needed a drink.

Looking around the parking lot, he muttered a curse as he saw nothing. The hastily scribbled, badly spelled note that his contact had sent him had told him to wait under the third lightpost in the back of the church until seven. It was seven thirty. Bart gave it another five minutes before somebody noticed that the pastor had kicked it, ten until the ambulance got there. Considering that there was a witness around, he really didn’t want to be around for that part.

With another impatient glance over his shoulder, Bart rummaged in his pockets for a cigarette. Much as he tried to fight it, the nic fit was making his hands shake. Lighting up, he drew in a deep breath and let it out in a shuddering rush, savoring the taste and the burn. It wasn’t quite enough to distract him from the quiet crunch of snow beneath someone’s boots. Tensing up, he slid the cigarettes with careful casualness back in his pocket, wrapping his fingers around the handle of the gun just beside them.

“Sir?”

The speaker couldn’t be more than ten; the voice sounded too young, too high, too anxious. Bart let himself relax slightly, cracking open one eye to look down. His estimation had proved right. Peering up at him with solemn eyes, the suit jacket and fancy khakis looking entirely out of place on someone that young, was a kid.

Flicking the ash off his cigarette, enjoying the way the kid’s eyes widened, Bart smiled humorlessly. “Can I help you, kid?”

The kid looked gravely up at him for a moment, then drew in a deep breath and said firmly, “Don’t panic.”

Bart stilled, staring down at the boy with an expression that would have made most people back down. When the kid just met his eyes, steadily if a little nervously, he muttered, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

The kid scowled. “That isn’t what you’re supposed to say.”

Ignoring that, Bart demanded, “You hired a hit? You?”

“Yeah,” the kid replied defensively. “So?”

“You haven’t even hit puberty.” Shaking his head as the blush rose up the kid’s cheeks, Bart looked away with a low, disgusted noise. “How are you supposed to pay me?”

“You said that you’d name your own price!” the kid protested, a sudden panic in his voice. “I brought all I have!”

“And how much for you have?”

With a quavering breath, the kid dug into his pocket and came out with a handful of grubby bills wrapped around a few coins. Holding them out, he pinned Bart with a simple, hopeful look through a tangle of blond hair.

“Why is it always the blonds?” Bart asked no one in particular, then reached out and took the money. A quick count later, he glanced up at the kid, who was shifting back and forth anxiously on his feet. In a low, flat voice, he intoned, “Twelve dollars and sixty-three cents.”

“I-I don’t have anything more.”

“Jesus, kid.” Letting out a slow breath, Bart finally pushed the money back at the boy. “Shit.”

Biting his lip, the kid stared up at him, desperation in his dark eyes. “Y-you’re not going to bring him back, are you?”

“From where?” Bart snapped back, distracted by the sudden throbbing pain behind his eyes.

“From wherever you sent him. I asked for somebody to make Father Andrews go away.” When Bart cursed abruptly and emphatically, yanking a hand through his hair, the kid asked anxiously, “You did make him go away, didn’t you?”

“You could put it like that.” With a sigh, Bart let his hand drop to his side. “Trust me, kid, Andrews isn’t coming back. I couldn’t yank his ass back if I wanted to.”

The kid relaxed so obviously that Bart had to smirk faintly down at him. With a tentative smile back, the kid seemed to come to a decision. Thrusting out his fistful of sweaty dollars, he declared, “Take it.”

Bart looked down at the money, then at the kid. Then, shoulders slumping, he sighed and said in a rush, “Forget it. Keep the money.”

“But-“

“Just do it before I change my mind, okay?” When the boy started, then nodded hastily and began to shove the money back in his pockets, Bart finally gave in and reached down to rumple already mussed blond waves. “Just because you remind me of somebody, though. And don’t go doing this again thinking that you’ll get another freebie.”

“Yessir.”

“Bright kid.” Reaching into his pocket, Bart found a cigarette and slid it behind his ear. From a few blocks away, he could hear sirens. “Now, I want you to do something for me. Go to the padre in there, and tell him that if he’s not very, very careful, I’m coming back. Understand?”

The kid nodded solemnly, taking the duty to heart. “Yessir.”

“Good.” Aiming a light, rough swat at the kid’s head, Bart barked, “Now go!”
 
Startled into action, the boy went. Once he started running to the church, he didn’t stop. By the time the ambulances arrived, he was already with his choir, tucked in among the bright young faces, indistinguishable in his uniform. Father Andrews’s death was declared to be due to natural causes, and with a few phone calls to the bishop Father Matthew had assumed his new duties as pastor by the next day.

No one saw the man dressed in black walking away from the church, singing carols softly and off key to the night.