Out of Time 01 - Out of Time

Better a lone wolf than a pack?”
    “Unless that wolf is after your wife,” Simon said. “You’ll forgive me, Father. Under different circumstances I’d love to discuss the past, but it’s the present that concerns me. Soul or not, Kashian has made his motives perfectly clear. I intend to protect my wife by whatever means necessary. If you have something that might help me, I’m in your debt. If not, we’ll try elsewhere.”
    “Simon—”
    “No, no. He’s quite right, my dear. And of course, I’ll do what I can to help you.”
    Elizabeth let out a shaky breath. “Thank you.”
    “You came for holy water and crosses, I imagine?”
    “If you can spare them.”
    The priest smiled kindly. “I think I can manage that, but I’m afraid they won’t help you. In the spirit yes, but not the flesh.”
    Simon leaned back and narrowed his eyes. “So it is a myth.”
    Elizabeth had been hoping Simon was wrong about that. He’d always doubted the claims of religious icons affecting vampires, but it sure would have been nice if he’d been wrong. “All the books I’ve read, all the research?”
    “Propaganda,” Simon said. “Another way the church exerts its control. Another in a long series of misinformation campaigns to keep people depending on the church for things it can’t provide.”
    “Or perhaps to give them faith,” Father Cavanaugh said. “Where’s the harm in helping quell people’s fear? To give them a feeling they have power over the Evil that surrounds us. Faith is the best protection.”
    “That’s wonderful in the abstract, and I’m sure it comforts children before they go to bed at night,” Simon said and leaned forward. “I wish we were dealing with fanciful notions and things that only haunt people’s dreams, but this is real. This isn’t some amorphous darkness lurking around the next corner. This is a creature, flesh and blood standing in front of me and threatening to take everything I hold dear. You’ll forgive me for being blunt, but I didn’t come here for God’s help. I came for something much more practical.”
    “I find God very practical.”
    Elizabeth rushed to diffuse the situation. “He didn’t mean that the way it came out.”
    “Don’t apologize for me, Elizabeth. I meant what I said. We came here for weapons, nothing more.”
    “I understand,” the priest said. “But not all weapons are forged in steel. The most powerful weapon against Evil is inside you. Your faith.”
    Simon snorted, but Elizabeth tried to ignore him. “What if... I’m not very religious, Father. I don’t really know what I believe about God.”
    “Ah, but you have faith.”
    “I don’t know,” she said. She thought she did, but the last twenty-four hours had made her question lots of things. She’d believed they could face anything together, but there didn’t seem any way out of the mess they’d gotten themselves into.
    Father Cavanaugh looked from Simon back to Elizabeth. “You two love each other?”
    “Yes,” she said without hesitation.
    “And you believe in that. You believe in your love for each other?”
    Elizabeth nodded.
    “That’s God,” he said. “He goes by many names, many faces, but God is simply that—love. I find God in this church, in the faces of my parishioners. One man may find it in nature, in the majesty of a tree or a river,” he said and then looked directly at Simon. “Or another man may find it in a woman’s smile. Wherever it’s to be found, it’s to be cherished. When you find it, you hold onto it and nothing, no force, no evil can take it from you. It’s yours forever. And that, my dear, is something very powerful.”
    Elizabeth had never thought about faith in such simple terms. It had always been something vague and just beyond her reach. If love was the answer, she thought as she looked at Simon, she had that in abundance.
    “That’s a poetic notion, Father,” Simon said. “But I fail to see how that will save our lives.”
    “Not your lives perhaps, but your souls.”
    “You’ll forgive me if my concerns are slightly more immediate,” Simon said.
    Father Cavanaugh seemed troubled by Simon’s curt dismissal, but with patience born of years of practice, he nodded calmly.
    “If we can’t use holy water or crosses,” Simon said. “What can we use? What can you tell us of his weaknesses?”
    The Father sighed and his hands clenched before he spread his palms on his knees. “I’m afraid, I can be of very little