Seize the Night

left hand. The thing that slid out of the glove, however, wasn't a human hand. It was a hand in the process of becoming something else, still exhibiting evidence of humanity in the tone and the texture of the skin, and in the placement of the digits, but the fingers were more like finger-size talons, yet not talons precisely, because each appeared to be split—or at least to have begun to split—into appendages resembling the serrated pincers of baby lobster claws.
    “I can only trust in Jesus,” the priest said.
    His face streamed with tears no doubt as bitter as the vinegar in the sponge that had been offered to his suffering savior.
    “I believe. I believe in the mercy of Christ. Yes, I believe. I believe in the mercy of Christ.”
    Yellow light flared in his eyes.
    Flared.
    Father Tom came at me first, perhaps because I was between him and the doorway, perhaps because my mother was Wisteria Jane Snow. After all, though she gave us such miracles as Orson and Mungojerrie, her life's work also made possible the twitching thing at the end of the priest's left arm. Though the human side of him surely did believe in the immortal soul and the sweet mercy of Christ, it was understandable if some other, darker part of him placed its faith in bloody vengeance.
    No matter what else he was, Father Tom was still a priest, and my folks had not raised me to take punches at priests, or at people insane with despair, for that matter. Respect and pity and twenty-eight years of parental instruction overcame my survival instinct—which made me a disappointment to Darwin—and instead of aggressively countering Father Tom's assault, I crossed my arms over my face and tried to turn away from him.
    He was not an experienced fighter. Like a grade-school boy in a playground brawl, he threw himself wildly against me, using his entire body as a weapon, ramming into me with a lot more force than you would expect from an ordinary priest, even more than you'd expect from a Jesuit.
    Driven backward, I slammed hard into a tall armoire. One of the door handles gouged into my back, just below my left shoulder blade.
    Father Tom was hammering at me with his right fist, but I was more worried about that weird left appendage. I didn't know how sharp the serrated edges on those little pincers might be, but more to the point, I didn't want to be touched by that thing, which looked unclean.
    Not unclean in a sanitary sense. Unclean in the sense that the cloven hoof or the hairless pink corkscrew tail of a demon might look unclean.
    As he pounded on me, Father Tom urgently repeated his statement of religious commitment, “I believe in the mercy of Christ, the mercy of Christ, the mercy, I believe in the mercy of Christ!”
    His spittle sprayed my face, and his breath was disconcertingly sweet with the fragrance of peppermint.
    This ceaseless chanting wasn't meant to persuade me or anyone else—not even God—of the priest's unshaken faith. Rather, he was trying to convince himself of his belief, to remind himself that he had hope, and to use that hope to seize control of himself once more. In spite of the malevolent sulfurous light in his eyes, in spite of the urge to kill that pumped uncanny strength into his undisciplined body, I could see the earnest and venerable man of God who struggled to suppress the raging savage within and to find his way back toward grace.
    Shouting, cursing, Bobby and Roosevelt clutched at the priest, trying to tear him off me. Even as he clung fast to me, Father Tom kicked at them, drove his elbows backward into their stomachs and ribs.
    He hadn't been a skilled fighter when he launched himself at me, seconds ago, but he seemed to be learning fast. Or perhaps he was losing the struggle to subdue his new becoming self, the savage within, which knew all about fighting and killing.
    I felt something pulling at my sweater and was sure that it was the hateful claw. The pincer serrations were snagged in the cotton fabric.
    With revulsion thick in my throat, I grabbed the priest's wrist to restrain him. The flesh under my hand was strangely hot, greasy, and as vile to the touch as might be a corpse in an advanced state of decay.
    In places, the meat of him was disgustingly soft, although in other places, his skin had hardened into what might have been patches of a smooth carapace.
    Until now, our bizarre struggle had been desperate yet at least darkly amusing to me, something that you couldn't laugh at now but at which you