Quite some time later she came back downstairs. Father Benton was still sitting by the fire, staring absently into the flickering flames. Serapha sat down opposite him and looked into the fire as well.

“Why?” she said, eventually. “Why did all this have to happen? There were so many points where everything could have gone differently. If I hadn’t gone for a walk with my father, or if we’d taken a different path, everything would have been different. Or if I’d sailed on a different ship that first time, or if I hadn’t spent so much time talking to Gabriel, or if he hadn’t come back here when he did. Why this? Why me?”

“I don’t know,” said Father Benton. “There are many possible answers. It’s possible that the way things are is simply the way they happened, that chance is the answer.”

“But you don’t believe that.”

“No, I don’t. It is my personal belief that life is the forge of the gods. Have you ever watched a smith at work? He takes the metal and puts it through the most severe of conditions. It is pounded on, heated red hot, suddenly quenched, bent and folded. The best weaponsmiths will reheat, fold, and reshape a piece of metal hundreds, even thousands of times, before it is fit to be a sword. But a simple horseshoe is only heated once, perhaps twice, and refolded not at all. I think that is how the gods shape us. Those of us who are the very best, the highest quality steel, are put through the greatest torment. We are tested to the edge of our ability. I think that you, child, are very high quality steel indeed. And this will quite likely be only one of the trials of your life. Perhaps no other forging will be quite this painful, but there will be others.”

Serapha was silent, thinking. “I can see what you’re saying, though it doesn’t give me as much comfort as I might like,” she said at last. “But I still have to wonder, why? Why this trial? Why did I have to… to kill Gabriel?”

“You wonder if there was some other way, don’t you?” said the cleric gently. “You torment yourself with the thought that maybe you didn’t need to kill. Maybe there was some other solution that you didn’t see.”

Serapha nodded wordlessly.

“Why did you do it? What made it necessary at that time, child? In your own mind as you made the choice you made, why did you choose thus?”

“Because… because there wasn’t time. You were bleeding to death. It was do something right then, or let you die. And I couldn’t think of anything else. I didn’t know what other tricks Gabriel might have had. He had the crossbow, what else could he have prepared? I just didn’t have time to think.”

“Yes. And the reason why you didn’t have time was because of me. The blame for this could easily be laid on my shoulders. If I’d had the good sense to call the watch in instead of going off on my own, then things would have been different. That might have ended with the captain just as dead, but at other hands than yours. And I do hold myself somewhat responsible for your troubles. But when you feel guilty over this, think of this: you did what you did to save a life. Whether the exchange of Captain Young’s life for mine was a good one it isn’t my place to judge, but you acted to do good, not evil, when you acted. And I, selfish man that I am, can’t help but be grateful for your choice.”

“I guess I have a lot to think about,” said Serapha. “And I am glad you lived. Very glad.”

Just then a soft knock sounded at the door. “I’ll get it,” said Serapha, not wanting Father Benton to exert himself. When she opened the door she found her brother Alan on the other side of if.

He took one look at her and said, “Something’s happened.”

“A great deal has happened,” said Serapha with a sigh.

“I had a feeling I should come and get you,” said Alan. “Perhaps it is time for us to go home?”

She looked up at him. “I think you’re right. Though I could wish you’d had your feeling a little earlier in the evening. But I would like to go home.”

She turned to Father Benton. “You’ll be all right by yourself?”

“Certainly! I’m not so old and feeble as that. And I’ll take care of young Michael for you as well.”

Serapha smiled. “Thank you,” she said. Then, turning to her brother, she said, “Let’s go.”

The trip was a swift as they could make it, and by the time the sun reached its zenith they had arrived. Serapha was tired, both physically and mentally, and she headed straight for her bed. When she awoke a little after sundown she still felt mentally unsettled. Talking with Father Benton had helped, but he couldn’t really understand what was troubling her. But there was one person who surely could.

“Dad?” she said from the door of the little study.

“Yes Serapha?” replied Aidan, setting down his pen and looking up at her.

“I need to talk. Do you have a minute?”

“Sure.” He set aside the sheet of parchment he’d been writing on and moved from the desk where he’d been sitting to the little couch that stood against one wall. “Here, come in and have a seat.”

Serapha sat down next to him on the couch, nervously rearranging her wings.

“Now, what did you want to talk about?”

Serapha looked up at her father, took a deep breath, and plunged into the story. When she was finished she said, “I talked about it with Bather Benton, and he helped some, but… he can’t understand what it was like. It isn’t just the fact that I killed him, it’s how. I felt him die! And I can still taste it, that last taste. It won’t go away. I can’t get it out of my mind.”

“Oh Serapha,” said Aidan, hugging her and folding his wings around her in a comforting embrace. “I wish I could take all that away from you. I really do. All I can say is that from my own experience the memory will fade in time.”

“Have you ever…”

“Yes,” said Aidan answering the question Serapha hadn’t quite wanted to voice. “Not in the same circumstances, but I have killed that way before. But what I’ve done isn’t the problem. I’ve dealt with my own demons.” He smiled then, “Literally at times. You have to find your own way to deal with what life’s given you.”

“I don’t know if I can. I mean… it’s part of me, his blood is in me, and I can’t forget that. It makes me sick thinking of it.”

“You want to throw up, but you can’t, and it’s too late anyway because your body has already absorbed it.” He closed his eye for a moment, remembering. “But there’s another way of looking at it, you know. Even vampires are still part of life’s circle. Someday you and I will die, and we’ll return to the earth, just like anyone else.

“They’ll bury Captain Young somewhere, and the grass will grow over him, the earth will reclaim him, and the people of the town will eat what grows from the earth, and he’ll be a part of all of them too. It’s just a bit more… immediate in your case. I know thinking about it that way won’t make it just go away, but it might help a little.”

“Maybe…”

“You might want to talk to you mother about it sometime. She might not have a vampire’s point of view on this, but she understands the way life and nature and the world all work a lot better than I do. There have been just a few moments in my life when I felt connected to the turning of the circle. But she was born with that connection. I envy her that sometimes. You and I, we have to find our way to our place in this life, discover who we are and how we fit into the big picture. But she’s always known.” He shrugged then, and gave Serapha another hug.

She hugged him back. “Thanks Dad. I guess I’ll learn to cope with the eventually. But I still wish it had never happened.”

“I could wish that too, Serapha. But even something like this can bring some good with it.”

“I can’t see what good there could possibly be.”

“Give it time,” said Aidan. “Give it time.”