Eventually, he gave up and went away. This was an incredibly uncomfortable time for me. I had truly come to love Father Paul, he had always been really nice to me, and for the last few years or more, I had come to think of him as my father.

To hear him begging my mother through the letterbox made me feel ill. I couldn’t understand my mother. I thought of her as being cold, almost ruthless, and I resented her for this. I missed Father Paul and wished she would relent and let him in again.

When he realised that he wasn’t going to get the opportunity to speak to my mother, he began writing letters and posting them through the letterbox. Mother would then read them to us around the table. They were love letters and very personal, intended solely for her. Nevertheless, she would sit and read them to us in a mocking tone. In these letters, Father Paul described his love for my mother and the love that he had for us children. He wrote how he loved Kara, Nik, and me. He professed his love for my mother and stated how he couldn’t understand why she would no longer acknowledge him.

Mother seemed to take some kind of wicked pleasure in reading these letters to us. She would pick out particular sentences he had written and then read them over and over again, each time adding more and more ridicule to the tone of her voice. I couldn’t bear it, so as she sat one evening and ridiculed Father Paul, I got up from the table and fled to my room. I just didn’t want to hear her any more. I cried and when I had stopped, I took the watercolours he had bought me, and started to paint, escaping to an imaginary world inside my head. Anywhere had to be better than home.

Because I was banned from seeing Father Paul, my paintings went unnoticed. It had only been him who had ever taken an interest in them.

I really missed him, not because he wasn’t around to praise my artwork, but because we had developed a relationship, a father and son relationship, and I desperately needed a father in my life. I’d heard nothing at all about my real father, not since my mother had returned with the news that he had been found innocent by the Elders.

To rid my feelings of loss, I hatched a plan. I stowed my paintings away in my rucksack and slipped out the door. I made my way to the remote little church and passed through the graveyard, up the hill to his secluded house.

Knowing that his brother had warned him to keep away from my mother and me, I sneaked round to the back door and rapped softly against it. Within a matter of moments he pulled open the door, and looking surprised but happy to see me again, he pulled me close.

His first question was, “Does your mother know you are here?”

I explained to him that she didn’t, and I would have to try and keep it a secret.

“How is she? Has she mentioned me at all?” he asked.

“She’s okay, I s’pose,” I said, stepping inside. I didn’t have the heart to tell him how she had read his letters to us and had ridiculed them.

“Why wouldn’t she answer the door to me?” he asked, taking me to sit by the fire where I had once spent hours cleaning the candlesticks, then drawing and painting.

“I don’t know, Dad,” I said. “She forbids us from letting you in. I hated hearing you outside, I felt so uncomfortable.”

“I think she’s acting like this because I let her down,” he said, looking into the fire.

“How do you mean?” I asked him.

“You know, not running away with her.

But I couldn’t, Jack. It would have been impossible. It would have been dangerous.” He justified to me again his reasons why, although he didn’t have to.

“How’s Kara and Nik doing? I miss you all so much,” he said with a sad-looking smile.

“They’re okay. We still haven’t heard anything from Lorre,” I told him. “You don’t know where she is living, do you?”

“No, sorry, Jack, I don’t,” he said.

We sat quietly before the fire, the thought of telling him how my mother had often treated me kept screaming across the front of my mind.

However much she confused and hurt me, I felt unable to speak to him about this. I felt I would be betraying her in some way. So for the rest of that day and into the early evening we talked, I showed him the new pictures I had painted. As the evening began to close in, I packed them away again and made my way home. For years, our family had shared many secrets, but now I had one of my own, and it excited me.

So every Saturday for the next few weeks, I would make my secret visits to Father Paul's, and once again spend most of the morning cleaning the candlesticks. Then we would sit together before the fire, him reading, and me painting my pictures.

I managed to keep my secret for about a month. On returning one Saturday evening, my mother was waiting for me. She was furious, standing before me with her hands on her hips, and eyes shining brightly. I knew at once I was in the shit. I had become skilled at deciphering her moods. I put my bag down and she immediately asked me where I had been.

Before I’d even opened my mouth, she screamed at me, “Don’t you dare lie to me!”

“I’m not lying…” I started.

“You’ve been with him, haven’t you?”

she snarled.

“Who?” I asked.

“The Blackcoat!” she roared. This was the first time I’d ever heard my mother refer to him in this way.

I hadn’t been expecting to have been discovered so soon and I was momentarily lost for words. I didn’t see the point in lying anymore, so I said, “Yes, I’ve been to see Father Paul. I’ve been going there every weekend for a while now.” I felt relieved that she knew my secret.

Deep inside, I was proud that I had maintained my relationship with him.

“I don’t believe what I’m hearing! How could you? Where is your loyalty?” she fumed.

I just couldn't grasp what she was fucking saying to me and I spoke up in my own defense. I wasn’t a kid anymore. “What do you mean loyalty? He’s been like a father to me. As far as I’m concerned, he is my father. I just can’t stop those feelings. It’s like we have a connection somehow.”

“You’ve got to forget him!” she barked at me.

I felt stunned and confused by what she was demanding of me. “For years you’ve encouraged me, all of us, to see Father Paul as our dad,” I reminded her. “Now you’re asking me just to forget him? I don’t understand what has changed.”

Immediately, mother got that look, the look she always had when she was about to tell me some hideous revelation. “Your beloved Father Paul, the person you’ve been so happily sneaking off to see, is a coward.”

“He couldn’t run away with you,” I barked back. “He has no money, where would we have lived? The Elders forbid Vampyrus and our kind mixing! They would punish him if they ever found out. Is that what you want?”

“I wasn’t talking about that!” she roared, slapping me hard across the face with the back of her hand. My head rocked backwards with a crack and the left side of my face felt as if it were on fire.

Kara must have heard the shouting because she came into the room and stood behind my mother. As always she was so close to her, like my mother’s shadow.

“What are you talking about?” I shouted back, a well of anger and confusion bubbling over inside of me. Tears ran down my face. Not because of the pain I felt from my mother striking me – but through hate.

“Your precious Father Paul beat me,” she snarled.

I couldn’t comprehend what she was telling me. I felt utterly bewildered and lost. “What do you mean?” I gasped.

“Just like your father, he was violent and cruel. There is no difference between the Vampyrus and the Lycanthrope. We are the same,” she said. “There you go. I didn’t want to tell you, but you’ve forced me to.”

I shook my head in disbelief. “I don’t believe it!” I snapped.

“So I’m a liar, am I? Is your sister lying as well? Is she?” She had that gloating sound in her voice, which I had heard so many times before. I looked over at Kara, who was standing a few feet behind her. I then looked at my mother again.

“What’s this got to do with Kara?” I breathed.

“He beat her, too,” she said.

I looked at Kara and asked, “Is this true?”

Kara looked away and as she did, she slowly nodded her head.

I couldn’t believe it, I wouldn’t believe it, and I told them so. “I don’t believe you. I know Father Paul. I mean, I really know him. I might believe what you have told me about my real father, but not Father Paul.”

My mother began to seethe on hearing this, and replied in a cruel and bitter tone. “You’re pathetic! You’d choose to believe a Vampyrus over your own mother and sister? Well, I wash my hands of you. Don’t ever expect anything from me again. You disgust me.”

I picked up my bag again and ran from the house. I never wanted to go back. I didn’t want to have to hear her voice anymore. I had heard it all before about my father. I ran and ran, so many twisted and disturbing images slithering around in my head. Her words had poisoned my mind. As I ran, I recalled everything she had told me about my father and began to wonder if it could possibly be true. The Elders hadn’t believed her, so why should I?

With my heart racing in my chest and gasping for air, I realised I had run blind to Father Paul’s house. I knew I could never tell him what my mother had said, it would have crushed him. I didn’t need to ask him if it were true. For whatever reason, my mother and sister had lied. I knew Father Paul. I knew how gentle he was. I had seen his compassion and the love he had for my mother and us. He had helped us always.

Whatever her reason, my mother had lied to me that day. I truly began to wonder how much, and if anything she had ever told me about my father was true. The desire to find out had begun.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Jack

I waited for a few moments outside the back door before I knocked. I was still so fucking angry with my mother and I wanted to calm down.