The flames painted the sky red as Remmick left the Lockwood mansion behind. The air still carried the scent of blood, of charred wood, and of an empty cradle. In his arms, two small bundles—heavy in a strange way, not from weight, but from the promise of peace they carried.

He found her in the dark room of their home, seated as if she had spent the entire night there, keeping vigil. Her hair was tousled, the dress too thin for the cold hour, her eyes hollow like open graves—until she saw him.

Her shoulders relaxed. Her lips curled into that libidinous smile that always disarmed him. She took one of the babies with delicate hands, whispering something too soft to be heard.

Remmick sighed—for the first time in weeks. Everything was fine. She was herself again. And nothing else mattered.

Centuries ago, on a cloudy night, Remmick had taken her. The Irish village slept as he slipped between moss-covered stones. Her dress still held the scent of church—a virginal white that gleamed like provocation. She was the loveliest of them all, and she belonged to an Englishman. That infuriated him more than he dared admit.

She resisted, of course. Even after Remmick took her fiancé’s life, she resisted. Her mouth kept denying the fate he had already decided. But Remmick, ancient as the bones of the hills, knew how to wait. No’s unravel with time.

Before spring ended, he turned her. She woke with arid eyes—no scream, no prayer. Nothing remained but him.

For a long time, there was no forgiveness. She sobbed through the nights for the motherhood she’d never know, for the dreams that had rotted beside her fiancé’s buried body. He pretended not to hear. He fed her, cleaned the traces, whispered gentle words he barely meant.

But time is an ally to monsters. Decades passed. By the next century, she was smiling. Then, she accepted his kisses. Eventually, she seemed to love him—or mimicked it well.

In the United States, they bought a large house in Jackson, Mississippi. The money came from blood. The peace, from caution.

But one baptism was enough to bring it all down.

Remmick had foreseen disaster, but she went to the Christian ceremony anyway. And he, unable to deny her anything, followed.

At the church, her eyes locked onto the Lockwood twins—newborns still wet with blessing. She said nothing on the way back. Not that night either.

In the following days, she began to fade. She sat for hours, vacant-eyed, her veins dried out. She wept without tears. Silent.

Until, one early morning, Remmick woke to an unexpected scent: milk.

He looked at her. Her breasts were full—like a mother’s.

Impossible.

He sought answers. An old priest, half doctor and half drunk, told him it was possible—phantom pregnancy, the mind fooling the flesh.

Remmick couldn’t stand to see her like that. She drifted like a starving specter.

So he decided.

He smeared himself with mud. Scratched his own chest. In the dead of night, he knocked on the Lockwoods’ door.

“They’re hunting me,” he panted. “I need shelter.”

They believed him. They always did.

When the blood stopped spilling, he looked at the bodies and knew he couldn’t hesitate. He took the babies. Burned the house. Erased every trace.

Now, sitting with her and the children on the train to Natchez, he felt his shoulders begin to ease.

“Women are difficult, kid,” he murmured to one of the twins, watching the small sleeping face in his lap. “Human or not.”

He stroked the baby’s head as if rehearsing a gesture he’d have to repeat for a long time. He still didn’t know whether this was redemption or damnation. But she was smiling again. And that was enough.