The Vatican's Thorn
🩸 “The Baptism of Ruby” — The Sacred Unmaking
~
“You need a name,” he murmurs, voice low and electric. “Something worthy of what you are now.”
He kisses her temple, just once.
“Ruby,” he whispers. “For the jewel you’ve become... and the blood you wear so beautifully.”
~
The chapel had long been abandoned, the rotted wood the stained worn color of dandelion yellow.
What once housed solemn hymns now echoed with the murmur of something older—something darker. Candles flickered like nervous heartbeats. The stained-glass saints watched through fractured panes, their faces warped into silent screams by the flicker of flame and shadow.
In the center, the girl knelt.
No—Ruby knelt.
“Ruby,” he whispers through the memory of her prayers.
Naked, save for the crimson handprint across her chest, left there by Alucard’s palm. Her hair clung to her skin in damp clumps, her eyes wide, unblinking. Awaiting judgment. No... ascension.
From behind the altar, Integra emerged. Regal, composed, her boots clicking like the ticking of fate. Her shirt unbuttoned dangerously low, her eyes trailed downwards; The cigar smoke precedes her like a ghost
Alucard followed in her wake like a curse dressed in silk and shadows. He carried a silver bowl—ornate, etched with scripture in Latin and madness. It sloshed gently with the sacred blood of their enemies, freshly taken from a high priest whose last breath was a hymn to a deaf God.
“Do you renounce your former vows?” Integra asked, her voice smooth and cold as blade steel.
Ruby didn’t flinch. “I do.”
“For the jewel you’ve become”
“Do you forsake their God?” Alucard cooed, crouching before her, tilting her chin up with a bloodstained glove.
“I do.”
“Do you pledge your body,” Integra said, circling her like a predator in commandment robes, “your will, your hunger—to us?”
“and the blood you wear so beautifully.”
“To you,” Ruby whispered, trembling not with fear, but something deeper. Something ecstatic. “Always.”
Alucard’s smile was slow. “Then rise, child of crimson.”
But first—the blood.
Integra dipped her fingers into the bowl and drew a line from Ruby’s throat to her sternum, then across each shoulder. “In the name of death, we mark you.”
Alucard followed, pushing Ruby back until she lay across the stone altar, arms outstretched like a sacrifice too sacred to burn. He poured the bowl slowly over her chest, letting the thick, hot blood trail down her ribs, pool in her collarbones, paint her thighs.
“In the name of war,” he growled, licking a droplet from her navel, “we claim you.”
“And in the name of us,” Integra said, now close enough for Ruby to feel her breath, “we baptize you. You are no longer theirs.”
Integra leaned down, and kissed her—chaste, but electric. A final seal.
Alucard followed with his mouth to her throat, whispering against her pulse, “You are Ruby. Our Ruby. Our sacred sin".
The candles flared as if answering the rite. The chapel groaned, ancient and awakened. Outside, the sky cracked open with thunder.
And inside, three monsters smiled.
