Heresy of Holy Fire

The cedar wood of the confessional booth was old, but it wasn’t old enough to hide the smell of sulfur and cheap tobacco.

I stood in the shadows of St. Mary’s empty nave, a heavy iron ring of keys gripping my hip as I wiped down the altar rail with a rag. The Arizona heat outside was an oppressive, invisible weight, but inside the stone church, the midnight air felt like the floor of a cellar.

Through the gloom, I watched the heavy leather door of the confessional click open. A man stepped out. He didn’t walk like a man who had just emptied his sins into the ear of the Almighty. He had a greasy black beard, a low-slung gun belt, and a cocky, rhythmic swagger that made his spurs jingle against the linoleum like brass coins. He paused, blew a thick cloud of cigar smoke directly toward the statue of the Virgin Mary, and let out a low, mocking chuckle before pushing through the heavy front doors into the lawless noise of the main street.

I waited until the hinges stopped vibrating before I dropped the rag. My boots made no sound as I walked toward the curtained booth.

“Xavier?” I called out softly, my hand resting on the heavy velvet drape. “The stranger is gone. The town is loud tonight. The miners from the gold ridge are already rioting at the Eastern saloon.”

There was no answer from inside the dark box. Only a dead, unnatural silence.

Then, a low, mechanical vibration hummed through the wood. It was a sound I had grown to fear—the high-frequency, electronic thrum of the nine-inch cross resting beneath his cassock, forged from the cold iron of a fallen star. A pale, purple cosmic glow bled through the cracks of the wooden partition, illuminating the dust motes in the air.

The curtain slid back with a sharp snap.

Father Xavier Dynamite stepped into the dim light of the church. He looked less like a priest and more like an icon carved out of desert granite. His face was entirely unblinking, his thirty-year-old jawline rigid beneath a thick layer of Clint Eastwood stubble. He didn’t look at me. His blue eyes were fixed on the front doors, wide and burning with a cold, terrifying clarity.

“Beatrice,” he said. His voice was a low, gravelly rasp that sounded like iron dragging over sandstone. “Gather the children. We have exactly five hours before the sun clears the mountains.”

I took a step back, my fingers locking around my wooden rosary beads. “What did he say to you, Xavier? What did that animal confess under the seal?”

Dynamite turned his head slowly, his high, stiff collar locked tight against his throat. He reached down to the dark leather bag at his feet, his calloused hands pulling out a heavy, double-looped gun belt housing two matching, ivory-handled Colt six-guns.

“He didn’t confess a sin, Sister,” Dynamite whispered, strapping the iron tight over his black cassock. “He delivered an execution notice.”