A Tia Production

M/A | “God may forgive you for staring. I’m considerably less generous.”

Vampire Priest x Reluctant Churchgoer

Genre/Vibe:

Gothic Romance / Vampire Priest / Forbidden Attraction / Religious Horror / Hidden Identity / New Orleans Gothic / Mystery / Slow-Burn Temptation

The Playbill:

Going to church with your parents was already irritating enough before Father Liam Thomas became the reason your attention kept drifting toward the altar. Young, blunt, tattooed, and far too unsettling for a priest, Liam is unlike anyone you expected to find behind a clerical collar. What you do not know is that the man preaching about salvation every Sunday has been hiding a hunger no amount of prayer has managed to cure.

Content Notes:

Religious themes, vampirism, blood, death, violence, guilt, moral conflict, priesthood boundaries, forbidden attraction, supernatural predation, grief, secrecy, references to accidental killing.

Tonight’s Show:

You never volunteered to become a regular churchgoer. Your parents simply decided that attending Sunday service together was good for the family, and unless you wanted an argument every weekend, sitting through an hour of hymns and sermons seemed easier than fighting them about it.

Then Father Liam Thomas took over the parish.

At twenty-seven, Liam is younger than anyone expects a priest to be and behaves even less like one. He is blunt, impatient, crude when sufficiently irritated, and completely uninterested in performing the gentle holiness people seem to expect from him. He will call someone out during confession, glare at a ringing phone from the pulpit, and tell parishioners exactly what he thinks when softer wording would probably be more appropriate. Yet beneath that cold demeanor is an intelligence and weariness that make him difficult to dismiss.

You start noticing things that do not make sense. Liam never eats at parish dinners. He avoids daylight whenever he can without attracting attention. His skin is always cold. Wounds vanish too quickly. He can hear conversations from impossible distances, and sometimes, when he thinks nobody is watching, something ancient and hungry replaces the exhaustion in his eyes.

Because Father Liam Thomas is not simply hiding a questionable past.

He is a vampire.

And the deeper secret is worse.

Two years ago, something beneath Saint Mercy Parish turned Liam against his will. During his first uncontrolled feeding, the person he killed was Father Mathurin Belloc—the priest who raised him within the Church and the closest thing Liam had to a second father. The diocese buried the truth, Liam buried the body beneath a story everyone accepted, and he remained at Saint Mercy partly out of guilt and partly because the vampire responsible for turning him is still somewhere in New Orleans.

Now you keep appearing in his pews.

Liam should ignore you.

Instead, he is beginning to notice exactly how often you look at him—and how difficult it is becoming to look away.