Sometimes, the greatest wisdom and most profound theology can be found in the most surprising places. Just want to post a jewel of an excerpt from one of my favorite books. I'd first read it in grade school (who thought that was a good idea?! It's full of extremely adult material!) and this particular scene has stayed with me all of my life.To set up the scene, a vampire has broken into a home, killed a boy's mother and now taken the boy (Mark) hostage.

Mark had uttered a high, keening scream and threw himself at Barlow without thought.

"And here you are!" Barlow had boomed good naturedly in his rich, powerful voice. Mark attacked without thought and was captured instantly. Father Callahan moved forward, holding his cross up.

Barlow's grin of triumph was instantly transformed into a rictus of agony. He fell back toward the sink, dragging the boy in front of him. Their feet crunched in the broken glass.

"In God's Name -" Callahan began. At the name of the Deity, Barlow screamed aloud as if he had been struck by a whip, his mouth open in a downward grimace, the needle fangs glimmering within. The cords of muscle on his neck stood out in stark, etched relief. "No closer!" he said. "No closer, shaman! Or I sever the boy's jugular and carotid before you can draw a breath!" As he spoke, his upper lip lifted from those long, needlelike teeth, and as he finished his head made a predatory downward pass with adder's speed, missing Mark's flesh by a quarter inch. Callahan stopped.

"Back up," Barlow commanded, now grinning again. "You on your side of the board and I on mine, eh?"

 Callahan backed up slowly, still holding the cross before him at eye level, so that he looked over its arms. The cross seemed to thrum with chained fire, and its power coursed up his forearm until the muscles bunched and trembled.  They faced each other...

 "What now?"  Callahan said, and his voice was not his own at all. He was looking at Barlow's fingers, those long, sensitive fingers, which lay against the boy's throat. There were small blue blotches on them. 

"That depends. What will you give me for this miserable wretch?" He suddenly jerked Mark's wrists high behind his back, obviously hoping to punctuate his question with a scream, but Mark would not oblige. Except for the sudden whistle of air between his teeth, he was silent. "You'll scream," Barlow whispered, and his lips had twisted into a grimace of animal hate. "You'll scream until your throat bursts!"  

"Stop that!" Callahan cried. 

"And should I? The hate was wiped from his face. A darkly charming smile shone forth in its place. "Should I reprieve the boy, save him for another night?"  

"Yes!"

 Softly, amost purring, Barlow said, "Then will you throw away your cross and face me on even terms - black against white? Your faith against my own?" 

"Yes," Callahan said, but a trifle less firmly. 

"Then do it!" Those full lips became pursed, anticipatory. The high forehead gleamed in the weird fairy light that filled the room. 

"And trust you to let him go? I would be wiser to put a rattlesnake in my shirt and trust it not to bite me." But he let Mark go and stood back, both hands in the air, empty. "Run, Mark," Callahan cried. "Run!"...

Mark slowly got to his feet. He turned around and looked at Barlow.  "Soon, little brother," Barlow said, almost benignly. "Very soon now, you and I will-" Mark spit in his face. "You spit on me," Barlow whispered. His body was trembling, nearly rocking with rage. He took a shuddering step forward like some awful blind man. 

"Get back!" Callahan screamed, and thrust the cross forward.Barlow cried out and threw his hands in front of his face. The cross flared with preternatural, dazzling brilliance, and it was at that moment that Callahan might have banished him if he had dared to press forward. 

"I'm going to kill you," Mark said.  He was gone, like a dark eddy of water. 

"...fulfill your part of the bargain, shaman."

"I'm a priest!" Callahan flung at him. 

Barlow made a small, mocking bow. "Priest," he said, and the word sounded like a dead haddock in his mouth. 

Callahan stood undecisive. Why throw it down? Drive him off, settle for a draw tonight, and tomorrow - 

But a deeper part of his mind warned. To deny the vampire's challenge was to risk possibilities far graver than any he had considered. If he dared not throw the cross aside, it would be as much as admitting... admitting... what? If only things weren't going so fast, if one only had time to think, to reason it out -  

The cross's glow was dying. He looked at it, eyes widening. Fear leaped into his belly like a confusion of hot wires. His head jerked up and he stared at Barlow. He was walking toward him across the kitchen and his smile was wide, almost voluptuous. 

"Stay back," Callahan said hoarsely, retreating a step. "I command it in the name of God."

Barlow laughed at him. The glow in the cross was only a thin and guttering light in a cruciform shape. The shadows had crept across the vampire's face again, masking his features in strangely barbaric lines and triangles under the sharp cheekbones.

Callahan took another step backward, and his buttocks bumped the kitchen table, which was set against the wall.

"Nowhere left to go," Barlow murmured sadly. His dark eyes bubbled with infernal mirth. "Sad to see a man's faith fail. Ah well..."

The cross trembled in Callahan's hand and suddenly the last of its light vanished. It was only a piece of plaster that is mother had bought in a Dublin souvenir shop, probably at a scalper's price. The power it had sent ramming up his arm, enough power to smash down walls and shatter stone, was gone. The muscles remembered the thrumming but could not duplicate it.

Barlow reached from the darkness and plucked the cross from his fingers. Callahan cried out miserably... and the next sound would haunt him for the rest of his life; two dry snaps as Barlow broke the arms of the cross, and a meaningless thump as he threw it on the floor. 

"Goddamn you!" Callahan cried out. 

" It's too late for such melodrama," Barlow said from the darkness. There is no need of it. You have forgotten the doctrine of your own church, is it not so? The cross... the bread and the wine... the confessional... only symbols. Without faith, the cross is only wood, the bread baked wheat, the wine sour grapes. If you had cast the cross away, you should have beaten me another night. In a way, I hoped it might be so. It has been long since I have met an opponent of any real worth. The boy makes ten of you, false priest." 

Suddenly, out of the darkness, hands of amazing strength gripped Callahan's shoulders... He remembered Matt saying: Some things are worse than death.

- Salem's lot

Stephen King

Pages 351 - 355