A tale of a paladin who is undead

Due to lack of interest on both the internet and myself this is being discontinued. Thank you if you have been reading anyways.

Chapter 12: Inciting Incident

Leana held a knife out to a random man who had the unfortunate of being caught outside during the night. She pressed him against a brick wall with the illusion of strength that she had as a result of being a vampire. She gave him a longing stare before branding her teeth for the kill.

“Please, I just want to live,” the man plead.

“Food shouldn't talk,” she replied as her fangs readied for a bite.

Not that Leana had much of a chance, for in the corner of her eye she saw the silhouette of a woman shakily holding a gun. She was pointing it at her direction. Leana froze for a moment, but then called out “You gonna shoot yourself or what missy?”

No response was given. Instead a shot rang out. The woman holding the gun jumped at the sound and Leana responded by running down the alleyway. The man sighed and looked at the stranger with the gun and nodded in fear. “Thank you miss...”

At this moment sirens could be heard from the distance. The night patrol heard the gunshots and were on their way to the alley. The man looked to the woman.

“Those police aren't going to like that you have a gun: hear, give it to me. You saved my life, its the least I can do.”

His words rang through her head as she complied and gave him the gun. He then ducked out after Leana as the police came and surrounded the area.

Leana was caught on the other end of the alley while the man was nabbed further out. A routine padding down of his person revealed the gun, still warm from the recent shot that had rang out of it. The other woman, who was in too much shock to run, was peacefully picked up by the police.

“Yeah, I was attacked by that bitch-vampire-thing,” the man could be heard speaking, “so I pulled that beauty out and shot at her... I fucking missed thought... dammit.”

Leana struggled with two officers before being hit on the head with a nightstick and leaned on by the officers as they coiffed her hands and feet.

“Miss, gunshots were heard here,” one cop told the strange woman, “what do you know about them?”

“I heard shots...” she replied simply.

“Ok miss,” the officer replied, “but I still have to take you in for violating the curfew. Do you understand?”

She nodded. As the cop lead her to his car he noticed that her hands were very cold. He turned to her. “Are you a vampire?” he asked.

“... No,” the strange woman replied.

The cop appeared to be in deep thought. “You can shine a UV light on me if you're not sure,” she simply said as though she was being accused of something.

“Easy miss,” the cop responded as he nudged her head into the car, “this must be your first time being picked up at this time of the night: we do the UV test at the station as standard procedure.”

With that the car made its way to the station. The man and the woman were being booked. While the man had to provide his finger prints and have a mug shot done on him as he was being charged with “Possession of a concealed and unregistered firearm” the woman was simply sent to the drunk-tank.

Course, before that, the UV test.

You see, the police have their thick moments, but they are not stupid. They have figured out at the start of the major outbreak in Canada that putting a vampire in a cramped cell with a bunch of non-vampires is an inherently bad idea. So, anyone that tests positive under the UV test will be sent... actually I have no idea where they are sent, just not with the others in the drunk-tank.

So with that, the strange woman was taken to this room with an officer holding a light. They knew the drill: a non-reaction was negative for the rotolamia virus while burning and writhing in pain was positive.

So they were deeply perplex when they held the light under the woman and her skin started to sparkle under it.

“The hell?” one officer exclaimed.

“I'm not a vampire... see, the skin is not burning,” the woman insisted.

“She was cold to the touch,” the arresting officer informed the others.

“I have a poor circulation,” the woman retorted.

“Does she have fangs?” one officer asked.

“None that I can see,” the arresting officer replied.

“Throw her in the drunk-tank with the others,” the one officer finally said.

Chapter 11: The Sweeping Tides

It was night in the sleeping city of Barrie. The police were on patrol looking for anyone caught outside the curfew. This was the moment that some of the vampires went on hunts, while others just hid in their whatever dwelling they lived in just as terrified as anyone else. The streets are quiet, with the march of policefolk being all that was out – and anyone smart enough to avoid detection.

Not that the police were anything to genuinely be afraid of: if your caught outside and look healthy they would just slap cuffs on you, drag you into the back of a patty-wagon, and drive you to central lock-up, where you would be booked and asked to sit in the affectionately named 'drunk-tank' until dawn. Sure, some of the coppers would be less than nice or outright dicks, you know, using the curfew as an excuse to outright torture people and hide behind the badge and the War-Measures Act, but such is life: the monsters are everywhere. Good news, however, its better than the PMCs who specialize in vampire hunting.

No, you don't want to tango with those fuckers. I mean, the police at least try to screen out those with an absent or screwed moral compass. The PM fucking Cs on the other hand aren't regulated as heavily, and because there have been so many blood-crazy vampires the government got desperate and tried to get more people out hunting the vampires as their numbers grew.

There is good news and bad news across the board. One must tread softly and carefully, and remember that reality is chaos and to expect black and white order is like trying to corral screaming cats.

***

Watts was standing at the foyer entrance and stared at the door to the place. His stare was bordering the creepy tones of obsession, as though he was awaiting someone to walk through that door any moment. The curfew would make sure such wasn't the case, but in the meantime Lilith never locked the door and had no qualms about dealing with any nightwalker: provided they had the funds for a roof that evening.

An equally restless Amanda walked down from the hostile room she was assigned and noticed Watts standing there. She made an attempt to slip by when Watts muttered “Quiet evening, isn't it?”

“Sure,” Amanda replied as she made her way to the lift that was destined for the basement.

“You need blood?” he asked quickly, “I recommend that you look for a fangbanger and ask them for their blood.”

“I'm alright for now,” she replied, even though the thought was starting to make her crave for such an abhorred delicacy.

“Then where are you going?” he asked again. There was an uncomfortable silence. Watts then asked “your heading for the basement?”

“And if I am?” Amanda replied defensively.

“I don't know if Lilith would approve,” Watts simply replied.

“You worried about that woman?” Amanda replied, “cuz, well... yeah I would worry about her... but for different reasons.”

Watts rolled his eyes at her. “Don't mind her: she jokes like that.

“Still, you wouldn't want to cross her: she manages this operation to keep the vampires protected from the government and the PMCs,” Watts went on.

“Right,” Amanda replied with a simple smirk, “she's a lord: with favours in every disgusting orifice of the underworld.”

“One does what they have to do,” Watts comment was simple and quick.

“Watts, dammit,” Amanda shook her head, “Its one thing if you were offered up to the devil: its another thing entirely to volunteer.”

Watts turned from the door he was staring at and looked Amanda sorely in the eyes. “The devil, huh?” he muttered. He's glance was cold and hard. “You believe in that shit, don't you?”

“Oh, don't give me that,” Amanda replied, “There is an evil force that lingers about, one that is to be fought at all times: a force against all that is good.”

“As if the world worked like that,” Watts responded, “Cuz evil ain't a force.”

“Yes it is,” Amanda went on, “and it comes from the devil: to further our suffering on Earth. I mean, the vampires are part of that army, in how they desecrate...”

“Is it that easy for you?” Watts interrupted in a plume of anger, “that the world is black and white? Black and white and at odds?

“How bout those hand-shaking moments with devils where the 'good' had to make a bargain with the 'evil' to end stalemates?

“Or the basic fact that no one does anything in evil's name... ever? Are you that juvenile in thought?

“Or how about the fact that people where made to suffer... in God's blasted name?”

“Oh no innocent believer was killed in God's name,” Amanda responded quickly, “Only the heretics. God demands that his children obey so they don't fall for the evil...”

“Do you know what we call people who demand that kind of unconditional obedience?” Watts interrupted her. After a brief, uncomfortable, silence he responded: “Tyrants.”

“They're not God...” Amanda stammered.

“You defend a tyrant?” Watts exclaimed, “What has he ever done for you?”

***

“A weapon is gone?” Lilith paced through her office in her office in the basement.

“Who you think took it,” Batsie asked Lilith.

“I have an idea, and I will be checking it,” Lilith responded, “Now, where did Watts go? Knowing him he's plotting vengeance on the behalf of Twist. Dumb kid.”

“You think he would...”

“Those two were close you know,” Lilith snapped quickly, “course, I'm upset that Watts would do this: I mean I might let him go on this vengeance quest, but I just ask that he get permission for the dam gun just so I know where the thing is and I'm not hunting for thieves in the Barrie area.”

“Right, naturally,” Batsie replied, “though I really don't want him to get hurt.”

“Save your feelings Bat,” Lilith's response was cold, “I doubt he could ever look at him the way you look at him.”

At that point there was a knock on Lilith's office door. She went to open it, and saw Watts standing on the other side of the door.

“Lilith do you have a gun I can use?” he asked her.

“What about the one you already took out of the hold?” she baggered him.

“What?” Watts retorted, “Lilith I wouldn't take a gun without the ok: you mean too much to me.”

After a brief pause Lilith uttered harshly “Oh piss.”

Chapter 10: Recogning

“Anyways, as you might have figured out already, this is a safe house for vampires,” Lilith spoke as she led Amanda to a room in the basement. With a click of the door they were inside this room.

This room with a computer from the early 21st century sitting on an oak desk. This room with a rack filled with various hand gun and rifle hanging on the back wall next to an open box of ammo on the floor. This room, with the trappings of a mastermind everywhere, was seen to further place Lilith as some sort of leader.

“We are organized Amanda,” Lilith merely spoke, “and we must be: the police love locking us up in the drunk tank and the PMCs assigned to vampire hunting are very indiscriminate.”

“We're monsters, what is to be...” Amanda interjected for a stern Lilith to reply “No, we are not monsters. We are not demon spawns, and we are not sent by the devil or god or whatever shit you believe in to 'punish' the innocent – assuming there is even such a thing.”

“We stalk their children, we kill them as they walk, as they sleep,” Amanda rambled on, “we populate to take the world over, and to kill the humans as the holy rapture comes...” “Watts wasn't kidding, was he Ms Cullen?” Lilith quietly uttered under her breath as Amanda continued to ramble on, “...as part of the advancement of evil into the world. These people are just defending themselves from that fate: the faithful will be saved while the rest are to be a feast to the vampires – us – at the end...”

“Your the faithful, right?” Lilith asked in a voice loud enough to grab her attention. The smile she gave Amanda was juicy with villainy – teeth bared in a mocking and cruel fashion. There she waited for the silenced Amanda to search her thoughts for the answer.

“O-f-f course!” Amanda's voice shook, “I am faithful... I...” Pain was in her voice before her thoughts on the night she prayed in the woods, and found herself sparkling under the sunlight. “I am faithful: God saved me! He forgave me!” her voice rang with a sudden confidence, a certainty that she had forgotten and will never forget, “you see it in my skin, in my condition: I don't burn. God has plans for me, I'm more than a monster!”

Lilith's cold look was anything but forgiving as she looked at Amanda with this fervour that she had gained. This Lilith replied with a coldly placed question: “Are you a Jesus Freak or an egotistical bitch?”

“I can't deny what I saw, and you can ask Watts,” Amanda replied under the assumption logic was on her side, “he saw! I'm not a vampire, or at least I'm not a normal one. You can't deny what that makes me?”

Lilith opened her mouth to speak, but whatever words she could spout died in her throat and she sat back in her chair. After a brief moment of thought she turned her glance to Amanda and gave a soft giggle. “I get it,” she chucked, “I get it with you Ms Cullen: its either think your a demon-monster thing, or think yourself as some sort of paladin – a vampiric paladin, an 'undead' paladin.

“May the fibre of reality change for you my sweet, sweet girl.”

***

“Nox tells me you claimed Twist died,” Watts spoke to a pale, dark-haired, young woman about his age.

“Yea, sorry Wattsie,” the woman replied simply, “I know he meant a lot to you.”

“But how?” Watts replied with anger brewing in his voice.

“As I told Nox, those fuckers in the woods with the fancy shit held this big boom-fire out in the outskirts of Orillia,” she answered in a strange combination of cold anger and colder matter-of-factness, “they were stuffing corpses into the fire and... well, I saw Twist in there as one of those bodies.

“They must have picked him up when he was at the safehouse in Toronto. He was checking on stuff there... Watts?” the woman took note that Watts had wandered a few paces and stared at the door in the closet room on the second floor. She followed. “Again, I'm sorry.”

“Batsie, why?” Watts simple said.

“Watts, I'm,” As Batsie spoke Watts turned to her. “Leave me,” he meekly asked, “Please?”

With that Batsie walked out of the room. Watts sat down and was silent. He was angry that Twist was gone: that he went into those woods looking for him and some sparkling Jesus freak was all he could show for it.

He nodded to himself. Those bastards will get their revenge.

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