Battle Hymn of the Executioner

[Emily Chase]

Chase was having second thoughts about her choice of footwear for the evening. When she had dressed for a quiet night off, she had donned her favorite black cigarette pants, a silvery tank under a nubbly black sweater that used to belong to her dad, and she'd topped the ensemble off with a pair of spike-heeled boots, black, that she had rescued from the bargain bin at Goodwill. She justified her extensive wardrobe by telling herself that each piece she owned was from various and sundry second-hand and resale shops, and that she was adopting the abandoned articles and giving them a loving home.

Tonight, however, she would have been better served had she worn her faded and much-worn Chucks, which were much more practical for the amount of running she now found herself doing.

Chase, who padded her income from the floral boutique by moonlighting as a bounty hunter of sorts, tracking down rogue "supes" such as Vampires, Weres, and the occasional malevolent spirit. She was, as they say, vigilante justice.

Tonight was supposed to have been her night off, and she had planned to spend it curled up in her modest apartment, which was just this side of sketchy, with a cup of bad coffee and a good book. She would never admit it, but she was a die-hard Bronte fan. She had bought several copies of Wuthering Heights over the years, because she read the story so frequently, sometimes just revisiting certain scenes or moments, that pages were missing from the bindings. Alas, her evening had turned out to be anything but quiet.

Her phone buzzed just as she had wrapped herself in the brown chenille blanket, coffee mug in hand, and when she flipped it open (she couldn't afford one of the snazzier, newer models of phone, so hers was a flip-phone) and read the shorthand message on the screen.

ASSIGN. WTNG. CALL DIR. STAT.

With a heavy sigh and a roll of the eyes, Chase dialed the number for the director of the underground organization for whom she worked when money was tight, and the head of the group, whose name Chase did not know, answered on the third ring.

"Agent Chase. Thank you for responding promptly. We have a runner downtown, heading for the train depot. Retrieve the target and bring him to the warehouse. Use force if necessary." Click. The director was a man of few words.

With another roll of her long-lashed eyes, she headed for the door, taking her trusty crossbow from the hook by the door. The bow shared a hanger with her jacket, her keys, and a leash for the dog that had run away a year ago.

An hour later, Chase hadn't caught a single glimpse of the rogue Vampire the director had described, and she wondered vaguely if she went home now, would she be able to stay awake long enough to get in a chapter or two of Wuthering Heights before she fell asleep? She had just shouldered her crossbow when she saw a flash of movement behind a dumpster across the street.

The shape that emerged looked big, sort of tall but hunched, and in the sputtering light of a street lamp she could tell the person was wearing a long coat of some kind. She slowly inched her left hand toward her back pocket, feeling for the police-issue stunner she'd lifted a few months back. You couldn't be too careful when you were working with supes, after all.

Chase slipped from her hiding place and nonchalantly wandered a few paces down the street before slipping the stunner from her pocket and taking aim at the hunched creature, who was standing still as a statue.

But the shape seemed to have sensed her presence, and just like magic, he was on top of the dumpster, crouched there with perfect balance. The shape had moved impossibly fast, and before Chase could get her bearings, the creature had leaped from the dumpster, onto a low balcony of the building, and from there, he went straight up the fire escape toward the roof.

Chase figured her best bet was to head the creature off on the next street over, and with the hope of a fat check in her pocket before sunrise, she barreled around the huge building and down the sidewalk, which was strangely deserted at this hour.

When Chase arrived at her destination, she realized she was standing outside the front of a gothic cathedral, and she didn't see her target anywhere at all. She looked around, breathing heavily from running in heels, and swore under her breath.

THIS TEMPLATE WAS MADE BY ARRO AT CAUTION 2.0

[Mikhail Vakhteiar Iul'ian]

Mikhail still hoped that this, all of this, was some terrible nightmare that he might soon wake from. Yet, yet it had been a few weeks now, and everything pointed to this strange, futuristic world being a sad reality, and one that he must now resolve to forebear.

He did not yet understand why he had woken, and was only comforted by the resolution that there was always a reason. Whatever that reason was, he hoped he might find it soon, but he would not allow impatience to cloud his judgment. It was not easy to be patient, however, when there were other things weighing down on him - things like his culture shock (which in itself was a gross understatement).

He had awoken in what he presumed to once be his home, in the sealed catacombs beneath a countryside monastery somewhere in modern day Russia. His memories did not return to him at once; quite the contrary, he could not remember much beyond his name, his former station in life, and ... and, well, what he was.

The catacombs frightened him; they were dark and cold and oh-so-claustrophobic. The dead around him were asleep, permanently, and the absolute silence that surrounded the dead was oppressive. Thankfully he found his way out, having to break through the stone ceiling of the chamber that had not been moved for centuries; perhaps the disturbance would attract some archaeologists or ghost hunters or whatnot to the scene, but Mikhail was operating on instinct.

It was cold ... of course it was cold. And his clothes were since turned to dust, so, coming to find that the monastery was still in use even today, he stole a priest's habit from the wardrobe, murmured hasty apologies to the altar, and then fled, not really knowing why.

Somehow he ended up in the warmer side of the mainland, stowing away on a ship from Rome bound for Marseille, and from Marseille, to the States.

Roma and Marseille's names were familiar to him. But now he was heading across the ocean to the unknown - feverish dreams told him that an old friend was on the other side of that ocean. But where to begin?

He had more clothes now; one of the roadside chapels he had stopped at had been kind enough to give him some. Now he had an impermeable parka thrown over another robe, which did well to guard against the cold in one of the cargo holds of the ship.

As for food, he was starving. He'd stopped to hunt a wild animal or two, but the cities were so populated; wildlife was scarce at best. So for the ride over, he slept most of the time.

When the cargo box he was hiding in was delivered to port, he was startled awake. The moment someone opened the door, he zipped past them, gone in the blink of an eye. He was just a shadow, and at the moment, that was certainly what he felt like.

Perhaps coming here had been a mistake. There were too many people. He'd only been searching for two days when someone summoned the city guard; they had brought him to some sort of jail, but it was a strange jail: the wardens spoke in very gentle tones and asked him a lot of questions. Mikhail almost thought they were concerned for him. They made him wear a robe and left him in a very small room. He didn't like small rooms very much.

Not a week later, he managed to escape from that place, learning now to try to stay away from the residents of the city. He searched desperately for a place that was quieter and had more room ... maybe an abandoned building. Thankfully, he found one soon enough: an old cathedral near the waterfront.

Mikhail found the lack of homeless here odd, but he wasn't frightened away from the place. Predictably, he found it comforting; the first comforting locale in this foreign city.

Barefoot and dressed only in the hospital gown, Mikhail walked through the rubble and crouched by a metal sign, brushing off the dirt.

'Est. 1794.'

Mikhail blinked at the number. Was this a date? He didn't know what the letters meant.

Feeling even more lost now, he trudged across the sanctuary, his steps slowing as he neared the altar, which, despite the surrounding dilapidation, was still in one piece, and surprisingly clean.

His knees gave, and he collapsed to the ground suddenly, cupping his hands over his face as he began to weep.

-----

On a certain night a few days following, Mikhail was cleaning. He'd found an old broom in a closet and had been using it to try to dust away the dirt on the floor around the altar. Maybe it was silly, but the task comforted him. He felt that it was something he used to do.

He murmured to himself as he worked; he usually did when by himself, out of habit. Why out of habit? He didn't know.

It seemed another group had lived here before him, another group of vampires - he loathed to use the term - but he had frightened them away his first night here, and had not seen them since. He knew he had been outmatched; there were maybe five or six of them, but one night when they had surrounded him to attack, he had held aloft the handful of stone beads he had found on the platform where the tabernacle should have been; he'd uttered prayers of protection, and then suddenly it had been bright, overwhelmingly bright. When his vision cleared, the monsters had scattered with no trace, not even their scent.

"Quare veni?" he murmured to himself, staring at the rosary before slipping it around his neck and returning to cleaning.

And tonight he was still cleaning. But hunger was beginning to tug at him. He hadn't fed since arriving here, and it didn't take that much to figure out that he was going to need to eat soon.

But how? There were no animals near here. He hadn't even seen a forest. No trees. Only stone and concrete and other strange materials.

He had seen cats wandering the streets though. That would have to be his best bet. Lowering the broom, he sighed and leaned it against the wall.

Moments later he had found a stray cat, almost as thin and malnourished as him. The deed was done though; blood stained his gown, but not too much. He'd been careful.

He was on his way back, however, when he suddenly froze, smelling someone nearby. A human?

He quickly crouched behind the nearest structure; some kind of box that smelled horrible. He waited, silent, for the person to pass, but then he - no, she - emerged far too close.

Without thinking, he fled, over the roof and back to his hiding spot, which in retrospect was probably a terrible idea; it revealed to the pursuer where he lived.

Stumbling over fractured stones which would have easily cut softer feet than his, he scrabbled back into the sanctuary. One could always take sanctuary in a church, at least, that was what he remembered.

"Dominae, illam quae nescit ... ca-cadere caritatem," he breathed in a hushed murmur, his voice soft and musical, almost ethereal; it didn't match his underfed, scruffy appearance at all.

He darted behind the altar (whose candles were still lit), crouching down behind it. He'd grabbed the broomstick, clutching it as a last ditch weapon of defense.

" ... ut mea lucerna accendi sciat, exstingui nesciat," he went on, eyes shut tight. " ... mihi ardeat, aliis luceat - "

But then he was startled as some sort of arrow flew past his head, narrowly missing by a hair's breadth.

"Obsecro!" he cried out, still clutching the broomstick. "Obsecro! Ne occidatis me!"

He was spouting Latin, because everyone spoke Latin; it was the lingua franca, was it not?

[Emily Chase]

Chase had moved quietly, almost cat-like, into the cathedral. She was fairly certain that if anything was lurking in this abandoned place, she was walking right into its arms, but she was frustrated after losing her target.

As she crept further and further into the sanctuary, she heard something off to her left, something that sounded like the rustle of curtains in a breeze, but a preliminary glance around the room told her that there were certainly no curtains in this derelict old place. None the less, she retrieved her crossbow from its place on her back, feeling her shoulders tense as she held the bow's familiar weight.

The minutes ticked by in utter silence. It wasn't just quiet- it was a complete absence of sound, like being in a vacuum. The silence was almost oppressive.

And suddenly, the silence was broken by something near the altar. The noise would have been negligible in any other situation, but in the quiet of the church, the sound of shuffling feet sounded to Chase like a starting pistol. Without thinking, she whirled toward the offending sound and sent an arrow whizzing through the air. The missile found purchase in the very center of an ornate gold cross above the altar.


"Obsecro!" A voice cried out. "Obsecro! Ne occidatis me!"

Chase had no idea what the hidden person had said, but she didn't need to.

"Don't move," she called, her voice authoritative. "Come out from behind the altar, and do it slowly. Any sudden movements and I'll nail you between the eyes." Meh, she never claimed to be nice. She was just there to get the job done.

Chase moved with calculated strides toward the ornate altar, where tapers still burned, releasing a very slight aroma of spicy vanilla. By the time she'd reached the front of the sanctuary, she still hadn't seen who was crouched behind the altar.

She peered over the top of the altar and almost laughed at what she saw. It was a very thin and very pretty person- she couldn't even tell if it was a man or woman, but based on the Latin cry from a moment before, she was guessing male- crouching behind the altar, wearing a hospital gown and clutching a moldering old broom as though clinging to the very thread of his life. It took Chase a minute to register that this creature's ratty hospital gown had flecks of what looked like blood sprinkled across its front.

"God, I hate the pitiful ones," Chase muttered. For the most part, she could stomach her duties as a vamp hunter, but occasionally she would come across one who was absolutely pathetic, and while she didn't exactly feel guilty about hauling them in, she didn't exactly relish it, either. She preferred something that offered a little more of a challenge.

"Up you get," she said with a jerk of her head toward the door. "Come on. I'm not playing. Get up."

Only after a few minutes of staring at the emaciated vampire did it occur to Chase that this was probably not the vampire she was supposed to be hunting. He seemed too timid to be any kind of threat, but then again, he could just be messing with her. She doubted it, though. This one looked genuinely terrified.

"Ugh," she huffed and reached down over the altar to pull the vamp to his feet by his hospital gown, but she seemed to have second thoughts halfway through the movement. It struck her that if she took hold of the gown, she was going to get a look at more of this vampire than she ever wanted to see. She wasn't squeamish, per se, but she was raised to respect privacy. It was an odd trait, she thought, being so modest about some things, and then so brazen about others. Everyone has their quirks, though, and she pushed it out of her mind.

She realized after a moment of standing still that her arm was still extended toward the pretty-if-haggard creature, and suddenly she felt very awkward.

THIS TEMPLATE WAS MADE BY ARRO AT CAUTION 2.0

[Mikhail Vakhteiar Iul'ian]

At first, Mikhail's only audible response was more feverish whispering, and he'd just hastily crossed himself before looking up and gasping in surprise to find the woman leaning over the altar, peering down at him.

He remained frozen, blinking up at her, his expression a mix of fear and confusion, before his gaze darted to the elaborate weapon in her hand. It didn't take much to figure out that she was the one who had fired at him, but it was strange; the crossbow was one of the first familiar things he recognized in this gray, foreign world. Even if it looked much different.

"Arcus," he mumbled, hesitantly reaching out a hand as if to touch the weapon, before his gaze flicked back to the woman and he quickly withdrew his hand, instead concentrating on listening to her words, which sounded quite threatening, even if he didn't understand them.

His brow knit, and he frowned, before squinting his eyes shut, trying desperately to identify what she was speaking. He only knew with fluency his native tongue (some ancient form of Russian), and Latin and ancient Greek, but after having heard the people in this city speak (and threaten and question), he was beginning to deduce that they were speaking a derivative of some western language; he caught glimpses of Latin in it (and the alphabet had been similar; at least he'd thought so when the people at the jail had given him parchment to write on).

"Play ... playing," he parroted in a heavy eastern European accent, his frown still in place. Gingerly he tucked a brilliant blond lock behind his ear, his other hand still grasping the broom. When she offered her hand, though, he blinked at it, and then blinked back at her. "Get ... up?" That was the same thing the city guard had said to him before taking him to that jail with the nice wardens.

Considering the woman's disposition and her weapon, Mikhail began to suspect that she was also a city guard. He shifted uncomfortably, still not budging from his spot huddled behind the table. He didn't want to go back to that jail, even if the wardens spoke softly.

"Redire nolo," he whined, shaking his head and clutching at the broomstick again, now staring at her offered hand as if it were a snake. He had half a mind to hit it with the broom, but that might just make things worse.

But then he noticed something odd about her extended arm. The color of her skin; there were discolorations, like bruises? Or scratches of some sort.

Frowning again, he dropped the broom and took her hand in both of his, inadvertently pulling her closer so that he could inspect it. He turned it over, examining her palm, noting the callouses on her fingers, before he inched the hem of her sleeve up, eyeing the scratches that looked like they had been inflicted by some sort of creature larger than just any wild animal.

He curiously laid a hand over one of the series of scratches, and the placement of his claws almost matched perfectly the patterns of scratches down her arm. His bright blue gaze brightened even further in understanding. The bow, the wounds, why she was chasing him.

"Vos uenator," he spoke in realization. "Huntress, verum?"

But upon proclaiming this, his gaze darkened, not in hostility but as if he suddenly remembered something. There was a tug of familiarity at his heart, and he couldn't place his finger on it. She reminded him of something from life, but what?

He was just about to drop her arm when he caught sight of something else, just at the very edge of the hem of her sleeve. His eyes widened, and he brushed his fingertips over the telltale marks: a pair of pinpricks with residual drag marks, not neat at all; it was as if they had been rendered during a struggle.

"Bite," he pointed out, hushed, blinking wide-eyed at her. "Istselyat, heal," he insisted, already signing a cross over her before he cupped his hand over the bite, beginning to proclaim verses in Latin just as before.

[Emily Chase]

Chase raised an arched eyebrow at the pitiful whimpers of the Vampire. When he copied her words, she understood- he din't speak English. Well that was just too damn bad, because Chase had slept a few times since her last Latin class, which was her senior year in high school. Jeez, I'm getting old, she thought distractedly.

After a moment, her attention snapped back onto her target, and she tried to look menacing. This wasn't entirely easy, because though she was fairly tall, she was quite thin, and unfortunately possessed of a pretty face, which usually just made her victims laugh at her. Apparently beauty was associated with innocence nowadays.

The Vampire was clutching a broomstick close to his chest as though to let go would be to fly into a thousand pieces. This whole evening was beginning to try Chase's patience.

But when the creature reached up and snatched her hand, pulling her halfway over the altar in the process, she yelped with surprise.

"Easy, there, hoss," she groused. The creature, whom, she realized, was quite beautiful in a haunting sort of way, examined her hand and wrist, flipping it over a few times and inspecting each finger carefully.

"You people get weirder and weirder," she muttered, but the Vampire seemed harmless enough, so she didn't immediately pull away. Sometimes it was just easier to let the crazies get it out of their system.

Chase allowed the vampire to continue his inspection for several minutes. His gentle (if clawed) hands were actually remarkably soft against her callouses, and the tenderness of his touch was actually quite relaxing...

Then he spoke, and what he said was a word she actually understood.

"Huntress?"

"Er... yeah," Chase said uncertainly. "Bounty hunter, actually but... oh, never mind."

The Vampire continued his examination with almost clinical attention, and Chase amused herself by watching the different emotions flit across his face as the minutes ticked on. When a sort of scowl darkened his features, she realized with some surprise that she was curious about what had inspired the change.

"What's up?" She asked, her tone void of hostility.

"Bite," he said, pointing to a round weal on her forearm.

"Oh, that," she said. "Occupational hazard," she explained, still uncertain of whether or not the creature could understand her. "I had it checked out by someone in my order- he smeared some salve on it and said I was good to go."

"Heal," the Vampire said.

"Oh, no-" Chase began to object, but the Vampire was already making a sign of the cross at her, which shut her up lickity-split. "Hey, now," Chase tried to wriggle her arm free but the Vamp was already muttering words over the bite, which had already begun to scar.

The Vampire continued to chant, but after a few minutes Chase lost her patience. "Hey!" She snapped, grabbing his chin in her free hand and forcing his face up so their eyes met. The pressure of her fingers made him look like he was making a fish face. "Listen, Mister Pretty Vampire! I don't need your Latin voodoo, okay?" She jerked her arm away, but the movement made her overbalance, and since she was already perched precariously on the altar, she ended up sliding over the stupid thing and just crumpling in a heap on the floor, practically in the Vampire's lap. Her crossbow landed in such a position that the Vampire's favorite body part was in danger of receiving a new piercing if the bow misfired.

As Chase retrieved her dignity (or what was left of it) and straightened her shirt, rising to her feet, she muttered, "this was supposed to be my night off."

THIS TEMPLATE WAS MADE BY ARRO AT CAUTION 2.0

[Mikhail Vakhteiar Iul'ian]

Mikhail didn't really know why he was doing what he was doing; only that something compelled him, and it was his duty to try to repair this woman's gestating curse. That might have seemed a strange contradiction, coming from one of his apparent nature, but evidently everything about him up to this point was pretty strange. So on second thought, maybe what he was doing actually made sense.

The woman spoke quite a bit; at least the hostile tone was gone, but through her disposition, Mikhail now sensed uncertainty. He assumed it was because of the spell he was trying to weave, and that was okay; it was the result that mattered.

Unfortunately he didn't get to reach it, as the woman suddenly broke away, interrupting Mikhail's progress. The faintest blue glow had begun to envelop his fingertips, but it quickly fizzled out once the woman grabbed him by the chin.

"Mffm!" he squeaked, blinking stupidly at her, his face all scrunched by the grasp she had on him. He didn't know what she was saying, but she was obviously angry, and he didn't know how to try to explain or apologize without infuriating her further.

"Prastite!" he insisted, bowing his head once or twice, and straightening up just in time for the woman to come tumbling over the altar. He yelped and hardly had time to try to roll out of the way, before ... well, before thud.

Startled, Mikhail froze, still as a statue again, until the woman clambered off. His gaze followed her, or more precisely, her weapon, and meekly he tugged at the hem of his gown, wishing it weren't so short (or maybe he was just too tall for it).

"Tu ... tu ... " he babbled, " ... heal, before ... before transform," he insisted.

But he also understood that there were those who could not be helped until they wished to be helped. It was not his place to force things if it was not yet their time.

He remained huddled by the altar for a moment longer, watching her with a mix of sympathy and fear. But the moment she was distracted with straightening out her appearance, he was on his feet again, and with hardly a sound save scattering stone over the floor, he had disappeared.

Predictably, he would probably be back the next day, but now that he had deduced she was a 'huntress,' as he'd put it, he was going to stay as far away from her as possible.