“Hey!” came a voice from the alley he was passing.  He paid it no mind.

            “Hey you, big man!” came the voice a second time, and the acoustics of the voice changed, indicating that the voice’s owner had stepped out of the alley.  The vampire again paid no attention to it, the words that the gentle blonde-haired half-vampire had said to him earlier still strong in his mind.

            “C’mon, man, I got your hookup right here!  Best stuff you’ll ever put in yourself!” called the voice again, and the few other people on the quiet street ignored it, knowing the scenario quite well.  However, the vampire didn’t ignore the voice this time, and he came to a stop, slowly turning his head to look at the skinny man standing at the mouth of the alley, fixing his intense, dark eyes upon the mortal.  Wade raised a single eyebrow at the man, who motioned him towards the alley.  Turning on his heel, the big vampire strode back towards the alley, and the man gave him a grin that sported a few gold teeth.

            “I thought you looked like the type that liked to party, my man,” said the mortal, who was dressed in jeans, a starter jacket, and had a black bandanna tied around his head.  There were fading acne scars on his tanned, sharply-featured face, and his green eyes were constantly moving as Wade approached him, on the lookout for trouble, but he held himself with a great deal of confidence.  He was apparently either quite good at what he did, or was otherwise so cocky he didn’t know better.  However, judging from the quality of his clothes, it was probably the former: cocky fools didn’t usually last long on the streets.  As Wade got closer, he brushed his mind against the man’s, and realized that the man was someone he needed to conduct a bit of business with.

            The man slipped back into the dark alley littered with trash and random urban debris, and Wade followed him a good way down it before the mortal stopped and turned to look at his silent follower, who towered over him, easily topping six feet.

“So what can I set you up with?” the man asked with a friendly gesture of his hands.  “If I don’t got it on me, I can get it for you in less than an hour … my customers always go home satisfied,” he said, flashing his gold teeth at Wade proudly.  “And it’s good stuff, too, much better than a lot of the—“

He never got a chance to finish his sentence, as Wade’s fist lashed out with blinding speed and slammed against his face, sinking deeply into it, spraying blood all over the alley as bone was powdered and brains liquefied, ending his dealing days with brutal abruptness.

            Wade’s eyes narrowed as he glared at the man’s body twitching on the end of his fist, his head nearly impaled upon it, and the vampire smiled, his eyes beginning to glitter slightly.  With a contemptuous flick of his wrist, he flung the corpse against the brick wall, where it hit with a wet splat, then collapsed into a faceless heap on the cracked concrete floor of the alley, its feet and hands trembling ever-so-slightly.  When the body collided with the wall, a polished nine millimeter pistol and several small baggies, containing pills, white powder, and a crumbled greenish substance, all fell out of his jacket.

Softly clucking his tongue, Wade reached down and picked up the gun while he crushed the baggies and their contents beneath the heel of his boot, thoroughly grinding them into the concrete until they were utterly useless.  The gun, which Wade knew had been used as part of a drive-by shooting the man had been involved in last week, resulting in the deaths of two children and an elderly man, disappeared into the depths of his trenchcoat.  He quickly rifled through the pockets of the man’s clothing, pulling out several more baggies and a couple of syringes, and all of them received the same treatment that the first set of baggies had.  Then, satisfied, he nodded once at the now-motionless corpse, giving it one last grin before he quickly licked off all the blood on his hand and sleeve, cleaning himself off with a speed and efficiency a cat would have been quite jealous of.

            Turning on his heel for the second time in the last several minutes, Wade turned and swiftly strode back up the alley and on to the sidewalk again, where he resumed his walk.  In his mind, he could almost hear Katheryne’s sigh of exasperation.  Earlier that late summer evening, just after the sun had fallen and the city was still warm from its light, he’d sat with her on the rooftop of an abandoned building while she’d tinkered with an amplifier that had been badly blown during one of her band’s recent shows.  As she’d carefully reconstructed the guts of the amp with her slim, nimble fingers, she’d kept casting glances at where he was perched on the ledge like a gargoyle, peering down into the streets, his eyes open for trouble.  Finally, she’d said, in her soft, smooth voice, “The weight of the world isn’t in your hands.”

            He’d said nothing to that, and had given no indication that he’d heard her, but she knew he had, and continued.  “You don’t have to be ‘on’ all the time.  I know what you’re trying to do, and I think it’s very admirable, but you have to own it, not let it own you.  You started slow, then you picked up speed, going faster and doing more and more, and now about the only time you’re not looking to run down trouble is when you’ve got your guitar in your hands,” she’d said, then had set her tools down and walked over behind him, putting one of her hands on his broad shoulder, and though he couldn’t see her face, he knew her soft features, framed by her blue-streaked blonde hair, were pinched in concern.  “You need to relax once in awhile.”

            “I do, during the days,” he’d said, and she’d sighed.

            “That’s because you have to.  When was the last time you roamed the streets purely for yourself, or went on a midnight ride out in No Man’s Land?” she’d asked, referring to the stretch of desert outside of the city, where he’d often liked taking long, solitary rides on his motorcycle, lost in his thoughts.  His lack of an answer to her question had confirmed her suspicions, and she’d encircled his torso with her slender arms, resting her head and chest on his back, sighing once more.  “When you started this again, you told me to watch out for you, and to let you know if you were getting too deeply into it … I’m telling you now.  Are you going to listen?”

            He’d said nothing, but the way his muscles had tightened made her hug him more closely.  “Relax,” she’d said, “You don’t have to stop every single crime and bring down every single bad guy in the city; you’ve already done so much just in the last few months.  You have to remember you’re not responsible for every single endangered life out there and that the world won’t come to an end if you slow down once in awhile.  You’re a man with a mission, not a mission with a man.  You have to remember how to shut it off and just live.”

            She’d been right, of course.  Since a brush with death several months prior, he’d been developing a powerful obsession with making the world around him a better place, resuming a mission he’d let go of centuries before and attacking it with a tremendous fervor, much like he had in the past.

He’d once before walked away from his self-appointed mission due to the very things his dear friend had reminded him of; he’d had no choice, as he’d let his mission dictate his entire existence, becoming little more than a frenzied automaton hellbent on delivering justice to the world, whether it had wanted it or not.  His obsession had made him relentless and overly-vicious, beginning to truly cross the line between vigilance and dictatorship, and he’d stepped back before he’d gotten completely out of hand, only taking care of the occasional crime in progress, nothing more, as opposed to the pre-emptive strikes and swift executions of known wrongdoers (even if they were minding their own business at the moment) he’d done before.

When he’d fully picked it up again this spring, he’d explained the basics of it to Katheryne, and she’d promised to watch out for him, to pull him away from the edge when he stepped too close, and tonight she was doing just that.  She was to be the counterbalance he hadn’t had in the past, and he had to listen to her, even when he didn’t want to.  “I know,” he’d said.

            “Do you?” she’d asked, her voice nearly a whisper, but very strong.

            “Yes.”

            “Good.”

            He’d ended up promising her to do his best to cool off for that night, at the very least, and to enjoy himself in idle pursuits, such as walking around town, people-watching, or taking his bike out on the road.  She’d invited him to go along with her and her lover, the mischievous half-vampire gypsy named Donita, for a walk in the park and a late-night creature double-feature at a drive-in theatre, but he’d declined, wanting to be left with his thoughts for the evening.  That, and he didn’t want to feel as though he needed to be babysat in order to slow down; he’d do it on his own, come hell or high water.  So he’d given her a hug, thanked her, and had departed into the night, not quite sure what to do with himself, which drove it home to him even more that he needed to keep himself in check, as he’d always found plenty to amuse himself before he’d resumed his mission.  But he was infinitely grateful to the sweet-hearted half-vampire for helping him in trying to tame the demon that had taken control of him before.  As someone had once told him long ago, you had to learn to make your demons work for you, not vice versa.

            The young man in the alley had been his only deviance thus far tonight, and he’d given the idiot a good set of chances to avoid him, so he felt as though it was justified.  It was one thing to go looking to stomp on trouble, and another thing entirely when trouble came tugging at your sleeve, demanding your attention.  Some people just didn’t know when to quit.

After he crossed a street, Wade turned a corner, making a sudden decision as to where he wanted to go.  He knew Katheryne would probably have rolled her eyes at the notion of it, thinking that he hadn’t listened to her at all, but he thought it a good idea, since the place in question was always one of his favorite places to people-watch and was constantly full of troublemakers, which would force him to exercise his self-control and stay in line.  He wasn’t going to learn how to control his demon if he avoided every situation where he was tempted to knock off a known drug dealer or murderer, as that was just a cop-out.  He had to do it right this time, he was determined to win against the demon, no matter what it took.  So the big vampire headed off towards Pecadillo’s, watering hole of choice for a good lot of the scum and villainy in the seedier sections of Los Angeles, a place that would tempt him to no end.  If he could keep himself under wraps in Pecadillo’s, he could do it just about anywhere.

As he walked, he glanced up at the full moon overhead, which was unusually clear tonight, especially considering the smog and light pollution of the big city, and it had a very slight bluish cast to it, giving it a particularly ethereal look.  When it had risen earlier in the evening, Katheryne had called it a sorcerer’s moon, and had said among magick-users such as herself, it was considered a good omen for any endeavors one might be planning that night, as well as a signal to be cautious, as anything could happen.  Though Wade wasn’t one for superstitions, he never totally scoffed at them either, as it was amazing what a little belief could do, and he decided that he’d take the moon as a promising sign that he was in for a good night.  After all, a little whimsy never hurt anyone.

*     *     *

            The small, agile female figure leaped through the warm night air of Los Angeles with liquid grace, hopping from rooftop to rooftop as easily as a child played hopscotch, and as she sprang along, the wind whipping through her long black hair, she softly sang to herself.

People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven when you're down

When you're strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you're strange
And no one  remembers your name
When you're strange
When you're strange
When you're strange

            The formidable vampiress known as Raven came to a stop on the roof of a tall building overlooking a park, and moving over to the ledge, she peered down at the street and sidewalk far below, watching the blue-haired, dark-skinned young vampiress that had been her traveling companion for the last several months walking towards the park.  The slender little vampire clad in jeans, boots, a Doors t-shirt, and a black leather jacket considered hopping down off the building and talking to the other vampiress one more time, but she shook that idea off almost as soon as it had formed.

No.  The youngster, Rafaela, wasn’t going to be able to truly begin her own life anew if Raven kept appearing and distracting her, especially since it had been Raven herself who had ordained they needed to separate so that Rafaela could grow and develop on her own.  But since they’d parted ways, Raven had found herself checking in on Rafaela regularly from a distance, to make sure that she was all right and that she was dealing with the separation with no ill effects, and she chuckled as she silently chided herself for having gotten too used to the presence of the earnest young vampiress.

It had been a long time since Raven had allowed someone to be in close proximity to her for any considerable length of time, and she had very much enjoyed having Rafaela around, as Rafaela didn’t annoy her like so many others did.  Raven was a largely solitary individual by choice, as she found most people, vampires included, to be little more than obnoxious bothers, but when she found someone worthwhile, she savored them as much as possible while they were around.  She would miss Rafaela, and she looked forward to their next meeting, though that would come far sooner than expected unless she remembered to keep her distance.

The separation was necessary, as Raven had seen far too many of her tendencies and behaviors beginning to manifest themselves in the younger vampiress, and it had been the elder vampire’s intent to teach Rafaela how to fight, survive, and thrive, not mold her into a clone.  But Rafaela, like an impressionable youngster imitating a parent, was working towards shaping herself into another Raven, which was something that needed to be nipped in the bud.  Raven wanted Rafaela to be herself, nothing more, nothing less, and she couldn’t do that if she was consciously and unconsciously emulating Raven at every turn.  She’d been resentful at Raven’s decision at first, but had come around after she’d given Raven a chance to explain her reasoning, and they’d parted very amicably, both looking forward to future encounters.  In the brief time since then, Raven had been keeping an eye on her like a nervous parent, which amused Raven to no end, as she’d never done anything quite like this before.

Rafaela disappeared into the trees and walkways of the park, and Raven immediately stomped on the idea of following her in, mentally scolding herself for doting so much.  “The child will never learn if you keep hovering over her like a mother hen … or mother raven, as it were,” she said to herself, giggling at her own little joke, as she often did.  She stepped away from the ledge, silently saying good-bye to Rafaela, and as she was going through the myriad list of things she could do tonight, trying to decide on one, a soft breeze blew past her, carrying on it a scent that made her eyes widen and a broad grin cross her face.

“Perfect timing,” she said, throwing back her head and laughing wildly for a few moments.  “Perfect!”

All other options for the evening were immediately thrown aside, and Raven broke into an eager run across the rooftop and leaped off the edge into the night air, springing from building to building as she followed the scent, her extremely sharp vampire nose holding it better than a bloodhound.  Though the smells of the city were many and varied, the scent she was tracking was one that she’d known for centuries, and one that she’d have been able to pick out anywhere, no matter the circumstances or environment.  The grin never left her face as she traveled, hopping along rooftops, clambering up and down the sides of buildings, and taking broad leaps across the countless streets crisscrossing the vast city.  After traveling well over a mile, she found herself in a shabby part of town, where the scent was stronger than ever, not to mention very fresh, and she redoubled the speed of her pursuit, eager to reach her goal.

Leaping down into an alley where the scent was particularly strong, the black-haired vampiress found the still-warm body of a young mortal laying in a puddle of congealing blood, the face annihilated from a tremendous impact.  Around the body were the remnants of small plastic bags and various-colored substances, which she recognized as a sampling of the narcotics that many mortals were quite fond of, and which were also quite illegal.

She crouched down in front of the body, inspecting the massive damage done to the head, and she murmured, “Very illegal, indeed.  Fatally so, if you run afoul of the wrong person, and you, my stiffening friend, seem to have done just that.”

She leaned forward and sniffed at the body in the manner of a skilled predator, checking for a scent, and after a few seconds there was absolutely no doubt as to who did this, and had done it very recently, as a matter of fact, scarcely an hour ago.  “Fvienn,” whispered Raven, grinning ear-to-ear, “At last!”

The vampiress hopped to her feet and swiftly walked out of the alley, following the trail with her nose, and she began to happily sing to herself again.

People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven when you're down

When you're strange
Faces come out of the rain
When you're strange
And everyone remembers your name
When you're strange
When you're strange
When you're strange

*     *     *

            “Hey, long time, no see, Hoss!” exclaimed the stocky, weathered black man, known to one and all as Rudy the Meathook, when he noticed Wade sitting at the little table in the far corner of the dimly-lit bar.  “Fuck, my friend, I didn’t even notice you come in!  I’m old, but I didn’t think I was getting that senile!” he said with a chuckle, running a hand through his greying close-cut hair.

The big vampire couldn’t help but nod at him and grace him with a faint smile: he’d always enjoyed the presence of the sly and garrulous mortal, who was one of the more notorious thieves and racketeers in this end of the city, having been in business for over thirty years.  He’d gotten the “Meathook” moniker from the vicious way he’d dealt with those who’d tried to screw him over or hurt him or one of his associates, but no one had ever been able to pin anything on him, as the man was as about as clever as a mortal could get, wily and tough, a true survivor.

Unbidden, a mental list of every crime that the vampire knew Rudy was connected to popped up in his head, and he’d already began to debate whether it would be wiser to kill him right there or follow him into the bathroom, where Rudy had been headed, and do the job there before he angrily reigned his impulses back, gripping his glass of water tightly, causing it to crack just a little.

            No, not him, not tonight.  Save it for someone who deserved it, like a rapist or serial killer, not someone who only killed in self-defense or when it was necessary, like Rudy.  The man was a criminal, very true, but he had a certain gentlemanly respectability about him, and there were far, far worse out there than him.  Deep down, Wade’s instincts told him that Rudy didn’t need to be killed, didn’t deserve such a fate, and the big vampire had to listen to his instincts, regardless of Rudy’s police record.  He had to remember to differentiate, as simply killing everyone that strayed from the straight and narrow ultimately made him more of a threat than those he sought to wipe out.  Wade told himself that over and over again, forcing it into his head and augmenting it with Katheryne’s words, yanking on the demon’s leash and nearly choking it, demanding its obedience.  Slowly, grudgingly, the demon relented, and Wade’s grip on the glass eased until his hand was relaxed once more.  Better.

            “So where you been?  Haven’t seen you all summer,” said Rudy, stopping at Wade’s table for a moment.  “Haven’t had my favorite listener around to let me tell ‘im about the good ‘ol days.”

Wade had discovered the Rudy greatly enjoyed talking to him, as the big vampire never said much, but always listened well, and he’d wiled away many evenings regaling Wade with his exploits, ranging from fencing stolen diamonds in the 1960’s to blowing up rain-gutters with firecrackers when he’d been a kid.  He took care to remind himself that, to remember that he considered Rudy a friend of sorts, regardless of the man’s profession, and that hadn’t changed just because he’d resumed his vigilant quest for justice.

            Wade shrugged at Rudy’s words.  “I’ve been busy,” he said, and though most would have taken the short reply as a rebuff, Rudy knew Wade well enough to know that was just how he was.

            Rudy nodded, taking his hands out of the pockets of his old green coat.  “I know how that goes, brother.  I haven’t been in here as much as I’d like to, myself.  Been having a few fights around the house, ain’t something I’m enjoying all that much, either.”

            The big vampire raised an eyebrow.  “The wife?”  Rudy’s arguments with the several wives he’d had throughout his life were practically the stuff of legend from what Wade had gathered, and he idly wondered if Rudy had been chased with a skillet yet again.

            But the old mortal shook his head.  “Nope, me ‘n the ‘ol lady’s gettin’ along just fine for once, it’s my damned daughter that’s givin’ me headaches right now.  She’s in college, you know, and she’s startin’ to get a conscience about where the money for her school is comin’ from … says she doesn’t want to get an honest education with dirty money,” he said with a weary growl, shaking his head again.  “Says she’s gonna try to get a scholarship and get a job so she won’t have to use any of my money for her school.  Pisses me off, y’know?”

            Wade inclined his head in agreement, and Rudy continued.  “I’ve been busting my ass double-hard to make sure she gets all the things I didn’t when I was a kid, so she can go get herself a big-time degree, so she doesn’t have to do the shit I do to get by, and now she goes and tells me that my money ain’t good enough for her on account of how I come by it!  Shit, if I could make forty grand a year at an office or machine shop, I’d do it in a heartbeat, so she could have a clean conscience about the whole thing, but I can’t do that, I know it and you know it.  I’ve got something I’m good at, damned good, if I do say so myself,” he added with a wink at Wade, who returned it, “And I can’t change horses this late in the race, no matter how much she yells at me over the phone and when she’s at home.  I wish she’d just shut up and realize that I’m doing the best I can for her, no matter what the hell it is I’m doing.”

            “Kids think they know everything.  Hang in there,” said Wade with a trace of humor in his voice, and Rudy laughed.

            “Yeah, tell me about it.  But you’re right, I just gotta keep at it, I guess.  Sometimes it’s all a man can do,” said the wily man, and then motioned with his chin towards the bathrooms.  “Nice talkin’ to you again, but I gotta go take care of some pressing matters right now, if you know what I mean.  Try not to be a stranger so much, eh?” he asked with a grin, and Wade sketched him a little salute with his fingers, which gave Rudy a chuckle and sent him away satisfied.

Wade took a sip of his water and rested his chin on his hand, casually scanning the room with his eyes, just watching the people, which had always been one of his favorite things to do.  Some people liked observing the habits of monkeys, while some favored birds, but the vampire was one that could sit and observe people for hours and not get tired of it.  Granted, some people were more interesting than others, and few were as interesting as some of his vampire friends, such as Stacey, who was the closest thing to a living cartoon he’d ever seen, but as long as there were people to watch from afar, Wade would never be bored.

            The inside of Pecadillo’s was fairly large as bars went, with a high ceiling, dim lighting, and a construction composed almost entirely of dark, grimy wood, making it seem somewhat like the interior of a cave.  Overhead, almost lost in the shadows, at least to those without vampirically-sharp vision, ceiling fans slowly whirred around, making a half-assed attempt at keeping the thick, smoky air circulating, and their sounds mixed with those of the noisy, mostly-drunken patrons and the powerful jukebox, creating a heavy layer of noise that ensured quiet conversations concerning illicit matters could be carried out without fear of detection.  There were also booths on the other side of the bar for those who wanted an extra amount of privacy, as well as pool tables to discuss business around on a raised area of the wooden flooring, which was also home to a few battered arcade games that had been there since the mid-‘80’s.

But not everybody was there to make transactions or arrange them; many people came to Pecadillo’s with the sole intention of getting shitty drunk, making idiots of themselves, and having a good time, possibly kicking someone’s ass or getting their own asses kicked.  In the center of the building was the bar, which was an island in the sea of tables and people.  The bar itself was in the shape of a rounded-off rectangle, enclosing an impressively tall and well-stocked set of liquor shelves, and the bartender went around the inside of the rectangle clockwise, serving the patrons and taking care of their needs as efficiently as an assembly-line operator, doing his best to keep everybody happy and relatively placid.  The clientele of Pecadillo’s was a rough one, composed of the sorts that always made cops and suburbanites nervous, and while not everyone in the bar was a criminal, almost all of them were troublemakers of some kind.  It wasn’t a place for the weak, that was for certain.  Tonight, the place was almost filled up, but not quite to capacity, and there were plenty of people for him to watch.

            Up at the pool tables, a heated argument over a game was already in progress between a burly, long-haired biker type and a big, fat Mexican fellow with massive arms, and the two were nearly coming to blows over a wager the two had made concerning their game.

“I didn’t agree to none of that shit!” asserted the biker, managing to yell around the big cigar he was chomping.  “You said it was the best of five, not the best of three!”
            “Fuck you!” bellowed the Mexican, folding his big arms over his barrel chest and giving the biker the evil eye.  Next to him stood a much smaller Mexican, who was as lean as he was fat, with a slim mustache and rodent-like countenance, and the little man seemed to be acting as a translator.

            “He says he doesn’t like you,” said the small Mexican, sounding smug.

            “Well, that’s too fucking bad!” growled the biker.  “Rack ‘em up again, dammit, I get at least one more game!”

            “I don’t like you, either,” the little Mexican informed him, even more smugly.

            “Fuck you!” added the big Mexican, and if Wade recalled correctly, it was the only English the man knew.

            “Like I care,” sneered the biker, banging the bottom of his pool cue against the floor impatiently.  “Rack ‘em up!”

            “You better watch yourself, we’re wanted men in twelve counties,” said the little Mexican with great confidence, and he was backed up by a loud harrumph from his large compatriot.

            The biker’s eyes narrowed as he took a drag off his cigar, and then puffed the smoke in the direction of the Mexican duo.  “Yeah?  Well, I’ll be careful, then,” he said, sounding unimpressed.

            Suddenly, the little Mexican produced a switchblade seemingly from thin air, took three steps towards the biker, who completely dwarfed him, and snarled, “You’ll be dead!”

            “Fuck you!” roared the big Mexican, stomping his foot emphatically.

            “He says you need to stick to the bargain, or otherwise we’re going to find out what’s in your stomach!” growled the small Mexican, who didn’t back down, even when the biker pulled out a much bigger knife and waved it in his face with an evil leer.

The ante was upped even higher when the Mexican whipped out a little Derringer pistol and pointed it at the biker, while the large Mexican pulled a big gun that looked like a hand-held cannon and chuckled, “Fuck you!” rather dangerously.  Behind the biker, two other similarly-dressed men, apparently the biker’s friends, stepped away from the game that they were playing, pulling out guns of their own, and the tension grew very heavy very fast.

Wade was half-out of his seat to inject himself into the situation, but then he forced himself to sit back down, and he heard Katheryne’s words, the weight of the world isn’t in your hands, echoing through his head.  Back at the bar, Rudy was watching the exchange with the cautiously amused interest of an old veteran, and several people were already getting ready to duck, but the skinny, bald bartender quickly put an end to things when he brought out a massive double-barreled shotgun, almost as big as he was, from behind the bar and pointed it right in the direction of the would-be combatants.  “Take it the fuck outside if you’re gonna do it!” he snarled, “With this thing, I don’t even need to aim, I just gotta point ‘n pull the trigger, and if the first barrel don’t fuck you up, the other one will.  So knock it the fuck off!”

It wasn’t an idle threat either, as Wade had seen the little man fire the shotgun on more than one occasion, and though it always blew him backwards like he’d been hit by a truck, he never missed his target or targets.  Reluctantly, under the watchful black eyes of the shotgun, the guns and knives were put away, and the two Mexicans decided to go for a best of five game series, though the little one made sure that the biker knew they did it because they were fair guys, not because of any outside interference.

Laughing, Rudy turned and looked at Wade, giving him a raise of the eyebrows as if to say, “kids today, huh?”  Wade returned the gesture and shrugged, and with a tip of his glass to the big vampire, Rudy got back to his drinking, while Wade went back to people-watching, feeling himself relax just a little bit.  That was twice he’d controlled his instinctive response of swift and brutal violence to deal with a criminal element, and though he was twitching to crack some heads, he knew that right now it was more important for him to teach himself to balance his instincts with what his intellect knew all too well.  In the past, it had been all or nothing where his mission had been concerned … with too much of either, he wasn’t doing anybody any good, including himself.  It was just a matter of getting the demon leash-trained, which, unfortunately, was a lot easier said than done.

His eyes passed over the people again, watching them drink, talk, and play, and he’d visually gone around the bar twice before he came to a sudden and screeching stop, his eyes locked upon someone who hadn’t been there a few moments before.  Someone who was looking right at him with a pair of intense amethyst eyes and giving him the grin that he’d never forget, even if he lived to be ten thousand years old.  Shit.

She was leaning up against the far wall of the room, wreathed in shadows, her thumbs hooked in the pockets of her jeans, one booted foot resting against the wall, looking like the picture of casualness.  Her grin grew a little wider when she knew he’d seen her, and her eyes, which were set into a pale face with fine, almost aristocratic features, seemed to glow a little in the dimness.  Keeping her eyes on his, she smoothly pushed away from the wall and began to walk towards him, the patrons unconsciously getting out of her way much as those on the sidewalk had for him earlier, though she got more than a few appreciative looks from the male customers she passed, but she paid them no heed, staying focused on him.

As she approached, the room seemed to waver, his mind stripping away the years, and he saw her as she had been at that long ago festival held for a god long since forgotten by a people that weren’t even a footnote in history’s pages …

He sat against a tree, a piece of meat impaled on a stick in one hand and a clay cup in the other, watching the other revelers silently, heavy matters on his mind, his eyes occasionally flitting up to the large stone building perched on the cliff overlooking the starlit ocean, and then he saw her, watching him.

She was clad entirely in black, save for the deep red bandanna marked with the same gold insignia that adorned the walls of the stone building high above them, as well as the red sash draped across his leather tunic.  Her features were striking, her lips the color of rubies, though she wore no cosmetics to enhance her looks.  He’d seen her before at a distance, and he’d admired her beauty and the fluid ease with which she moved, but she’d never given any indication that she’d known he’d existed until now.  What she wanted, he had no idea, but there was a pull behind her amethyst eyes, and he felt himself drawn to her.  Had it not been for the fact that she was approaching him, he may very well have gotten up from his comfortable spot and approached her instead.

The golden handle of the dagger resting in its scabbard on the leather belt that encircled her narrow waist gleamed in the firelight, and the black cloth of her long sleeveless tunic and ankle-length breeches seemed to absorb any light, and other than the exposed flesh of her hands, face, and feet, she seemed like a liquid shadow as she moved.  She lightly stepped across the grassy, tree-speckled glade, avoiding the large bonfire burning in the center of it, and some of the revelers raised the cups and food at her in a greeting, and she acknowledged them with a nod of her head and slight smile, but her eyes were only for him.  He wondered what her desire was; this was the first time he recalled seeing her outside of the shadows in the stone structure upon the cliff …

He was snapped back into the present when one of the patrons of Pecadillo’s, a lanky fellow dressed in a flannel shirt, gave the short woman a playful smack on her rear followed by a wolf-whistle.  “Nice walk you got there, darlin’!” he said, and when she stopped, Wade found himself leaning slightly forward, knowing what was coming next.

She turned her narrowed eyes to the man and pinned him with them, causing him to shrink back into his seat, though he had no idea as to the source of the sudden dread that had permeated him, and Wade almost grinned.  The woman stared him down for well over ten seconds, and the people around them began to quiet down to watch, while the lanky man’s breathing was starting to rapidly increase as he broke out in a profuse sweat, and she kept right on glaring at him, even when he began to tremble.  Finally, he fell backwards out of his chair with a terrified howl, much to the entertainment of everybody watching.  With a disgusted sniff, the woman took her eyes away from him and resumed walking towards the big vampire, who had been caught off-guard by what he’d seen, though the only outward indication of his confusion was a single extra blink.  But the woman caught that blink, and when she did, she gave him a pleased smile, looking like a cat that thought herself to be especially bright.

When she reached his table, she pulled out the chair across from him and neatly dropped into it, scooted up, put her elbows on the table and cupped her chin in her hands, mimicking his posture, her eyes still on his.  “Fvienn,” she said softly, using a name that had disappeared from the world ages ago, her eyes glimmering.

“Ael,” he replied simply, the first time he’d spoken the syllable in decades.

“Or should I say Wade?  Or shall I use a more Californian name, such as Brett …” she said, and he gave a slight shake of his head.

“Not unless I should call you Tiffany,” he said wryly, and she laughed.

“Tiffany is a poor name for a legend,” she said with a toss of her hair.  “Raven suits me far better, forever and always.”

“So it seems,” replied the big vampire, and then made a subtle motion with his head towards the spot where the lanky man had reclaimed his chair, though he was still shaking and the subject of much teasing from his neighbors.  When she caught his meaning, she gave him another grin.

“That’s related to why I came here for tonight, believe it or not,” she said by way of explanation, smiling disarmingly, and he raised both eyebrows in a silent question, saying nothing and keeping his expression guarded.  She noticed this, and asked, “Suspicious, are we?”

Wade’s eyes tracked upwards just for a second, indicating the scar that trailed from above his hairline down to the middle of his forehead, and then raised both eyebrows at Raven, causing her to laugh.  “Oh come, now.  You can’t hold that against me forever, can you?”

Wade snorted.

Raven rolled her eyes.  “And they say women never forget …”

The big vampire made a rolling motion with his finger, wanting her to get to the point, as he knew she had a tendency to go off on long tangents when given the chance.  Raven sighed, shaking her head.  “Ah, yes, down to business, of course … silly me.  After all, you haven’t seen me since the 60’s, so why on Earth would you want to actually exchange pleasantries or amusing chit-chat?”  Now Wade rolled his eyes, and acted as though he was playing a violin for a few seconds, getting the small vampiress to snicker, and then Raven said slyly, “Up to your old tricks again, are you?”

Wade’s eyes narrowed, and he said nothing, and the black-haired vampiress leaned forward with a grin.  “I saw the body in the alley.  A person doesn’t do that when they’re just out to feed, do they?  And it certainly wasn’t self-defense, unless both the boy and his narcotics decided to attack you with truly excessive force.  Can’t keep away from those urges of yours, can you?”

The big vampire shrugged.  So what?

Raven’s eyelids closed halfway, and she said, “It’s only been a few centuries, too, which is surprising, considering.  The memory of Rome hasn’t faded that much, has it?”

Wade’s lips pulled back in a quiet snarl, and as he glared at Raven, his eyes began to develop a slight reddish hue, and she flashed her ivory fangs at him in a satisfied grin.  “I didn’t think so.  But sometimes you can make even me pause, so I thought I’d at least ask.”  She sniffed at the air slightly, and then raised an eyebrow.  “Is she the one looking out for you?”  Wade’s eyes narrowed even further, and Raven sniffed again.  “She smells clean, young, and like electricity, a half-blood, too.  Very formidable.  But will she be enough?”

Wade said nothing.

“And does she know you like I do?” Raven asked, leaning across the table on her elbows and eyeing him intently.  “Will she have the guts to do what I did in Rome, or will she balk at a critical moment?”

Wade growled, “She’s none of your concern.”

“Who says?  You know me well, probably better than anybody, but do you really know what my concerns are?  Can you really tell me what I’m thinking?” Raven asked, clacking her fangs against her bottom teeth.  “You can guess all you want, but no matter how educated your guess might be, it’s not necessarily right.  And you know it, too.”

“Is there a point to all this?” asked the big vampire icily, and Raven brightened up.

“Oh yes, I almost forgot, I was having so much fun getting under your skin …” said the black-haired vampiress, giving Wade a wink.  Then she sat back in her chair, held out her arms to encompass herself, and expansively said, “The Great Destroyer is dead.”

Wade raised an eyebrow.  “You don’t look dead to me.”

“You misunderstand,” Raven said, her eyes glimmering softly in excitement.  “I’m through with it.  No more aimless gallivanting around the world wrecking everything that I please, no more imposing myself on simpler people in the name of making myself a legend, no more wholesale slaughtering of groups and armies that annoy me.  New Orleans is to be the epitaph of the Great Destroyer.”  She looked him square in the eye and rapped her knuckles against the table.  “It’s done.”

“New Orleans?”

Raven chuckled.  “The beginning of the end.  Several months ago, they sought to run me out of town due to lingering resentment regarding the … ‘incident’ involving you and I nearly four decades ago.  They invoked the rules of their childish Charade, and to be blunt, I decimated them.  I annihilated their lairs, slew their leaders, captured their Clan Articles, and left the survivors’ futures in the hands of a youngster.  I essentially wiped out an entire culture in the span of a night, killing scores of vampires and leaving their world in shambles, simply because they irked me,” she said, shaking her head slowly, her eyes looking off into the distance.  “Maybe some of them had it coming, maybe their existence was a stagnant one, maybe … But the thought that I crushed them so easily beneath my foot, without hesitation, became more and more disquieting as time passed.  I had a little help, yes, but I was the driving force behind it all, like always …”  She sighed, then looked down at the table.

“Help?”

She looked up at him and her expression perked up again.  “Yes … Rafaela.  The one who drove the stake through the heart of the Great Destroyer without even trying.  In fact, she wanted to be just like me.”  She gazed at Wade for several long moments, then blinked and looked down again.  “It bothered me.  A lot,” she said, her voice soft, almost a whisper.

Wade leaned back in his chair and regarded the pensive vampiress, not sure how to take this.  He couldn’t recall the last time, if ever, he’d seen her so … vulnerable.  But there she sat, less than five feet from him, looking very nearly stricken.  He waited, and after a short while, she continued.

“I didn’t make her a vampire, so she wasn’t my fledgling, but she … adopted me, I guess you could say.  She’d been wronged by the vampires of New Orleans in the past, and she was there to exact revenge on them at the same time I was, and our common foe drew us together.  She impressed me with the strength of her will and the courage in her heart, and I saw a spark in her, something which I rarely see in anybody these days.  I wanted her to thrive, I didn’t want that spark to be extinguished, so I gave her my blood and taught her how to fight and survive against everything that was thrown at her.  She learned well … too well,” Raven said, slowly trailing a fingertip around the top of the table, her eyes focused on it.

“She began to emulate me and my behaviors, my habits, and my tendencies: she wanted to be another Raven.  She wanted to slay armies, destroy cities, engrave her name upon history and make a legend of herself like I have, and all I could think was how wrong that was.  Is that my legacy?  Nothing but destruction?  Two millennia of it …  She’s an artist, a writer, a creator, blast it, and she wanted to toss all of it away to be just like me,” said Raven, again looking at Wade, and her eyes looked haunted, chilling him. 

“In the process of becoming another Raven, she would have destroyed everything that made her unique, everything that made her Rafaela, and I would have killed her just as surely as if I’d cut out her heart, because Rafaela wouldn’t have existed any more, and there would only have been Raven.  I had no choice but to separate us for the time being, until she’d fully learned who she was, so that she wouldn’t feel the need to follow in my footsteps.”  She was silent for a moment, and then said, “How many others have followed the same path, emulating my legend?  How many souls have I unwittingly claimed by spreading my legend all over the world?  I could have destroyed the most brilliant musician, the most compelling writer, and the most intelligent leader of all time and not even have known it.”  The vampiress shook her head.  “No more.  I’m done.  Finished.  The Great Destroyer is dead and buried, and now Raven must find a new direction for her life, a new purpose … and perhaps undo some of the damage she’s already done,” she said, and banged her fist on the table decisively, making it rattle considerably and causing Wade to twitch just a little bit at her sudden, unexpected movement.  “And that’s what I’m here for.”

“And why you didn’t kill your admirer?” Wade asked sardonically, arms folded across his broad chest as he nodded in the direction of the still-frightened man.

“Exactly,” replied Raven.  “There would have been no purpose to his death.  Any fool can kill one far weaker than them, and I would have proved nothing of true importance to anyone.  Just another death, just another victim, big deal.  I’m through with those petty little games, I want something bigger and bolder.  I want to create a legacy that will truly mean something in the grand scheme of things,” she said, then leaned forward again, her eyes intensely flickering.  “I want to join you.”

Wade’s own eyes narrowed.  “Join me?”

“Yes,” Raven nearly hissed, grinning excitedly.  “You’re back in business again, striving towards creating a better world, and I want in.”

The big vampire said nothing.

“Think about it!” Raven exclaimed, her eyes bright.  “Think of what we could accomplish together!  We went against the Legions of Dejonorus and we won!  We stormed the gates and conquered Hades by ourselves!  We once led armies into battle, side by side, and nobody could stop us!  And that was when we were far younger than we are now and didn’t possess nearly the might, cunning, and wisdom we currently have at our disposal … imagine what we could do, Fvienn!  Between the two of us, we have what it would take to conquer the world itself, and if we turn that power towards the ills of the world, we could have a utopia in but a few generations!  It’s in our grasp, we can do it!” she said, so taken by her idea that she reached out, snatched one of his hands, and clutched it tightly in her excitement, like she had always done so long ago.

His mind spun, fueled by the fire in her eyes and the images conjured by her grand words, and as he gazed across the table at her, he found that his heart was racing at the wild notions she was suggesting.  Wild they may have been, but he also knew that it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility, particularly where they were concerned.  A single mortal man, in his short lifespan, could make a tremendous impact on the world that would be felt for generations and millennia to come; what could two driven immortals, armed with over four thousand combined years of knowledge and experience, accomplish in their endless lifespans?

Raven saw the way that his face subtly changed as he considered the possibilities, and she squeezed his hand even tighter.  “We can do it,” she urged.  “We need each other now, to make sure that we don’t repeat past mistakes, and with us balancing one another, we’ll be perfect together, just like we once were.  We’ll make a better world for tomorrow’s children, a world where the young Rafaelas would never consider treading down the path of destruction.  I didn’t know you’d started up your crusade again until I saw the body in the alley tonight, and before I found it, I was going to find you and try to convince you to join with me.  But now … it just seems right, doesn’t it?  We both turned our heads upwards, towards greater things, at very nearly the same time …”

He shook his head slightly.  This was all going so fast, he was at a loss for words.

“You’re already considering quitting once more, because you’re not sure if you can trust yourself, and you’re afraid your noble intentions will end up being a repeat of Rome all over again,” Raven said, and Wade’s eyes widened very slightly at her words, and he involuntarily tightened his grip on her hand.

He hadn’t even admitted those thoughts to himself, but as soon as she voiced them, he knew they’d been there for quite some time.  That was why he’d enlisted Katheryne to act as his safety mechanism, and why he’d taken Steele, one of the most formidable and cunning vampires he’d ever known, along with him on one of his night-long forays against the criminal element of Los Angeles.  He knew that though Steele trusted him almost boundlessly, Steele was one of the few that wouldn’t be afraid to stand up to him if things started to get out of hand.  And hadn’t he been considering dropping hints of his crusade to Brandi, a powerhouse of a vampiress whose strength, endurance, and determination impressed even him, just in case?  All the evidence was there, and Raven was right, damn her.  Though he’d attacked his reborn crusade with a fervor, the doubts had always been there in the back of his head, and he’d been unconsciously setting up failsafes just in case.  He hadn’t done that in Rome, centuries ago, and when the situation got out of control, there had been nothing to stop it.  Nothing except for the woman sitting across from him.

“It won’t happen again,” she whispered, and unbidden memories of her whispering into his ear while scuttling around in pitch-black underground warrens nearly two thousand years ago, long before the incident in Rome, came into his head.  She’d reassured his tense nerves then, so long ago, and now she was doing it once more.  He felt the corners of his mouth quirking up in a faint smile at her, which she returned tenfold, flashing her ivory teeth and fangs in her brilliant grin.  “I promise you, Fvienn, Wade, whatever you wish to be called, cast the fears from your head, it won’t happen again …”

He just barely managed to deflect her arm enough to throw her aim off, and the sound of the .44 Magnum going off right next to his ear exploded into his skull like artillery fire, momentarily deafening him to the point where he almost didn’t hear her gleefully finish her sentence.  “… because before that happens, you’ll be a long time dead!  Quoth Raven, NEVERMORE!”

            Wade didn’t have time to curse himself for a fool, because even though he’d gotten hold of the wrist of Raven’s gun-hand, she used her free hand to swing her chair at him, slamming the piece of furniture against the side of his head and shattering it into splinters.  But he wasn’t going down that easily, not by a long shot.

Kicking his chair out from underneath him, he grabbed the wrist of her gun-hand with his other hand and wrenched her towards him, yanking her right off her feet, causing her to squawk in surprise, and with a snarl, he took a step backwards and then swung her through the air like a club, smashing her through the table like a caveman whacking a prospective wife.  The impact, which was enough to reduce the table to a pile of rubble, wasn’t enough to even shake her, and she was already back on her feet by the time he smashed her across the face with his chair, sending her sailing backwards into a table loaded with drunks, who all staggeringly scattered when she crashed into their midst.

            She was already crowing when she sprang to her feet and almost absently sent the nearest drunk, a man four times her size and outweighing her by nearly three hundred pounds, flying with a swat of her little fist.  “I almost had you, my darling!” she cackled, her eyes wide and wild as she charged him.  “You so badly wanted to believe in that drivel I was feeding you that you forgot who you were talking to!  I told you everything you wanted to hear and you fell for it!  Unlike you, I’ve got no problems with what I am, because as far as I’m concerned, I’m perfection itself!”  She closed the gap between them and leaped, catlike, through the air, fangs bared and her fingers bent into claws, intent upon tearing into him like a buzzsaw.

            “Shut up,” he growled, enraged at her for her deception and at himself for falling for it.

He tried to dodge her attack, but she anticipated it and slammed into him, sending them both tumbling across the floor in a clawing, punching, and snapping mass.  Since they’d been sitting at a table in the corner of Pecadillo’s, they didn’t have far to travel before they crashed into a wall, caving in the lower part of it and causing plaster and wood to rain down on them.  The big vampire struggled with the little vampiress as she cackled like a loon, twisting and writhing around, seeming to flow over him like a liquid.  He tried to regain his footing, but her fists and kicks kept coming from everywhere, keeping him off-balance.

            He was suddenly yanked to his feet at the same time a vise-like grip encircled his waist, and just as soon as his feet touched the floor, they sprang back off as he was jerked backwards in a vicious German suplex that slammed his shoulders and the back of his head against the floor hard enough to make the edges of his vision grey for a split-second.  He’d barely had a chance to register the first suplex when he found himself the victim of another one, this time through a table, Raven’s laughter bored into his brain.

“That’s it, just lay back and let me do all the work, and we’ll be finished before you know it!” she taunted him, then pulled him to his feet once more, moving him as easily as she would a kitten.

            “Shut up!” he roared, his frustration boiling over, and with a roll of his shoulders, he disjointed them in a way that only one with his unique physiology could manage, and he smashed her head between his elbows once, twice, thrice, before he felt the grip on his waist loosen.  He snapped his shoulders back into place, grabbed Raven’s wrists, yanked her hands apart, then spun around and delivered a resounding backhand to her face that knocked her completely off her feet and sent her sailing across the room, end-over-end.  She crash-landed on a pool table, collapsing it with a crash that was almost lost in the din that had enveloped the inside of Pecadillo’s.

            Wade took a few seconds to look over the interior of the bar, to check the lay of the land, as it were, and saw that the tussle between him and Raven had had a very predictable reaction: apeshit anarchy.  In a bar like Pecadillo’s, where everybody was a troublemaker and wasn’t afraid to get into a fight, not to mention the fact that nearly everybody had a score to settle with somebody else, along with the alcohol in almost everyone’s system, all it took was a single spark to ignite the powderkeg.  To paraphrase the late, great Jimmy Durante, everybody wanted to get into the act, a-cha-cha-cha.  Guns were blazing all around him, sending lead buzzing through the air like enfuriated hornets, while knives, brass knuckles, and anything else available was being pulled and put to use.  In just the span of a few minutes, the place had turned into a complete madhouse.

Lovely.

            A bullet zipped past his still-ringing ear, and he barely had time to dodge the hail of bullets that followed: being introduced to the pool table hadn’t slowed Raven down a bit.  She’d managed to get hold of two more handguns in the chaos, and was firing away with them so fast that she may as well have had a couple of machine guns.  Ducking and twisting through the air, Wade seemed to dance through the bullets ripping through the smoky air, moving in impossible ways, and as he moved, his hands shot out like cobras, snapping up the bullets as they passed him, and in the blink of an eye he had two handfuls of hot lead.

As soon as Raven ran out of ammo and the barrage ceased, he landed and rushed her, pounding across the floor, dropping low, and then launching himself high into the air in a flawless arc, his trenchcoat flapping around him like the wings of a bat.  As soon as he hit the peak of his arc, he flung first one handful of bullets, and then the second, at Raven, giving her presents back to her all at once.  He’d figured his throws right, and despite the vampiress’ speed, his efforts were rewarded with sharp hisses when several bullets tore into her arms, legs, and torso.  To put the exclamation point on things, he pulled the nine millimeter pistol he’d gotten from the drug dealer and opened fire with it as he hurtled back down towards the floor, holding it with both hands to keep it extra steady.  His aim was true more than once, and several more bullets cut into Raven’s body, making her hiss even more as she danced around on the floor, moving like a cat on a burning griddle.

He emptied the clip in the seconds it took him to hit the floor, and as soon as his feet touched, he already had the hot barrel of the gun in his hand, and he swung the butt of the gun towards the vampiress’ head, his arm moving so fast that it would have been a blur even to vampire eyes.  But Raven wasn’t just any vampire, and she neatly dodged his attempted pistol-whipping, then leapt straight up in the air and viciously twisted her body in a savage spin-kick that connected with his chin, snapped his head hard to the side, and sent him skidding across the floor, bowling over several large combatants in the process.  They didn’t take very kindly to this unexpected interruption, and before Wade could get to his feet again, the big men tore into him with a flurry of curses, kicks, and punches.  One of them even managed to break a chair over his head before the vampire angrily lashed out with both of his arms, sending them flying through the air as though they were nothing, taking dark enjoyment from the sounds of bone breaking and flesh rending from the impacts of his fists.

But his enjoyment was short-lived, as the momentary distraction had given Raven enough time to draw her two daggers, one with an emerald-colored blade and the other one ruby-colored, from the forearm sheathes beneath the sleeves of her leather jacket.  Not only that, but it had also given the swift-moving little vampiress more than enough time to draw a long, slender vial made from hard wax out of a slim metal case concealed in her jacket and jab the blades of her daggers into it, coating them in a thin, viscous substance that gleamed in the dim lighting.  Casting the waxen vial aside, Raven grinned at Wade.

“It’s time to get serious, beloved,” she said, and with a deft motion of her wrists, she struck the blades of her daggers together, causing them to spark, which ignited the liquid, giving her already-deadly daggers blades of fire.

“Hell,” Wade had time to growl before she was upon him, her daggers leaving trails of fire as they sliced through the air, missing him by only fractions of millimeters.  The blades were like extensions of her body, and she wouldn’t drop them no matter how hard he hit her.  Even when he swept her off her feet and kicked her away she held onto them, and then came right back as though she were attached to his waist by a bungie cord.  Finally he managed to grab hold of both of her wrists with his hands and keep her roughly in place, forcing a temporary deadlock, which only seemed to amuse her further.

The back of his right hand grew hot from the flaming blade less than an inch from it, but no matter how uncomfortable it was, he didn’t lessen his grip, as the blade was aimed downwards toward him, and all she needed was a momentary lapse to plunge it right into his chest.  She looked up at him merrily as they struggled, her burning daggers reflected in the amethyst mirrors of her eyes, and her delighted smile was a stark contrast to the grim determination set across his features.  All around them was drunken, angry battle of numerous varieties, a veritable smorgasbord of conflict, but their eyes were only for each other.

“I sent Rafaela away because I wanted her to be herself,” said Raven, her voice betraying no trace of the strain of their struggle, “And not because I was horrified that she was going to become another me.  A person could do much worse than follow in my footsteps, after all, and while it was flattering, she has far more potential as Rafaela than as another Raven.  But you … you might do well to learn from me.”

The big vampire was silent as he tried to force her backwards and get the daggers from her hands, and she took that as an invitation to continue, grinning slyly.  “Maybe you’d have a lot less trouble if you’d just stop lying to yourself, stop trying to pretend you’re something that you’re not.  You’re not interested in justice, a finer world, or the safety of the innocents, not deep down,” she said, her voice smooth and knowing.  “You’re like a wolf dressing up as a sheep, and all of those high and mighty ideals are nothing more than deceptive fleece you cover yourself in, trying to convince everybody, most of all yourself, that you’re a sheep with grand ideas.  One of the flock, just with a better grasp on things.  But no matter what you cloak yourself in, you can’t change the fact of what you are: a monster, pure and simple.  You’re just like me, Fvienn,” Raven purred, licking her ruby lips, “Except that I don’t lie to myself.  I’m a monster.  I’m good at what I do, and I enjoy it.  I enjoy it, Fvienn.  You do, too, deep down, in your heart of hearts.  You walked this path before and instead of being a monster, you tried to be a man, and you botched that up rather spectacularly”

Distracted by the vampiress’ piercing words, Wade’s guard slipped just slightly, and she delivered a ferocious kick to his stomach, knocking the wind out of him, then wrenched herself free.  The big vampire barely had time to duck as a flaming dagger slashed through the air where his face had been a half-second before, then he felt the front of his black shirt cut open as he narrowly dodged a slice aimed at his chest.

“You’re not a man!” Raven screamed at him, spinning her daggers so fast that they looked like flaming sawblades on the ends of her hands.  “You’re a monster!  When you give in to what you are, it’s better than anything you can imagine, better than blood, better than sex!”

Her blades whizzed past him again and again, coming closer each time as her words battered at his concentration.  “The only reason you’ve even got your little crusade is so you can justify your killing hunger to your oh-so-guilty conscience, but when you kill, you still get that same old rush, that rush that has nothing to do with high-minded ideals, and it feels so good because it’s right!  It’s what you are!  But you keep lying to yourself, keep stacking the deceptions on top of one another, patting yourself on the back and thinking yourself righteous, when nothing’s changed save the lies you tell yourself afterwards,” she said, her voice calm and clear as she spun and leaped at him, dodging his punches and kicks as though they’d choreographed everything weeks in advance.  Wade was grinding his teeth together so hard his entire head hurt, his skull throbbing with the pain and Raven’s words, which were like little drills working away at exposed nerves.

“Time passes,” Raven said, as though she were lecturing a class, “And your rhetoric changes, making it so that it’s all right for you to kill more minor-league wrongdoers, and before long you’re killing people because they threw their trash in the street or spat on the sidewalk.  It keeps going until you’re killing people left and right to maintain the ‘peace,’ and it becomes an obsession, your monster’s instincts twisted to a man’s idiotic desires.  It controls you because you think you’re on a crusade for what’s right and good, and you need to kill every miscreant on the face of the Earth to attain that.  It eats you up inside and drives you mad, and it all could be avoided if you’d just face up to the truth in the first place.  Save yourself from the madness that got you back in Rome.  Lift the weight of the world from your shoulders and be yourself at long last, Fvienn.  You knew the truth once, so long ago, but you started lying to yourself, and you’ve been at it ever since … the lies almost consumed you once.  Don’t let it happen again, my beloved.”

Any reply Wade might have had was forever lost as he faltered for a split-second, which gave Raven the opportunity to stab the white-hot emerald-green dagger into his abdomen, cutting deep, the flames extinguished as the blade sizzled within his flesh, sending a lance of agony throughout his torso.  With a gasp, he shoved her backwards, getting the blade out of him before she could slice any further, but she had it back in not even a second later, this time right through his trenchcoat into his side, and she was laughing again.

“You know the veracity of my words, and no matter how you may fool yourself, the truth always hurts!  Quoth Raven, NEVERMORE!” shrieked Raven, barely missing stabbing her other blade into him as he twisted around, causing the first blade to rip him up even more, blood flowing from the wound and down his side.

Socking her across the face, he managed to knock her backwards enough that the dagger slipped free of him and clattered to the floor, pulled from her grasp, and as he clutched at the wound in momentary relief, the little vampiress came back with a wicked haymaker that sent the staggering vampire tumbling through the air.  He landed headfirst behind the bar, crashing into one of the lower shelves and getting cut up even more with the broken glass of dozens of liquor bottles, and though the released alcohol stung his catalog of wounds, at least he had a few seconds to catch his breath.

Actually, it was more than a few seconds, as the sounds of a very large gun being fired several times, followed by a very familiar, “Fuck you!” reached Wade’s ears.  Raven had apparently gotten somebody else’s attention.

“He says you ruined his pool game and broke his favorite cue, so you’re gonna have to pay the big bad piper, girly!” came the voice of the little rat-faced Mexican that served as the big man’s disproportionate shadow.

“Fuck you!” bellowed the big Mexican, followed by several more shots.

“Or you can drop your pants and let him show you what a real man is, and he’ll call it even!” the little man informed Raven, sounding as though the offer was an exceedingly generous one.  Raven, predictably, laughed like a thousand hyenas.

“What in the blue hell is going on out there?” asked another familiar voice, this one much closer.  Wade, who’d gotten into a sitting position, turned and saw Rudy leaning up against the big safe under the bar, his callused fingers expertly working the dial while he kept his ear pressed against the safe’s door.  “She an ex-girlfriend or something?  Shit, Hoss, you might actually have a story to top one of mine if she is!”

Wade shook his head slowly, not quite sure what to say.  “It’s … complicated,” he finally offered, and Rudy chuckled.

“Fuck you!” roared the big Mexican.

“Is that all you know how to say?!” Raven demanded.

“Fuck you!”

“Stop that!”

“He says you’ve got pretty eyes!” the rodent-like man informed Raven.  “And a very cute little rack, too!”

“I’d say it’s plenty complicated, from the looks of it,” said Rudy, glancing in the direction of the argument on the other side of the bar.  “Let me get this bad boy jimmied before the barkeep gets ‘round from the other side, and I can lend you a hand,” the seasoned safecracker said, winking at him, “’Cuz she looks like quite the little pistol.  Well, more like a bazooka, come to think of it.  If you need a place to hide out till this shit blows over, I got a spare bed down in the basement, if you don’t mind sharing the room with the cat.”

“Fuck you!”

“Stop that!”

“He’s a fair guy, he just wants compensation for his troubles!”

“Fuck you!”

“Stop that!”

Several loud thumps and surprisingly high-pitched yowls ensued.

The big vampire paused for a second, touched by the man’s offer, but he shook his head again, this time more vehemently.  “Thanks, but it’s all a bit—“

He never got to finish his sentence, as the big Mexican came flying through the air over their heads and smashed clean through the tall, double-sided liquor shelves, sending shards of glass, booze of all varieties, and other assorted debris raining down all over both sides of the bar.  The big man then bounced off the opposite side of the bar and crashed to the floor with a final, “Fuck you!” before mercifully dropping into unconsciousness.

“Sweet Jesus!” screamed the bartender, who was on the other side of the bar.  “You’re gonna pay for that, you fat fuck!  Booze doesn’t grow on trees!”

Any further comments from the beleaguered bartender were drowned out, as a second later the little Mexican went hurtling through the hole his large friend had made, screaming like a woman the whole way, and his momentum ended up carrying him all the way across the room until he plowed into the jukebox and fell to the floor in a semi-conscious heap.  Meanwhile, the jukebox started blaring a very loud and fast Mexican rock song entitled, “Angry Cockroaches,” which seemed quite apropos for the whole sorry mess.

There was a loud thump on the bar, and when Wade’s head snapped up, there sat Raven, perched like a grinning female gargoyle, a flaming dagger in one hand and, of all things, a half-empty bottle of whiskey in the other.  When Raven actually didn’t start gleefully jabbering away at him, Wade focused more closely on her face, seeing that her cheeks were puffed out and her lips were tightly pursed shut, then he realized where the bottle’s missing whiskey was.  As soon as the realization hit him, Raven held the fiery dagger up in front of her face and spit the whiskey out in an extremely tight and highly-propelled spray.  As soon as the misted whiskey whizzed past the dagger, it burst into flame and kept right on coming, and for all intents and purposes, that damnable woman was breathing fire at him.

Rudy cursed in surprise when the jet of fire shot through the air, and Wade felt like doing the same when the gout of flame hit the liquor-soaked arm of his trenchcoat and set it ablaze.  Before the big vampire even had a chance to blink, the flames had leaped from his arm to the side of his coat, and Wade barely managed to duck another jet of flame that had been aimed at his head.  He went into a hard roll across the floor towards the other end of the bar, trying to escape the fire-spitting vampiress while putting out his coat at the same time.  His back heated up as Raven zapped him with another blast of flame, and he kept rolling, extinguishing the new fire almost immediately.  The little vampiress had apparently expended her load of whiskey for the moment, as he heard her start laughing again, sounding positively delighted with herself.  Then again, nobody amused Raven as much as Raven.

He hit the far end of the bar, got onto all fours, and scuttled around the corner as quickly as he could, his eyes rapidly flitting around until they locked onto what he’d been looking for.  Wade hopped to his feet, smoking heavily from Raven’s attempts at turning him into a crispy critter, and charged over to where the bartender was angrily banging the phone against the floor.

“Work, you son of a bitch, work!” howled the skinny bald man.  “Insurance ain’t gonna cover all of this!”  But the man could have pounded on the phone until dawn and gotten no results: Raven would have cut Pecadillo’s phone lines before she came into the building, so that it would have taken that much longer for the police to arrive, giving her plenty of time to have her fun.  She hated being interrupted when she was enjoying herself, unless the interruption had been arranged by her; the woman had a way of making sure that whenever she played, it was always by her rules.

Wade, however, wasn’t concerned about the phone or calling the police, as he was far more interested in the double-barreled shotgun that the bartender was clutching in one hand.  With a blindingly fast movement of his arm, he plucked the shotgun from the bartender’s hand, cracked it open to make sure that it was fully loaded, then snapped it closed again, satisfied.

“Thanks,” he said to the bartender, who was staring at the big vampire in irked surprise.

“You gimme that back, you—“ began the bartender, springing to his feet with the intent of whacking the big man over the head with the phone, but a tap from Wade sent him sprawling onto his ass.

Shotgun in hand, and a smile forming on his face, Wade bounded back the way he came, and just when he rounded the corner, he discovered that Raven had reloaded and was nearly on top of him again.  Another jet of flame lashed out at him, but thankfully, this time he was ready for it.  Ducking and rolling, he narrowly dodged the fiery blast, and could feel the uncomfortably close heat as he moved.  Dropping into a crouch, he aimed the barrels of the shotgun upward, directly at Raven’s stomach, and giving her a big grin, he let her have it with both barrels at point-blank range.

Raven stood her ground as the shotgun blast tore into her midsection, which would have been remarkable for almost anybody else but was actually pretty routine for her, considering the damage she was capable of enduring.  However, she sprayed out all of the whiskey still in her mouth while violently hacking up a sizable amount of bright-red blood all over Wade, making an even bigger mess of him.  Despite her new injury, she still had hold of her flaming dagger, and though she staggered a little, she swung it at Wade while spewing up more blood.  But Wade, who knew firsthand just how much of a licking she could take and keep on ticking, was prepared for the eventuality that the shotgun blast wouldn’t be enough to do more than slow her down, and he neatly flipped the shotgun around, gripping the hot barrels tightly in his hands, and just as Raven slashed at him, he drew back and swung as hard as he could.  Somewhere in the afterlife, Babe Ruth whistled in approval.

With a somewhat gargly shriek of annoyance, Raven was launched from the bar like she was tied to a rocket aimed for Mars, and the little vampiress tumbled out-of-control through the air until she crashed into Pecadillo’s ancient Galaga arcade game which, in its last act of defiance at a world that no longer cared for it, electrocuted Raven with everything it had.  Though vampiric biochemistry and cell structure was such that a vampire was nearly impossible to kill via voltage, getting zapped did hurt like hell, even when you were Raven.  Wade smiled with satisfaction as the black-haired woman jolted like a jackhammer from the current, and as she twitched, she screamed oaths in pained irritation, though most of it ended up sounding something along the lines of “Yiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiyiiiiiiiiiii!”  The big vampire even managed a small chuckle at that point.

The bartender came around the corner of the bar just then, and stopped and stared in confusion at what he was seeing, a part of his mind wondering how much his insurers would give him for the old game, if anything.  Wade turned and held up the remains of the shotgun to the bartender, who had to look at it for several seconds before he even realized what he was eyeballing. The wooden stock of the shotgun had disintegrated instantly from the force of the impact against Raven, and the rest of the gun was bent and warped so terribly that it would never be useful for anything other than a modern art piece, but it had served its purpose well.

“Sorry,” Wade said with a shrug.

First looking at the shotgun, then at Wade’s bloody and burnt state, and then again peering around Wade’s shoulder at Raven’s ongoing electrocution, which was making the lights madly flicker, the bartender shook his head slowly for a few moments as he weighed his options.  Making a decision, he turned, hopped over the bar, and hustled across the warzone that had been a business just a short while ago as fast as he could, heading for the nearest door.  “Fuck you all!” he bellowed as he exited the building.

The skinny man had chosen a good time to run, because the building’s aged and neglected power grid, stressed by the Galaga machine’s attempt at frying Raven, chose that moment to give up and die, plunging the inside of the building into blackness.  Well, not total blackness; Raven had finally dropped her dagger when she’d collided with the arcade game, and it had set fire to the chair it had landed under, which in turn had lit up the table it was next to, creating a nice, natural light source for the bar’s combatants to stumble around and maim each other by.

Wade could have cared less about the fire, because his main concern when the lights went out was the source of the voice that snarled, “So you want to play rough, do you?”

Raven slammed into his midsection like a nitro-powered freight train, sending them flying backwards until they smashed into the bar, which they went straight through, Wade’s back screaming in anguish from taking the brunt of the considerable impact.  Raven’s laughter sounded again in his ears, and he frantically rammed his knee upwards as they skidded across the floor, where the vampiress’ torso was still torn and bloody from the shotgun blast, and he was rewarded with a pained growl and a sudden lessening in the grip around his waist.  They finally came to a stop a short distance from the wall, and Wade slammed his fist against the side of Raven’s head several times, forcing her to let go of him, and she suddenly scrambled right over the top of him, as though she were fleeing something.

He sprang to his feet just in time to see Raven sprint across the floor and up the wall as though she were exempt from the rules of gravity.  The little vampiress ran fifteen feet up the wall, and then leaped off of it, twisting through the air like a gymnast as she came right at Wade.  Moving like lightning, Raven wrapped her legs around his head and twisted hard in mid-air, using her momentum and the considerable might in her muscles to rip him completely off his feet and viciously fling him through a table in a picture-perfect huricanrana.  Dizzied after the sudden, twisting attack, Wade started to hop to his feet again, but Raven’s foot came from out of nowhere and connected with the side of his head, nearly knocking his eyes from their sockets while rattling every single one of his teeth, and sending him bouncing across the floor until he collided with a wall.

Gritting his aching teeth and growling, he put his back to the wall and used it to help him get upright again, his head still swirling, but before he could even get his eyes focused again, the little vampiress, laughing wildly once again, took a flying leap at him and slammed both of her feet against his chest, viciously smashing him against the wall.  Bones cracked and his heart skipped several beats, and Raven wasn’t done yet, either.  As soon as her feet had impacted with Wade’s chest, she kicked off like a swimmer and somersaulted backwards, landed on her feet, and then charged forward and blasted Wade across the jaw with a vicious elbow-shot that smashed the back of his head through the wall.

“When you keep lying to yourself, you forget who you are and you forget what you are, and that makes you weak, Fvienn,” hissed Raven, who was appearing in triplicate in front of Wade’s nearly-crossed eyes.  “You tell yourself you’re not a monster, that you don’t love how good it feels when you end the lives of those unworthy of it, and you’re denying what you are, diluting what you’re capable of, making yourself only a shell of the force of nature that you could be.  Just give in to it, stop lying to yourself.  Free yourself from the petty concepts of good and evil like I did, and open your eyes,” she purred, her face only inches from his, her eyes shining brightly.  “Drop your little crusade, forsake all of your pretty excuses for killing, and live.  It’d be so easy, just—“

With a snarl, Wade let fly with a wild swing on Raven, but she had anticipated it, and she grabbed his arm by the wrist and nearly wrenched it completely out of the socket before hammering his midsection with several solid kicks.  From there, she kept hold of his arm and proceeded to run right up the front of him in another defiance of the pedestrian laws of gravity, stomping down hard enough that every step was like another kick, and she made sure she gave his forehead a solid slam with the heel of her boot on the way up.

Once she’d gotten past his head, she planted her feet against the wall and jerked upwards on his arm, ripping him from the wall, and then she spun around at high speed with her feet still against the wall, flinging him through the air yet again.  This time there were no tables in his way, and he met the solid, rather unforgiving floor at an awkward angle that sent a jolt of razor-edged pain through his entire body, including the arm that Raven’s attack had numbed just seconds before.  And damn, did his head hurt, not only from the damage the little vampiress had inflicted, but also from the words that kept cutting so deeply to the core of his being, the words that he wanted so badly to completely deny and disown.  But the problem was that she knew him so well … possibly even better than he did.

Though he was currently on his stomach and couldn’t see what was behind him, instinct served him well, and he rolled out of the way just in time to avoid Raven’s foot smashing through the back of his skull.  As it was, her boot plowed through the wooden floor and left a foot-shaped impact crater in the concrete directly below.  He went for a leg-sweep, but made the mistake of trying it on his wounded arm, and instead of pivoting in a circle like he’d intended, he ended up on his back with his arm shrieking at him.  To make matters worse, Raven gave him no time to get up, leaping onto his torso and wrapping her hands around his throat, apparently intent on throttling him.  Though he didn’t need much oxygen to get by, a tight enough grip on his neck could disrupt the flow of blood to his brain, knocking him out and leaving him even more vulnerable than he already was.

He grabbed Raven’s arms by the wrists and attempted to pull her hands away from his neck, but she was locked down tightly, and at the moment one of his arms was almost completely useless, giving her a distinct advantage.  But that didn’t stop him from trying, and he struggled against her as she straddled his body, boring down on his neck with a strength that seemed impossible for her slight stature.

“I’ve got you this time, beloved,” she purred, leaning forward while she strangled him, her face again only a short distance from his.

“Your doubts and fears weaken you and wrack your body and mind with corrosion, like a sword gone rusty from misuse.  You know I’m right, otherwise you would’ve been so much more of a challenge for me.  The truth cuts you more keenly than either of my daggers ever could.  Only a monster can stand against me.  A man just can’t hack it, I’m afraid.”  She laughed darkly as he strained his muscles against hers, but to no avail whatsoever, and she ground down on him even more tightly, immobilizing him.

“The monster who wants to be a man, how noble, how lovely, and how utterly, terribly flawed.  Apparently the lessons of Rome were lost upon you, eh?  Have the memories of the gibbeted corpses swinging in the wind, the mangled bodies burnt in the bonfires, and the blood flowing down the steps faded so much already?  Have you forgotten the fear of the children, Fvienn?”  She clamped down on his neck so tightly that he almost blacked out, and she was suddenly nose-to-nose with him, her eyes narrow and blazing redly.  “Have you?!”

He glared back at her defiantly, his fangs fully extended as he fought against the encroaching blackness for his very survival, and through gritted teeth he growled unintelligibly, sounding more animal than man.  Her words unleashed all of the memories she’d mentioned, along with many more, and they were as fresh in his mind as the day they’d happened: images, sounds, and feelings that he’d carry with him to his grave and likely beyond.  How could he ever forget any of that?  How could he ever let himself forget?  Not a day went by that he didn’t remember, and on the few occasions when he slept they always came to him, reminding him of the past and the mistakes made, the horrifying mistakes that he was terrified of repeating, the mistakes that made his blood run colder than ice.

“Give it up, you’ll never be a man, not today, not tomorrow, not ever; you can’t deny what’s in your heart,” Raven whispered harshly, a wicked grin across her bloodstained ruby lips.  “You can’t pull off this little crusade of yours, and you’re only going to fail at it because it’s not what a monster does.  Give it up, and I’ll let you walk away from this more or less in one piece.  What do you say?” she asked, loosening her hold on his neck enough to let him speak.

Wade spat at her, spraying her already-bloody face with the blood of some internal injury she’d dealt to him.

Snarling, Raven clamped back down on his neck, increasing the pressure tremendously, and just when the world began to fade, a shot ran out and blood exploded from Raven’s shoulder, splattering him even further.  Her stranglehold dropped to almost nothing, but before he could capitalize on it, she drilled him between the eyes with a lightning-fast punch.

Another shot tore into her chest, causing her to hiss like an enormous cat, and Wade’s ringing ears heard Rudy’s voice bark, “Back off of the man, you crazy broad!  You may be tougher than my ex-wife, but I’ll bet even you can’t take a shot to your damned head!”

“Stay out of things that don’t concern you!” snapped Raven, though she kept her eyes on Wade, who was in turn almost-dreamily staring at the bullet-wound on the upper part of her chest, the blood flow from which was already slowing down to almost nothing as Raven’s insanely fast metabolism set about reknitting the damage; the shotgun blast to her stomach was already little more than scar-pink and powder-blackened skin.  He also noted that the noise inside the bar had dropped down to almost nothing, save the jukebox and the slow crackling of the fire on the other side of the bar.  It seemed that most of the inhabitants of Pecadillo’s had scuttled away when the lights had gone out and the fire had gone up, fleeing like rats from a sinking ship.

Then the sound of a gun’s hammer cocking back caught his attention.

“This concerns me plenty, seeing as how that big fellow you’ve got on the floor happens to be a friend of mine.  When a friend of mine’s in trouble, I don’t just walk away,” said Rudy, his voice firm and determined.  “Get off him.  Now.”

“Why don’t you make me?” asked Raven, challenge dripping from her voice, a tone that Wade knew all too well.  “I don’t think you can.”

“Back off,” Wade croaked around Raven’s steely grip, his voice only a ragged imitation of its usual deep resonance.  “My fight.”

“A fight that you’re losing badly,” Raven whispered, chuckling.

There was a long pause from Rudy’s end, and then he finally, almost hesitantly, asked, “You sure, Hoss?  You’re lookin’ pretty down-and-out right now …”

“My fight,” Wade reaffirmed, his voice harsh as he tried to increase its volume and strength.

Raven’s face moved forward until her lips were nearly touching his.  “Kill him,” she murmured, so softly that only Wade could hear.

“Go,” ordered Wade, trying to loosen Raven’s grip so that he could speak more easily.

“Nothing doing.  I’m staying right here,” argued Rudy.

“He’s a criminal, I can see it in his mind.  Enough theft in his lifetime to purchase a small town, more lives taken than I can count on my fingers and toes,” said Raven softly.  “He loves what he does and he has no regrets about it.  In fact, he’s proud of how long he’s been at it.  Kill him.  That’s the kind of thing you do nowadays, isn’t it?  What’s one more?”

“Go!” the big vampire demanded, lapsing into a fit of strained coughing as Raven refused to release her hold on his throat.

“I’ll sit out, but I’m staying here.  I don’t walk out on friends, Hoss, no matter how big they may be.  Maybe you’ll kick the shit outta me later, but it ain’t nothing that ain’t already been done,” replied the stocky man.

“You’ve killed others for far less in times past,” Raven said, her voice smooth and quiet.  “What’s stopping you now?  Maybe you think he’s your friend, but a good, righteous man like you can’t be friends with someone like that, can he?  Do it.  You wanted to kill him earlier, but you stopped yourself.  Kill him not only to better your crusade, but because he’s interfering in our business.  You don’t want him here, you told him to go, but he won’t.  So remove him from our business by killing him.  You want to.  I know you do.”

“GO!” roared Wade at Rudy, his eyes locked on Raven’s, feeling himself starting to drift in her hypnotic gaze, her words sorting themselves out into wonderfully familiar and comforting shapes in his head.

He remembered what it was like once, before Rome, before the Legions of Dejonorus, before that fateful festival night.  Even now he could smell the dust, blood, and leather as war surged all around him, he could feel the heft of his blade in his hand and the jolts that shot up his arm as he used it to slice and batter living flesh to death.  He remembered the terror in the eyes of the weak, stupid, and corrupt: how addictive and heady it had been!  He perfectly recalled the feeling of exhilaration that surged through him whenever he charged off into battle, whether on foot or on his horse, slashing, burning, and devastating everything that got in his path.  There was never any mercy, no matter where he went or what he did, only murder for those that needed it.

Raven was right: it was easy, it felt good.  Why else would he have done it for so long?  There was never any doubt to slow his strikes or make him question his judgment or keep him awake when he was tired, because he’d trusted his instincts and let them guide his actions.  He’d been a monster then, pure and simple, and doubt was nonexistent in the face of those pure instincts.  Killing had been his business, and business had been damned good.

“You’re gonna have to get her up off you and make me leave yourself, Hoss,” Rudy informed him, his tone sharp.  “I ain’t going on my own.”

“Do it,” Raven urged, seeing the struggle in his eyes and feeling it radiating out from him.  She smiled lovingly, and then very gently kissed his lips, her gaze never wavering.  “Continue your crusade.  If you’re strong enough, if you want it badly enough, you’ll have the power the get past me and put yet another wrongdoer into the ground for all time, never to steal or kill ever again.  Make him pay for his crimes.  Make them all pay.  If you think you’re man enough to go through with this crusade, show me that the man is mightier than the monster.”

Wade’s eyes shut for a long time as he remembered times past, lives taken, battles won and lost.  He thought of Katheryne and his other vampire friends in the city, and what they meant to him.  He thought of Raven and how long she’d been a part of his life, the secrets they’d shared and the wars they’d waged both together and against one another, and how well she knew him inside and out.  He thought of Rome and what he’d learned about himself there, what Raven had done about it, and what she’d said afterwards, chastising him for trying to twist a monster’s drives and passions into a man’s works.

He thought of what he’d been doing in Los Angeles for the last several months, and how the old doubts and fears had come creeping back to him time and time again, making him question himself and his crusade every time he felt the old monster joy rising up in his heart.  He thought of how easy things had been early in his life, when both he and the world had been younger and everything had been painted in simple black and white … he’d never been anything but happy back then.  He’d never brooded, never worried, never doubted himself, and had never felt the need to justify it when he’d brutally massacred a horde of bandits or slain a court of royal idiots.  He’d simply lived and did what came naturally to him.  He’d loved being the monster.

He opened his eyes, meeting Raven’s once again, and he nodded very slightly, a smile crossing his lips.  She mirrored his smile with one of her own, and the pressure on his neck was released instantly as she easily hopped back to her feet and held out a hand to him.  He took her hand in his, and she pulled him to his feet.  He wasn’t sure if it was the adrenaline or just the rush from the thoughts in his head, but all of his aches and pains of a few moments ago had vanished, and he felt better than he had in a long time.  Everything seemed so much clearer now, so much easier, and he saw the future before his eyes as plain as the moon overhead … the doubts were gone, replaced with an ironclad assurance.  Raven saw this in him as he stood gazing at her, and she crossed her arms over her chest, beaming like a beacon.

“Do it,” she whispered.

He nodded at her once, flashing a smile more wicked than any she’d seen out of him in a long time, and he twirled around towards Rudy, his ragged and tattered trenchcoat softly swishing around.  Wade’s eyes then met Rudy’s clear blue ones, and he saw that the old mortal was standing at the ready behind the bar, his gun in one hand and a big sack of ill-gotten booty from the safe on the bar next to him.  Ever the thief, looking out for business at all times.  The man looked surprised at the sudden turn of events, not quite sure what the game was, and he regarded Wade with a mixture of curiosity and concern.

“Hoss?  You all right?” he asked, finally getting a good look at the burnt, bloody, and battered appearance of the big vampire, who was illuminated by the light from the growing fire on the other side of the bar.

“Never better,” Wade replied, then whipped around and drilled Raven square in the face with a fist that she’d anticipated but had been far too slow to block or dodge.

The force behind the punch flung her through the air like she’d been hit with a high-speed battering ram, but before she’d traveled ten feet, the big vampire hit her from behind with a stunning roundhouse kick to the center of her back, nearly snapping her in half and causing her spine to audibly creak in protest.  She didn’t even have the chance to hit the floor before another kick sent her hurtling through the air in another direction, aimed right at the blaring jukebox, and as soon as she slammed back-first into the machine and smashed it to little more than metallic rubble, the big vampire’s shoulder slammed into her midsection, crushing her against the remains of the jukebox.

Wade grabbed her by the hair, yanked her from the wreckage of the jukebox, and viciously brought her down on top of one of the few remaining tables in the building, reducing it to splinters in one shot.  Not satisfied, the big vampire again grabbed the little vampiress by her hair, pulled her to her feet, then plowed his knee into her stomach while simultaneously ramming the back of her head with his elbow, almost ripping her in two once more.  Somehow she managed to drunkenly remain on her feet, and Wade took care of that by launching her into the air with an uppercut that hit so solidly the crack split the air of the nearly-silent bar.

As soon as Raven hit the peak of her unexpected uppercut-powered flight, Wade was there to grab her in mid-air and send her right back down to the floor again with a double-fisted axehandle blow straight from Hell.  The back of her head and shoulders impacted the floor first, leaving another custom-shaped crater, and the rest of her flopped down in a heap, while Wade dropped back down to his feet, landing with more poise and grace than any gymnast, a short distance away.  The entire sequence had taken little more than four seconds, and back at the bar, Rudy blinked and rubbed his eyes with his free hand, certain that he hadn’t had a chance to get that drunk yet.

Raven was flat on her back and panting softly as Wade slowly stepped over to her, taking even, measured steps across the dirty wooden floor, and by the time he reached her, she’d painfully pushed herself up onto her elbows.  She had blood running from both her nose and mouth, as well from a gash across her forehead, but she was grinning at him just the same.  In a reversal of barely a minute earlier, Wade stood over Raven and held his hand out to her, and when she took it, he pulled her to her feet and gazed at her steadily, certainly.

“I may not be able to change what I am, but I can damned sure change what I do,” he said, his voice strong and sure, inviting no argument.  “I wronged the world once, back even before you came along, robbing it of a great destiny, and I can’t just sit by and do nothing about it because I’m afraid of going over the edge again.  If I can conquer and control what I’ve got within me, and guide it in the right direction, I can make a finer world for everybody, and maybe make some small amends for the things that I’ve done.  A man quails before his fears and lets them muddy his judgment and deeds.  A monster knows no fear.  I’m not going to be afraid of myself any longer.”

He meant it with every fiber of his being, and he was almost giddy by how clearly he could see everything now.  He saw the mistakes of the past in letters fifty feet high, as well as all of the mistakes he’d been making recently.  But in those mistakes were also things he’d done very right, such as letting Katheryne and Steele know what he was doing, as well as clandestinely organizing and paying vigilante mortals to help keep certain sections of town free of crime, so that he didn’t have to do everything himself, and he knew the lessons of Rome hadn’t been for naught.

His biggest mistake had been what Raven had said, trying to pretend he was a sheep when he was really a wolf, trying to convince himself he didn’t like the killing, that he was a pure-hearted force of justice, and that his viciousness with criminals came from the necessity to bring them down hard and send a message to those who might be tempted to follow their path.  While those were certainly side-benefits, they weren’t the driving motivation for his violence, not deep down … despite the passage of years and the changes he’d gone through, the old bloodlust was still there and quite intact.  He enjoyed ferociously destroying and ripping an enemy to shreds just as much now as he did back then, but now instead of scarring the world with his bloodthirsty ways, he was using them to help excise a cancer that gnawed away at the vitals of civilization.  Maybe a venerable old monster could learn a few new tricks for the benefit of all … or perhaps just remember a few old tricks that had always worked.  As he’d told Raven, it would be hard, but the outcome he was striving for was worth it.

Raven searched his face and eyes, looking at him intently, and he could feel her mind brushing against his, peering into places nobody else could see, and then she asked, “And what if you do fail?”

“I won’t,” he replied, standing tall.  “I’m not going to stop this.”

The little vampiress grinned.  “And what about me, hmm?”

A shadow of a smile upon his lips, Wade said, “You’re welcome to try, if you’re feeling masochistic.”

“There’s hope for you yet, Fvienn.”

“Wade.  Unless you want to be called Tiffany from now on.”

With a wild cackle, Raven leaped at the big vampire and wrapped her arms around his neck and encircled his waist with her legs, embracing him tightly and passionately kissing him.  He did nothing to dissuade her, holding her close with his powerful arms, and he returned her kiss with just as much fervor as she showed.