The story makes a bit more sense if you're familiar with the Vampire: The Masquerade game. Daniel is a vampire hunter character with True Faith. As a Wiccan, you can imagine it was a bit of a stretch for me to write a Roman Catholic. (Did that sound bad?)

By the way, I'm fully aware of the similarities here to The Crow. Personally, I think it's hard for anyone who's seen that movie and then tries to write anything about loss and vengeance to not be influenced by it.

Finally, I would also like to say that I wrote this story before I decided to get my own homepage. The location of Adrianna Devereaux's home is an odd coincidence. :)

The confession booth was small, cramped, and dark, smelling of sweat and desperation. Daniel contorted himself until he could fit into it, something under his coat raking across the wooden seat with a sound reminiscent of fingernails on a chalkboard. Irritably, he pushed it away from his body and sat down. Immediately, he started squirming uncomfortably. His hands and legs were striped with light coming through the latticework wall.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned," he said, his voice quavering. "It has been longer than I can remember since my last confession."

"What is your problem, my son?" the priest said.

"It’s a long list, Father," Daniel said, a sad smile creasing his face. "I killed a woman last night."

The priest reacted with shock, but that didn’t surprise Daniel. He could hear the priest start forward in his seat. "Why, my son? Such an act has surely damned your soul."

"That’s the thing. Is it a mortal sin to kill one who is already dead?"

"What? My son, you have taken leave of your senses." The priest settled roughly back into his seat.

"I don’t think so, Father. That’s why I’m so scared."

"My son, you should not be here. You should be at a hospital-"

"I’m not insane." The words rang with conviction. "I desperately wish I was. Then maybe she would still be alive." That last was said mostly to himself. He looked through the latticework, at the priest’s face, open-eyed and sweating. Daniel felt very calm. "Phantasms don’t kill people, Father."

The priest did not speak, just gazing back at him.

Daniel sighed, and held his right hand against the latticework. There was a plain silver ring on his index finger, too slim and delicate for his hand. "This would have been her wedding ring, Father. Her name is Elisa Wiest, and she is the most beautiful, kindest woman I have ever known. She is also dead."

"My son, I’m begging you-"

Daniel ignored him, and began talking. "I came home at four in the morning. I’d finally sold a painting, for four thousand dollars, more money than I’d ever had at one time, and I used it to buy her a wedding ring. I knew I could make a living, so I was going to ask her to marry me. Unfortunately, on the way home, I lost my nerve, and stopped for a few rounds at a bar near my apartment.

"I walked in, about half-drunk or so, and she was in bed. The thing was, there was a man with her. I thought for a moment that she was cheating on me, and I almost walked back out, and I would never have come back.

"Then I noticed one of the shadows on the bed was too dark to be a shadow, it was a pool of something, and tackled the man on top of her. He barely budged, and then I saw his fangs, gleaming in the light from the street, but I was drunk and didn’t remember it until later."

The priest’s eyes were shifting around, like he was looking for an escape. Daniel realized that for once, the priest was the one feeling unease in the booth, and pitied him for a moment.

"Shouldn’t you be talking to the police?" His voice shook with fear, like he expected Daniel to come through the wall after him.

"Yes, I should, but I’d really rather not have to break out of a state mental hospital. I need to tell someone this, Father. If I fail, then someone has to know where I’ve gone. Someone needs to take my place if I disappear."

The priest was silent, so he continued.

"The man threw me through the window like a rag doll. The only thing that saved me from death was catching the fire escape with my arm; even then, I dislocated my shoulder. When I managed to pull myself back into the room, Elisa was-" he swallowed hard, "-already dead. Her throat was slit.

"I don’t know how long I was there after that. Time kind of..." he scrabbled for a phrase, "ceased to have meaning.

"But, she had managed to do one thing for me. There was a matchbook in her hand, with a phone number scribbled on the back. I took it and left the apartment, leaving no sign I was ever there that night.

"That was what led me to Adrianna Devereaux. I knew of her. She was an art dealer in Soho. I’d heard of people selling paintings to her; they always got more than they were worth, by far. People thought she was running a forgery ring, for as much as she would pay. I called my agent from a pay phone at nine the next morning, and told her to set me up an appointment with Devereaux."

"What did you do then?" The priest seemed to have regained his composure.

"She got back to me an hour later, and told me that I was to meet Devereaux at seven that night, in her loft in Soho. I spent the rest of the day waiting for it.

"My plan was to walk in, throw the matchbook on the table, and ask her if she knew Eliza, but it didn’t turn out that way. Big surprise. I walked in, and was grabbed by two men the size of bears. She was sitting in a high-backed chair in the middle of the room, looking at me as if I was something good to eat. As it turned out, I was.

"She said to me, ‘An acquaintance of mine-you might know him; he thought he had killed you-said you were probably going to come looking for me, so I decided to bring a few friends. I hope you don’t mind.’ She had a thick French accent. Arrogance came off of her in cold waves.

"‘What do you know about that motherfucker who killed Elisa?!’ I screamed, as if the name would mean anything to her. ‘I swear, I’m going to rip your head off-’

"‘You are not in any position, my love, for bravado. I would recommend a little bit more discretion, if you wish to live out the night.’ She got out of the chair and walked towards me. I struggled, but it didn’t do any good. ‘But, if you really want to know,’ she said, whispering into my ear, ‘I recommended her to him. She was just his type, if you’ll pardon the pun.’ That’s when I saw the fangs slide out from underneath her gums, and I thought my mind had skipped off the track.

"‘Vampire,’ I said, softly, wonderingly.

"‘Very good,’ she said, and began to trace along my carotid artery with one finger. ‘Seldom do I have a night’s repast delivered right to my door like this. I almost want to thank you.’ She began to move toward me, but something stopped her."

Daniel paused for almost a minute.

"What?" the priest asked. "What stopped her?"

Daniel looked at the priest. "If I had to tell you, I’d have to say it was God."

"There was a flash of light, and for a second I thought someone had shot me. She and her two goons fell away, clutching at their eyes, and my vision cleared to find her running away from me like I was everything she had ever feared. The goons were just looking at me in sick awe. I still don’t know what they saw instead of me, but it must have scared them out of their minds. One of them, almost as if it were an afterthought, raised a gun and pointed it at me.

"‘Thank you,’ I said, and took it out of his hand. I was kind of proud of that. He didn’t really resist. ‘Now get out of here.’ They were out the door almost before I realized it, and I slipped the gun into my belt.

"Adrianna was cowering against the far wall, her fangs out, and as I approached, she hissed at me like an animal, beyond speech or understanding. As I looked at her, I noticed a mini-bar against the far wall, and got a bottle of whiskey out of it. I was moving through a dream, and I hoped I would wake up to find Elisa alive and the sun shining on us both, in a world where there were no such things as vampires.

"‘Get away,’ she said to me, as I stood over her. I realized it wasn’t a dream, and twisted off the cap of the whiskey bottle.

"‘Who killed Elisa?’ I asked her, almost conversationally. I sipped at the neck of the whiskey bottle, then poured a generous helping over her clothes and hair. She glared at me from underneath a mop of wet hair, fear and anger mixed up in her expression.

"‘I’ll rip your heart out, mortal! I will make you scream for a thousand years!’ "‘Promises, promises.’ I poured some more over her. The smell was burning my nostrils. ‘Tell me what I want to know. I don’t remember much about vampires from when I was a kid, lady, but,’ and I took the matchbook with her phone number out of my jacket pocket, ‘I figure you’ll at least feel this.’

"She looked at me, her eyes blazing. Her face was twisted beyond being recognizable as human. Beads of blood, like sweat, were running down her face and dotting her hands. ‘I never knew his real name. He’s gone. You’ll never find him.’

"‘Yes, I will, sweetie, because you’ll tell me where he went.’ I tried to sound merry. I didn’t feel merry. ‘Where did he go, Adrianna?’

"‘He said he was going to Maryville, Missouri. They called him there! Now, leave, or I’ll shred your heart!’

"‘What is it you said? "You are not in any position, my love, for bravado." I lit a match. ‘What’s his name?’

"It launched itself at me, and I dropped the match on its hair as I fell back under its weight, and the whiskey that had soaked into its dress went up like a Roman candle. Suddenly, I was on the floor-across the room-and a burning angel had me in her arms. Nothing seemed so right as to have her sink her fangs into my neck, and I knew in a rush why Elisa hadn’t been struggling when I had walked in. I had no idea why I had been chosen for this honor, but I swore to be worthy of it, and stopped fighting her. Then, fire climbed over her eyes, and the spell was broken. I pushed its burning corpse off of me.

"Before the building burned down, I took a few things from her loft. Some old book, a vase, some jewelry, which I pawned for supplies and a plane ticket, and a diary I figure belonged to her. There wasn’t much in it-just a bunch of veiled comments about the other ‘Toreador,’ whatever the hell those are, and a bit about some priest who’d tried to kill her about a hundred years ago with holy water and a cross. Apparently, those won’t work."

Daniel leaned his head back. "Do you still think I’m crazy, Father?"

"No. I don’t, my son."

Daniel’s eyes opened wide. The voice was different. Didn’t even hear him...shit! He reached under his coat...

"I think you’re dead." The wall between booths exploded into splinters as a hand reached through underneath the lattice, like the wood wasn’t there. Daniel managed to roll forward, through the curtain, pulling his gun from his belt as he went, knocking the wind out of himself when he hit the church’s floor. He noticed the priest, lying unconscious (he hoped) next to the other booth.

"Did you think you could kill a Kindred and just walk away, Lickstick?!" the vampire growled from inside, pulling his arm out of the wall. It was a man with dirty black hair, wearing sunglasses, a black leather jacket with the symbol for anarchy upside down on its back, and faded jeans. Its fangs were already out as it pushed past the curtain.

"You talk too much."

It looked at him in surprise, just before he put a round through its forehead. The pistol shot resounded in the church like the crack of doom. The vampire rocked back for a moment, then adjusted the sunglasses and smiled at him.

"You’ll have to do better than that-"

Daniel blew its right eye out with his next shot. Kindred. They call themselves Kindred. He filed that information away. While it recovered from that, he shot it twice more, hitting high chest, then ran for the door.

Unfortunately, the doorway was full. Another man stood in it, wearing an expensive silk suit and an expression of anger. There was a rose in the lapel.

"Daniel. Come to me, Daniel. Daniel, you want to come right here."

Daniel walked towards him. He could feel the man’s will pushing against his, trying to take control, and he reached underneath his coat, to the pocket he’d sewn into it.

"That’s a good boy, Daniel, come right here." A bead of blood oozed from under the man’s hairline. Its eyes burned into his. "Now drop the gun, Daniel."

The pistol clattered to the floor. The other vampire smiled, his fangs pushing their way out. Daniel was close enough to smell the man’s cologne. It took a careful step toward him, its eyes on his neck.

"You never said anything about this gun, pal." Daniel pulled the sawed-off shotgun out of its hiding place-the man, shocked, never reacted-and gave it both rounds in the chest. At this range, almost point-blank, the double-ought buck shredded the man. Its arms and head bounced free of the shattered ruin of its upper torso, which remained standing for a few moments longer before slumping over. The smell of decay and rot was almost overpowering.

What was all of that crap with my name? he wondered. He’d changed it when he’d turned eighteen-maybe his name gave them some kind of power? For that matter, how did they know he’d killed Adrianna? Then he remembered-the henchmen. Next time, he’d have to make sure nothing survived, and the thought made him very cold.

He knelt to pick up the pistol, and saw the other man, the wounds in its head all but closed, stalking down the church’s length towards him. The pistol was worthless, and the shotgun was empty-now what? Daniel, not seeing an alternative, pulled the flagpole next to the door down from its mooring and waved it at the coming vampire.

"Ooh, I’m scared. Save me from the scary man with the flag..." the man taunted him, weaving around in some kind of martial-arts stance. At some point, its hands had elongated, the fingers turning into deadly-looking black talons. "I should really thank you, though. Vincent was a pansy of the first order. I’d been wanting to do that myself for the longest time...anyone who knows that much about Dominate doesn’t really deserve to live, in my own humble opinion." He looked at Daniel with the same hunger Daniel had recognized in Adrianna, the same arrogance, the same cold smile. "Ready to die?"

The man rushed him, moving faster than Daniel’s eyes could track, and Daniel convulsively lashed out with the flagpole. There was an impact that jarred him to his very bones, but when Daniel looked up, he wasn’t dead. The vampire was impaled on the tip of the flagpole, the American flag emerging halfway out his back, covered in blood and worse. It seemed completely unable to move. Daniel let the creature drop to the floor, and reloaded his shotgun. His eyes met the vampire’s, which were alive and moving. I guess that wooden stakes work. Who’ve thought it?

"Ooh, I’m scared. Save me from the scary vampire with the claws," he said. His smile was ice, every bit the match of its own.

The vampire’s eyes tried to open wide, but could not.

"Goodbye." Daniel blew its head off.

The priest wasn’t dead, just the victim of a nasty knock to the head. Daniel brought him around after a couple of minutes.

"What in the world happened-Good Lord!" The church was covered in blood. The booth was in ruins, and the door was almost painted with blood. Both of the vampires had begun to shrivel up in death, their bodies losing their supernatural coherency.

"Two more of the ‘figments of my dementia’ came after me, Father. They won’t be bothering me again." Daniel took a deep breath.

"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been-" he checked his watch, "-five minutes since my last confession. In that time, I’ve killed two men, but they were already dead. What penance should I do?"

The priest waved his hand at him, his eyes on the decaying bodies. "Don’t worry about it."

Daniel looked at him. "I won’t." He looked at the two bodies, and saw Adrianna Devereaux’s face, enchanting even as the flesh burned off of her skull. The memory would be with him for the rest of his life. "But they will." And he walked out of the church, to catch a flight.

Nine o’clock, to Kansas City.

I’m coming, Elisa.