New York City, Fall 1995.

Johnathan Zion had planted stories in the media.  Blade Dangerous, husband Robert, brother Julien, and Julien's boyfriend had been killed when their car exploded on 12th street.  Steven Jewel had been shot by an unknown assailant, possibly the individual who had attacked him once before without ever being caught.  Steven Jewel was recovering and was expected to return to his home shortly.

The recently deceased waited three days and then visited Steven's building.  Robert and Blade found Steven resting in bed.  And they found Helen was with him, the fact that she was unclothed and curled beside him leading them to believe this was not a very professional type of courtesy.  He seemed to trust her. 

Looking into her it seemed to the Vampyres that Helen had been previously misled about many things and now believed Steven's version of the truth. 

"Come to play voyeur again?" Steven laughed and Robert said it was good to see him feeling himself again. 

Steven laughed until it hurt.

They said their good-byes, promised to contact each other. 

Robert left confident that Steven was in good hands.

~~~~

Louis and Julien were already at Joy's when Blade and Robert arrived and it seemed Julien and Joy were in argument. Louis sat on the kitchen counter looking bored, several deactivated listening devices beside him.  Apparently, Louis had set the options down for Julien: either he make Joy one of them right there and bring her along to Paris, or he say goodbye to her for good.  Julien didn't much like his options, and so Louis had one more bright idea.  They would seal a bottle full of Julien's blood and leave it with Joy.  If she ever really needed it, she could drink it.  That way there was more a chance of her surviving long enough for them to find her again.  Even Joy understood they couldn't come back to America, not for a long time. 

And so, they were having this spat.  Julien was saying she should just take the bottle. And Joy was trying to make sense, but the words weren't coming out right, she only made Julien think that she hated him.  But, he caught on eventually: Joy was of the opinion that if Julien loved her enough, he would give her no choice and just do it, take her away with him, while Julien had always thought it better Joy want it badly enough to ask for it, as he'd never been given the choice.  They had a problem.  He wasn't going to choose for her; she wasn't going to ask.

They kept crying out the same things to each other, and every so often Louis would look disappointed and say something like, "You know you can't both be subs."

Julien would glare at him.  "It's got nothing to do with that.  It's such a big thing.  She ought to have a choice, I never—"

"Oh God, please!" Louis shouted, "Not that.  She's the biggest sub, she won't ask, the girl likes being your possession.  Just take her, Julien, give her the blood.  You don't ask her, you just do it!"

You mean rape!

Louis turned away.

Julien left the bottle on the counter near Louis.  Louis hopped down then, sulked to Blade's old room.  Robert and Blade followed him and then Julien did too.  Joy was behind them, shaking and crying, shouting at Julien.

"It's just how Louis says, you can just leave me!  You put your doll away in her dollhouse when you don't want to play with her anymore.  You never cared!"

Robert felt so sad just then.  He almost went back for her himself.  But, Julien went.  He lifted Joy up into his arms and kissed her on the mouth as deeply as he had ever kissed Louis.  He seemed weakened and fell to his knees right there, Joy trying to keep him from leaving her.  You're too weak to deal with this, trust me.  You've got to want things for yourself, and ask for it, before I can give it to you.

Joy lay on the floor crying as Julien left her.  He made just one last promise, "I do love you, and I will be back for you."   And then he joined the others and climbed out the bedroom window into the night.

~~~~

They were split up again, as they had been in the past, only now Robert had Blade living with him and Louis had Julien.  It was easier to keep in contact now; they could telephone, or leave nearly secret messages with a few clicks and keystrokes.  Faye and Min stayed in Japan on one of the smaller islands with two of the Asian Vampyres who were also each other's sisters.  Julien and Louis lived in Paris as they said they would, immediately investing in an art gallery.  Blade bought a house in Mayfair and got a job doing make-up in the West End theaters, while Robert was a poet of sorts. 

They had changed their names.  When Steven and Helen married a few years later, they sent presents and used even more false names on the packages.  Blade went by Angel then, she even went out some nights hunting evildoers, as if imagining herself either a crime-fighter or real Angel.  The others all were well, even Julien, but Angel was becoming mad again.  Or, at least, she seemed mad to them, because none of them saw things as she did.

She was speaking to Robert less and less, and threatening to reveal what she was to friends they made.  Robert told no one.  He was afraid if Louis found out, that he would kill her this time, or at least try.  And alone in his room, Robert knew that if any of them killed Angel, it would give Lucifer cause to trouble them again.  They were wed, and he was always looking for an excuse to hurt his so-called Shadow.

And then, as if to prove she were mad, Angel brought home a child.  She had found this boy, Garin, whom she was calling Ganymede, in a hospital, terminally ill.  Without a word to Robert, her lover and maker, she had turned him.  And he was so young, younger even that Athen had been, only thirteen.  Her name for him suggesting she imagined herself raising this boy to divinity like Zeus. Robert did not know if she understood Lucifer had sometimes portrayed himself as that Lord of Lightening.

She and Robert had a row and it ended pretty indecisively.   Robert retreated to his office and would not come out.  Eventually, Angel came in and tried to make up.  Robert couldn't speak to her without crying.  He felt betrayed, as if she were bound to be his destruction.  "Never again!" He said.

"Oh, but you can do it."

"Never again." 

For a long while they did not speak. Both took measures to hide Ganymede's existence from other Vampyres.  It was decided, without words, that Robert could not bear to think of Blade as a lover again.  He would tolerate the child-Vampyre in the house so long as they tolerated him seeking Human lovers about.  Angel swore she would do the same.

They were getting news that bad things were happening in America.  Steven told them that Vampyres and other inhuman creatures were being hunted quite systematically.  Zion was still in charge of this, and was affiliated with the federal government.  He also said that Joy had taken after Julien.  She was now quite heavily into drugs and did not even hang about her old friends, but spent time with various boys who could supply her habit.  Opium was the only one who came around to see her anymore, and she and Steven had spoken a few times about the troubles there.

And then later, they heard that Joy had died.  The day the world was talking about The Towers, Joy died. There was no mention of the blood.  Robert wondered if Julien and Louis knew.

They heard, a while later that Louis and Julien had left Paris, and had gone to live in Barcelona where Julien owned a disco. And after Spain, they moved to Africa, but even Robert wasn't sure exactly where.

Robert was getting used to Ganymede however.  He blamed Angel for the child, not the child.  The boy was no taller than five foot, from Armenian parents, always very thin no matter how much blood he got, with large deep brown eyes and a mop of dark brown hair.  He had a Cockney accent, but his speech was so littered with Net jargon and slang that Robert hadn't understood half of it without telepathy. 

He was quick and clever.  Angel had given him a camera. He kept himself busy snapping photos and developing them in a basement darkroom, where he often slept.  He took pictures of his victims and left the tacked up on the kitchen walls.  Angel told guests at her parties that it was all theatrical make-up. 

They were all women and girls in the pictures. Ganymede never preyed on men. If there were a reason, Robert never learned it.

And then, just as Robert and Ganymede were getting friendly, Angel started spending time with someone else.  Her name was Ardor, an American with a New Orleans accent, whom had met Angel at the theater while researching a story for a magazine.  Robert learned that Ador was a transwoman - once having lived in the States as a man named Howard Julia, the name she still wrote under, before she began transitioning. Robert feared Angel would turn Ardor before she had a chance to fully experience life as a woman.  He did not want Angel to turn anyone at all.  Their number had been small, intimate.

But, Faye had passed along the teachings of the Old Fathers and Mothers, who warned against turning the young or inexperienced. Would other Vampyres seek-out Ganymede or Ardor, were she turned?

He had only himself to blame, he had fallen in love with Angel, trusted her, and that weakness had let him allow this.  He wasn't sure if Angel were still both rebellious and good.  To him she only seemed mad, killing those she judged evil by some rule that he did not know.  She spoke now of the evil in what was thought good and of the goodness of evil.  Angel said she had been learning, and now served truth.  But still Robert could not know if it was absolute truth she served or only one perception of reality.  He had no way of knowing what the absolute truth even was. 

Finally, Angel did give Ardor the blood.  Robert was sitting at the kitchen table, smoking, when he felt it happen.  Ganymede was sitting on the table itself and seemed to notice something, but it was new to him, the feeling, and so he wasn't sure what it meant. 

Robert sprang up from his chair and ran up the stairs.  He found them in Angel's bedroom, Ardor looking dazed and Angel laughing.  He was across the room in an instant, pinning Angel to the wall.  "What?  You going to kill me?" She asked, still laughing at him, laughing right in his face.

Ardor was nothing but a scream moving away from them.  Robert dragged Angel after him to the door and threw her down the back staircase.  She stumbled into the kitchen, already weak from having given Ardor the blood.  As Robert reached the bottom step he saw Angel careen into the kitchen cabinets, her skull crack. 

Ardor was against the far wall, Ganymede between them.  His eyes were burning.  "You didn't have to kill her!" He shouted and ran at Robert himself.  They both stopped, noticing Angel leaning over the sink, holding her brain from falling into it with one hand, her words incoherent. 

"Yet gout!" She was shouting and gesturing wildly with her free hand.  And then finally the words were spit from her lips, "GET OUT!"

Robert went to the hall where he called Troy from upstairs, and then he left, taking nothing else with him.

~~~~

Robert stayed in London a few days, and then he took Troy and wandered vaguely northward.  He spent a lot of time with himself, spoke to no one, not even his sad victims.  It had happened.  He'd fallen in love with something, let himself become vulnerable, and he had lost her.  He had lost her to a series of illogical beliefs and to Lucifer who greeted her victims nightly. 

Ariella gone because he lied, his Angel lost to him now because he had tried to tell her the truth.  He felt there was no love, or rather he started to wonder if perhaps Angel was right in part, if Love and God were both horrible things. 

He settled down in someone's barn, haunted its loft as Troy prowled the countryside.  Robert knew what would happen, before anyone else, before the politics would play themselves out.  Angel would leave her secret children behind and go back to America.  She would seek out Johnathan Zion and when all was done she would have gained promises from him and would be on his side. 

Angel and Zion would use each other.  She would destroy so many of her own kind, kill Halfangels, the Enim, the Naphaim, the Lilim, ridding the world of petty terrors and at the same time putting so many of them out of their misery.  And she would bring others to Zion, so that he could learn from them, learn of them.  And maybe, in the process, the masses would come to know these creatures, either as terrors as Lucifer once planned or perhaps as equals.  Zion's goal was to learn better ways to destroy them or to use them to make his own kind stronger.  And Angel's goal?  No one knew.

But, eventually, she would make an enemy of everyone who ever loved her.

~~~~

Noon church bells were ringing somewhere.  Daniel had been dreaming that he was at a wedding.  At least he had thought himself at a wedding until he saw the coffin.  He had woken suddenly and pushed himself up from the bed. 

Robert was still lying half beneath him.  He really was a beautiful man, even asleep.  The cheeks were hollowed just so, the tip of the nose formed pleasing angles with chin and forehead, the lips were full and soft, the eyelashes.

The body under him stirred as Daniel got up from the bed.  But Robert settled back into sleep as the curtain closed again.  Daniel was afraid to leave the room.  Last time he had wandered about, the wolf had tried to kill him. 

Daniel fixed a screwdriver at the bar, and then another. 

He stood flipping through the CD collection and saw the name Robert's Pill.  It didn't shock him.  Daniel had known of the group before, even listened to some of their songs.  Somehow, it didn't shock him.  All of that, it seemed a hundred years ago from now.  He thought it might actually have been that long.  Somehow he just shrugged it all off and wasn't frightened.

He thought of Joy, the girl everyone seemed to feel so familiar.  Robert had all but said outright this was the very same creature who had been Isabelle, and Francesca before that, and probably other names in-between.  She probably wasn't dead.  It was no fun thinking about the story with her dying at the end. 

It was no fun thinking that Joy was gone from the world.

Daniel took the Robert's Pill CD from its case and set it in the player.  It started automatically when he closed the drawer.  The Mortal Race this album was called, the cover a black and white head shot of Joy, he knew that it was her.  She looked tense, but very pretty. 

Daniel flipped it over, saw the black-eyed girl.  His eyes went wide.  This was the girl who had given him a place to sleep a week ago.  And if she was also the singer of Robert's Pill, that meant that the girl whose name had always eluded him until now was Opium, was the same girl from the story, maybe even a Halfangel.  Did so many people really live so long?

Daniel put the case down and turned over his shoulder to look at Robert.  He wondered if Robert knew Opium was in LA, or if he had been able to steal the image of her from Daniel's head. 

Something in the lyrics caught Daniel suddenly.  The word flowers.  He listened.  This was not Opium's usual ethereal voice, this was Joy, it had to be.  She was whispering.  Just drown me in flowers, drag me under, take me...there, give it to me, now, taking my last breath, thorns scorch my throat, I'm sinking in flowers, going under the earth....

Oh, Mandy and all his cronies would love that song.  It made Daniel sick thinking of him, the way he'd used them all.  Mandy thought everything was art.  If he hurt you, then your pain became his artwork.  Daniel was Mandy's masterpiece. 

The fact that Mandy had not found Joy familiar proved to Daniel that he was evil.  Sooo evil.  Sooo completely insane.

And there Daniel was, after all this time, trying to avoid, him sleeping in a bed with someone who had also known Mandy.   

"I want to die!" Daniel cried.  He reached up and pulled at his hair. 

Robert's eyes flashed open, caught a glint of light from the doorway.  He sat slowly.

"I want to," Daniel whispered.

For a long time, it seemed very long; Robert stared at Daniel as Daniel began to tremble.

Robert got up, crossed the room.  He stepped close to Daniel, kissed his throat.

"Do it," Daniel said.

And Robert stepped away.  "There's so much you don't know," he said. 

"Yes," Daniel said.  "You speak of a story in which so many people are manipulated, in which no one can be sure of the truth.  You hint at so much, so that I question, and yet I still only question."

"That's the first step.  But, I think my story is over.  And I do not know any more of that creature called Daniel.  There are some things still mysterious to me.  But, unlike the story, my life is not yet over. We all get a lifetime, Daniel, some are quite a bit longer than others; I've seen enough to know that.  But instead of standing here telling me you want to die...well you really ought to seek Truth.   Death won't help you, Daniel.  People like you: they just aren't her thing."

"People like me," Daniel said quietly.  He wondered whose thing he was.

~~~~

Daniel saw the ghosts before him and realized it was Halloween.  He had passed out on the couch upstairs and when he woke he had been alone again.  Something in him had known that Robert had helped him into unconsciousness and that he would not be coming back.  And so Daniel stood in front of the bookstore now wondering where he ought to go.  The girl inside the store was packing up her things and from the long gown Daniel guessed she had a party to go to. 

The door was open when he tried it and Daniel went in. 

"Oh, hello, Daniel...I'm going to be leaving soon," Anne said.

"I'll—"

"No," she smiled, "You can stay a while."  She had a small monitor on behind the counter that she was watching.  Daniel joined her, leaned against the case of shelves behind as he watched.

A pseudo news program.  Limousines and exotic cars were pulling up in front of what looked like a palace somewhere near Los Angeles.  The text on the screen: The Palace Shade.  And from the cars so many beautiful people in formal black clothing.  "—And so many of the locals claim the family are Vampyres.  One thing's for sure, they throw a Hell of a Halloween party."

Anne laughed.  "They never leave them alone.  It's like they have nothing better to talk about now that all the old Hollywood families are moving away and all the big studios have gone to Orlando or Vancouver.  I remember when they first started construction of the palace, it was all they talked about."

"Robert and his family live there?" Daniel asked.

Anne seemed to study him.  "You aren't from LA originally are you?" She asked with a laugh.

Daniel smiled and raked a hand through his hair.  "I'm not sure where I'm from."

She nodded as she switched off the monitor.  "Look, I really have to go, I'm meeting my sister Karen and our friend Daniel for coffee...do you have somewhere to go?"

"Oh, sure," Daniel said though he wasn't sure he knew where.  He thought Anne didn't look quite the type to help him.

"Well there's so many people going to be out tonight...." Anne said as she walked him to the door. 

Sure, Daniel would find someone.  He heard a car pull up just then.  It looked hopeful, classy and black, especially when a rather well heeled man stepped out onto the street, straightened his tie and looked at Daniel.  But then Daniel realized he only looked because he meant to come into the store.  He watched the driver slink from the large black car and join the other man.  They walked toward Daniel, the second one all in black and wearing sunglasses at night.  "Children's Crusade, whose was that then?" Asked the driver.

"Ours I thought."

"And I thought it was ours," said the other.

The rather queer looking man shrugged.  They both smiled at Daniel.  And then the passenger said hello to Anne.

"Hello Mr. Fell," she said cheerily.

"Somewhere to go?" He asked.

"Halloween party."  There were church bells ringing again, "I'll be late," Anne said.  She hurried across the street just as the two men disappeared into the store.

"Going to be a Hell of a party," said the driver as the door was closing.

Daniel stepped across the street.  He started walking, unsure of himself.  As the bells were stopping, he noticed the Church up ahead.  He had no where else to go really, so he tried the door.  It opened for him and as he entered he noticed the sign: Church of the Precious Blood.  Daniel laughed.

He walked through the dark church, constructed of stone, mosaic figures against a background of gold glimmering in the sanctuary.  Daniel walked to the front of the church and sat down in one of the pews.

He must have dozed off again, weak from all the draining of blood, and hungry.  It was a voice that woke him, a prayer? "Not as nice as my house, but I only have the one now.  Do you really hear them, all their Human voices?  I don't imagine they are nearly so harmonious as the Angelic choirs.  After all, Israfel does such a good job."

It was Robert again.  He was in the church, not very far behind.  Surely he must know Daniel was there.

"I still don't understand the resurrection bit, you know.  Perhaps it should be taken as literally as it was written, you travel, leaving your body behind and then returning three days later that immortal part of your would once again give the body life.  Like a phoenix?  You shed your skin and then put it back on?  Oh, how my mind boggles.

"I have been used in so many ways, guided, misguided, manipulated since conception.  But lately I wonder what I do now.  Bring more truths? Show illusion?  Save my own kind once again?  It would be an easy thing to send an Angel to speak for you."

There was a flickering of light, many candles being lit at once, and a smoky sort of smell.  Robert spoke, seeming to be sarcastic, though it was prayer, "A challenge I see.  I'd rather now you hadn't answered.  It will take me until the end of the world to straighten this one out."

"Hello, Shade," said the new voice.

"Are you sure you want him back?" Robert asked God in whisper.

There was a tsk from the other.

"Lucifer," Robert said flatly.

"Talking to God?"

"I was, had a nice little chat."

"I remember those."

"Miss them?"

"It is of no consequence," Lucifer said.

"As you say."

"Don't be coy with me again.  I've beaten you before."

"Have you?"

A stilted laugh.  "Of course I told you I planned you, said you were to be my shadow, and you rebelled against me.  And so I cursed you, said I would take that which you loved, and I did.  Our Angel served me as I said you should have, a complete terror to all creatures...and if I don't say myself she turned out rather well, of course the eyes didn't come out quite violet but the rest is quite good, right down to the rebelliousness and complementary dash of goodness."

"Don't tell me you planned for her to do all this?"

"I won't.  But I will ask you: Do others say I did not plan it?"

"To be honest, it seemed only madness.  I tend to believe you are taking credit for accident after the fact."

"Ah, but the very best part, the very best, my Shade!  If Our Angel did not hunt all the poor inhuman creatures and force them to band together, you could not have been their great savior!  You could not have come from your hiding place with Angel's beautiful brother on your arm to inspire them, to free them from captivity and lead them, and no one but you could have put a stop to Angel's work as you did.  You, Shade, Spawn of one of the Nephillim whom I saved from the flood, my Shadow, you saved all the inhuman creatures from extinction on a planet others willed to Man!"

"No."

"Ah, yes, and so you sit a Lord in your palace with all your powerful and beautiful family about, where no Humans dare to hurt you, not in this city where you pay half the salaries, what better representative on Earth could I ask for, really?"

"I do not have to be their leader."

"Oh, but you will be, because it is the right thing to do, it is unjust how the Humans treated you!"

"I see."

"Oh, my Shade, I know what is wished.  It is wished you might talk me into surrender.  And so we shall be together often.  But what if I talk you into rebellion first?  What if you should become convinced that I am good?"

"I cannot answer that."

"Answer then that you have been beaten.  I've won."

"It is not all over yet," Robert insisted.  "I do still have Angel."

"Oh, I'm sure it won't last."

"You can't free her.  She is justly punished where she is."

"True.  But, she can be freed...but enough of that.  I bore."

"You aren't happy."

"At it already? Trying to convince me of something?  Nothing makes me happy."

"Nothing is what you have, and you are not happy."

"Then I will not be happy."

"You could be.  Surrender."

"No.  It is all that is in my power: to refuse this.  And I shall refuse just as I was refused.  And eye for an eye and all that."

"Love your enemy."

"Oh, but I did," Lucifer said, his voice very low.

And then there was yet another voice, "You!  What are you doing here?"

Robert said, "Hello Father Park.  Forgive the intrusion, I was just talking to God." 

Nervous sounds.

"Why don't you have a seat, that is your chair?"

Daniel saw the priest walk by, dressed in his black, collar a bit crooked as if from dressing in a hurry.  He went up the small step and then, Daniel guessed he sat in the priest's chair. 

"Forgive me not introducing you, This is the Satan Seraphim Lucifer of the Morning Star."  Father Park must have been praying, because Lucifer laughed a hollow sort of laugh.  And then Robert said, "I have seen priests who tremble with fear in a similar position."

"I need only fear The Lord and separation from him if—"

"It's not such a bad deal," Lucifer said, but he couldn't have meant it.  "Ah, but have you met Shade?  Lord of the Nephillim, my minion?"

"Shade?" Asked Father Park slowly.

Robert was the one who laughed.  "This is LA, all the city knows we live in that palace up in the hills.  Most the working class probably helped build it." 

"Have you both escaped from a mental institution?"

"Hardly.  If a parishioner comes to you and says they have been visited by Angels or that God has spoken to them, do you laugh in their face?  No, you are obligated to investigate the claim.  Now, I don't ask that you inform your superiors in the church, but, it is the truth when I say I am as old as the incarnated Christ, and I am no longer Human."

"Are you Catholic?"

"No." Robert answered.  "I could tell you many things—"

"I could tell you many things," Lucifer interrupted.

"—That it was Gabriel who dictated the book to the Muslim prophet Muhammad, that I have met her—"

"Angels are sexless," said the priest.

"Sure we are," scoffed Lucifer.

It seemed the priest ignored the devil. 

"There is something I have long wondered...does the wine really become blood in the chalice?"

"Of course!"

"How do you know?"

"I have faith that it does, Christ told us so.  When I perform the sacrifice of the mass, transubstantiation takes place.  The wine becomes blood, the bread becomes body."

"But it is not proven?"

"Christ gave us the sacrament."

"I could prove it for you.  You see if I drink anything that is not blood it will eventually come up."

"That would be sacrilege!  If you have come here to trick me into sinning be gone now!  In the name of Christ I command you!"

"Even if I came to you along with other parishioners?"

"I would only have to say I knew you were not a member of our church."

"Other Vampyres in other churches?"

"I pray an Angel would stay the hand of the priest."

"Why would they?" Asked Lucifer.

There was a sigh from Robert.  "I am sorry, I have disturbed you.  I only asked...I really wanted to know.  I envy your faith, perhaps."

"Go now."

"Come Daniel," Robert said quietly.  Daniel rose slowly hearing Father Park stammer something.  It looked like Robert was going to apologize but it was Lucifer who spoke. 

"One of them has been here all along?" He asked loudly?  Daniel could see him clearly now, just the way he had been described in the story.  He looked only as tall as Robert, just as thin, but he was as pale and light in coloring, as Robert was dark.

"You know who he is," Robert said plainly. 

Lucifer took a step toward Daniel.  "Start running!" He said.

Robert stepped between them then. 

"Always on their side!"  The Angel spat.

"Go now, Daniel, there is no more truth for you here," Robert said.

Daniel felt his knees shaking, he did want to run, but there was that curious streak in him.  "Who was at the door?" He blurted out.

"It was Death, but as I said, you just aren't her thing," Robert said.

Daniel was already walking backward, eyes staring at the Spawn and the Satan and the priest behind them.  And then things just started to blur.  He started running.