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"Shaper - " Victor crawled to his knees, hands tentatively touching Shaper's shoulder, moving over his back to see if there was any more serious damage. "You're hurt - "

Something moved in the shadows. Something other than settling wreckage and crackling fire hissing in the rain.

"He's seen worse."

Victor's body went tense. Shaper's did. He whirled, peering into the darkness. A tall, lean figure stepped out, long hair hanging lank and wet down the sides of his face. It took Victor a moment to place the familiar face with a name. Shaper knew immediately. He heard a soft exhalation of breath from his injured comrade and on it was a name.

Charon.

"You son of a bitch," Victor whispered, furious beyond measure.

"Such words, for such a little boy." The psycho vampire slid forward, all grace and rolling movement even over debris littered ground. "I'd love to teach you a lesson - but I'd rather teach him one. And I don't have the time to do it here."

Victor's brain went white with anger. The inn was blown to bits. All those within destroyed. All to get at them, the supernatural investigators. And Charon had annihilated it all at a whim. Gone. Simply gone. And he wanted to do the same with them, because somehow, in the twisted avenues of his mind, he'd decided it was a righteous pastime.

Victor didn't think. If he had, he might have given second thought to attacking Charon hands on and without a weapon to his advantage.

The both of them knew Charon could take him down without raising a sweat. It just didn't matter at the moment. Nothing mattered but venting helpless rage.

He rushed in, hoping to take the taller man off balance with a shoulder to his gut, but Charon sidestepped and slammed a fist almost casually down on the side of Victor's head. Then as the raven-haired man was staggering, seeing spectacular stars, Charon caught him with a backhanded swing that knocked him into the brick wall of the building facing theirs. He slumped down in a sprawl of nerveless limbs, dazed and numb and barely retaining enough consciousness to see Charon wipe his hands as if Victor had dirtied him somehow, then turn his attention to Shaper.

Only Shaper wasn't immobile anymore. Shaper lurched up at him with a discarded wine bottle in hand and caught Charon across the cheek with the blunt end of the thing. Charon's head snapped back and he took an involuntary step sideways. He snarled something in Altarian and darted back at Shaper. He was just damned fast. If he'd had his mask, Shaper might have matched the monster's speed on a good day only. If he'd had a weapon, things might have been different. If he hadn't just taken the brunt of that explosion, things might have been. As it was, Charon stepped in close enough to intercept a second swing, took the impact on his arm and slammed an elbow into Shaper's jaw hard enough to make him stagger. Charon caught his arm, wrapping one arm about his upper arm and pressing his lower arm back by the wrist. It was a move likely to snap the joint if enough pressure was applied.

"Bad, bad boy." Charon twisted the arm until Shaper had no choice but to let the bottle drop. Charon caught it before it hit the ground and flung it against the wall by Victor's head. It shattered, sending shards of glass down into Victor's hair. Shaper went down, legs tangled in Charon's, arm still twisted at an unnatural angle. Charon came down on top of him with a knee to his gut that most certainly stole what air hadn't been knocked out of him by the explosion.

A fist tangled in Shaper's hair and yanked his head up, then slammed it back down against the alleyway. "Damned inconsiderate of you to walk out on me when we had such a lovely thing going in that old house of yours."

Again, the dull thud of impact when Shaper's skull hit the ground. "It really pissed me off, my pet. You don't know how much. It'll take such a long time for you to make it up to me. I was really enjoying that fight!"

Shaper made a hissing, angry sound, fingers tearing at Charon's hand in his hair, nails raking gouges in the monster's wrist. The freakish vampire winced and slammed Shaper's head back yet again and again with sickening sharp cracks, hard enough this time so that the rizen's eyes rolled up and his hands folded limply to the ground near his head.

"I thought you'd learned better. I thought we'd gone over this, time and again. You don't fuck with me. I fuck with you. Got it? No? Then I'll reeducate you."

Victor felt sick. Felt the nausea rising in his gut and wanted nothing more than to bend over and expel the insurgence in his stomach onto the litter strewn alley pavement. He found the neck of the broken bottle instead. Numbly wrapped his fingers around it. Somewhere in the distance, he heard the guard approaching. Heard the echoing roar of fire as it traveled up the guts of the building, finishing off everything that was alive.

He couldn't differentiate the rain from the tears.

He lunged forward, slicing the jagged edge of the bottle at Charon's back. Felt it tear through cloth and rip flesh. The vampire howled in shock and pain and spun, reflexively kicking out at Victor's legs. And he was too unsteady to avoid it. He went down; lost his hold on his only weapon and became the center of Charon's malice.

"You little bastard. I'll make you eat that bottle for this." He shifted off Shaper, who wasn't moving, who lay there with his eyes half open, and no mask on his belt. It had likely been sheared off by the explosion or the debris. Either way it left the rizen dazed and useless to Victor.

The guard had arrived, shouting and drawing guns, swords, whatever they had. Victor didn't even hesitate. He started screaming bloody murder.

Charon cursed and promised something dire in Altarian. Whether it was directed at Shaper or Victor, Victor had no idea. He really, truly didn't care at the moment. All that mattered was that help had arrived, ready to finish what Victor and Shaper had started. Ready to avenge the deaths of those who had the simple misfortune of being at the same inn as them... people who had died just being themselves, and those who had died personally at this bloody creation's hands. A creature that somehow, had known Shaper before his death... something that could, and desperately wanted to, harm them both.

He deserved everything he was about to get.

"He's trying to get away! Stop him!!" Victor jabbed a finger desperately at Charon's back, wincing at the first crossbow bolts and gunfire split the air.

Charon hissed, then screamed, high and shrill.

Then, in a heartbeat, it was all over.

Charon was dead, full of so many bolts, bullets and spears to make the thing he was nearly unidentifiable.

Victor smiled, glad it was over at last.

But now, he had something important to do.

Something for Shaper.

Standing up shakily and shaking his head made him dizzy, and spread glass fragments all over. Splatters of blood on the remaining walls all around them showed he wasn't as unharmed as he'd like to think, but he had to find Shaper's mask in all that mess. He stumbled against the wall, and one of the firemen who'd come to tend the blaze moved to help him.

A white flash caught his eye, and he dug in the smoldering embers of the ruins until his bare finger came in contact with the still cold porcelain of the mask. He pulled it out, wiping it off, and shrugging away aid from the rescue team. It was cracked, a long vertical line down the center, spiderwebbing out on either side, but more or less whole. He smiled at, and stood up to take it to Shaper.

That's when he blacked out.

When the world again became visible, Victor was half-dressed, and lying in a hospital bed. Shaper was very still and pale, lying in the next bed over. There was no air compressor, no heart or brain monitors hooked up to the rizen at all. He didn't even seem to be breathing. The mask, cleaned up and repaired as best it could have been by one of the town potters, sat on the table between them. Amy sat sleeping in a chair by the door, in what looked like a cramped position. Victor sat up, wincing at the stiffness and bruises from the battle, and took a closer look at the rizen.

Shaper was snoring softly, proving he was deeply asleep, and not dead. Funny how white sheets make those who were already deathly pale look worse.

The room was dimly lit by the door and window into the hallway... there was no window to the outside world, but by the fact Amalthea was sleeping, the dark-haired drifter assumed it was daytime.

He rubbed his eyes and sat down on the bed again. There was a bandage over his eye, and another on his cheek. Behind him, an orderly peeked in, squeaked and dashed off. A few moments later, a doctor came in.

"You're awake already?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"The amount of damage we found done to you was... staggering. You shouldn't have been walking around."

"I get that a lot." He scratched the top of his head and winced.

"Besides that, we tranked you and you shouldn't have woken up until tomorrow."

"I get that a lot too," Victor muttered with a wry smile, wishing for a smoke. "Look, the vampire that attacked us... is he dead?"

"You saw him filled with crossbow bolts and bullet holes and you ask that."

"Detective Hillman!"

"In the flesh. The dry flesh, that front finally past."

The doctor let Victor and Detective Hillman talk as he looked over Shaper, and looked more than a little shocked.

"But - he... he was dead not more than three minutes ago. I sent for the morgue gurney and now he's... he's alive and SLEEPING! What the HELL is he?"

Victor looked at the doctor.

"You don't catch on quick do you?" Victor said. "He's not human. She's not human."

"You're not human!" the doctor said, backing away. "I knew nothing could survive scars like that."

Victor sighed again. "You got it wrong, I'm the only one who is. But we aren't harmful. So don't get your knickers in a twist." He groaned and pushed his bangs out of his eyes. He really needed that smoke. And possibly a drink. There was no way they could stay in this town now.

Shaper yawned, and sat up. He looked down at the bandages swathing his chest and belly, then blinked pale green eyes at Victor. Green. Not red.

Victor blinked, rubbed his eyes, and looked again. The pale green orbs were still there, implanted in Shaper's head.

"What the hell happened to your eyes, Shape?"

"I don't know, they're my eyes, I can't exactly see them." Shaper blinked, and pulled a mirror off the table on the other side of himself, blinked, and looked again. "I... I don't know. But... what was Merrill, is gone. Like it was just a dream. But I bet the mask just has a demon stuck inside it now..." He looked at it, and picked it up. "Cracked, then fixed. I can feel it. Maybe the break let Merrill's spirit free, to finally rest? Or Charon's death. Hell, I dunno. I just wanna get out of here, and get a drink."

That's the most half ass idea I've ever heard, and you've had some whoppers."

Amy yawned, and began to wake up.

"Merrill? Merrill Foxhunter?" Detective Hillman raised an eyebrow, studying Shaper's face. "Demon?"

"Way to be subtle, Shape. This should be good." Victor snorted and sat down on the edge of the bed, dividing his attention between the kibbling doctor and what else was going on. He was nowhere near as steady on his feet as he'd pretended to be. Amy saw he was sitting up and glompted him lips moving silently, as she kissed his face and eyes.

"I thought you looked familiar."

"Wha... What do you mean?" Shaper asked, smiling disarmingly, and looking around for his clothes. "I'm not Merrill."

"You made that pretty clear. I want the whole story. And I want it now."

"I have to wait that long for a smoke?" Victor asked plaintively.

Shaper sighed.

"Can we do this someplace I can eat REAL food, get some booze in me, and Victor can get his smoke before he hurts me?"

"Hurting you is only the beginning," Victor said, and tossed Shaper some pants. "Detective Hillman, let's get out of here before the Doctor tries to arrest us for upsetting his worldview."

"He couldn't do that."

"Arresting someone for upsetting your worldview usually involves a large weapon," Shaper pointed out, struggling into the pants. "Agg. They must have shrunk."

"Something like that," Victor muttered.

Detective Hillman took them to his favorite tavern. When they were all seated, and their orders were taken, Victor lit up and looked at Shaper. "This is all you, Shape. I want to see how you explain it." He smiled a mere upturning of the corners of his mouth, at Hillman. "If he fucks it up too badly, I'll explain it so it makes sense, but I want to hear him do it. Some days he's almost coherent."

Shaper toyed with his glass of whiskey, and sighed.

"I... I used to be Merrill. Only, when he died, the demon he summoned melded to him and kept a tiny spark of life within. I was taken, thought to be little more than a dead corpse, to a lab someplace and they brought me back. God only knows how. But they brought me back. Only, I wasn't Merrill anymore. I was something else. I met up with Victor, and we traveled around a lot. Righting wrongs and shit. When we came here, I had this sense of deja-vu. Like I knew everyone, and everything here. And Charon showed up, somehow drawing Merrill back to the surface, and it became a mental battle of control. In the end, Charon got his come uppance, and I'm... just me again."

Hillman blinked, and raised an eyebrow, as if he didn't believe any of it.

"And who are you? Merrill? Shaper? Or the demon?"

Shaper sighed and took a gulp from his glass.

"Detective, I never really knew who I was to begin with. But since I started calling myself Shaper, I suppose that'd be who I am now."

"And who is that?" he demanded archly.

"Me." The rizen spread his fingers and gulped down his drink, before refilling it from the bottle on the table.

"Do you really think that's enough?"

"What more do I need to be?"

Victor snorted and drank his shot. "Shape, people have been trying to define themselves for hundreds of thousand of years; since Caine slew his brother; since God sent them out of Eden. And no one - no one - has ever been allowed to simply say 'This is who I am.'" He leaned back. "And most of 'em aren't half as fucked up as you." He took a drag of his clove, and sighed. "Hillman, you willing to accept what Goth-boy said, or do you want my version of what happened?"

"I'll take what he said," the detective sighed, lighting his own smoke.

"Fine." Victor exhaled smoke. "We'll be leaving in the morning. Soon as the stable I'm keeping Damyew at opens."

"Damyew?"

"Long story," sighed the slight black haired man.