Elenore Rigby

By Willow Taylor

Elenore had an extra room, and let Victor sleep in it. For this, he made sure that the ever growing presence of the gangs didn't touch her. She lived outside the neighborhood of St. Patrick's, and though the immediate area was much nicer to live in, the areas outside it were only getting worse. Victor's mother had given him oblique permission to stay away from the guild, after they'd attempted to shock something out of him by hooking him up to an electric turbine. It had mainly succeeded in ruining his shorts, and making him smell like ozone. But he was worried about something else now-since he was associated with Elenore - would she be in for trouble from the guild now? Could her innocently extended aid make her a target. Victor had the sinking feeling that he made everyone around him a target.

Damian was confused, and he did not like that at all. The information about the black boy had finally come in. He appeared to be a vampiric werewolf hunter named Ma'kar Plander - people who had known the sullen, nasty man had ID'ed him as such. However, the human gangs had seen him in daylight, and none of his actions matched that of the man who he appeared to be. Besides which, most reports had Plander dead over a year ago by a werewolf who got the better of him. So there was only one thing to do.

Victor heard someone coming up behind him and turned. There was nothing there but shadows.

"Damn it, come out and face me, buggers," he spat and figures melted out of the shadows. They circled him warily. "What do you want?" he asked.

"Just wanna ask some questions." Victor suddenly felt the sharp crack of something against the back of his head.

"Oh shit," he thought, crumpling to his knees. A second blow followed the first, sending him sprawling to the pavement in darkness.

When Victor woke up, he could feel that time had passed. Days maybe. That and he really needed to pee. Swaying on his feet he found himself a corner of the room and relived himself, looking around as he did. He was locked in a large round stone room, with a grating far above his head, set in iron bars - where the sun would fall through most of the day.

"Well it's a lucky thing I'm not a vampire," he grumbled. It wasn't the guild then, because they knew he wasn't. Which meant somehow, he'd acquired another enemy - one that was powerful enough to rent the dozen bullyboys that had surrounded him and kept him busy while someone else knocked his skull in with a blackjack. Well, chances were that they'd come see him, or bring him to them now that he was awake. Victor sat down, and out of boredom began doing pushups.

Damian was richly confused. He'd had in an old lover of Ma'kar Plander, who he thought this was - and she'd tasted his blood.

"Oh, Master Damian," she wailed. "I don't know what it is! My eyes and hands tell me it's Ma'kar - but the blood is different - too warm!" He shushed her with a wave of his hand. It was obvious the small vampire was scared - chilled to her very bones. Because quite frankly, she was making no sense. The master had her sent away. He was going to have to take the direct route. What a bore.

Victor had carefully scaled the wall, and had his arms looped through the grating, staring out at the countryside. Well, what he could see. It appeared he was in some sort of dry well, that only stuck out a yard from the ground. A well with a window. This had no other purpose but to immolate vampires. It was an oubliette.

"Lovely," Victor sighed and dropped the thirty feet back down to the floor. Suddenly a solid wall opened up, revealing a tall, dark and well dressed man. He was everything Victor was not, well groomed, neat, and imposing. Victor leaned against the wall and regarded him through half closed lids. "I don't suppose you brought my smokes with you?" he asked nonchalantly.

Damian raised an eyebrow.

"Do you know who I am?"

"Nope, name wasn't on the guest towels," Victor said wryly.

"I am Damian."

"And I'm Victor." Despite his flippancy, Victor recognized the name. Damian had a hell of a reputation. And here Victor was, totally unarmed.

"Really?" Damian elegantly arched his eyebrows.

"Who else would I be?" Victor demanded.

"That is what I wish to know." Damian said. "You appear to be a vampire, and yet reliable sources tell me that is not the case."

"I'm my mother's son," Victor said with a small twitch of a smile.

"Ah..." Damian, as he spoke was tasting the energy of Victor's aura. "There was Guild Regalia with your things - yet no medallion. You are not a hunter?"

"Everyone hunts in one way or another," Victor said, lacing his fingers behind his head.

"I could kill you."

"But you won't." Victor's smile was bright and quick.

"Are you sure of that?"

"If you'd wanted me dead, I'd be dead. So you're either going to let me go, or keep me here."

"Do you think yourself wise?"

"Oh I know I'm a wiseguy."

"True." Damian regarded the flippant youth solemnly. Then he spoke again. "If I let you go, I will need to assure myself that you are no longer a danger to my operations. So I will tell you this: no one around you will be safe. You'll live, because it amuses me to keep you so, but no one around you will ever be safe again."

"You bastard touch my mother and - " Victor launched himself without thinking and found himself against the wall with what felt like loose teeth.

"Your mother, your friends at St. Patrick's. No one will be safe." He snapped his fingers, as if he had not just knocked Victor sprawling across the room, and a servant came in with a tray. On it were Victor's knives, gloves, gun, belt and pouch. Over one of the servant's arms was draped his jacket.

"So what do you expect me to do?" demanded Victor, spitting a bit of blood out onto the floor. He licked his lips, getting the thin trickle that had escaped off his face.

"I don't know." Damian smiled maliciously. "That's the game." Victor slowly put his weapons back where they belonged, and slipped into his jacket. Then he lit a smoke.

"You're going to get yours Damian. Someday."

"Perhaps, but not from you."

"It doesn't matter. God'll see to it."

Damian chuckled. "You know I think you really believe that." He gestured again, and for the second time in a handful of days, Victor was knocked unconscious.

When he woke up, he was draped in the lap of an angel on the front of St. Patrick's. To be honest, half way up the front of the church. Getting down was easy - how he'd gotten up there was beyond him. He put it down to the master vampire's sick sense of humor.

For three days, Victor wandered the city, thinking. He didn't sleep in that time, he only wandered. He wandered down the magic district, where he picked up a new pouch. He wandered to a gun shop, where he bought more bullets for his gun - and a small derringer. He wandered from one end of the city to the other. At last, he stopped and in the middle of the night, woke his mother up. They spoke briefly, and embraced - then he went on his way again.

Elenore woke up in the middle of the night to someone tossing stones at her window. She looked out and saw Victor on the lawn, wearing a new leather duster. Down the stairs she went, putting her glasses on. "Victor where have you been I've been worried about you."

"You have? That's flattering."

"Come inside, I'll make you some tea," she started.

"No."

"What?"

"I can't stay here any more Elenore," Victor said with a sigh. "I'm putting you in danger."

Elenore pushed her glasses up her nose and tucked a straggle of hair behind one ear. "But Victor - you have to stay. You're such a very big help." She chewed on her lower lip. Don't go, now that I've finally gotten up the guts to talk to you in real life.

"I have to. I don't want you killed because of me."

"Will you ever come back?"

"Oh yes," Victor said with a smile, making her look up at him. "I'll be back when you need me most."

Elenore watched as he walked away, watched until long after he'd disappeared in the buildings down the street. He'd said he was going to walk east. Maybe she could head east too, after she got out of college. Maybe she'd find him again, and he'd teach her how to be strong like him.

The young woman's world dissolved back into daydreams.

For a year, Elenore waited for Victor to come back, as the world got worse and worse round her. The vampires gained power, and the little good they'd done dissolved. Rumors floated back into the city about an Angel in the countryside. A dark angel, but one who would help those who needed it, then disappear. Elenore was sure that was news of Victor. Almost a year to the day from when he left, a gang broke into the church as Elenore cleaned. Father McKenzie was out somewhere seeing to a dying member of the parish. So he missed the death of one of his most faithful followers. It was a bloody painful death, leaving only her face intact. She screamed for help, but no one came, the only ones who heard her shriek out to God and to Victor were the carved angels of the vault above her.

A few days later, Father McKenzie buried her. There was only him and the gravedigger in the graveyard. Everyone else was afraid to catch the attention of the gang that had done her in. The prayer for the departed ended, and the gravedigger began shoveling clots of dirt into the plot with great speed. Father McKenzie turned, and started to walk away, staring at his hands.

"What good have I done in the long run? I can do nothing more than one man's hands can do - and that is so little." He wiped the grave dirt from his hands onto his trousers and disappeared inside the parish house.

The good Father worked a good ten more years to try and help his city. But when it came time for him to die, the church was closed up, and he was alone. No more people came to his burial than had come to Elenore's.

And no one mourned the death of St. Patrick's Cathedral.