"The Road We Walk"

by Chris Davies

He could never bring himself to sleep on an aeroplane. The memory of his first voyage into the sky was still with him, and every time he felt the vast body defy gravity, a surge of wonder ran through him. Wonder, aye, and terror too.

Aethan looked out of his window seat at the cloudbank beneath the plane. Through gaps, he could see the vast blueness of the Pacific. So much water.

As he sometimes did, he wondered what would happen if the plane developed engine trouble, and it crashed into the ocean below. There would be a great loss of life, truely ... but what would happen to him, should he survive the crash, and be forced to step into a life raft.

He visualized himself, afloat on the open sea. A wave breaking over the small craft, smashing him into the water. And then ... he did not know. He had never seen for himself the true effects of immersion in running water upon his kind.

"Certes, you'd be so seasick you might welcome death ..."

"Excuse me?"

Aethan shook himself out of his revery. The middle-aged, bespectacled man in the seat beside him was staring at him. Aethan, Aethan thought sourly, if you must think out loud, could you possibly do so in Latin, so no-one will know what you're thinking about? 'Twill be less painful on your dignity.

Oh, shut up you old windbag, Aethan answered his own thought.

"I was just thinking about a rather unpleasant possibility ..." Aethan explained.

"Ah. My pardon."

The bespectacled man went back to reading his book. He was, if Aethan guessed right, Japanese. A native of the land to which Aethan was voyaging.

A land of dragons, ghouls, and spirits; and also, if more modern legends were to be believed, giant dinosaur-things and warrior women who ran around in sailor suits.

What, Aethan wondered idly, will they make of a thoroughly unextraordinary, run-of-the-mill, fourteen-hundred year old vampyre from Sussex?

* * *

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"

Minako was very conscious of being in the immediate vicinity of the centre of attention for the entire airport terminal. EVERYone was staring, even the disembarking passengers who had no idea what was going on ...

Serena was clinging to Darien, whose hands were filled with his luggage, and crying her eyes out at a decibel level beyond the dreams of rock and roll guitarists. The other Scouts were hanging back, more from a desire to avoid getting Serena's tears all over their clothes than out of any hope of avoiding being associated with the hysterically weeping teenager.

"Serena, I've really gotta get going ... my plane's boarding ... they won't wait for me ..."

"I don't WANNNNNAAA! You might not come back!"

"Serena, it's only for a week! What could possibly happen?"

"There could be a revolution! Yeah, and they might seal up the queen in the tower, and you'd have to go lead a desperate attack to rescue her, and GET KILLLED!"

"Great idea, letting her borrow your collection of "The Rose of Versailles" the night before Darien goes to France," Lita muttered to Mina.

Darien let out a sigh, dropped his luggage, and lifted Serena's face from his drenched shirt. "That won't happen," he explained patiently. "France is a republic now ... and besides ..." his voice dropped, "... you know you're the only queen I ever want to save, meatball head ..."

"Oh, muffin ..."

"Oh, gag me," Raye muttered. Mina shot a look at her that said, in crystal clear kanji, drop it.

Darien had just about disentangled Serena's arms from around him, when a second look of raw panic erupted on her face, and she clamped tight again. "What if killer tomatoes come after you and eat you up and I never see you AGAAAAAAAINN?!?!"

"And whose bright idea was it to watch that stupid American movie last night?" Mina whispered to Lita.

"Serena! You're being silly. There are no such things as killer tomatoes! The whole idea is as silly as ... as ..."

"Pretty Sailor Suited Warriors For Love and Justice?" Amy asked straight-faced.

They all turned and stared at her. Amy flushed.

Darien took this chance to get out of Serena's tight embrace, and back away. "Serena, I'm just going to France for a week, to study at a fencing academy. That's all. I'm not going to go leaping around Paris, battling evil by moonlight. I'll be careful. And I'll come back. And now I have to get on my plane!"

He took off at a run for the gate, pausing just before he stepped through door. "Good-bye, Meatball Head! I love you!"

The plane's landing gear hit the ground, and the jolt ran up Aethan's spine. He was, truely, in Japan. Practically the other side of the Earth from England. Perhaps I should name myself Aethan Farwalker ... Wotan knows I've gone further than any of my clan ever did.

"Thank you for flying Northwest Orient's Seattle-to-Tokyo express," the stewardess enthused. "Please enjoy your stay in the Land of the Rising Sun, and we hope you fly with us again."

Aethan rose from the seat, stretched once, pulled on his trenchcoat and fedora, and started to walk to the plane's gate. He studied his phrasebook intently as he walked up the passageway.

He'd learned bits and pieces of Japanese during his brief alliance with the U.S. government during the Second World War, and had augmented his vocabulary since. His accent was, he had been told, only somewhat atrocious, and he had quite accidentally developed the knack of knowing how to bow.

Aethan was reasonably certain that his command of the language would be enough to do what he'd come to do.

Serena stared at the plane, face pressed to the window, as it taxied down the runway. She held her position as it took off, and disappeared out of sight.

She sniffed once, turned around, and smiled at her friends. "Gee, I think I handled that rather well."

Had they been in an anime, this would certainly have been cause for a face fault. As it was, all that the girls could muster were a series of disgusted, disbelieving looks in Serena's direction.

"Heh-heh ... I think I deserve a nice cream soda after that. Let's go!"

Serena dashed off in the general direction of the terminal's restaurant. In typical Serena manner, she focused only on the restaurant, not noticing anything else.

Like the tall, slender, trenchcoated man engrossed in his book who stepped, completely unaware, into her path.

She slammed into him at full speed, and they both hit the floor hard. Serena had the breath knocked out of her, while the tall foreigner seemed more startled than anything else.

Aethan blinked, and stared at the young lady who'd just knocked him over. She was blonde, had a certain ingenue quality, and was gasping for air.

"I'm sorry, I ..." he began in English.

/I'm so so sorry, I .../ she started to say in Japanese.

They paused, re-evaluating the situation.

/I must apologize for my error .../ Aethan continued in Japanese.

"O, so solly! So very ..." she began in English.

They paused again.

The girls had seen the crash, and come running to help Serena, and to a lesser degree the guy she had smashed into, back to their feet.

He was a westerner, of course. English, it seemed. His hair was a sort of mix of dark blonde and light brown, and his eyes were a very deep green.

Mina listened with wry amusement to their linguistic difficulties. "I think my friend is trying to apologize," she explained to the tall foreigner, in her almost accentless English.

The traveller blinked. "I ... gatherered that much."

"She doesn't speak much English, though ... the school system is pretty terrible in that respect ..."

"It was really my own fault," he said. "I wasn't watching where I was going ... erm ... /I apologize for making you fall, small lady/" he said in ... well, reasonable Japanese. It wasn't his fault that he didn't know the connotations of that particular term for Serena.

/Agh! Reenie? Where?!/

The traveller stared at Serena's current spasm with an uncomprehending look on his face.

"That's a nickname of one of our friends ..." Amy explained. Her English, while not as accent-free as Mina's, was still much more proficient than the rest of them.

"Oh." Aethan didn't bother asking why they called their friend "young lady" -- nicknames were often based on private jokes, and this one would probably be as beyond his understanding as his own -- "Sussesson" -- would be beyond theirs.

"I'm very sorry that this is how you're introduced to Japan," Mina apologized.

The traveller laughed. "Goodness, I've had much worse receptions than this. Domo arigato for helping me up." He bowed politely.

The girls bowed as well ... except for Raye, who was staring at the traveller as though he had horns coming out of his head and a long tail. The traveller noticed this, and stared back.

"Heh ... well, good man has ... many things to do, hai?" Raye burst out, a desperate smile plastered on her face. "We got ... things to do, also! /Move it!/" she barked in a Japanese idiom that she prayed that he wouldn't know, and started pushing her friends away from the traveller.

"/Hey, what's the big deal?/" Lita demanded.

"/Lita-chan, even if that guy looks EXACTLY like your long lost boyfriend, stay away from him! I got vibes off of him like I haven't gotten since Kunzite!/"

Aethan wondered at the black-haired girl's rudeness, but shrugged it off as being uncomfortable around strangers. Such a mixture of girls. Two blondes, a brunette, an auburn-haired lovely, and that one with the ... bluish shades.

And to think he'd been expecting exclusively shiny black hair ...

Suddenly, with an instinct he'd been developing for over a thousand years, Aethan felt a hostile gaze. Slowly, he turned to look in the direction the gaze came from.

No one.

He had been being watched, but whoever it was had fled when he began to turn ...

Aethan shrugged, and continued through customs.

The man who had given up his name had known the creature for what he was the minute he'd caught sight of him. The vampyre gave no hint of the depths of its power and malignance, but the man knew them both. He recognized this one, from a clip from the Bayeux Tapestry thought lost by modern scholars, but actually deliberately hidden.

The vampyre Aethan had come to Japan.

The war had begun anew.

"What do you mean, he's evil?"

Mina's question hung in the air as the girls sat in the airport restaurant.

"I mean ... he stinks of the negaverse."

"Raye ..." Lita sighed.

"Okay, it's not a ... stink. It's more of a ... shimatta! How am I supposed to put something into words for which language was never intended?"

"You said that he felt like Kunzite. Was it the same sensation as anytime you sensed anything from the Black Moon Family?" Amy asked.

Raye struggled with it for a minute. "Sort of."

A pained expression crossed Amy's face.

"Psychic impressions should not be expected to fit into mathematically accurate categories, OKAY?" Raye shouted.

Serena let out a deep sigh. "Look ... Raye, if he's evil, and he does stuff, we'll probably find out about it eventually, and we can deal with it then, right?"

Everyone blinked. "That ... made sense," Raye muttered. "Serena, are you feeling well?"

"No! Darien's gone to France, baka! I feel lousy, and lonely, and depressed, and hungry, and tired, and ..."

Sigh.

* * *

Aethan took a cab from the airport to Tokyo's inner city. He had memorized the map that the smugglers had given him, so it was comparitively easy to find the particular alley that the transaction would take place in.

The young man leaning against the wall of the alley reminded Aethan very much of the various dealers in prohibited goods that he'd had to deal with over the centuries. It was intriguing to contemplate exactly how much it was profession, rather than culture or race, that truly coloured a person's personality. Of course, the other considerations often had an impact on the professions made available, not to mention the social credit accorded a given profession ...

Aethan quietly berated himself for, once more, allowing his rigourous discipline to slip, and his thoughts to travel down a winding path that led nowhere. I've GOT to learn to concentrate ...

"You are Degares-sama?" the young man asked with a smile.

"I am," Aethan answered.

The young man beckoned him to follow him further into the alley. There was a van parked there, and the young man slid open the side door, and lifted out the package -- a long, oblong box.

"You don't mind if I inspect it before handing over the rest of the payment?" It wasn't really a question.

"Of course not."

Aethan opened the box, then dropped it to the ground, unwrapping the object that was within from the towel. It was a beautiful katana, easily four feet long, with odd symbols enscribed down the length of the blade.

And it was, beyond any doubt in Aethan's mind, the most brilliant forgery that Aethan had ever seen in his existance. He almost admired the sheer craftsmanship that had gone into it. The ogham symbols, which few if any Asians would be familiar with, had been replicated perfectly. This was an incredible blade. Only someone familiar with the true besigiled sword would have been able to divine the difference ... and only if that someone was capable of percieving magical energies.

Like Aethan could.

"A marvelous blade, to be sure," Aethan said, and with one swift motion, grasped the other end, and snapped it in two pieces. "Now where's the one I paid your people to bring to Japan?"

Before the young man could even think about pulling his gun, Aethan grabbed his throat in one of his hands, and jabbed his other into the young man's stomach. "WHERE. IS. THE. SWORD?"

"In ... the back ..."

Aethan slammed a clenched fist into the young man's groin that left him moaning in anguish when the ancient vampyre dropped him to the ground. Aethan climbed into the back of the van, and sensed the sword's presence instantly. It was following it's usual, annoying habit, and singing to him.

The sword was hidden under a panel in the floor of the van, which Aethan opened easily, and lifted up the sword. Man could replicate many things, but the powers that had gone into the forging of this blade were not so easily invoked as to be duplicated. Aethan neatly hid it inside his voluminous trenchcoat, and exited the van once more.

The young man was trying desperately to crawl away. Aethan lifted him up once again. "You would have been paid fairly and well for your troubles," Aethan said in his flattest tone. "The expense involved in duplicating the sword cannot possibly have been justified by any amount of payment by another party. So, why did you do it?"

"Hadda have that sword ... it's just so ... magic ..."

A latent sensitive. Just your luck, Aethan. What should you do with him? Can you honestly justify killing a man for answering the summons of a power he doesn't even comprehend? For being true to his true nature?

"There is a tale that you may be familiar with," Aethan muttered. "An old woman found a dying snake, nursed it back to health, and was then shocked when it attacked and poisoned her, claiming that it was her own fault for not realizing what sort of monster it was. But what the tale-tellers don't say is that after it killed the old woman, the snake was itself killed by the old woman's son, who told the snake that it was its own fault for not realizing that humans must obey the call of their nature as well."

His fangs dropped into place.

"As must I."

The scream started out high and piercing, then dropped suddenly, and faded out altogether ...

* * *

"Raye said he was evil?"

"Yes," Minako sighed.

"But she didn't say why?"

"No."

Artemis blinked. "I don't see the problem here ..."

"He didn't seem nasty!"

Artemis mulled this over. "You've got a crush on him, haven't you?" he asked in long-suffering tones.

"AGGH. No." A long pause. "I don't think so."

Artemis stared at his protege as she lay flat on her back, staring up at the ceiling. Why did she have to be such a romantic? At least half the time she was as rational and reasonable as Amy ... but let her get one look at an attractive male specimen, and she'd start thinking up crazed schemes to get to know the guy better. She was so like Serena in many ways ... and also ...

ENTIRELY too much like her mother ... the oldest part of Artemis' mind whispered, but Artemis managed to jerk himself back from that line of thought. It hurt entirely too much to remember the mother of the one whose soul Minako was heir to.

"Well, what does it matter, anyway? You'll probably never see him again."

"Yeah ..." Mina sighed. Then she jerked herself to a sitting position. "Unless ..."

Crazed scheme time, right on schedule. "Forget it, young lady," Artemis announced in his most authoritative voice. "Your parents said you were to stay in the house this weekend while they were away. And I'm going to see to it that you do!"

"How?" Mina asked calmly.

Artemis paused in mid lecture. How WAS he going to ...

She was out her bedroom door in an instant, down the stairs to the door leading out two seconds later, and on the street before Artemis could close his mouth around the sound "Er ..."

Artemis had never seen her move so fast in the five years they'd been together. Such raw potential! Such talent!

The next time Luna complains about how much trouble Serena gives her, Artemis thought as he leapt through the bedroom window to the tree outside, I'm gonna smack her so hard ...

"So now you think he might be trouble?" Raye asked cooly.

Mina nodded, trying to keep a look of sincere concern on her face. It was actually pretty easy, even if she did feel like a turd for lying to Raye like this.

"And you want me to locate him with the fire?"

"Yes. It's our responsibility to keep tabs on potential threats ... we can't go on letting them come to us, and letting the enemies pick the place and time of conflict. Sooner or later, one of us is gonna get really hurt doing that ..."

Minako found it easy to say that, because it was true. She had been growing increasingly concerned about the lack of tactical planning the Scouts used. Lita had expressed similar concerns, but more in the line of the lack of physical conditioning the group had -- "We can't just rely on magic forever, y'know!"

But she'd apparently sold Raye on the idea of tracking this adversary, at least. "Right, let's do it now," the young priestess exclaimed.

They knelt before the flame. Raye's chanted invocation caused the flame to blaze with an odd, eerie light. Minako couldn't repress a vague shudder. She was as pious as the next person, but the thought that Raye was calling on forces from beyond made her very nervous. Mina would have prefered it if her friend was just a psychic, rather than a ... go ahead and think it ... a sorceress.

And then his image appeared in the flame, surrounded by blackness. But the picture itself seemed to blaze with light ...

* * *

Something stirred, took notice that someone was attempting to interfere with a creature that the something took an interest in, and took steps to thwart such interference.

* * *

The flame went out.

Raye gasped, and nearly folded double. "Amida!" she gasped.

"Raye! What happened!"

"I don't know! Something ... snuffed out the fire like it was little more than a match!"

Raye tried to stand, failed, and decided to stay on the floor for the time being.

"I got a reading on ... that thing's location, though. It's staying in a hotel not far from the airport. If we go there, we might be able to catch it."

Mina took an appraising look at Raye. The dark-haired girl was out of breath, flushed, and trembling. "Nuh-uh. I'm going after him alone. YOU'RE going back to bed until you feel better."

"IT, not him. And I'm fine."

Mina drove a finger towards the bridge of Raye's nose. Raye fell back, but Mina managed to tap her in between her eyebrows. "If you were fine, you'd have been able to block that one. I can handle ... it. I've got a little more experience at doing this sort of thing than you do, remember? If things get too harry, I'll call in Lita and the others, all right?"

Raye sighed, and gave a weary nod, which more than anything else convinced Mina that she was probably on the verge of exhaustion. At any other time, she'd probably have argued that point 'til doomsday.

Minako helped get Raye into bed, left a note telling Chad to give Raye some peace and quiet, and sprinted to a bus stop on a route that lead to the station.

She wasn't sure just what she would do with him ... she couldn't bring herself to think of the guy as an IT ... when she found him ... but it wouldn't be as nice and easy as she'd originally planned.

* * *

"A very fine sword," the ancient one murmured, rubbing it with a delicate touch.

Aethan didn't bother responding to such an obvious point.

"What are these?" the old man asked, pointing at the sigils inscribed on the blade.

"Ogham sigils ... hieroglyphs made by druidical priests ages ago. I don't know what they mean or represent."

The old curio dealer set the sword down on his desk, and raised his eyes to Aethan. "This is an enchanted blade, is it not?"

Aethan nodded.

"And you came to me, hoping to learn of its history, and perhaps greater powers than you have been able to manipulate?"

"True." It never hurt to let them think that you were just a little more greedy, or a tad more ambitious, than you actually were.

"I can tell you nothing ... this sword should not exist. It is not of any recognizable school of swordforging, and the markings are alien to Japan."

Aethan sighed. The ancient one was the greatest expert on katanas alive. If he could not identify the blade, it was unlikely that it would ever be identified. He took the blade, secreted it among the folds of his trenchcoat, and turned to go.

"Where did you obtain the sword?"

Aethan paused, saw no reason to lie to the man, and replied, "From an angel." And then he exited the old man's store.

He walked along the city streets, whistling the Chanson de Roland, and watched the setting sun. Aethan was unlike most of his kind, in that he had never feared the sun ... he had never been compelled to go to ground by day, nor had he dreaded the sun's caress as he would a burning brand. He often thought of the sun as a brother, perhaps ... like him, always there, watching over the doings of mankind.

"Sleep well, brother," he whispered in the Anglo-Saxon of his youth. "I will still be here tomorrow ..."

At that point, Aethan's ingrained instincts for self-preservation took over so that he would be able to fulfill his promise, and he ducked and rolled under the sword stroke that would have taken off his head.

Aethan landed on his buttocks in an alley, staring at his unexpected opponent. The man was tall, and almost as pale as an albino .. his skin was leathery, as though it had been subjected to environmental extremes beyond Aethan's ken. He wore a floppy hat that covered, but did not conceal his eyes. And in his right hand was a sword nearly five feet long. Had not the face told Aethan the man's identity, the sword most certainly would have. "Quincy ..." Aethan muttered. "Do you know who I am?" the man asked in his low, quiet voice. Aethan didn't bother to nod in response. "Surrender, Aethan DeGales, and I shall make your dying swift. Resist, and you shall suffer greater torments than you can imagine ..." "Pass on both, thanks," Aethan replied, with greater humor than he felt. He flung himself in a leap skywards, landing just a foot from the edge of the roof of the building. He had only a second to draw forth his sword before the man's own leap carried him to Aethan's level, and their swords rang out in the first blow.

* * *

Wait a minute.

Minako whipped her head around to see what she had glimpsed out of the corner of her eye. On a rooftop nearby, two men were fighting with swords ... and although she wasn't keen-eyed enough to make out their features, she was certain, somehow, that one of them was the mysterious foreigner. Mina yanked the stop signal cord, and raced off the bus the moment it came to a stop.

She was more than a block away from where they were dueling. Mina wondered momentarily why nobody had stopped to watch the fight ... then realized that this was an area of Tokyo that was often used to film the fight sequences of sentai and chambara television shows.

How appropriate.

She scooted into an alleyway, and not stopping, she called out "Venus Star Power!"

The magic ... there was no other word for it ... took hold of her. Even though she was still running, there was a sensation of stillness. Her clothes seemed to melt away, and then her flesh as well, leaving only a spiritual essence. The lights that whirled around her pressed in close, and formed her costume and body. As always, the transformation was a rush. She felt more alive than she ever did as a normal person, more like what Minako Aino was supposed to be.

Sailor Venus had arrived.

A simple leap took her up the side of the building, and she surveyed the two combatants. She had been right, one of them was the stranger from the airport ... while the other was a man she'd never seen before.

"Hold it! Stop fighting!" she cried out. "I demand to know what goes on here!"

The two combatants paused ... and stared at her. "Who the hell are you?" the taller, paler one asked.

Well, it always worked for Serena ... "I am Sailor Venus, champion of justice, protector of the innocent; in the name of Venus, I will right wrongs and triumph over evil ... and unless I get some answers, that means YOU!"

"Go AWAY."

The stranger from the airport growled those words. They seemed strangely ... compelling to Minako. The temptation to obey them was almost overpowering ... but fighting it with all her might, Minako held her ground.

"What did you do to me?" she demanded.

"Mind tricks, DeGales?" the other man sneered. "Is there no end to your depravity?"

"It was the simplest way I could think of to get rid of her, Quincy."

"NEVER CALL ME THAT."

The tall, pale man's face was blazing with hatred and fury. Before Mina could do anything, he leapt up, across the alley gulf, and stood on the other building.

"You cannot escape me, DeGales! I will hunt you down, across a thousand thousand years if I must ..."

And then he turned, raced across the roof, and dropped into the next alley, out of sight.

"From the way he was acting, you'd think I was the one running away ..." the stranger sighed, and turned to go.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing!" Mina protested.

"Leaving."

"I'm not letting you go anywhere until you answer some questions!"

He raised an eyebrow. "Indeed? And how do you propose to stop me?" Sarcasm dripped from his voice.

He'd asked for this.

The girl gestured, and began to intone the words "Venus ... Crescent ..."

Had Aethan been just a tad faster on his feet, he would have been over the wall in an instant.

"BEAM!"

The pulse of raw, annihilating energy raced towards him, punching through his lower left ribcage and lung, and exiting through the back.

Somewhere, someone was pulled out of a very interesting dreaming, by the sensation of one of her minions being used as the target for energies that she had thought banished from the world for thousands of mortal years.

Sighing, she dispatched an avatar to deal with the situation, one that was familiar with the minion in question.

And then she went back to sleep.

Mina stared in horror. She'd thought that the thing ... the man would be as resilient as any of the Dark Kingdom's Generals. But instead he was as easy to damage as a normal human would be.

Amida ... what've I done?!

He was standing stock still, looking down at the large hole in his chest. He didn't seem to be breathing. Maybe he had already died of shock, but hadn't fallen over yet.

She took a step towards him.

He raised his head, and said in a remarklably calm tone, "That hurt you know."

Her eyes bulged.

"In fact," he continued. "I would have to say that that was the second or third most painful experience I've had to date. In fact, I'd do just about anything to avoid another one like it."

He dropped the sword he was holding in his hand.

"I surrender."

Mina began to breathe a little easier. "I still want some answers ... who -- and what -- are you?"

He stared at her for a very long moment. "My name is Aethan DeGales, of Sussex. I was born nearly fifteen hundred years ago. And I am a vampyre."

That's when he fell over.

Minako let out a short shriek, and ran to help him. He was still conscious, but just barely. "Lady ..." he whispered, as she held him in her arms, "Lady, would you mind if we went somewhere else to answer the rest of your questions?

* * *

"Ooh ... Darien ... ooh ... OOOOOOOOH."

The problem with being the mentor / property of a girl who knows who she's destined to be with is that you have to put up with her periodic dreams about what she'll do when she's with him.

Luna closed her eyes, and tried to drown out the increasingly agitated noises from Serena's bed. It was, of course, useless. The only way that she'd get any sleep tonight was to head out to the roof, and sleep under the stars. It would be uncomfortable -- too many memories of the long years she'd spent searching for Serena without any clear idea what she was looking for -- but she desperately needed rest.

So Luna crawled out onto the windowsill, and started to plan her ascent.

"PSST! Luna!"

Luna looked down into the yard of the Tsukino household, and saw Artemis staring up at her.

"If I've told you once, old silly, I've told you a thousand times ... I'm not interested," she said.

"I'm not here for YOU, dark, skinny and irokegane ... I came to see if Mina had come here."

"Who are you calling sexless, you ... you ..."

"Luna," Artemis sighed, "we don't have time for this. Did Mina come by, or check in at all?"

"No ... why?"

"She went to check on that guy that they saw in the airport. You know, the one Raye had a conniption fit about?"

Luna thought. "Serena may have mentioned something about it, yes ... you let her go alone?"

Artemis snorted. "You may have noticed, it is difficult, approaching impossible, to get them to do anything they don't want to do. And she wanted to go alone ... she's got a crush on the weird guy."

Luna sighed. Oh great, another Molly incident. That's all I need. "Should I wake up Serena so we can go find her?"

"Unfortunately, Luna of the Silver Millenium, you will not be able to wake her up."

Luna twisted around to stare at the intruder in Serena's bed room. She was tall, black-haired, and wearing a white toga, leafing through one of Serena's anime magazines.

Artemis was on the windowsill, seconds after Luna turned away. He stared at the woman for a second, shook his head, and stared again. "Oh, crud," he muttered under his breath.

"Hm. This is an interesting sounding one. "Lensman: Young Kimball Kinnison is turned into an all-powerful lensman by the friendly alien Mentor to defeat the evil Helmuth ..." No, not as interesting as it looked. Stupid, in fact." She tossed the magazine aside.

She had been speaking loud enough that Serena would almost certainly have woken up at this point, had she been able to. But Luna could tell that Serena was sleeping peacefully, and even her sleep talk had subsided.

"You needn't worry about your princess. I've simply sent her into a deeper sleep so we could talk without interruption."

"Who are you?" Luna demanded.

"I am currently known as Madeline. You may, if you wish to be informal, call me Made."

"Luna, for the sake of all that's holy, be careful," Artemis whispered to her in the secret language of the Silver Millenium.

"And what do you want?"

"I don't want anything. I require, and will have information from you. By hook ... or by crook."

* * *

He stood on the field of Hastings, broadsword in hand, mail shirt across his torso. Before him, the werewolf ... some mercenary that William the Bastard had hired, perhaps not even knowing the man's true nature. The creature had laid waste to two score of Harold's troops, but it was no ordinary warrior that it faced now. Aethan Sussesson closed with the adversary, and began to fight the greatest battle of his five hundred year-long existance as a walking corpse ...

And then he woke up, and decided that the hole in his chest was definitely the second most painful experience of his existance. The wounds he'd gotten killing the werewolf were nothing on this. He could feel the tissues of his lungs and bones slowly growing back together, healing the wound. It was agonizing.

He was lying in a darkened room ... judging by the decor and the stuffed animals, a young girl's room.

The young girl whom he had met in the airport was standing in the doorway, looking pensive. There was no sign of the goddess who'd put the hole in his chest.

"Hey ... how'd I ..."

She spoke without looking at him. "Sailor Venus and I are pretty good friends ... she decided to stash you here while she went looking for the other guy you were fighting."

Aethan considered the explanation, and rejected it. "Not true."

Now she swirled to look at him. "Huh?"

"Sailor Venus just happens to know one of the two or three people I've met in all Japan? I don't believe in coincidences like that." Aethan peered at her ... and figured it out.

"You ARE Sailor Venus."

Her jaw dropped. "What?"

"How many blue-eyed blondes can there BE in Japan?"

She seemed to be searching for an effective response to that.

"Look ... I promise I won't go tell the Weekly World News that Sailor Venus is some teenager named ... what's your name again?"

"Nice try, buster."

He sighed. "I'm at your mercy, right? Any time you want to, you can blow my head off with that ... Circle Square or whatever you call it. Now, I will give my solemn oath that I will not seek to cause harm to you in any way ... if you will only just admit that I'm right."

Dilemna.

For some reason, the magical effect that kept even people who should be able to see the similarities between the Sailor Scouts and their normal selves from reasoning the secret out was not working on the ... thing that called himself Aethan DeGales.

Minako chewed her lip. She'd be as dumb as Serena on her worst days if she trusted a GAKI, for heaven's sake ... but ...

"How do I know that your word is worth anything?"

A look of intense anger flashed across his face. Mina strongly suspected that she had touched a nerve. "I have never broken my sworn oath. NEVER."

Mina doubted that. He was reacting too angrily to have been so guiltless as he claimed. But clearly, his sense of honor was strong enough that he became outraged by those who impugned upon it.

"My name is Minako Aino, and my friends call me Mina. And I am Sailor Venus."

"All right ... now, why did you come after me?"

"I wanted information from you ... one of my friends got a wierd feeling from you, like you had some sort of connection to our enemies, creatures from the Negaverse."

"The Negaverse."

Mina nodded. Aethan considered. "And this Negaverse is ..."

"I'm not too sure about that. Sailor Mercury's best guess is that it's another dimension. It's not an anti-matter universe, though ... it's supposedly a place of terrible darkness, and monsters ..."

"Well ... I can understand why your friend Mercury would think I'm from there, but I'm not. Truely. I was born fifteen hundred years ago, in the region that would someday be called Sussex. When I was sixteen years old ... I was out hunting after dark, and this strange, dark haired woman ... tore my throat out. The next morning I was healed completely, but I had strange abilities ... I healed swiftly, I was stronger than anyone else in the village, and I didn't age. But I had to drink blood ... to survive."

"You didn't make any ... pacts with infernal forces?"

Aethan stared at her.

"The only vampires I've ever read or seen anything about are gaki ... who are more or less demons -- and Bram Stoker's Dracula, which I saw while I was in England."

"No, Minako. I did not trade my soul for immortallity. I became what I am ... more or less against my will."

She flinched. "I can sympathize with that ..."

And she told him everything. The Silver Millenium. The Kingdom of the Moon. The War against the Negaverse. Dying. Being reborn. Being awakened by Artemis. Her time in England. Returning to Japan. Dying again, and being resurrected by the power of the Silver Crystal. Remembering a second time. Adventures since.

"I wouldn't trade what I've become for anything ... but I wish ... I just wish I'd been given more of a choice in what I became."

Aethan stared at her, almost as if he wasn't hearing her. Minako wondered what was wrong. "Is something ..."

"Minako ... that is an incredible story. You are either the most deluded woman alive ... or you are telling the truth ..."

"Of course I'm telling the truth!" What was wrong with him?

"It IS an incredible tale, you must remember ... possibly the strangest story I've ever been told, and I've heard thousands, believe you me."

"It's true. It's all true."

He sighed. "Life on the moon. Ancient wars against shadowy forces. Talking cats. It's all too much for me to handle at one go. I need a rest."

"Okay," Minako nodded. "I need some sleep tonight too ... can I get you anything to ..." She broke off. Baka, offering him something to drink. Baka baka.

He quirked up in a semi-smile. "No, Minako-chan. That won't be necessary ... I've already had enough this evening."

She didn't want to know. She had to know. "Did you ..."

His smile faded, and was replaced with a vague sorrow and regret. "Yes. I don't have to kill those I feed from, but this time ... I did. I could say that it was necessary, that society won't miss him ... but I won't."

Minako started to back away. He closed his eyes, and rolled so his face wasn't looking in her direction ... so she couldn't see the hurt he felt at her horrified expression. You deserve it, monster, he told himself. Why ... why do you go out of your way to destroy the feelings that those around you have for you? When will you be able to let them come close?

* * *

"I must confess," Artemis said with a calm he didn't feel, "it is a strange thing to see one of your kind here on Earth, in these days."

The woman calling herself Madeline stared at him with amused interest. "Do you know what I am?"

"I suspect that I do. And I suspect also that you won't confirm or deny any of my guesses."

She smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. "No wonder that in your old age Queen Serenity made you her sage counselor, Orion of the Silver Millenium."

ORION!!!!!!

Artemis jerked his mind back from that agonizing, horrible memory. Another woman, named Artemis, dying in agony because he had ...

"I had almost forgotten Orion," he said in a dull, dead tone. "I hate and curse you for reminding me of him."

"You may hate and curse me at your leisure. But you will tell me of the one called Minako Aino. Now."

And since there was nothing else to do, Luna and Artemis told Madeline all they knew about Mina. Luna was amazed at the sheer number of details about Mina that Artemis was able to remember without being prompted.

Madeline stood still, considering what had been said. Finally, she shook her head, and sighed. "I cannot find fault in your actions, or in hers. It is unlikely that she will be a negative influence on my protege. He may be one on her, however."

"Your protege is the man they encountered in the airport?" Luna asked.

"Correct. His name is Aethan, and he is an example of the subspecies of humanity termed "vampyre". You would, I think, be wise to prevent him from engaging in his predatory habits on Minako."

Her tone changed, becoming somewhat apologetic. "I regret having to interrogate you in this manner, but the destiny of entire civilizations, not just that of Earth, rests on Aethan's shoulders at this time. Had we met at another time, it is possible, even likely, that we could have had a great deal to discuss." Her eyes seemed far away. "I remember the Kingdom of the Moon well. It was with no small amount of shame that I allowed its destruction." She shook her head. "Ah well. It was long ago and far away ... yet objects in the rear view mirror ..."

She faded from sight.

Luna collapsed, out of sheer exhaustion from the questioning she'd just undergone. "What manner of being is she?"

"A legend ..." Artemis murmured. "Before the Silver Millenium, it is said that a race of immense power fought a war in which our forces would have been annihilated in an instant. The war was against forces from another universe ... beings of darkness ... forces of light."

"And she's one of these beings that fought the war?"

Artemis padded over to where she had dropped the anime magazine. He stared down at the stills from the "Lensman" movie.

"I think so, yes. They haven't been forgotten, after all. And the only way legends can die is if they're forgotten."

* * *

She stared down at the youma. It was pleading for its life. "I was just following orders ... I didn't want to harm them ..."

She calmly, and without saying a word, lifted her hands, and blew the creature's head off with her Crescent Beam.

Minako woke, choking back a scream. She had curled up on the living room couch after leaving Aethan in her bedroom. It was about six in the morning. Light was just beginning to stream in the window.

Oh gods, when am I going to stop having the nightmares?

She hadn't done anything worse that Serena had ... why should she have less peaceful nights than Serena?

That wasn't fair. Serena had never killed an adversary when it was begging for mercy ... or at least she didn't talk about it, and Mina was fairly sure that she'd heard the details of every single one of Serena's adventures either first-hand, second-hand (from Raye and Amy), or third hand (from Luna via Artemis).

It had been a youma. It had nearly killed several people in the supermarket it had worked at. It didn't deserve mercy.

But what about Nephrite? If one of the greatest forces of the darkness could reform even a little ... Mina wished Serena had never babbled her account of the General's self-sacrifice that night after they'd met. It had been better when she'd had moral self-assurance.

She got up off the couch, stretched, and padded into the kitchen to get some orange juice. There was a scratching at the door, and it occured to Minako that she hadn't seen Artemis since she'd run off yesterday.

She opened the door, and a white streak burst in. "Okay, where is he? What'd the two of you do? Huh? Where?"

"He's in the bedroom ..."

Artemis' jaw dropped. "You DIDN'T!"

"ARGH! Hentai Cat! No, I just left him there ... hey, how'd you know he was here?"

"Let's just say that your vampyre friend has friends in high places! VERRRRRY high places. Places WE don't need trouble from." Artemis seemed to calm down. "Did he bite you?"

Just to drive Artemis crazy, Mina gave the appearance of giving it a great deal of thought. For three minutes, she hemmed and hawed. Artemis' eyes got bigger and bigger ...

"The answer is no. I did not."

Aethan was standing in the entrance to the kitchen, looking even paler than usual. The bandages that covered the hole in his chest were gone, revealing new, bone-white skin in its place. He had approached without making any noise. He was staring at Artemis as one might stare at a ... well, a talking cat.

"Aethan DeGales, I presume?" Artemis said weakly.

"I am currently known by that name, yes. You are the one named Artemis, I take it. Now ... which friends in high places were you referring to?"

"Does the name Madeline mean anything to you?"

"Yes."

They stared at each other in stony silence for a moment.

"Who is Madeline?" Minako asked, deciding to make the peace herself.

"My guardian angel. She gave me my sword, ninety-six years ago. Since then we've had occasional meetings, usually when she wants something done and I'm the only one who can."

"Guardian angel ..." Well, thought Artemis, that's one way of looking at it ... Artemis wouldn't have wanted one of THOSE looking out for him, but perhaps this Aethan was of sterner stuff.

"Was there anything else? I wouldn't want to abuse your hospitality more than I had to."

"Wait a minute! You're just leaving?" Minako protested.

"That is my plan ..."

"I want to know about the one you were fighting ... you called him Quincy. Do you know him?"

Aethan sighed. "I know of him. Most of my kind do. He is a slayer of vampyres, possibly the most talented and dangerous one alive. His name is Quincy Harker."

"Any relation to Jonathan and Mina?" Minako asked, to lighten the mood.

"Yes."

She swallowed. "Then ... the stories about ..."

"They are true. Vlad Tsepes, called Dracula, did arise from his grave as a vampyre. He did come to England a hundred years ago, and there engaged in a conflict with several individuals associated with Abraham "Bram" Stoker. Whether he died in the manner that Stoker described is ... a mystery, even to me." That admission clearly rankled him.

"And the descendants of the characters in that novel have taken up vampyre hunting?" Mina asked.

He paused for no longer than a second. "Some of them, yes."

The small pause told Artemis that there was something more going on here than met the eye ... something that Aethan wasn't saying.

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll be leaving ..."

"Um ... are you really going to go to the airport dressed like that?" Mina queried delicately.

Aethan considered himself. The white shirt that he had been wearing was ruined, as was his trenchcoat. It would be better to get a change of clothes ... such as that which he'd left in his hotel room.

"It would be dangerous for me to go back to the hotel ... Quincy no doubt has it under surveillance."

"I can go!" Minako interjected. "He won't recognize me, after all ..."

Aethan paused ... and sighed, and nodded. "He wouldn't, either. I cannot ask you to do this for me, Minako-chan."

"It is my obligation, Aethan-kun. I caused your injury, and so it is only right that I assist you to avoid further injury."

"Thank you," he said simply, and bowed.

* * *

Turn the key in the lock, slowly let the door swing open, giving a view of most of the room. Step in slowly ... the suitcase lies open on the bed, more or less still packed. Step closer slowly ... all senses alert ... slowly ...

Quincy stepped out of the shadows and put a knife to Minako's throat before she could even let out a noise. "Don't scream," the hunter whispered. "I promise, I won't hurt you. But don't scream."

* * *

The phone rang in the Aino living room. Aethan let it ring a few times, staring at it. Mina had gone out nearly half an hour ago.

He picked up the phone. "Moshi moshi?" he said.

"Aethan?" quivered Minako's voice.

Then a harder voice interrupted. "Sending young girls to do your work ... is there no end to your decadence, vampyre?"

Aethan didn't say anything for a very long moment.

"I've got her, Aethan. I'll kill her. I swear I will. Unless you meet me to have it out once and for all ..."

"And I swear, by all the gods that may or may never have been, do you harm one hair on her head, they will be forced to invent a name for the death you suffer."

"Meet me at the Genom Industrial Park, Aethan. Warehouse 665. In an hour. Or they'll be finding pieces of her for the next twenty years."

Click.

"He has her," Aethan said quietly.

"What are you going to do?" the white cat asked, just as quietly.

"What I can."

* * *

He had not spoken to her since they arrived at this warehouse. She was becoming very afraid of this tall, pale man ... and Minako, even more than most of her friends, hated being afraid. It would be a simple matter to transform to Sailor Venus, and beat the living crap out of him ... if he hadn't tied her arms behind the chair, and if he hadn't been carrying that strange sword. He was standing, looking out of a second story window in the warehouse in the Industrial Park.

"I was lying, you know," Quincy said. "I lied to him when I said I'd kill you. I won't ... no matter what."

"Why should I believe you?"

"You don't have any reason to ..." he said, shrugging. "It doesn't matter, in the long run. I do what I have to do, to win the war."

"He told me who you are ..." Mina said, quietly.

"Did he?" he asked carelessly.

"He told me that your name is Quincy Harker."

He tensed for a moment, and she could see anger building in his eyes. Then it all went out of him, and he slumped. "I don't have any right to that name."

"So what do you call yourself?"

He turned and stared at her with a look of terrible sadness.

"I call myself Damned."

She didn't have an answer to that. He turned back to the window.

After several moments, he spoke up again. "Here he comes ... he's going into the warehouse ..."

Minako strained her ears, but couldn't hear the sound of any door opening into the building ... "So what will you do when he gets here."

"He won't."

"But ... you summoned him to this warehouse."

"No ... I summoned him to Warehouse 665. This is the next one over."

The explosion rocked through the warehouse, and the bright flame rose up in the window.

Mina's jaw dropped. It wasn't possible. He couldn't have ...

"I rigged it ... before I kidnapped you ..." Quincy explained, trying very hard to maintain a stern, straight face. Mina wasn't sure if he was trying to suppress laughter or tears, or possibly both, as he untied her, and let her run to the window.

The other warehouse had collapsed, utterly. Flames roared across the wreckage and rubble.

Quincy came up behind her. "Fifteen years I've been hunting him, and suddenly he's delivered into my hands by the strangest set of coincidences I've ever been ..."

Mina spun around, murder in her eyes, and slammed her palm into his cheek with all the force she could muster. He didn't even blink.

"I probably deserve that, for dragging you into this," he said, quietly.

"You deserve one hell of a lot worse! You just killed a friend of mine!"

"They don't know friendship. They don't know love. They only know anger and hatred and desire ..." Quincy said, with the air of one who had explained this many, many times before ...

... and suddenly he trailed off.

And his eyes went wide.

And his lips formed the word, "No."

And Minako turned around to stare out the window to the point where Quincy was gazing.

And saw, standing still, and firm, and unbent amongst the ruins, Aethan DeGales.

He stood, wreathed in flame, the flame that by rights should be consuming him. He stood, his sword unsheathed, and the fires that burnt around it were of a purer kind than the fire that was reducing the warehouse to cinders. He stood, and the fire of his sword and the fire in his green eyes were one and the same.

Minako had barely a second to leap to one side before he burst through the window, having leapt from the ground to the second story in a heartbeat. Aethan seized Quincy by the collar of his shirt, lifted him into the air, and, in a voice of doom, whispered:

"You have officially pissed me off."

And with that, he flung Quincy through the hole he had made in the wall, and leapt after him.

Minako considered jumping down after them, but decided that she was still shaky enough that it would be dangerous ... so she retraced the route they had taken coming into this building, down stairs, and out the front door. Whatever plans she'd had to interfere were lost the moment she saw what was going on.

The duel that they were fighting was a horribly beautiful thing.

Two masters of the sword, one supernatural, one less-so, locked in mortal combat that would almost certainly mean the death of one of them.

Which made it all the more horrible that Quincy couldn't do a thing. He was hard pressed to defend himself. Aethan was moving faster than the human eye could follow, making dozens of attacks in a second, not even bothering to parry ... because all of Quincy's efforts were devoted to stopping the strikes.

Minako couldn't understand ... if Aethan was that much faster than the hunter, why hadn't he reduced his adversary to so much sliced meat? And then, with lacerating clarity, the answer came to her.

He was pulling his blows.

Every time he even came close to landing a strike on Quincy, he stopped the blade, as little as a centimetre from his foe's skin. The pressure of the air displaced by the blow no doubt caused some bruising, but not enough to slow Quincy down.

Aethan wasn't so much playing with his opponent as demonstrating to him, beyond all reasonable doubt, that he was so far beyond him in ability, that should he wish Quincy dead, it would be already done.

The last blow rang out across the pavement, and Quincy's sword was struck from his hand, and went flying across the way to stick into a concrete wall. It wobbled, a bit.

Aethan stared at his disarmed opponent. "Were I a more civilized person, I would allow you to regain your sword. But I'm not."

And he swung his sword downward at Quincy's neck.

Minako couldn't, no matter how she tried, bring herself to look away.

Quincy let out a final scream of defiance.

Which trailed away as he realized that he was still alive, and that Aethan's sword was poised, no more than a centimetre from his neck.

"And were I the bloodthirsty, vicious monster you believe I am ... I would take your head as a trophy. But I'm not. Completely," he amended, only somewhat self-consciously, as he nicked Quincy on the side of his cheek.

The wound cauterized instantly, from the heat of the blade.

After the agonized screaming died down, Aethan pulled Quincy unwillingly to his feet. "I am going to let you live, Quincy. The gods above look down, and scream to me that I should kill you now, and prevent you from becoming a true menace. But I have never listened to the gods when they told me to do something I did not wish to do."

"Wuh-wuh-why?" Quincy sobbed.

"In part, for the love, honor, and respect I have for your father, wherever he may rest. In part, because I do not wish to tarnish Minako's eyes with the sight of your headless corpse. But most of all, for a very simple reason -- you came THIS close," he said, holding his index finger and thumb a minute distance apart, "to killing me. In over eight hundred years, no hunter has ever come so close to destroying me. And you have done so WITHOUT harming the innocent."

Aethan sighed. "It may be that a time of darkness is coming, Quincy. There is ample evidence of it. In that time, vampyres may become a true threat to humanity, rather than simply a parasite lurking in the shadows. You are the greatest vampyre hunter that will ever be, Quincy. You are humanity's salvation, should we vampyres ever lose touch with our OWN humanity. Do you understand? I let you live, because there may be worse things awaiting which I will not be able to stand against ... and in the twilight of the world, I have faith that you, alone amongst your kind, will stand with the forces of light."

He released Quincy from the grip of iron that he had held him in. "Now go. And do not come against me again."

Quincy backed away, turned and headed for his sword. He paused, once, after he pulled the blade from the wall, and spoke to Aethan without looking at him.

"I am still Damned."

"If you choose to be."

"And you are still a monster."

"Yes. But your father wanted both of us to be more."

Quincy almost turned to look at Aethan, but he did not. He walked away, alone, unbowed.

Minako approached Aethan cautiously. "Are you all right?" she whispered.

"I am, thanks to Artemis."

"What?"

"Artemis warned me that Quincy might be trying to trap me, so I took certain ... precautions."

There were so many other things she wanted to say, but she knew she never would. And she saw, too, that he had much that he wanted to say to her, but would not.

There were tears in his eyes, she could see now. "Why are you crying?" she asked.

"For him."

"Why?"

"He did not choose to be what he is, Minako-chan. Any more than you or I. I told you that he was related to Jonathan and Mina Harker?"

She nodded.

"A half-truth. He is Mina Harker's child, true, but Jonathan was not his father."

Mina knew, immediately, who Quincy's father was. And how it could be that he was the child of a woman who had lived a century ago, yet look as though he were in his twenties.

"When a vampyre ... shares his blood with a pregnant woman ... strange things happen to the child. The child is born ... with strange abilities. And when the child dies, it is doomed to rise again as a vampyre. Many of the famous "living vampyres" of history are examples of this. Most choose to embrace the darkness within. Some few strive for the light. He is of the latter kind."

He paused, and when he spoke again, it was clear that he no longer spoke to Minako, but to the other, who had left them.

"The road you walk is thorny ... through no fault of your own. But as rain enters the earth, and rivers flow to the sea, so do tears flow to their predestined end. Your suffering is not yet over. Farewell, Quincy Draculea ... Vampire Hunter D."





Epilogue.

Damnation.

The Wiseman had been so certain that this strategem would work. Although he knew not how, the vampyre called Aethan DeGales had an important part to play in between his present and the future of Crystal Tokyo. It had been so simple to draw the hunter Quincy's attention to the presence of the creature, and let things proceed from there. How had Aethan's destruction been averted?

"Simple."

The female voice behind the Wiseman was deceptively calm. The Wiseman turned and stared at the one who had, without his knowledge, entered his private sanctuary.

"Who ... and what are you?"

"I have been known as Madeline, and what I am is ... none of your business. I am the one who has prevented your designs against Aethan DeGales from reaching fruition."

"HOW?"

"By warning him, through intermediaries, that he would be walking into a trap by going to the warehouse unprotected. Let that be a lesson to you, Servant of the Death Phantom. While the slightest noise can start an avalanche, the smallest twig can change its course."

And then the woman abandoned her mortal form completely, and the Wiseman stared up in horror at the creature of light and geometry that was before him.

And let this be another lesson, it sent telepathically. Know that with which you deal. Never again interfere with any of my proteges. Or the wrath of my people shall be great indeed.

"No ... no! You are a myth, a legend, a writing in a story long forgotten! You do not exist!"

Legends do not die, unless they are forgotten, Wiseman. And there are still those who remember Arisia.

And then it was gone. And the Wiseman knew that never before had he been so close to a final destruction.

The End.

Author's Notes

Whew. 61K. That's the longest thing I've ever written for the net. Possibly the strangest story I've ever written, even though I took a lot fewer risks with this one than with either of the two before it.

Aside from the two anime I've crossed in this tale, there are quite a few other influences on this story. Just to give you an idea of what went into the making of this tale ...

Music

• Annie Lennox's "Love Song for a Vampire"
• Bonnie Tyler's / Nikki French's "Total Eclipse of the Heart"
• Meatloaf's "I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)"
• Queen's "Who Wants to Live Forever" and "It's a Kind of Magic"

Nobody Sue Me Okay?

[Stories]