Surprise, Exorcise, Vanish Chapter 7

“So he hasn’t forgotten about us after all-”

“Well, I am for one glad that he’s doing fine without-”

“Didhementionme? Didhesayhewascomingback? Pleasetellmepleasetellmepleasetellme-”

“One at a time, please,” He tried to ask. Try to, as the three of them spoke over him.

“All of you, stop.” The High Seraphim spoke.

They did, and Ontos breathed in relief.

“Tell me everything, please,” she asked.

“What would you like to know first?”

“Your interaction would be a good place to start.”

Ontos nodded. While certain details were fuzzy and indistinct, the rest was crystal clear in his mind. “When we met, I recall he was excited to see me. Most of what we talked about was about me personally. He wanted me to do something here, I understood that much. What that something is…”

Ontos looked at his right hand, rubbed its palm with the other. “Perfect, that was what he described me as. I don’t feel like I deserve to be called that. I’ve made… some mistakes. He knew about them, what I’ve done in the past. I don’t think he minded. If anything, he forgave me.”

“And I don’t remember what He looked like either. No, more as if His appearance wasn’t…” That blurry indistinct boundary taking the shape of a humanoid. The more he focused on it in his mind, the blurrier it became. “Like it wasn’t constrained or defined, if either of those were the right words.”

“He could look like whatever He wanted,” Michael explained. “Or, He looked like what He wanted you to see in a given moment.”

“He liked to be the largest person in the room,” Sera added. “Larger than life, in His own words.”

He nodded at that. It made more sense than anything else.

“Please, Ontos, continue.”

Ontos smiled. “He called me ‘exceptional.’ I thought it was silly, I never thought of myself as such. I also never thought that I would…”

“Come to Heaven?” Michael answered for him.

Ontos nodded. “I… did things. Awful things, but that’s another topic. My past life seemed to… impress him, I suppose? I ‘fit the bill,’ in His words.”

“Then He wants you to do something,” Sera realized. “He picked you to do something here in Heaven. That’s why He intervened.”

“I told Him that I didn’t feel like I deserved this,” he shrugged and gestured at himself, adding emphasis with a flex of his wings. “He disagreed.”

Emily placed her hands on his arm. “If our Creator thinks you’re able to do something, he isn’t wrong.”

“He seemed to think so. Apparently in His eyes, I was the only person fit for the position.”

“Position? I don’t understand.”

“Again, in His words.” Ontos thought about it for a brief moment, thought about the power and authority that the others sitting at that high table held. They were generals, chief secretaries and ministers. Politicians, in all but name. He had wanted him to sit at that table with them. In a past life, he’d even had the chance to. Not that table, but one that was similar enough to it.

“Well, we have been looking for individuals to fill the other seats,” Leo said. “It would seem He took the initiative to fill one of them for us.”

“As for why, that would have to do with what you did in your… previous life.” Michael hesitated on the last part. “Clearly, you lived meritoriously enough to warrant his approval.”

“The funny thing is, I was pretty sure I knew where I was going after I died.” He had long accepted it too.

“And you were wrong. I understand, Ontos,” Michael said. “Many do.”

“Do you?” He glanced at the other three. “Do they?”

“I don’t understand.”

“I wasn’t a saint, not by a long shot,” Ontos said. “I was not a good person. I was someone a lot of people hated, for one reason or another.” His hands were limp in his lap. For a moment the skin tone was wrong, the proportions alien. That human part of his brain, rearing up at the wrongness it recognized, recoiling away from the precipice of that uncanny valley.

An instant later and the dysmorphia he felt was gone, faster than the last few times. He was getting more and more used to his new body. The human part was being worn away, or buried or-

“Ontos?” Emily called his name. The name he had chosen when he arrived. It meant being in Latin, and in that moment at the Gates when Peter had asked, it had perfectly fit. Better than his own, which now felt more like an old alias than his name.

“How did you die?” Leo asked him.

“No,” Ontos drew a breath, exhaled it. “How did I live?”

“What?”

He closed his eyes, drew another breath, and then he continued.

“Allow me to tell you a parable, about a man named Tomas Martinez.” He paused for a moment, at the utterance of a dead man’s name. “He was born in Los Angeles as the only child to a street walker and a refugee. He wasn’t anyone exceptional, he was mediocre in school. He had no interest in sports, was average in athletics.”

“But he was smart. Smart in the only way that counted for someone in his place. He knew the streets, and he knew that if he didn’t escape them, he would die on them. He’d be roped into a gang, or he’d be carted off to prison for the crime of having the wrong skin color. One way or the other, he knew he would be dead or in jail by twenty like most of his peers.”

“So he looked for a way out of the streets, a way to escape the gang warfare and the corrupt cops, the destitute hopelessness, the filth and all the suffering. He took the only real path open to someone who’d been dealt the hand he had if they wanted an escape. So on his seventeenth birthday, Tomas walked into a recruitment center and enlisted in the army.”

“As it turned out, he was good at soldiering. He could have even made a career of it. But by chance he met a man who thought he was pretty clever, that his talents were wasted. So he volunteered for ranger school. He found out he liked the prestige, and the camaraderie of being among the best. He thought he might make a career of that instead.”

“But after a year of guarding embassies and VIPs and doing little else of note, he had grown bored and frustrated. And then another man found Tomas. And that man thought his talents were still wasted. That man suggested a change in employment. He offered him a job at an office building, in a town called Langley, Virginia.”

“So Tomas found his way into the embrace of the Agency. He was good at what he did, the espionage and the field work. Good enough that people in high places took notice, and those people smoothed a path for him to the top. He eventually became its Deputy Director, as high as someone could go in that organization, unless they really liked politics.”

“But Tomas hated politics, though he never told anyone that. He could play the game as well as anyone else in that town, could grease the right palms and sweet talk the right senators. But he hated the beltway, and the monsters that dwelled there. But he did his job and did it well, until it came time for him to retire.”

“And then one day, a week before he left his corner office for the last time, before he could go to his cabin in upstate New York, the world came to an end. And it started in Los Angeles, the city Tomas once called home. He could have hidden away, could have ran. Could have sent others to do the Agency’s bidding instead.”

“But he didn’t. Tomas wasn’t that kind of person, to send good men to their deaths when he was safely ensconced behind a desk. He went personally, even though everything ached and his hearing was bad. He went so someone else wouldn’t be forced to. He went, because otherwise he wouldn’t have been able to live with himself.”

“Tomas went and did something about the world ending, and he succeeded. And then he died. And you know the rest.”

The words had come out as a stream of consciousness, from that small part of him that still clung to its humanity and recoiled at the alien nature of the place he now found himself in. It might have been some sort of confession, or a defiant last gasp.

But it had an effect. He felt confusion from Sera, concern from Leo, a profound sadness from Michael. And from Emily-

The smallest of the seraphim wrapped her arms around his waist, burying her face in his robe as she did. He heard something that might have been a choked sob from her. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled.

Ontos rested a hand on the young woman’s head, patting it. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

“I…” Sera faltered. It was the only word any of the other three could spare for a moment.

“Perhaps I know some of what you’ve gone through,” Michael said. “But that was then, this is now-”

“Spare me your sympathy,” Ontos shook his head. “You can’t know what it’s like, to stand there like I did, to know you were going to die no matter what you did. But if you managed to do the impossible before you died, it might mean a few less people would suffer. I was willing to do that, because I had ethics where so many others didn’t. I died. I know that, but I don’t know what to do after.”

For a moment, he was at a loss for words. His hand found his face, cupped his eyes. “I can’t be human anymore, and I don’t know how to be anything else.”

“So be human.” Ontos looked up, it was Michael who spoke. “Just be you. Do what you know, do what comes natural to you, and you’ll be fine. And if you find something you’re good at? Do that.”

The seraphim smiled, before leaning over to Ontos, extending the hand that, until then, hadn’t left his sword’s pommel. “I’m sorry for being so cold at first. I was wrong about you, please forgive me.”

Ontos opened his mouth to reply, but no words came. Instead he nodded, and shook the offered hand. “Thank you. And He said that too, you know.”

“What?”

“Just do what comes natural. And I think I’m starting to understand now.”

“That confession,” Leo said, “was a little vague about things.”

Emily finally broke her grip. He suspected that if he’d still been human, her pneumatic press like stranglehold would have pinched him in two. “What kind of office?”

Ontos smiled. “I mentioned an office, and an agency too. I called it the Agency, as did most folks who worked there. Most everyone else called it the CIA.”

A moment of silence filled the room. “Never heard of it,” Michael said.

Ontos shrugged. “The Central Intelligence Agency. I was good at my job, really good. Not just the spycraft or the intelligence gathering or the analysis or the field work, but the administration side too. In brief, I was a spy,” he said. “And a very good one at that.”

“What’s a spy?” Emily asked.

Michael sighed. “Someone who spies on people, Emily.”

Emily looked up at him. “It’s not a good thing to spy on people.”

“The people I spied on were seldom ever good people.”

“Oh.”

“And you did that professionally?”

Ontos nodded. “I served my government as such. I spent a few years as a field agent gathering human intelligence, and for a few more I worked in an office gathering signal intelligence. The rest of my years I spent at a desk managing others, or as an intermediary between the agency and the politicians. I hated that part of the job.”

“So you’ve said.”

“But yes. The CIA spied on adversaries of America, the country it was formed to serve. State actors, terrorist groups, et cetera.” He shrugged, “I like to think I accomplished something in my time there.”

“But what came next?”

“The end. I remember it started in LA, but there were other things happening around the world.” He shrugged. “Not much I could tell you there, detail wise. I was too busy trying to help retake Los Angeles.”

“From what, if I may ask?”

Ontos sighed. “From demons.”

That got a reaction from the others, and the other four exchanged glances.

“Explain, please,” Sera asked, a serious tone now in her voice. “When you say demons, what do you mean by that exactly?”

Ontos closed his eyes. He hadn’t been on the front line, but he’d read the reports, seen them through optics and camera feeds. “Some were humanoid, with horns or animal features. Others were stereotypically demon-like, as pop culture tended to portray them. None were friendly, and they all were every bit as nasty and dangerous as you could imagine.”

“But they could bleed. While they were a lot tougher than a person or a human, you could still put them down with enough focused fire. Machine guns, rockets and explosives, crushed by tank treads, obliterated by airstrikes.”

“Hellborn,” Michael muttered.

“I didn’t know,” Emily said. “You’re telling the truth, but…”

“Emily-”

“But I don’t think Charlie or her dad would let Sinners or demons do that!” The young seraphim’s eyes were filled with a mix of confusion and conviction, like what he’d said clashed with something she already held as truth. What had he said to upset her?

“I’ve heard rumors of Hellborn finding their way into the mortal world but…” Michael fell silent for a moment. “Only ever in ones or twos, a small group at the most. But a full scale invasion? Seriously?”

“Emily, please, later. Michael, let him finish.”

Ontos shrugged and continued. “I called it the end of the world for a reason. Because deep down, it truly felt like it. I know that everything west of the Mississippi was rushed to LA. If it was a military unit, it was sent to that meat grinder of a warzone. They had to be, after most of the California National Guard was wiped out by the first day.”

“What became of you in all of this? How did you die?”

There was the question. A long, pregnant pause followed it. Next to him, Emily wilted into her seat, her wings drawn up around her. He used the time to think about how to best answer.

Eventually he did. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t remember the manner, because it was instant. Most likely I died from being at ground zero of a nuclear blast.”

Michael stared at him. The others were silent, either in surprise or confusion.

“It makes sense though. That close, you die before your brain can process it.” Fifteen milliseconds, he remembered from some source from decades past. That was how long it took for the brain to process sensory information. “You just stop being biology and start being physics.”

Emily abruptly hugged him, even tighter than before and she didn’t let go. Her head was down, buried in his chest. “I’m sorry,” came muffled words.

Ontos patted her head. “Remember what I said earlier, about apologizing?”

She nodded into his side. He spared a glance at the others, at the conflicted emotions on their faces.

Michael broke the silence. “You ordered it, didn’t you?”

“The strike? No, the President did,” he chuckled. “They were the only one that had the authority to. Well, the new President. Something happened in DC in those last hours. I don’t know what, there was an information blackout. The former Secretary of Education was now President and she gave the order. She was… very far down the line of succession.”

“But she ordered the strike. It made sense, after everything else had been tried and didn’t so much as chip the stonework. Downtown LA was the target. Well, that Cathedral was. Not much of Downtown was actually left at that point to target.”

“Cathedral?”

“The massive, floating gothic cathedral that appeared over Downtown, yes.” He remembered the strange mix of dread and hope he felt at seeing that thing with his own eyes as it blotted out the sun for a decent slice of California. It had looked menacing hanging in the sky, even from miles and miles away through high powered binoculars.

“But anyway, the order came down. The mission was simple: aim a laser designator at the cathedral’s roof, from the tallest building in LA. I volunteered to lead it.”

“It was a suicide mission then.”

“It was billed as such, yes,” Ontos chuckled. Around his waist, Emily’s grip tightened. “We had an exfiltration, helicopters to pick us up from the roof. But the landing zone turned hot, the helicopters were shot down and the team I hand-picked were all but wiped out to the last. I don’t remember exactly how those last few moments played out very well.”

It was a blur, that last hour, and especially those last few minutes. The fight up Venture Tower though literal swarms of monsters and demons. The blood he’d drank that had made his aches and pains vanish and lacerations disappear, that made him feel like he was in his prime again. It had been the main reason he’d lasted as long as-

Ah, he remembered them too, that bar owner and his own crew. They’d lasted far longer than the SEAL team had, who had all died on the way up. He remembered the names of those last few that made it to the top with him; Nines, Damsel, Skelter, Jack. They had been the last ones standing.

So much happened in such a short span of time, one revelation after the next. Vampires, they had called themselves. He didn’t believe them at first. By the end, he believed them very much. They had been good people, to each other and to the very end. Maybe they had found their way up here with him, despite it all.

“And we know the rest,” Sera echoed him. “All that is left to be said is…”

“What now?” Leo finished for her.

“He talked about that with me. He talked about you, Sera,” he glanced over to the High Seraphim. “He also talked about someone named-” Ontos stopped, a void in his mind appearing where a name should have. It was there, but he couldn’t remember it. He had mentioned that he wouldn’t be able to though.

“Who?” Sera asked.

Him and his merry band murdering to their hearts’ content. He remembered the context clues from the conversation and made the connection. “Adam.”

“Oh. Ooh.”

Ontos knew that tone.

“Adam… isn’t with us any longer.”

He knew that euphemism too. “So what happened?”

“First, what did He say about him, if I may ask?”

“Just the footnotes,” Ontos explained. “He died while killing demons in Hell and-”

“He was the leader of the Exorcists,” Emily interrupted him. Her tone had shifted from pleasant to venomous. “He hunted down and killed Sinners, and he’d been doing it for a long time. Charlie didn’t want that, she wanted to help them. She tried to get him to stop over and over, but he attacked her and her Hotel and-”

Sera silenced her with a hand on her shoulder. “He died, foolishly,” she finished. “You don’t have to worry about him, or the misfits that followed him around. After that last ‘extermination,’ I ordered an end to it all, and I disbanded his Exorcists. The ones that didn’t perish with him, at least.”

“We didn’t have a choice in the matter,” Leo sighed, “not after his daughter was proven right.

“Good riddance,” Michael muttered. “I never liked him, or any of his sycophants.”

“But Vaggie is nice! She’s friends with Charlie!”

“Ah yes, ‘friends,’” Leo chuckled.

“He also mentioned a daughter of a seraphim,” Ontos remembered. “Is that her name?”

“Charlie?” Emily asked. “It is! Ooh, what did He have to say about her? Did he like her?”

Funny enough, I like her. Her dad raised her well. “He does.”

Emily made a sort of high pitched sound Ontos didn’t have a word for. Looks of surprise and shock flashed across the others’ faces.

“I take it you don’t share that opinion?”

“Recent events have had a… divisive effect on Heaven’s leadership, both the Seraphim Council and the lower councils.”

“Leo, that’s putting it very mildly.” Michael said.

“So, cliff notes, whatever those are. Hell exists as well, as does Heaven. My brother Lucifer, I mentioned him earlier, rules its Pride Ring. He has a daughter-”

“Charlie!” Emily cheerily provided for a second time.

“I think he knows her name by now, Emily,” the High Seraphim chided her.

“Yes, Charlie. She wants to redeem Sinners, those demons that were mortal before dying and falling to Hell.” Michael continued, not missing a beat. “She’s gathered a coterie of her own, built a Hotel to house any of Hell’s denizens that seek redemption. None of us thought she would succeed, not even her own father from what I’ve heard.”

“That was, until she was successful,” Leo stated. “I examined the new angel personally, and he’s as angelic as any other Winner.” Leo smiled. “Whatever the Mornigstar’s daughter’s methods are, they’ve proven to be successful.”

Ontos sighed. “Well, this is… complicated.”

“Life is a string of complications,” Leo said. “Or so I’m told.”

“He wanted me to help you with this,” Ontos realized. “I think I understand how to.”

“Oh? Found a purpose already?” Michael asked him.

“I have.” Just do what comes natural. He’d had a dream, once. And now he’d been given the means to make that dream a reality, even if it wasn’t in the way he’d first envisioned. He just needed to convince them.

But first, he had a question. Something that had been sitting at the back of his mind, related to observations he had made.

“Where is He?”
--==--

Ontos stared at the vacant throne.

The vacant throne remained vacant.

Ontos continued to stare. The throne continued to be vacant. It was about as ostentatious as the rest of Heaven he had seen so far. Perfect white marble, with gold filigree highlights worked into its surface and edges. It sat at the rear of a vast, dome-roofed chamber. Large rectangular windows ringed the edges of the dome’s base, illuminating the chamber below.

“Is this the part where you tell me he stepped out for a skee-ball tournament?” He finally asked after a long silence.

“No,” Sera answered. “And I’m afraid I have no clue what that is.”

“I don’t either,” Leo echoed her.

“Is it fun?” Emily asked, smiling.

Ontos turned away from the throne to look at the rest. “I would think so. It’s one of those carnival games that rely on skill. I’ve never played it.”

“But no, He did not ‘step out’ Ontos,” Sera explained. “He’s been gone for a very long time.”

“Metatron too.”

“Who’s Metatron?” The name wasn’t one he’d heard before. Or maybe he had, and had long forgotten it.

“His messenger, and right hand,” Michael shrugged. “They both disappeared together.”

Ontos thought back to the conversation, about the cryptic nature of some parts of it. In hindsight, they made sense. He had talked and acted as if He was preoccupied or busy with something else. Their entire interaction could have been compared to a company boss taking a moment of their time to speak with a new hire, to welcome them with encouraging words.

“It comes as a shock to some newcomers that arrive,” Emily said. She had approached him at some point, standing close to his side. “A lot of humans want to meet Him when they arrive and, well…”

“They can’t.” The words hung in the air for a moment. “So where is He?” He repeated his question from earlier.

“We don’t know.” Sera approached him, then walked past to approach the throne. She hung her head. “I was one of the last He spoke to before… his departure. Had I known at the time it would be the last time we spoke, I…” The High Seraphim fell silent for a moment.

She sighed. “I don’t know what I would have done, to be honest. He told me that he had to take care of something personally, and to ‘keep an eye on things here.’ I nodded and smiled, blissfully unaware it was the last time I would ever see him.”

“He trusts you enough to carry on with things here,” Ontos said.

“He really said that?”

“He did.” At first, he’d had his reservations about the woman, but he was starting to come around to her. Starting to, he wasn’t quite there yet.

“I believe you. He sent you to us, after all.”

Ontos understood. “I’m the message.” He recalled what the Creator had told him. When you do meet and speak to her, she’ll understand.

“So what now, Lady Sera?”

“I think that question is better suited for Ontos here.”

“I agree,” Leo said. He gestured to Michael, standing at his side, “We can help if you need it. You have some goal you wish to accomplish. You have His blessing already, so all that needs to be said is what you need.”

Ontos nodded. Yes, he had a goal. And an elevator pitch too. He turned to the High Seraphim, “I am going to need things.”

“Like?”

“Capital for starters, with which to acquire real estate, skilled personnel and material. Time, with which to build an organization and train its members to my standard.”

“Those can be arranged for.”

“And most importantly, agency and secrecy.”

“What exactly do you mean?”

“I can’t say for sure what adversaries there may be. But I can say for certain that there will be situations where either I myself or a subordinate will have to make a judgment call, and cannot afford to wait for someone higher up to call the shot due to extenuating circumstances. As well, a level of confidentiality regarding operational secrecy.”

“Secrecy is part of what got us into this problem in the first place,” Michael deadpanned.

Ontos nodded. He didn’t deny it. “I am willing to be public about my actions, if so requested. Any group I form would serve Heaven first and foremost after all, and not any one private interest.”

“What exactly do you have in mind then? Something akin to what you did in life?”

He nodded. Michael was clever, and correct. “I propose an intelligence agency. Its purpose would be twofold, to gather and analyze information about adversaries and threats, and when necessary and if needed, perform covert actions in response to that information.” For an elevator pitch, it was about as concise as it could get.

Sera was silent for a moment, as were the other three. Finally, she spoke. “Knowledge is power.”

“Miss Sera?”

“Something He told me, once,” the High Seraphim said. “Knowledge is power, and with it comes responsibility.”

“He is a wise person.”

“He is, yes.”

“But…” Michael shook his head, falling silent for a moment. “I struggle to see the value in something like that.”

“Things are changing.”

“Leo?”

“What Adam did down in Hell? He set a change in motion, when he chose to go after your brother and niece.”

“Charlie,” Michael spoke under his breath. “And I was there when Galan made that statement.”

“Whether he knew, or even cared enough to know? In the end, he violated His original dictates." Leo spared a glance at the throne. “Even by itself, his death set things in motion, let alone the deaths of his subordinates which are a separate matter entirely. And now there is very little between us and the legions below that despise our home.”

“I have my Royal Guard.”

“And yet they had no clue of the greater scope of things. None of us did, until that Exorcist came back short an arm while holding Adam’s blood-smeared halo.” Leo’s support was a surprise to be sure, but welcome nonetheless.

“There will always be people that do their best to exploit times of change, for their benefit or for others’ detriment,” Ontos chose to say. Those years after the fall of the Soviet Union came to mind, as disparate oligarchs and criminals fought over its rotted corpse until only the most brutal and violent of their number remained.

“How do you know that?”

Ontos raised an eyebrow. “Are there people in Hell?”

“Sinners, but yes.”

“My point stands,” he shrugged. “There are people there. And I know people. And I know that they’ll see the passing of the literal bane of their existence as not a cause for celebration, but an opportunity.”

“To attack Heaven,” Emily realized.

“That, yes.” Among other things. He was meaning to do away with rivals, clear the board of both their opposition and competition. He let Michael come to that conclusion though. It wasn’t even a wrong conclusion either.

Michael fell silent at that. Emily looked worried. “Would you kill them?” She asked.

He had the answer ready. “If you mean these Sinners, not unless I was forced to.”

“Oh.”

“Wet work was a very small part of what the Agency did,” he explained. “I for one preferred to work with people if I could before resorting to violence or threats thereof.” Although, many of his superiors had seen things quite differently. Their penchant for violence, to wage war for profit had likely been what got them all killed at the very end.

“Wet work?” Leo asked.

“A euphemism.”

“Ah. I think I understand.”

“Okay then,” Emily smiled. “Speaking of Charlie, you should talk to her!”

“The daughter?”

She smiled. “Her dad’s Lucifer, yes.” The name caused the other three to recoil, like back there in the offices. Ontos had never been much of a church person, but he knew the bullet points. King of Hell, one of if not the first ‘big bads’ in a literary work. If he was as bad as he’d been made out to be by his Sunday school teacher? Their reactions were understandable.

Although, the Bible’s big bad having a daughter was never mentioned. Then again, the Sunday school lessons never talked about any of the other characters he’d met in the past hour or so either. Emily also referred to him as Charlie’s dad. Not father. That implied a close familial bond. And if the seraphim had a high opinion of her?

“Have you met her?” He asked.

Emily nodded enthusiastically, and opened her mouth to answer before Sera cut her off. “Briefly,” she intoned. “We still haven’t come to a definitive conclusion about how to approach her Hotel.”

Hotel? That word again. “We, as in-”

“The rest of the council,” Michael said.

There was an opportunity there then. “I can help with that too.”

“That’s the ‘analyze information’ part then?”

Ontos smiled. “It will be, yes.”

“As loath as I am to kick the can down the road metaphorically speaking, having all of the relevant information before we make any decisions regarding the Morningstar’s daughter’s actions would be prudent.”

“This Charlie and Her hotel should be the first thing I learn about.” Ontos was out of the loop. Heaven and Hell had people, and thus politics, and thus it would take time to learn the ins and outs of said politics. But for once in his life, he had plenty of time to do so.

“I’ll tell you all about her later!” Emily declared.

The High Seraphim just sighed. “I believe that settles it then.”

Ontos nodded. It did. “Shake on it?” He asked, arm outstretched.

Sera smiled and nodded, enveloping his hand in her own.

--==--

Well, here we are.

So, the other half of the crossover. The World Of Darkness. When I was in high school, I became enamored with Vampire the Masquerade, Bloodlines, and the wider setting as a whole. I loved the idea that that abandoned house down the street hid a coterie of vampires, or the rusty old grain mill outside of down was home to werewolves. In a way, this fanfic is a tribute to WoD.

There will be one more chapter after this, an Interlude chapter, and that will conclude the first arc of the story.