I was originally going to wait a week before updating again, but what the Hell it's Halloween! Also I just got elastics put in my braces. (Worst. Timing. EVER.) I need something to cheer me up.

For future reference, the top section is where I'll reply to reviews I get on this chapter between the chapter update and the next. Only problem is, I haven't got any reviews yet. *cries* I promise you it gets good! Lots of gore and fighting a someone will get impaled on Grell's chainsaw. Yay chainsaws!

I've creeped you out now, haven't I?

...Happy Halloween!


"Wakey, wakey!" A familiar voice said in her ear. "You've been sleeping for some time."

Eyes fluttering open, Evangeline drifted to wakefulness to see a face beaming down on her, shaggy black hair framing his face. Bits of it fell in-between his eyes which were a dark brown. He was leaning over her, practically pinning her to the bed she had woken up on. She felt some of her arms and legs wrapped up in cloth. Bandages.

"Oh. Hello, Kain." She answered slowly. "So you found me."

"Yup. I cleaned you up too. I haven't gone round to patching you up completely, though."

"How long was I out?"

"Ah, like half an hour or so." Kain chirped. "For someone who gets injured so easily, you wake up fast."

"All the more pain to suffer for, I suppose." Evangeline muttered as she propped herself up by the arms one the bed. However, her eyes widened and she moaned as she collapsed yet again. The muted pain that pulsed throughout her body regularly sharpened with even the tiniest movement.

Seeing her in agony, Kain's expression softened to one of concern as he reached for bandages and continued to treat her wounds.

"Does it still hurt, Eve?" He asked, using her shorter nickname.

"I'm in constant pain!" The girl, whose nickname was apparently Eve, moaned. "Of course it does. You should know. You know more of my condition than I do!"

"Curse. And you're behaving incredibly morosely, if I may say." Kain corrected. "Then again, you're like that all the time."

She turned her head to glare at Kain. With the hair that usually concealed the right half of her face held back with bandages, he could see both of her eyes.

Her left eye was relatively normal. Neither a honey gold nor chocolate brown, it was a hue caught somewhere in between, perhaps leaning towards the brown. If Eve didn't spend so much time with a stoic, half-lidded look on her face, more people would see that it was quite pretty, with slight sparkles and an enchanting glow.

Her right eye… was not. Like the vampires she'd just returned from assassinating, this eye was a bright ruby red, with the slit pupil of a cat in the center. Unlike a vampire's (or cat's, for that matter,) it wasn't keen or farseeing. In fact, it was blind. Completely useless in everything to weeping blood and making others who saw it shy away in disgust and fear.

Ever since 'that day', I've never been the same…

That wasn't where her deformations ended; Eve was bitterly reminded of as she saw herself underneath the sheets.

Most of her hair was a glossy black, just like ravens' wings. (Just like her wings, the thought popping into her mind before she shoved it away.) Though the majority was long enough to cover her back, a few shorter layers framed her face, and others were swept back, as if tossed by the wind. This was for two reasons. First, it kept the streaks of red in her hair, (not stained by blood, but unnaturally growing that way) shorter and therefore less noticeable. Second, half of her face was obscured by it, covering the eye that had a tendency to scare people.

And then there was that scar. Strangely enough, Eve's skin always stayed the same; the same silky tone of alabaster, the same paleness gained from nature and kept from having little contact with the sun. Of all the injuries she received, not one of them ever left a mark on Eve. No matter how severe the wound, or how long it took to heal, they all eventually disappeared, leaving unblemished skin once more.

There was one exception.

A crescent moon enclosed in a circle shone black on the skin over her left hip. It enwrapped a cross within itself, pointing at a forty-five degree angle. It was just an outline, crossed through exactly once, with tapered ends. Thick spirals and twisting lines filled the crescent itself, like a Celtic design. The whole thing was surrounded by a crown of thorns.

Reaching tentatively, Eve brushed a finger against the scar to see if it still shot bolt of pain through her body if she did so. She winced. Of course it still did. How stupid it was to think otherwise.

Noticing this, Kain paused from his activity and put his head on her shoulder, trying to see what she was doing.

"Are you touching yourself?" He asked, feigning innocence upon asking the dirty question. Then, ever one to suddenly switch interest to things, he continued. "Hey what's up with-?"

"What? No! I mean, yes, I technically was, - but no, no, not in that way! Why does everything you say have to be so perverse!" She howled as she pulled the sheets over her head, to hide herself from view. "And where the Hell did my shirt go? I'm sick of waking up covered in nothing but bandages!"

Kain gave an 'are you kidding me' face. "They were torn to shreds, just like the rest of you."

Eve's scowl melted, and her face popped out from underneath the blanket as she deadpanned slightly. "Oh. That's right."

"Not to worry, I'll just lend you a shirt on your way out. Now, about your back…"

"Eh?"

Kain switched to medical mode. "Two identical wounds located between your shoulder blades. The mirror image of each other, they form a V shape and look too ragged to be caused by blade. However, they certainly didn't look like a vampire decided to bite a V shape into your skin. And this isn't the first time I've seen them on you… Have you been hiding something from me?"

Eve almost didn't answer, but she knew Kain would find out sooner or later anyways. "…wings."

An awkward silence befell them.

Kain lifted his hand to his chin pondering the thought. "… I see. It was so out of the ordinary, you were too afraid to tell me."

"Yeah."

Damn, how does he always know?

"I wonder, is this a good or bad sign? These wings."

"You tell me. Like I said, you know more about this condition than I do."

"And like I said, it's a curse, not a condition. It was made to heavily bar your magic while slowly weakening you. It's supposed to eventually cause you to deteriorate to the point of death. A time bomb. The only thing keeping you alive is while the seal is feeding off your magic, you have so much of it. The upside is that it must be enough to fight the seal's effect. The downside is that you can't use magic anymore for that very reason."

"Tell me something I don't know." Eve mumbled. "Which, by the way, is anything but what you just said."

Kain continued. "But to use reAnimus abilities includes that… there's two possibilities. Either your magic potential has grown to the point where you can use some of it despite a large portion being leeched off, or in times of severe stress you use magic that is supposed to be used to combat the curse… at the cost of its grip tightening on you."

Eve absorbed the information, but didn't answer.

"Whelp!" Kain's face of 'serious concentration' suddenly broke and he returned to his cheerful self as he finished patching his patient up. "No use worrying about that now! We'll see what happens when it does. We'll know something is wrong when you start suffering massive waves of ongoing pain even worse than the ones you have now!" Grabbing a pair of pants and a shirt, Kain flung them in Eve's face with a whack. "You know that way out. Byeee, see you tomorrow!" He waved before popping out the door out of sight. "Oh, and don't worry about payment. There's a fan girl that visits me every Saturday morning with proclamations of love. It's quite unsettling, really. You can chase her off for me tomorrow." He added as he reentered the room, before disappearing a second time.

Eve stared.

"…whut. Why the Hell do I hang out with him…" She asked herself and she lifted her palm to her forehead. Then it occurred to her. "Oh yeah, it's because he's possibly the only thing keeping me alive. Ahaha, isn't life grand?" (It wasn't.) With a sigh, Eve hoisted herself out of the bed and into the clothes. Kain was surprisingly slender, but his black dress pants and shirt were still two sizes too big for her.

It'll have to do until tomorrow, when I can sew myself another shirt. While I'm at it, I should probably make a few extras too, because me running out has been becoming way too often an occurrence lately.

Traveling down the staircase and letting herself out the door, Eve walked down the familiar dirt road to her own home. Like Kain, Eve lived over a shop.

Kain ran an apothecary. Filled with medicinal herbs and materials, he sold everything anyone would need to cure illness and treat ailments. Yet no one was as good as utilizing them as Kain himself, who often used his own wares to heal others. Eve was his 'star patient' as he often called her, usually with a goofy grin or smirk. He earned enough revenue to live off the entire year with his business. This popularity was partly due to his sheer talent at doing his own job, and the fact that many females found Kain attractive, which often resulted in him accumulating fan girls. Many, many, persistent fan girls, who acted were quite similarly to rabid dogs. Aside from executing criminals, it was Eve's job to keep them at bay; a special kind of payment that Kain charged from her for his services. It was no pleasant job; sometimes Eve wished Kain would charge some astronomical amount of gold for his services instead, like everybody else.

Meanwhile, Eve lived above a shop that sold various random articles made of metal; she was an amateur blacksmith. Her specialty was producing timepieces. She didn't sell very many because A) she rarely had it open since she had two other jobs and B) people avoided her like the black plague, one of the many benefits of being a social pariah. It was rather small and run down. Eve wasn't the most financially secure person, and could only afford a tiny home that barely fit two people. The only upside was that if was next door to Kain's place. (And that wasn't because he was attractive! She got injured rather a lot, and he was one of the few people who didn't kick her out at first glance.)

Creeping through the front door, Eve closed it behind her as softly as possible. She didn't shout out "I'm home!", because it was the middle of the night and she didn't want to wake up her sister and scare her witless.

"SIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS!"

Too late.

Faye came bounding the stairs, blue eyes sparkling with excitement. Her long blonde hair, usually put in a single braid going over her right shoulder, flew all over the place as she jumped down from the top of the last landing. "What took you so long?" She cried and as she ran up to her, waving her arms left and right, up and down. "You weren't home for hours so I was waiting for you to come home!"

"All this time?" Eve was touched, but it was probably three in the morning and way too late for a twelve-year-old to be awake. "Don't you still have classes tomorrow?"

"Only for one more day." Faye pouted. "And then it's the festival, wheeeee! You promise to come, right?"

"…riiight. But for now, let's go to bed. We must both be exhausted."

"Yeah, okay. You're alright, aren't you? I know you don't like me prying into this business too much, but you gotta tell me when you get too hurt so I can help!" Faye said sternly, a concerned expression on her face. "You have to take care of yourself!"

"I do, I do. It wasn't that bad this time, I've had worse. Much worse."

Bop!

"Ow! What was that for?"

"And I told you to stop with the emo attitude, too! You'll just end up driving yourself into depression!"

"Faye, 'emo' isn't a real word."

"Well it is now!"

"Is not."

"Is now."

Is not.

"Is now!"

"I'm choosing to end this conversation before you hit me again."

So, the two sisters climbed the stairs to the bedroom above both their beds where. Plopping onto the straw mattresses, both girls said good night to each other, and fell asleep.


A bad habit of mine is to start and end chapters with my characters waking up and falling asleep. DX H-how do I not notice this for two chapters straight?

Be sure to review. The first chapter was viewed by like thirteen people and not one of them reviewed. If that was you and you're reading this, you're a meanie. No offense.