As he gets closer Alastor begins to hear more voices, loud and taunting. Drunken men from the bars, no doubt. They slur through their shouts, turning their words nearly incomprehensible.

They're so loud, in fact, that they nearly drown out the sound of a woman crying.

Alastor peers around the corner of an old building and down another dimly lit alleyway and sees a group of 5 men looking down at something. One kneels in the midst of them, and between the legs of those standing Alastor catches a glimpse of one slim arm on the ground.

"You should've known what would happen goin' out looking all pretty like that."

The hand at the end of the arm balls into a fist, and before he can follow the movement, he hears the kneeling man cry out in pain.

The men around them fall in together, heaving the figure between them up to their feet. A bloodied face appears amongst them, almost a full foot of a height difference between her and her attackers.

"Fuck you." She spits, tear streaks leaving clean trails through the blood on her cheek. Her dark curly hair is disheveled, sticking to her forehead where an angry, open wound bleeds profusely.

A man tsks, amusement in his tone. "That ain't no way for a lady to talk." He says the word lady mockingly, as if it's an obvious lie.

She starts struggling then, trying to break free of the hold the men have on her. Then she screams, kicking hard when the man in front of her, still kneeling, starts to push his hands up her thigh under her skirt. The kick lands solidly on his chest, knocking him on his back with an oof.

"You bitch!"

Alastor feels the hair on the back of his neck stand up when the whispers turn into a cacaphony of wordless screams as he watches. The woman didn't even have a chance against them, fight as she might. She was the source of the scream from seconds earlier, scaring away the man that had almost been his fourth victim. He couldn't blame her, either.

This definitely wasn't a fair fight.

"LET ME GO! You-!"

One of the men covers her mouth, chuckling. "Ain't no one out here to help you-" He insults her then, calling her an obscene name that never failed to disgust Alastor wherever he heard it.

Alastor looks closer, and that's when he notices she looks familiar. And why she looks familiar soon follows.

She was the performer from the bar.

She no longer donned her red dress and boa, and the tears and blood had surely washed away whatever makeup she'd had on previously. But the fire in her eyes burned bright, he notices as he looks closer.

The distinct sound of an unbuckling belt makes Alastor freeze, and he watches one of the men, one in a grey shirt, take the fallen one's place. "Stop fighting and get it over with." He says, a filthy grin on his face.

The sound of horrified sobs start up immediately, her fighting turning more desperate and frenzied. "No! LET ME GO!" Then she kicks again, solidly nailing the man below his belt.

He falls like a stone, his friends choosing to catch him in favor of holding her. And that's when she manages to break free, shoving the heel of her palm into a different man's nose with force enough to break it before she swerves around him and takes off running in Alastor's direction.

He hides back around the corner as he watches her round the opposite one, taking off up the street on bare feet.

"Stupid fuckin' bitch broke my damn nose."

But that was the least of their worries. Alastor's blood was boiling, the screams in his head so loud that they drowned out all else except for the pounding of his heartbeat in his ears. He tucks his pocket knife away, pulling from a hidden pocket in his coat a sharpened butcher's knife. A bigger knife for a bigger slaughter.

Then, when the men rise to follow after her is when Alastor steps in to block their path. The man in front, the one who claimed a broken nose, grunts as he immediately walks into Alastor's raised knife. He grabs the man's shoulder and pushes forward, feeling the blade slide through skin and push past bone. Blood spills out onto his hand, painting it red.

The group following behind staggers back, surprised by his sudden appearance. Their eyes turn wary as they go back and forth from Alastor's face to their dying friend, unable to see the weapon between the two. Their eyes search his to see if he's an ally or a threat, not knowing of their friend's fatal injury.

"Can we help you?" One slurs, a man in a black undershirt. He was the one who'd been kneeling in front of the woman, who'd been kicked down.

Alastor tilts his head to the side, smiling from ear to ear. "I do believe you can." He lets the man, now lifeless, drop to the ground. "You all can, I'm fact. To help stop the screaming."

The men jump back, eyes immediately going to the blossoming stain of blood growing on the front of their friend's white vest. When he doesn't move, they look back up at Alastor as horror dawns on their faces.

A threat.

The man with the black shirt makes the mistake of trying to attack him, rage contorting his features. He balls his hand into a fist then raises it to throw a punch.

Alastor avoids his attack with a side-step and a stab to the throat. He pushes his hand forward, cleanly severing the man's external carotid artery and spraying himself with blood. Tsking in disappointment, he retracts his knife from the falling body, "I really enjoyed this coat."

The remaining four men don't hesitate to advance on him despite this, trying to use their numbers to their advantage. But the alcohol poisoning their bodies makes them clumsy. Careless.

The next to go down is a man in a brown sweater, Alastor's knife entering his left eye socket and pushing into his cranial cavity as he goes in for the attack. He slumps to the ground immediately, his blood stoaking into Alastor's coat sleeve.

The second manages to land a punch, but trips over the man before him, allowing Alastor to stab up directly into his throat. He stumbles and falls to his knees, blood spurting from between his fingers as he wraps his hands around the wound. He bleeds out in seconds.

The last two men are a bit more cautious, having moved back as they watched the first two die due to the recklessness of their attacks. One of them, the man with his belt still undone from his attempt at defiling their victim, looks past Alastor quickly, as if debating escape. The other, a shorter heavyset man, is crying openly, the front of his trousers wet with urine.

Alastor chuckles in amusement and runs the side of the blade across his tongue, the salty tang of his previous victims' blood filling his mouth, "Stop fighting and get it over with."

"We weren't goin' to kill her!" The shorter man cries, falling to his knees. "I didn't touch her! I swear it!" His upper lip shines with mucus and tears. "Please let me leave!"

Alastor rocks back on his heels, allowing contemplation to show on his face. "...Go ahead." He says, motioning away with his knife and watching as shock registers on the man's disgusting face.

He rises from his knees and turns around to run down the opposite direction, away from Alastor and leaving his friend at his mercy. But he only gets so far before hitting the ground, falling face first into a puddle of dirty water.

The man before him only jumps at the crack of a gunshot that echoes down the barren alley, hitting the fleeing man squarely in the back of the head.

"You cads wouldn't even give that woman the freedom to run away," Alastor gently rubs the barrel of his pistol before tucking it away. "So you aren't allowed to have it either."

The last man standing pulls out his own knife, bracing himself. "Come on then!" He yells. "Try it! I should've killed the trollop when I had the chance!"

Alastor feels the grin split across his face as the voices in his head begin to rise once more, "If you insist."

He wasn't prepared. They never are. His flimsy knife did nothing to protect him from the attack that came without warning.

All the air leaves the man's lungs as Alastor knocks him to the ground, knocking the weapon away and into the gutter next to a pair of discarded shoes. Again and again, his knife is brought down into the man's chest. Even when the light leaves his eyes Alastor still continues, turning the body into a mess of bloody skin, broken bone, and tattered fabric. All the while, his grin stays painted across his face.

This was what filth deserved.

When he finally rises to his feet, his body shaking with laughter, he's drenched in blood and gore. Blood drips from his fingertips, hitting the stone below with a steady plip, plip, plip. Rolling his head back he looks up at the night sky, basking in the light of the moon as the euphoria courses through his body.

Then, a presence behind him makes him turn abruptly, bringing his knife up to the throat of the intruder he hadn't realized was upon him.

The wide brown eyes of a woman, filled with fear, stare up into his.

The performer was back.

I just saved her and now I'm going to have to kill her anyway.

Alastor grips the handle of the knife tightly in his fist, grimacing internally. He didn't want to kill a woman, but he didn't know how much she'd seen. Not as if that mattered. He was covered in the blood of the bodies laying at their feet. There was no mistaking that it was his doing.

"I-I live down here." She stammers. "I thought that t-they'd be gone by now." Then he eyes drift beyond him to the ruined body on the ground. She still doesn't run.

I should kill her now.

She looks back up at him, then, and to his surprise the fear there has diminished slightly. Instead, her eyes are searching his face. "This... is the second time you've saved me." She says softly after a moment. "...Thank you."

Alastor steps back, the smile finally dropping from his face. "I don't know what-" He pauses. There was a familiarity there. In the darkness of her eyes, and the tiniest dot of a birthmark below the right one.

Then all at once, it comes to him. A scream, the crack of a shotgun through the trees, and fearful eyes on the same face covered in blood.

Lucille.

Six years had changed her in a way that only time could. No more was she a tiny slip of a girl, but a woman with more fight in her than any of the men he'd slaughtered around them. Her next words still shock him, however.

"Let me help you this time."

Here he was, covered in blood, and she was offering him help. It was insane.

She should be afraid.

He regards her warily, "Why?"

"Why does anybody do anything?"

The response forces a laugh to bubble from between his lips. There they were, his words from six years ago being returned back to him.

But when she walks past him and down the alleyway, he follows.

"You know... I never caught your name."

Alastor looks up at her from beneath the towel that he dries his hair with. He'd been allowed to bathe off the blood and dry beside a fire in borrowed clothing that fit him only sightly less than poorly. The pants were too short and the shirt too big.

"Pardon?"

"Your name." Lucille repeats, looking up from the bin she currently washed his bloodied clothes in. This was the fourth bin of fresh water she'd had to fetch to clean them, and even the water in this one was tinged with the reddish hue of blood. A bottle of peroxide and a bowl of juiced lemons sits by her side. "You never told me it."

Alastor regards her quietly.

"Are you thinking about killing me too?"

He laughs, "How ridiculous of me would it be to save you only to kill you anyway?"

A small smile tugs at the corner of her lips at the old words before disappearing into a pressed line of concentration as she turns her attention back to his clothes. "Then if not, I don't see how giving me your name can do any harm. Not killing me means you don't see me as a threat to you."

He considers this for a moment. "Alastor." He says finally. As far as he knew she never told a soul what had happened in the forest that day. After a month had passed he had figured he was in the clear, that she hadn't said anything either for fear he'd find her or because no one would believe her. Or purely out of appreciation for how he'd helped her.

"Well Alastor," She wrings the fabric out and surveys her progress. "Thank you for saving me for the second time."

"Why are you not afraid?"

Lucille looks at him then, the silence loud for several beats at his sudden question. "I am." She says quietly. "But better to be on the side of a murderer than against him. Especially one that happened to save you twice."

"The first time wasn't intentional. Neither was the second. I heard you by accident both times and the second I intended to kill whoever I happened upon." The homeless man escaping had been disappointing, but the events that followed had washed away that feeling of loss. He'd stumbled into a bigger prize, in the end.

"You hesitated when you had the knife to my neck."

Alastor shrugs, folding the damp towel in his hands, "I prefer not to kill women."

Lucille hums, "So... is that why you know how to get rid of a body? You've done it enough to develop preferences and limits?"

That quiets him. He never spoke about his kills. Never even to his mother, who was complicit in his father's killing through her silence on it. She knew what had happened in a sense, but she never asked for details so Alastor never gave any.

"I'm trying to make light of it so I don't have a breakdown." The shakiness of her voice in this admission, a break in her cool facade, takes him aback. "Humor me."

"Details won't do you any good then." Alastor replies. "Though you did handle the sight and smell of blood well, all things considered."

Lucille grimaces, "I'm a woman, I'm very familiar with cleaning bloody clothing."

"This high of an amount though?"

"Worse."

Alastor snorts, sitting down in an armchair by the cracking fireplace. "Hokum."

"That man disappearing was the best thing that ever happened to us. My mama and I." Lucille says after a moment of silence passes. "I was sick of him pawing at me when she wasn't around. My mama said he was a 'lounge lizard', which is how she got tangled up with him. Presented himself as a great man when he was really an oily snake in disguise."

He remembered the man he'd dismembered and gotten rid of for her years prior. His flesh had lasted for a while before it had gone bad and he'd been forced to feed it to the pigs at the farm across the way one night.

"She got a job getting paid good money, making clothes since she always made mine growing up." Lucille continues. "Some fancy white people took a liking to her and spent a pretty penny on custom dresses. Still do."

"And where is she now? Your mother?"

Lucille smiles genuinely then, the first time he'd ever seen her do so. "With her sweetheart," She replies. "He's the real McCoy. Gets her ritzy things and makes her happy."

"And... your father?" Alastor ventures.

Lucille sighs, the sound barely a whisper. "Never met him." She says, her tone laced with light disgust. "He found out he got mama pregnant and disappeared. Turns out he had a wife and kids the whole time, and white men have everything to lose when they get 'tangled up' with a Negro."

"Ah, I see."

"What's worse is she carried a torch for that lousy sonuvabitch until she met another monster." She spits, venom in her words. "Who's hopefully burning in hell as we speak."

Alastor quirks up an eyebrow, "Are you religious?"

This question seemingly catches her off guard. "My family is." She shrugs, standing up to go get more fresh water. When she returns, she starts giving his clothing their final rinse. "Bible belt born and raised."

"But are you religious?"

Lucille laughs, "Guess I can't give you the run-around on that, huh?" She hums softly. "I guess I am, but I don't follow the scripture blindly like they do."

"As shown." Alastor tilts his head to the side, studying her. "What does the scripture say about murder?" He had never read the Bible, let alone held one. While he'd heard passages from it, he'd never paid it much mind.

She pauses for a moment, thinking. "Deuteronomy 5:17 - 'You shall not murder.'. Leviticus 24:17 - 'Anyone who takes the life of a human being is to be put to death.'. Ezekiel 33:8 - 'When I say to the wicked, 'You wicked person, you will surely die,' and you do not speak out to dissuade them from their ways, that wicked person will die for their sin, and I will hold you accountable for their blood.', and 33:9 'But if you do warn the wicked person to turn from their ways and they do not do so, they will die for their sin, though you yourself will be saved-"

Lucille's pause makes him look up again.

She clears her throat, "I guess I should advise you against killing again, on that last word." Then she pauses. "However, the Bible warns against killing innocent people. I can't remember what the case is for the bad ones..."

"Then what do you think, sitting here having a conversation with and cleaning the bloodied clothes of a murderer?" He asks, genuinely interested in her answer. She knew the Bible well enough, but she said she didn't blindly follow it for a reason.

Lucille simply shrugs, "Jesus spent time in the company of sinners and it wasn't seen as wrong. He also said 'He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone'." Her eyes meet his then. "So I can't judge you when I've taken a life as well."

Alastor frowns at that, "It was self-defense."

She shrugs, "And usually that's forgiven, but... I still can't help but to feel like it's not fully forgiven, being as how I feel not a single shred of remorse for killing that man."

"As I feel no remorse for any of the lives I've taken."

"And... how many has that been?"

He indulges her. "9, so far."

Lucille's hands still at his words. "...So far?" She asks.

Alastor looks into the fire at his side, watching the flames consume the kindling beneath them. "It's become... rather like an itch I can never fully scratch." He explains, lowering his tone. "One life taken led to another, and ever since then I've never known a moment of peace in my own mind."

A quiet descends as she processes this.

"What about now?" She asks.

A tired smile tugs at the corners of Alastor's lips. "Even now they're still whispering to me. It never stops." He taps his temple. "But it is quieter now. I would assume from the... overindulgence."

"They?"

"I've heard voices whispering at the edges of my conscious mind ever since I decided to kill my father." And there it was, the words he'd never said aloud. They hang in the air between them for a moment before Alastor turns to look at Lucille's face.

She looks... shocked, to say the least.

"He was... a tyrant." Alastor begins to explain. "Beat both my mother and I for the smallest of reasons, and it only grew worse when my brother died suddenly in his infancy."

"I'm... so sorry."

Alastor waves a dismissive hand, a smile coming back to his face as he recalls the next memory. "It didn't last for much longer." He tells her. "The gun that you'd scrambled upon was his, left there from when I'd killed him months prior with my own. It was... poetic, almost. I was surprised it even fired if I'm truthful."

"I'd always wondered why it was there."

"Call it luck that you managed to fall down exactly where it was."

Lucille rises to go hang his clothes up outside, but when she returns she has a strange look on her face. "Well," She motions down a hall to the left. "Your clothes most likely won't be dry until the sun is fully up. We... do have an extra room for guests."

"You sound absolutely terrified at the idea of having me sleep under your roof." He laughs. "As you should be. Smart girl." But he didn't like the idea of traipsing through the streets in the early morning dressed as he was. The exhaustion had already begun to sink into his bones, his lip still sore and busted from where one of the men managed to land a punch on him. The adrenaline had left him unable to feel the wear until he had sat down. "However, I will... accept your generous offer."

Lucille nods and motions to the opposite side of the house. "I'll be heading off to bathe and sleep, on that note. If you need anything just knock. My mama won't be home until late tomorrow so you won't have to worry about running into her." She says. "So... Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Lucille."

She gives him a small, hesitant smile before heading off around the corner.

Alastor looks back into the fire, picking at his nails as he thinks about what he's going to do next.

Having an... ally of sorts, could be helpful. Especially if he did most of this hunting in and around the French Quarter and needed to hide or clean up. The girl was rightfully afraid of him, as she could've just as easily been another bloody corpse right alongside the six men laying dead in the alley up the bend. Yet, she hadn't gone running to tell the coppers about what he'd done. She had enough proof.

As he sits, a plan begins to take shape in his mind. The voices hiss with approval at the idea of bloodshed already back in his mind. He would rest tonight, but come morning he'd be rejoining society with his public mask on tight.

A grin grows on his face, imagining the announcement over the radio news channel telling of the bodies found from tonight. He had a good thing going.

So why not indulge a little more?