Redeeming Cain
By Kaj-Nrig
Notes/Disclaimer: Final Fantasy VII is the sole property of Square Enix Co., Ltd. I claim none of its characters, scenarios, or affiliations as my own.
Chapter 3: The First Night (Prelude)
"Say... what are you doing?" Lucrecia asked quite sweetly, quite innocently. It made his heart ache. If I want her, I know she wouldn't mind me putting my hands on her. He bit his tongue at the thought, but it was true. He wanted to pin her down to the mattress, rip her clothes off, and make her scream for more, more, more-
"Blessing the house entrances."
And he could smell the lust, faint and suppressed, emanating from her like some sort of sweet drug. She tried so hard to keep it hidden, and that only made him want her more. Do it, do it, do-
He pulled out a small vial from a vest pocket and stood at the front entrance of the house. "St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil. O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, thrust into hell all the evil spirits who prowl about the world, seeking the ruin of souls. Amen." Three streaks of the clear liquid splashed against the wood and disappeared, and he immediately moved into the kitchen, repeating the same mantra on the small kitchen window.
Lucrecia had sat down on the couch, busying herself with some sort of task involving paper, thread, and a needle, and as he passed into the other hallway, he noticed that the desires rising from her, the slight blush, the swelling of her breasts, the heat radiating from below her stomach were all diminished, almost completely gone. Good. She was already serving as a good diversion; to have her jumping on him would only make matters worse.
Stepping into her room, he suddenly felt dizzy, almost drunk. Her smell was everything here – it rested in her bed, it brushed against the nightstand, it hung in the walk-in closet, it twisted around the window latch. Shaking his head clear of the delirious drug, Vincent quickly rushed over to the window, recited, "St. Michael, defend us in battle, Amen," lined the wood with blessed water, and rushed back out, trying to keep all the blood in his body from rushing to his head and groin.
The next room, the lavatory, went quickly; there was only a small circular skylight that lit the room, and vampires never entered a house through such... undignified means. Crazy old fucks, the bunch of us.
As he approached the room of the deceased Melantha, however, Vincent felt a very real chill crawl through his spine. He knew from experience just how gruesome a curse like the one placed upon this room was. Many an unwary traveler had perished at his hands, but only after they had been forced with complete sight of the demonic realm and were made unable to distinguish between the living and the dead. Grimacing, he emptied the remaining three quarters of the bottle onto the floor in front of the door. "The power of Christ compels you, the blood of Christ compels you, and the Gospel of Christ compels you."
There was a hiss...
"Keeeeeeeeeee!" It ran up and snatched at him, howling in the quiet hallway as its fiery tentacles thrashed at him. He tumbled down the hallway, and when he got up, the tower of fire popped, cracked, and howled, almost as if it were laughing at him. His cape had caught on fire, and he quickly snuffed it out. Eyeing the wailing fire, Vincent drew the cross out in front of him.
"Feel the holy fire of the Lord upon you, demon, corrupter of souls!" he whispered, letting the silver crucifix reflect the fiery and otherworldly light.
"hoooly... fiiiiire?" the gout of ebony and auburn echoed, its voice a shrill, raspy, dry thing. "...yessss... but noooot... nooooot G- G- G-" The name caused it excruciating pain, and the swirling tower pulsed, each time growing smaller and weaker. "Fiiiiiiiiire... of SataaAAN! Keeeeeeee!" The fire chortled, twists of flame spitting out at him, sparking in the ephemeral space.
Snarling, he took a step toward the fiery mass. "Choke on the name of the Father, cursed one! Choke and remove yourself from the presence of God's child! Part! Part, like the Red Sea did to Moses under guidance from the Almighty Lord! PART!" And as he came within arm's reach of it, the fire that bore no heat, it instantly gaped open, swirling around his arm with envy and hatred as he destroyed it. "I tell you again, demon! PART! In the name of the Lord!" And then, howling and screeching curses and wraths, the apparition dissipated. With a heavy breath, Vincent wrapped his rosary around the doorknob of the cursed room.
This vampire will be a definite challenge. He had never seen a curse act like that before. Only the Elders had had even a remote chance of doing such a thing, and they had died so long ago.
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When he returned to the living room, dusk had passed and the world was completely shrouded in darkness. Lucrecia was still on the couch, nervous and intimidated as she gazed out into the encroaching darkness. Upon his footsteps, though, she visibly calmed and set down her sewing kit. He glanced at it – she had sewn an intricate and highly-detailed crucifix onto the paper – as he came into the room, and quietly refused her proffered cup of tea. "Did you hear anything just now?" he asked, sitting down next to her... but a respectful two body lengths away.
"Hear? Such as?"
"Forget it." She looked at him, concerned, and he almost melted under her gaze and confessed, but he shook his head instead. "It's nothing."
They sat there, both of them uncomfortable and excited, nervous and enticed. Misty steam from the two cups filtered up in a dizzying, alluring dance, reminding him all the more that they were the only two in the house, that there was no one else within shouting distance, that he could easily-
"You should get some sleep."
"Hm?" she whispered back, lazily swiping at her drooping eyes.
"You need all the rest you can get. Go; I promise I'll watch you." This caused her to blush profusely, and he berated himself without abandon. Don't get attached, you stupid, stupid idiot.
"Um, actually..." She continued to look away, but that blush on her cheeks still wasn't going anywhere else. "...I... I was hoping I could sleep here... with you." Immediately after those words escaped her lips, she gasped and scrambled to correct herself. "I-I mean...! I mean... I'm scared to sleep alone... I'd sleep easier knowing you were by my side..."
And I'd feel more at ease with myself if you didn't put all these thoughts into my head. He answered by nodding calmly. "That's fine."
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Night fell swiftly on this portion of the Outer Plate, and the world underwent an immediate change. Lights flickered in the last vestiges of sunlight and sporadically went out, diminishing the soft spots of illumination spread throughout the plains and hills. Rumbles, deep and primal, reverberated from the malevolent forest, whose blacks seemed to grow blacker with the absence of sunshine, and any romantic, beautiful, or poetic notions of a holy sanctum within its cover were swiftly put to test. Howls began to issue forth, inhuman, unnatural, and wholly disturbing, joined in its cacophony by a symphony of squeals, squirming and wriggling, and the sound like nails on a chalkboard.
Inside the walls of Asgard, people were in less of a hurry to return to their homes, and some shops still stood, selling the remains of the day's goods. Even here, though, under the protecting vigil of Son Jesus, a feeling of anxiety and fear hung in the air, as if the citizens half-expected the walls to crumble around them at any moment and leave them exposed to the terrors of the ghouls beyond their city walls. The three small, double-door gates that marked the northern, eastern, and southern faces of the perimeter had been closed and barricaded at the very last sign of sunlight above the Nibel mountains, and anybody unlucky enough to be outside its walls were now desperately seeking safe and disguised shelter.
Inside the town, everything was silent. But soon the same heavy rumblings reached their ears, and children began to weep, women were visited by nightmares, and the ghosts of the dead began to haunt their living relatives.
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The night was different from most others: by three o' clock, there hadn't been as much as a distant squealing of wheels on axles, much less an entrance by the ageless undead. Vincent fingered the large trio of stuffed pockets on his left side, his metallic claw somehow managing to itch. He was all the more wary now than ever – midnight was the prime time to attack any victim because the moon was fullest in the sky and the sun was furthest from the sky, and even as late as 2 AM was a good time to strike due to the absolute darkness that came at that time. But any time past that was flirting with the prospect of burning alive.Perhaps it will not attack tonight, he had tried to tell himself, but he knew better. No vampire would be so meek as to ignore the death of one of its victims.
I sure as hell didn't.
He shifted slightly in his position in the shadows by the window and continued his vigil. The minutes ticked by, and he grew more and more anxious, more and more-
He froze, turning into an invisible statue, a black on black, a raindrop in a lake, and averted his gaze from the outside to Lucrecia's sleeping form. It had been sudden, almost soundless, but someone now stood outside the locked gate, silhouetted by the moon behind it, surveying the premises. The cows should have been restless and tense in their pastures, but there wasn't a single sound coming from them. Even they hadn't detected it.
"Lucrecia." The voice was surprisingly high-pitched and youthful, almost childlike. He half-expected the cattle to perk up at this whisper, but somehow they hadn't heard it. The vampire had directed it solely at its victim. "I'm coming in." Again, that aggravatingly... cute voice. His ears straining against the intense silence, Vincent removed his pistol as quietly as he could, the fingers deftly unclasping the holster with a low snap!. There was another inaudible klak! on his left side, and one of the three compartments opened, revealing several small glass balls. As the last bit of moonlight struck them before he molded completely with the dark, it reflected off of a glistening amber powder.
The door was flung open with such incredible speed that there had to be a thunderous roar, but even the unoiled hinges made no sound at all, and the door stopped just short of slamming into the wall. It took a step...
...and continued into the house.
How? How did you get past the barrier, vampire? All his instincts told him to bolt, to retreat from this awesome creature that could step into a blessed house beneath God's radar, but he held fast. He had to, or this entire night would have been wasted.
"Lucrecia," the youthful-sounding apparition whispered again, and at this distance he could finally make out the small, lithe frame of the attacker. Shielded as it was by the shadows of the hallway, he still couldn't make out its face. Come, you devilish abomination. Come into God's revealing light and identify yourself before the Lord.
It did just as he commanded, strolling leisurely into the scope of the moonlight... and froze.
A girl? She looked no older than fourteen, and she was dressed in the most unseemly of outfits; her top consisted of a simple black sleeveless shirt that cut off just below her breasts and a black lacquered vest which hung open, unzipped, and her bottom... to say that she revealed a fair bit of skin was an understatement. But what struck him the most was the overall... shabbiness of it. Perhaps not shabby, but it certainly didn't fit the image he'd built up of the aristocratic vampire. She seemed almost... amateurish, if that was possible. She looked like an amateur at being a vampire. God must have a sense of humor, he glumly noted in the back of his mind.
The girl-demon snarled, revealing her small, miniscule fangs. "Okay, where the FUCK are you!?" she exclaimed, catching him off-guard yet again. This wasn't right... the vampire he had expected was something powerful, an ancient lord that had somehow eluded his scrutinizing crusade. A vampire that ruled its domain as he had – with a warped dignity and perverted sense of class.
One that donned the most extravagant, the most luscious of fabrics, not some... somecommoner's clothing.
One that spoke with refined, lyrical notes, not some callous dribble.
"I know you're here somewhere, you FUCKTARD, so just come out and I'll make it easy on you!" The young girl stamped heavily on the ground, baring her fangs as she swiveled her head every which way. He took a quick glance at Lucrecia; she hadn't woken up yet, which was a good thing.
"Gotcha."
He felt her cold, tingling breath brush against his neck as he leapt out from the shadows and whirled around, gun drawn. From the corner of the room, only a few inches away, he could hear her chuckling lightly, but there didn't seem to be anything in that impenetrable darkness.
"Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk... I gotta admit, you had me wondering for a sec. I almost couldn't tell where you were," she said lightly. "So what are you? Some sort of bodyguard? ...Wait a minute..."
He kept his gun beaded on the inky blackness and focused his gaze. "Don't think you can hide from me, vampire."
"Hide? Wha- hey, hold on a sec! What the hell's up with YOU!?" she stammered, and he could suddenly make her out that much easier. Her youthful, unblemished and pale form stepped out into the moonlight... and quite angrily, at that. "Look, there's no need to be so hostile, okay? We're all friends here, right?"
"Your kind is meant for extinction."
"'My'... hey..." The girl became flustered, suddenly taking real notice of the firearm aimed at her heart. "H-hey... w-what's wrong with you...? O-okay, just... just put that down... alright?"
He stepped closer, frenzy – Friends, are we? – filling him like blood, and he felt his finger tightening on the – I am no vampire! – trigger, squeezing, squeezing – No more! – and he was going to do it again, kill another of his own-
"...Vincent...?"
Savagely, the demon in front of him swept at the gun, and there was a loud bang!, and he found himself tossed into the living room wall, then someone screamed, who was it, who was it, it had to be Lucrecia, and glass shattered, that was her, that was the girl, Shit!
Falling onto the couch, he grasped one of the small orbs from its stash and crushed it in his metallic grip. With a quick snap, he flung the encased dust into the air, tingeing the air a sparkling red color. The vampire girl stood in the yard, looking confusedly and angrily at him, and he aimed and fired into the misty substance, bang bang bang!
Three behemoth jets of flame shot forward, streaking out into the open and slamming into the earth with massive force. "Stay here!" he ordered Lucrecia as he bolted from the couch and out the window. Scanning his surroundings, he saw the little vampire girl dashing down the road toward Asgard. He aimed quickly, fired, and saw her shoulder lurch violently forward, heard her let out a surprised yelp, and then he was dashing after her.
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She stopped directly underneath the heavy, looming walls of the city gates, gazing up at the holy cross emblazoned there. By the time he made his way to her, the girl had turned around and regarded him with her shimmering gray eyes.
"There's nowhere left to go," he remarked, his gun again trained on her small, nimble frame. Her right shoulder oozed black humor, but she did nothing to staunch its flow; to the contrary, she drove her fingers into the torn mass of tissue and muscles and bone and whipped something at him, something hard and sharp. He knocked the piece of bone out of the way and trained his gun on her again.
"Shut up!" she yelled defiantly, turning to face the monolithic gates. "Don't think one stupid wall can stop me!" Saying that, she bolted toward the gate and leapt up, up, up. She was jumping right onto the blessed walls. Is this girl an idiot? he wondered briefly, until her small feet touched the surface.
Holy fire burst forth immediately, but she was already up again, up above the radiant yellow flames. In three hauntingly beautiful strides, the vampire girl was up and over the wall, leaving a trail of dying will-o'-the-wisps in her wake.
Gazing up so far that his neck began to strain, Vincent couldn't help but be enthralled by the show of dexterity. No vampires before had ever tried to scale the walls of a blessed gate, and none had certainly even attempted to resort to such... mundane measure to scale ANYTHING. This girl's just full of surprises. Rather than infuriate him, it only served to slightly irritate the beleaguered hunter.
Straining the muscles in his legs, the hunter followed her lead, though he made contact with the wall well short of her mark. Stabbing his claw into the hallowed stones, Vincent slowly made his way to its crest.
As he descended, he scanned the lightening forms of the buildings and streets for her lithe form.
Nothing.
She was gone.
But suddenly, as if to award him for his effort, the walls were flooded with light from the rising sun, its streams of light breaking through the shadows of the walls and touching on the western face of the town. In the distance, he heard a high scream, and he sprinted in its direction.
Chapter 3: The First Night (Prelude) END
A/N: I have a habit of cutting things short. I've gotta work on that. But I suppose this time it's not such a bad thing. The original outline called for this chapter to extend to the morning hours, when another person would be found bitten. But I figured that it'd be hard for the girl... yes, it's Yuffie... to bite another person with only a few hours of night time left, with a gunslinger hunting her, stuck inside the walls of something that rivals Jerusalem in its religious mumbo-jumbo. It also turns out that the cutting would help out the story a bit more, too. I hope you'll see what I mean as the story progresses.
If there's anything I missed, I apologize. Oh, there's a small update to Chapter 9 of TFJ, but it's nothing big – all I did was switch "Kami no Henshin" to "Henshin no Kami."
Hopefully, I'll be a bit more prudent about writing and finish the next chapter(s) sooner, and again, thank you for reading.
Notes:
"St. Michael the Archangel ... Amen." – An altered take on the Prayer to St. Michael (originally written by Pope Leo XIII).
"The power of Christ ... compels you." – Any horror fan worth his or her salt should know where this line comes from.
"It IS said that God has a sense of humor." – If you've seen Dogma, you'll understand this piece of dry, humorless comedy.
Yuffie's attire – Yuffie's attire is basically an embellishment on her Advent Children outfit. Her shirt's flat black, cut off just under her breasts to reveal more of her stomach. Her vest remains more or less the same, only shortened a bit and darkened. Her shorts are mostly the same – again, just darkened – and her leggings are reduced to ankle-length socks and sneakers. It reminds me a lot of Tifa's outfit, actually.