Setting up the big showdown...
'What a lovely day for a funeral,' he thought to himself as he watched the mourners surrounding the grieving parents as the young bartender's ashes were scattered over the the cliffs of Dover.
There they all were, people who only suddenly realize what a great person he was... AFTER he died.
Did he feel remorse? WHY? All he did was remove the boy from a reality he would've regretted living to see... his dream girl with a 'superior' male... or so he'd tell himself. But the boy had faced an obvious supernatural threat, with no chance of successfully surviving without capitulation, and had spat in it's face... in her name. So he had made it so that if she was to live for eighteen hundred years... she would remember the boy's name.
He watched the group surround the mother... all but one.
"AHEM!"
The sudden disruption of his quiet contemplation caused him to drop the ruby in his hand. His instincts hummed; perhaps the proximity to capture.
He turned to face the Croft girl's friend... Samantha Nishimora.
She held the ruby in her palm, open for him to take.
He hesitated. Looking away so she wouldn't get a good look.
"Odd," she began, "rejecting a thing of beauty you once held so dear. You should NEVER disregard a thing of such obvious value." she. gripped the stone in her white knuckled fist.
He made a great effort to avoid her eyes... sweating on a forty degree day.
She went on, "Of course... you may indeed come to miss it. Perhaps even hold it dearer than your own chance to experience Heaven. The tiny thing you held so close to your heart... you may feel ripped apart; till getting it back from the one who ripped it away is all that matters... come the very fires of hell. So here." She placed the ruby back in his hand.
So intent on looking away from her, he didn't notice.
She sighed, "THAT is true devotion: the ashes scattered, the sun setting, last words spoken... and yet... 'dare mo denai' or... as a wretched traitor might command as his wolves tore into the innocents... 'non egreditor '. "
He turned white, "No one leaves," he whispered as his head turned to face her.
She was gone.
He trembled, till another personality took hold... JACK. He grinned, till he looked back at the departing mourners, and SHE stood directly in front of him: Mary
He screamed.
The image lunged at him full force; slammed him to the ground, and clawed out his eyes. Terror filled him, overwhelmed him he lost consciousness as he passed away from fright.
(Volcanus loves it's pet... especially it's guilt and terror.) He crawled up to his feet in darkness. Moments later.
When his eyes finally functioned again - hours later - he found he had growths and lesions all over his flesh: the plagues he had delivered to Europe... so, he wasn't immune. And... his prey was NOT scared of him... at all. He would need to remedy this. But first his watch needed setting. He headed toward the lights of a distant house.