Fan Fiction ❯ Samaritan ❯ Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Don't own DMC. Don't own the number 1 bestseller of all time, although I'm working on it.

 

This is Rapture pt. 3, may not make too much sense if have not read First Impressions and Conservation. The below are story notes: if not interested skip to the fic.

 

The Parable of the Good Samaritan, FYI, is a story told by Jesus about a man who gets robbed and left for dead on the road side, a tax collector (a good citizen, theoretically) sees him and ignores him, a Pharisee (a kind of holy man, usually depicted in the bible as actually corrupt) ignores him, the one who goes to a lot of trouble and expense to help him is a Samaritan, who is a member of an ethnic group that converted to Judaism and were considered inferior by the `real' Jews. The moral of the story is don't be racist.

 

The Book of Revelations, incidentally, wasn't written to be taken seriously: Apocalyptic literature was a genre back then. Think Aesop's fables. Moral instruction.

 

Heresy is fun, isn't it?

 

And now on to the actual fic.

 

- - - - - -

 

Some days, she really has to wonder why she even bothers. There are these people she'd heard about, Social Darwinists, who think that people should be left to survive on their own, cultures too. That if they die, they die, the weak are culled and the species is stronger for it. Or, they manage to survive and quit being weak and stupid like they would if you kept helping them out. All according to nature's plan.

 

Some days, she just wants to bang her head against the wall, because they're just so damn stupid. Of course, she tells herself, they don't know any better.

 

Some days she thinks they should let them know better. Quit it with this whole conspiracy, nuclear raid drills and evacuation tests and escaped Zoo animals, and just let people know what's out there. Let the government spend its time on the real threats instead of bombing people trying to free their country because they've got the wrong ideology.

 

Those aren't the days like today, when she gets a call from a frightened kid who got grabbed by one of the enspelled flyers she put on college campuses (`Supernatural Specialist, 1000 an hour,' which was high enough to turn off the dabblers and the phone number wasn't correct unless you were full of fear) to attract kids with a trace of the right stuff on them. When she gets a frantic call from someone stammering so badly over a malfunctioning payphone she can't even get the address off him and has to use a dowsing crystal to get the place.

 

When she meets at the corner an ordinary kid, like you wouldn't give a second glance on a college campus. Would have run right past him if he hadn't been standing under the one working streetlight. Blood glistened like an oil slick far longer than it should. Brown hair, blue jeans… a kid whose fraternity tried a demonic ritual for kicks. Play `Satinists,' got a high girl to play `nekkid vergin sacrifice', although probably no higher than the rest of them… beer bottles everywhere. Some of them had tried to use them for weapons: a couple of them had had knives, one antique hunting rifle. This was a rough neighborhood, after all.

 

Only one of the neighbors had tried to help when they heard the screams. The screams still going on when she arrived. Fifty-something black guy, probably a WWII vet.

 

Thank go… whatever this was New York, the city where people walked right by a mugging. Redgrave'd told her about small towns. The kind where people didn't lock their doors, the kind where people grabbed their guns and turned out to help their neighbors. The kind doomed to poverty because all the able-bodied workers were dead.

 

Some guy'd said Hell was empty, and all the demons are here. Just one, thank god. Here, anyway.

 

One of the medium ones. Black cloak, scythe. Couldn't spot which type off the top off her head, but the Devils made new servants a lot… it wasn't immune to bullets and the whole thing could take damage, not like those annoying ones where you had to hit the head or you'd just wasted a bullet. Easy money.

 

The highest ranking fraternity officer left, the Under-Treasurer or something had pressed the cash box with all their dues into her hands, and the five left alive and conscious had given her all the cash they had.

 

Apparently it'd left the ones in a closet alone while it ate the ten it had disabled right off the bat. Ate them slowly, to prolong the fear and pain, chased another through the house... It had wanted them to listen, wanted them to hear.

 

They didn't leave bodies. That was an odd thing to make her lose her cool, when it was all over and she was out of earshot. No body.

 

On the one hand, it made clean-up easier. No traces, no way to prove it wasn't a human. But the thing was, if there was a body, they would have had something resembling a sense of closure. They could have burnt it, or dismembered it. They could have gotten some sort of vengeance. They'd be looking out behind them all their lives. They'd always be frightened of the dark, and no psychiatrist would be able to come up with an easy cure. They wouldn't even be able to tell anyone. Not without being locked up. In an enclosed space. Easy prey.

 

Easy prey like the bodies on the floor, the scents of blood and shit and fear so strong she was sure she could smell it like a demon could.

 

And that's what they'd be for the rest of their lives. Prey, who knew man wasn't the top of the food chain. Scared little mice, because they got drunk one day and decided to try something out of a book one had brought to `investigate the supernatural' and done it wrong enough it was right.

 

So goddamned stupid. There were some corners you just shouldn't shine light into.

 

And in the end, she knew, that was really why they fought.

 

She had six blue orbs. She'd gotten two from Redgrave, starting out: she'd had to give them back for the next hunter when she got her own. She also had potions and things, but those required doing the finger twists to grab them for her coat, and then opening the top and drinking them. This required stopping shooting to leave her hands free. Which was not on option, indoors with no room to maneuver, or they'd be on you in a second.

 

She'd been down to two orbs at one point, until the Runes had managed to transform enough of the energy they gave off when injured into enough to activate one of the healing set spells she'd had ready to go.

 

And then, of course, it had only seemed like an instant until she'd taken it out, and the green lights of its victims' souls had clustered around her, wanting to offer her their last bits of life, and she hadn't had any place to put most of it.

 

Sucked to have free healing energy and have to let it go to waste.

 

Anyways, she was going to buy it. Long term planning for a Hunter was getting a magazine subscription. She was gonna buy it. And Redgrave'd remember her, and there'd be some record book with her training, her reports, that some day someone else who was gonna die soon would leaf through frantically, as she'd done, trying to find some vital bit of information.

 

She was gonna buy it. Probably doing something stupidly heroic. And no one would ever really know. She'd just be one more faceless Hunter who had hopefully been just good enough. And Hunters didn't have time for history.

 

And no one in the real world would have any idea.

 

These are the days, when she looks into the eyes of people who have seen just a little too much, that she realizes she'd okay with this. That all the lies, all the deception, all the lack of recognition is damn well worth it.

 

They die. They die and normal life goes on. They die and no one remembers. They die and no one knows the battles they fought, the sacrifices they made, the terrors they knew.

 

And this is their triumph.

 

That idiots can think they're kings of the world, that what color is in, what musician is hottest, what's going on in some little country on the other side of the world matters in the slightest.

 

That everyone, everywhere, doesn't have the look in their eyes that these kids (was she ever so young?) do.

 

Because of her, these kids are alive. And people are sleeping soundly not a block from here.

 

Screw it, anyways. A body'd be evidence. Proof it was real. They'll convince themselves it was a bad trip, a dream, a mass hallucination, whatever. Just a dream.

 

Just a nightmare.

 

Huh. Guess that'd make her the alarm clock.

 

She was still pissed though.

 

Of course, alarm clocks often got whacked at.

 

She'd just gotten back `home' around 2: your stereotypical midnight ritual. Friday night was busy: she'd wanted to check her equipment. Fortunately, the spells on her coat kept it clean. She wished everything was that easy to get blood out of…

 

…aaaand ran into the welcoming committee. Fortunately she'd recognized the creep just before she fired.

 

Whatever happened to early to bed, early to rise, and all that shit?

 

Pastor Theophilus J. Flocker. Proprietor of the storefront church three places to the left of her home/office in the strip mall, on the bottom floor.

 

Right across from the stripper joint. Why oh why couldn't he go bother them?

 

In retrospect, having a pentacle (right side up, thank you) on her sign in red neon was kinda asking for it, religious idiot-wise. But she'd set up first, damnit!

 

“Wergild” didn't seem so cool a name now that she'd used it for her shop for a few years, but apparently it was bad luck to change it.

 

It was kinda weird to encounter rampant superstition among people who knew how it really worked, but on the other hand, no Atheists in foxholes.

 

Pretty, though. She liked the color. War and courage and all that. And you can't bleed if you're dead. Neon is basically chemicals in tubes with electric charges. What blood is, come to think of it.

 

And no, she wasn't paying attention. Tuning out unimportant conversations is a vital social skill, at least when she was growing up…

 

Bitch, please. Not witch. She'd like to believe in Wicca. She'd like to have some faith: a lot of demon hunters did have something to believe in, even Christians among them yet.

 

End times? Not on her watch.

 

Demon worshipper? Thank you, oh non-existent god, for the stupidity of thy sheep. She needed a good laugh.

 

Ah, the persuasive power of the sub-machinegun. Why yes, she was violent, thank you. Really, a self-proclaimed `warrior for God', scared off by her just drawing back her coat enough to expose the holsters?

 

Allowed himself to be dragged off by his adoring public. She hadn't seen those two before: probably showing off his faith, facing down the local Jezebel.

 

Better get in, get to the phone.

 

No, this was not Bernie's Deli. Bernie's Deli's number was -2668. This was -2666.

 

…and now she wanted a BLT. Of course, after the first few times delivery boys walk in during payment negotiating sessions with mob bosses, get accosted by religious nutjobs, or get sliced at by weird things, word gets around. No one was going to deliver to this block until dawn.

 

Let's see. She had… mayo, half a head of lettuce… Damn, she needed to go shopping. It'd been an hour, and all she'd been doing was sitting around and wiring C4 blocks, no real calls… what were the odds somebody'd have a close encounter of the 6th kind in the 10 minutes it'd take to get there, get Bernie to slap something together for his favorite customer, and run back?

 

…practically certain.

 

Her stomach rumbled.

 

After she'd vaulted off the railing lining the walkway in front of the second floor shops down to street level, she did a cartwheel for the hell of it. Didn't have anything if you didn't have style. And she needed to loosen up after bending over teeny wires for over an hour.

 

Also, if you acted like you were nuts, they thought you were. Always good to be underestimated. Even better to be simultaneously over and underestimated. She idly did the spinney thing with a couple of her handguns as she took the shortcut through the alley.

 

She munched on her sandwich as she walked back. And stopped. And stared. And dropped her jaw and her sandwich… shit! That had been a good sandwich!

 

And did the finger twist that called out her guns and ran towards the burning strip mall. She was going to find out what idiot had been playing with matches and leave them dangling off a skyscraper! She still hadn't managed to replace all her office furniture since that two-bit sorcerer had sent demons he managed to control to steal her spell components!

 

People were rushing about in a panic. Screams, shouts, hysterical laughter… wait a minnit. She knew maniacal laughter when she heard it.

 

Well, this really took the fruitcake.

 

Panicked mob. She fucking hated panicking mobs. Blocking each others' escape routes, crushing people in panic, pushing others towards the blades to survive… getting in her way. Unforgivable. She fired her gun in the air for attention. ...funny, she thought she hadn't loaded it with flare bullets… and her silencer must be busted.

 

Well, it got their attention. Silence, but for the crackling flames. And the roaring.

 

“Welcome to the First Annual Manhattan Marathon!” she chirped brightly. “Participants will receive the opportunity of a lifetime! Follow Broad Way towards Glen Avenue,” she pointed as they stared, “For a chance at surviving the night!” She held up her gun. “On your mark, get set, go!” She fired in the air again.

 

There they go.

 

Now.

 

“There's nowhere to run, sinners! Now that the demons have descended upon earth again, the great Babylon will be destroyed and Christ will come to judge you all as the Book of Revelations foretold! Though I have condemned my soul to hell by trafficking with fiends, I will be found worthy on Judgment day, for I have brought hell to earth in the name of god!”

 

What. The. Fuck?! She stared.

 

Flocker continued to preach to his one remaining listener. Well, except for the demons stalking toward her. “According to God's divine plan, the Judgment Day was intended to come within the lifetime of his Son's disciples. For so it was foretold, that when Earth was shrouded in darkness and the sins of man had brought the untold torment of hell upon them, the Christ would descend upon this vale of tears, and the good would ascend to heaven and the evil would have plague upon plague visited upon them! And then, the end of days would come and all evil, even hell itself would be destroyed by the power of God! But one of the devils realized God's plan, and before it could be brought to fruition…”

 

She flicked the switch and threw it, taking out the demon that had stalked closest.

 

Boom.

 

“Though I walk through the alley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I am the wickedest bitch in the alley!” She chanted. She tossed another bomb in her hand. “I'll let you finish your speech, Bastard, as they're your last freaking words!”

 

“See!” He shouted at the sky, wild-eyed and frothing at the mouth. “Corrupt is this world, that a woman can ape the ways of man! This infamy should never have come to pass! Forgive us, oh Lord! Forgive your children for living past your intended time of destruction! Forgive us for counting a devil as our savior against the forces of Hell, when only your son is our true, divine savior! Only he can rescue us from the darkness we are ensnared in! Let him descend upon us a second time now, as he should have 2 millennia ago, and visit upon Earth his wrath!”

 

BOOM.

 

…shit. The fire must have spread to the explosives in her office.

 

…shit. She needed a new office.

 

…shit. She wasn't going to get to have the nutcase burned at the stake.

 

On the plus side, at least some of the demons had been far away enough from the fire to survive. She put the other bomb away with a flick and with another twist held her semi-automatics.

 

She beckoned them toward her tauntingly. “Come and get me, boys.”

 

Well, that was fun. But her smile disappeared as she dug through the rubble.

 

Amanda. She didn't know her last name. She didn't know any of their last names. She only knew a few of their first names. She'd only been in the strip club one time when there'd been a ruckus while she was passing, one of the patrons trying to haul off one of them without payment.

 

Amanda had been the one to come up, about a month or so after she'd moved in, and ask about the sign. Ask if she was a witch. She'd raised an eyebrow and asked why.

 

Back in the middle ages, the big beef men had about witches was they could make people barren.

 

It wasn't that much of a hassle to make more of the tea she used to keep her period regular. Of course, after a while, if you exercised with the fanaticism a hunter had to, you went a long time in between periods. But she couldn't afford to smell of blood on a mission.

 

And now Amanda wasn't going to have to worry about an unwanted child ever again.

 

…and now the firefighters arrived. She nodded to the chief, who looked like he didn't know to give her a medal or hang her. She was tempted to say something along the lines of, we must stop meeting like this, but bit it back. No point in acting to him, he knew the score.

 

He'd smelt burnt human flesh and hair before.

 

She tossed what she could salvage in the pockets in her coat. …had to be careful, crystal ball shards all over here, and she didn't envy the clean-up crew. She should probably give the firefighters a list… bomb-making required a bunch of nasty chemicals, not to mention potion ingredients…

 

She yawned, looking up at the sky. Morning, already? She needed a place to crash…

 

She started towards this little rattrap that the guy who ran it owed her big, and

 

Ohshitohshitohshitandithurtandwhyhadn'tsherealizedthatwithheroffi cedestroyedtherewentthespellthathidwhereshewasandhowhadtheygottensocloseand ithurtandshecouldn'tmoveandtheGoldenOrbsbroughtherbacktolifestilltrappedand sheonlyhad5left4leftherhandwastoodamagedtogetagun3leftcouldn'tscream2leftsh edidn'twanttodielikethis1leftI'msorrySarahit'sallgoingdark…