Hellsing Fan Fiction ❯ Deuce ❯ Memnochs Seraph ( Chapter 1 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

He didn't watch her as she entered the room. Of course he didn't. His pastel grey eyes were staring off to the left, into the distance, as if something of mild interest had caught his attention. In truth he cursed the direction of his gaze, and wished he could turn it toward the room, and more importantly, toward her. Thus far, all he could see of her was a small silhouette in the corner of his eye. That was all.
She leaned up close to him now, as she always did, and brushed her lips over the glass that covered his cheek. It was her way of greeting him, and she never failed to do it. Consequently, she had to clean the glass off at least once a week, because the blurred smudges of her mouth would remain upon the surface. The girl didn't like to leave him all besmirched. In the last few weeks, she'd gotten a little fanatical about her parents being close to him, "just in case they knocked him over, or brushed against him".
He wanted to close his eyes and savour her chaste greeting, but he couldn't. No one had ever crafted him any eyelids, and if they had, his eyes would either be closed or partially open. It was the moving that he couldn't do, and it was more than a little frustrating. All he could do was exist, and think, and feel.

"Hello Deuce." she mouthed against the glass. Her eyes were closed, he saw. She looked as if she might be in pain, but he couldn't tell for sure. When she was this close, her face blurred even more and he had to strain really hard just to see the features he knew so well. He heard her breathing grow shaky, and knew she must be on the fighting point of sorrow. It made him want to reach out one clawed hand to touch to her hair. She loved him, he knew she did. He was her guardian, her friend and her father. He watched over her at night, and he was there for some meagre form of comfort when no one else was. Of course she loved him.
"Deuce." she murmured again, not moving back. She said his name like a prayer, "Deuce, my demon; my angel."
In his mind, he could see himself folding his wings protectively over her. In his mind he embraced her to him and hissed at those she so intensely hated. If he was all she said he was, he could have done this and more. But what was he but a creature, confined behind a sheet of glass and a cruel steel frame? The idea of him taking care of her was laughable. But she believed he could. He had been that small measure of comfort when she'd been backing away from her stepfather with dull disbelief behind her eyes. He was her comfort when she wrapped her small arms around his frame and clutched him tight as she sobbed out the pain of betrayal.

The girl leant back now. He caught a glimpse of the grey-blue that she often referred to as "dirty ice" and hid behind her beloved sunglasses. Then her hand entered his vision, the two inch nails painted black. She brushed them across the glass covering his forehead, as if she thought she were moving a piece of hair out of his eyes. He saw her twisted smile that meant that all too soon she was going to be huddled in the corner of her room with her "Book of the Bringer of Light" clutched in her hands as she faithfully recited short verses in Latin and in English. Deuce knew the girl well enough to know that when she was in her room, she was all about comfort zones. She had a few of them, and each of them only brought a paltry amount of solace. But she loved them all anyway. Loved them as if they were people.
"Sian Aineal." the smile bent itself even more as she said it, the two words Deuce knew also to be his name, "My warrior. You must miss the days of your prime, when you were a fierce fighter."

Deuce wanted to smile, but couldn't. Stella was always talking about "the days of his prime"; and truthfully, there had never been any such days He had been as he was now since he had been crafted, and he was doomed to stay that way for the rest of his existence... however long that may be. But he listened to her speak of it anyway, painting a picture of his "life" that was so real he almost believed it sometimes.
"I would miss it if I were you" she sighed, fumbling now to take him off the wall as she spoke, "You were the son of the Bringer of Light, and you were special wherever you set foot. After all, it's hard not to notice a warrior standing at 7"5, holding the severed head of the Master in one hand, and a blood dipped sword in the other." she added this last bit with a wry smile that made his spine want to tense up, "Every step you took made the ground shudder, did you know that, Deuce? You were five hundred pounds of solid muscle, and you could hardly hold something without breaking it."
It annoyed my lady wife, he thought, amused. She always said I could never hold something fragile and beautiful without crushing it.
"You know how it irritated Christine." Stella said, as if she had read his thoughts, "Do you remember the day you first met her, Deuce? How you tried to pick her a rose and by the time you gave it to her, there were more petals around your feet than on the actual flower?"

Deuce wanted to close his eyes, stretch his wings out and lay his arms behind his head as he listened to her. Preferably, he would be stretched out in the grass with the full moon shimmering over some distant lake, and the night so dark that the trees were reduced to dark silhouettes. Stella would lie beside him, head resting against his shoulder as she spoke of the past that was supposedly his. Deuce would feel the cool water as he dipped his toes into the lake, as well as the midnight breezes that awoke things from the silences. Stella would have the perfect comfort zone, and he would have a life.
Then there would be nothing stopping him from cradling her in one arm and telling her what she so desperately wanted to hear: "I'm here, Stella. I'm here for you, and nothing can hurt you ever again."
He would mean every word of it. And then God help anyone who tried to twist her in a direction in which she did not want to go. Anybody at all who tried to cause her pain, ever again, would be physically torn in half and left to die unceremoniously in some mouldering old pit somewhere. Then he would protect her, instead of just crouching behind his sheet of glass as people did things to her.
But none of that ever had the chance of becoming true. All he could do was imagine that the side of her face was pressed to his stomach - he was very tall - and his hands were rested gently at the back of her head.

"Some people would think I'm mad, Deuce, loving you so much."
Her eyes widened as she said it, and for a moment she truly did look as if she had lost her mind. Then she blinked, and the dirty ice of her irises seemed to grow back to their normal size. She gave him an almost sheepish grin, as if she rather thought that Deuce himself must think her insane too. One hand came up to tug restlessly at her earlobe, and she rested him carefully against her bookshelf.
After looking at him a second, she turned around to smear more black stuff on her lips. It made them look thinner than they were, and Deuce wished she wouldn't do it. But even if he were able to move and tell her not to mutilate herself like that, she wouldn't have listened. Many people had tried, and all of them had failed. Stella stuck to everything she decided was part of her, from her fashion to her pentagram tattoo, to her religion. Deuce had seen a couple of people arguing with her, and always knew it was no use. As far as she was concerned, if she didn't stay true to old number one, then she really did have nothing left.
Besides, she liked thin lips. That was why, when Deuce was crafted, his lips could only measure a centimetre from upper to lower, when they were closed. From looking in the mirror, he decided the look suited him, but felt that she would have looked far better with her lips as they were.

"God Almighty." one of the men murmured, quickly doing the three points of the father, the son and the holy ghost over his body. His fingers trembled as he did it.
Nathanial wouldn't have minded doing the same thing, but now was not the time for a show of faith, especially when everyone around him knew perfectly well he had been an athiest all his life. It wouldn't do much for his ego if he shunned God for as long as they had known him, and then suddenly decided he needed Him just because things were... rather strange right now.
Nathanial stood at six feet four, towering over all the other men. Faced with something like this, he felt he would have to be over twelve feet with a gun bigger than he was in order to feel safe. Or, even better, to shoot at her whilst housed safely in the biggest tank in existence.
The woman - if one could call the creature on the end of those chains a woman - was heavily pregnant. Nathanial didn't know a hell of a lot about pregnancy, but he was pretty sure she was about ready to pop. The thought wasn't nice one, but at least he wasn't the only man who shivered.

"What do we do with it?" someone asked; no one answered him.
Good question.
Normal morals told them that taking anyone's life was a woeful act only heartless bastards indulged in. You didn't kill women, and you most certainly didn't kill infants. Even Nathanial knew that, supposed Godless son of a whore that everyone thought he was.
But surely... this woman? Surely if there were a God, he would turn a blind eye toward such a dastardly deed? Such a monstrousity didn't deserve to live, never mind procreate.
As if sensing his thoughts, the woman-creature's head snapped toward him and she yanked hard against her chains, almost pulling the car door right off its hinges and biting Nathanial's nose right off his face. Red eyes glittered. A thin trickle of yellow saliva ran down her chin; dripping off the points of her fangs and hissing in a hot puddle of drool when it hit the ground.
That's not a woman, goddamnit. That's the scariest damned motherfucker I ever saw.

So what do we-
(toss it in the fire)
-do with it?
What do we always do with creatures spawned from Hell?
Take a pitchfork and ram it into the delicate part of her throat? Yeah, sure. And after that, why not pull down his pants and satisfy his jollies for the evening? Jesus H. Christ on a Rubber Crutch. Nathanial lifted a hand to massage his temples. To have even considered cold blooded murder made his spine tingle. Guilt was usually underestimated; an emotion that could fry your mind just as easily as hatred could. It wasn't up to any of them who lived and who perished. If it was, they all might as well pull signs over their heads that had "I AM GOD" procclaimed all over them. Why not just tape a "shoot me" sticker to the back of his scalp?
"If I can get it... her... inside, I'll take her to the hospital in my car. She needs help."
Why do I always volunteer these things? Why?
Nathanial looked back at the woman-creature, and it took a little longer for the in-built answer to come to him than usual. One's concentration span just didn't hold up that well when you were looking at a snarling, drooling creature, who looked all but intent on sculpting you a new face with its teeth.
Because I always have to prove to them that I have more morals than they do, even though they are holier than thou Christians.

The woman's skin was completely grey, as if she were chiselled out of stone, before becoming flexible. The pregnant belly itself was a much lighter colour, and you could see a nasty web of black veins nestled near the surface of the flesh. Her fingers ended in four inch long, cracked talons four shades darker than her skin. She looked like a decaying monster. The only thing missing was the fungus creeping out of the cracks in her body, and the squirming maggots eating into her limbs. Oh, except her eyes. Her eyes were too aware, hate-filled, pained and cunning.
Whenever she tried to bite at one of the men, spittle went flying. It only hit one of them in the face, but it was enough to raise the bile in Nathanial's throat. He swallowed it with difficulty and took a step forward. All of the men were silent, watching with the kind of morbid fascination that usually thoroughly annoyed him. He bit back the urge to send a sarcastic comment over his shoulder.
Maybe something like: Cowards are always content to watch, not help, eh?
He didn't do it, tempting as it was. They already hated him enough; he didn't need anymore resentful looks thrown at him just because he had been in a bad mood.

"Hey, hey lady." he tried to say soothingly, holding his hands up in that universal sign that meant 'I'm harmless', "Calm down, okay? We're going to get you some help."
She stopped straining against the chains. Her eyes narrowed down on him and Nathanial was reminded unpleasantly of a lion peeking out atits prey through the foliage. To go from a bucking, struggling, shrieking banshee; to quiet and considering, was just plain disturbing. Never before had he wanted to turn tail and run so badly as he did then. All he could think to do was to keep her gaze locked on his own.
Her thin blue-purple lips pulled back from the gums, threateningly exposing a row of viscious looking teeth.
Take one step closer, those teeth said; take just one step, little man, and I am going to show you what getting ripped apart feels like.
But it was the tongue, not the teeth, that forced Nathanial to take a step backward.

It wasn't a graceful step backward either. The man's boots twisted around each other, and he stumbled over them, practically into one of the men's arms. He heard himself exclaim out loud, but was only distantly aware of it. The other men had gasped and recoiled along with him. The one who had recieved a faceful of drool actually reached for his plain silver crucifix. He began murmuring a prayer under his breath.
"What the fuck?"
Her tongue was a snake. It writhed in her mouth, undulating and baring its fangs. Beady black eyes darted around at them all, and as Nathanial watched, he saw that its entire body was coated in the woman's saliva. The grey-green scales shimmered in the hazy torchlight held by the shaking hand of a skinny, dark haired man. Only Nathanial was close enough to see the ridged inside of its mouth, and wonder how on earth it survived in the mouth of another. If it ate, how did the woman get nourished? And if it wasn't meant for eating, then what?
A really painful french kiss.

He laughed. He couldn't help it. He straightened and planted his boots more heavily in the dirt, readying himself - rather bravely, he thought - to approach her again. Vile creature or not, she was still vulnerable and probably scared. Hell, if he were surrounded by a whole ton of strangers whilst restrained to the door of a rusting old Toyota, he might also act aggressive.
"Don't go near it, Nate. It'll kill you, for Christ sakes get back here!"
Nathanial didn't even turn to acknowledge the plea. He didn't particularly like any of these pretentious pricks; and if he had ask then one more time not to call him fucking Nate he was going to break something. Preferably one of their much treasured crucifix's. Just SNAP, right over his knee. He would never have a more tiumphant moment in his life.
"She's scared, Harold." he said, deliberately not calling him 'Harry' as the man liked, "How do you think you'd react if you were her?"
"But she's evil!"

Nathanial closed his eyes and tried to be patient. After all, he himself had seriously considered smacking a shovel into her forehead not that long ago. He hated that word anyway. Evil. He had always considered it a Christian word for anything they didn't understand, or feared. He supposed this creature - this woman - rested uncomfortably in both of those characters. Oh yes, she was evil in the entire sense of the word. The Christian sense of the word. Because only religious nuts would believe there was such a thing as pure evil. And as fearsome as the woman looked, she had probably spent her life being shied away from or having the sign of the cross shoved in her face. Nathanial sympathised, and it was more likely this than his bravery that helped him to move toward her once more.
"Easy, easy. I'm going to unchain you, alright? No one here is going to hurt you."
The woman didn't entirely seem to believe him, and she pressed herself back against the car door as if readying herself to spring. The tongue-snake hissed and reared back in her mouth, cocking its head sideways so it could look at him properly through one eye.

She was breathing heavily, and when one of Nathanial's hands cautiously touched her shoulder, she flinched. He almost did the same thing with her, but caught himself in time, making sure to keep eye contact with her. Just one glance anywhere else, and she might go into a panicked attack again.
"We have to kill it." Harold said from the crowd, "That thing is Devil's issue. It lurched out of the fiery pit, and keeps itself alive by feeding on human flesh."
"Shut up, Harry, you're scaring her." Nathanial muttered tensely.
The woman did indeed look scared. But the more frightening thing was that she also looked as if she might start getting defensive again, and Nathanial did not want her to start trying to bite again. He made a sort of shushing noise at her, soothingly, and reached up to examine the locks on the chains.
"You'll get the devil in you." Harold boomed, obviously awed and jealous of the bravery displayed that he couldn't replicate, "She's already using her wiles to win you over, and if you don't stop fiddling with that we're going to be forced to kill you too!"
"Harold. I said shut up. If you're scared, go get in your car and drive off home. I'll stay here and figure out how to get her out of these."
Then you can leave me in peace, and wank off to Jesus.

As soon as he thought it, he felt bad. After all, he wasn't anybody to crucify anyone's religion, - pardon the pun - not when he had no idea what to believe himself. This is exactly what happened when Nathanial got pressured or annoyed, except this time he was glad he hadn't said anything out loud. If he had, they probably would have staked him to the side of his car and burnt him whilst he was still bleeding to death.
Still, the anger he felt was more a deep sadness for them all. These were the type of people who would sacrifice their own daughters if they were born looking like the woman was. Declare their own child as Devil's issue, and judge whether the infant was fit to live or not. It was a sad thing. It also happened to be around them all. Religion choking people everywhere he looked with its swirling black tendrils.
Fear me, it called, Worship me. Without me you will have no sense of self-purpose. With me, you'll be a little ignorant and closed-minded, but that's little to pay for an eternity in Heaven?
Only so much more was paid than that. Lives had been taken, mostly by the Catholics. "Witches" had been burnt. The world had lived in fear of the fiery pits of Hell and what lurked within it. Information had been destroyed, and people had turned into mindless followers. Religion had been the start of destruction in the world. Not just Christians. All of them. Them and their petty arguments in mere differences of opinion.

He looked into the woman's glistening eyes and wondered how much persecution she had suffered over the years. Now that he looked closely, he saw that she was barely a woman at all. If you ignored her grey skin, fanged jaws and matted tresses of dark hair, and concentrated merely on her features, you could see that she must be about fifteen or sixteen at most. She was young. She was trembling, and she brought out nearly every paternal emotion in Nathanial's chest. More than anything, he suddenly wanted her out of those chains. If he had to hack them off with his shovel, he would.
She saw the look on his face, and her face changed from hostile to cautiously hopeful. She made a mumbling sort of moan in her throat, and her eyes were imploring him. Her gaze darted from the men back to him, and he understood it to mean that she wanted them to leave. He couldn't say he blamed her.
"She's just a girl." he whispered, closing his eyes and pressing his forehead to the cool side of the car, "For Godsakes, would you quit being all high and mighty and help me? Christo, where the hell's your axe? These chains don't look that strong. We could chop her free."
After that, we need to get her to a goddamned hospital. She looks upon the verge of-
(popping)
...giving birth.

The others didn't move, and Nathanial was tempted to march off to Christo's car and get the godforsaken axe himself. But, for good reason, he didn't want to leave her alone with them all. She was nervous, and they looked about as trigger happy as you could get without pistols. One wrong move and something bad would happen, he was sure of it.
"Christo. Some help please? Get the damned axe?"
"Look at her arms" the man pointed, "She could pull out of them if she wanted to. She could probably pull the whole door off its hinge."
At these words, the girl let out a low pitched whine. All the men tensed. One of them even put his hand on the hilt of his knife, as if he drew comfort from it. Nathanial was not a patient man by nature, but he thought, judging by all the provocation they were handing him tonight, he had held his temper marvellously well. The last thing he needed was another restraining order because once again his fist had gotten too friendly with someone's face.
"If she weren't in her current condition, maybe she would." Nathanial said through gritted teeth, "Has it ever occured to you that she might be concerned for her child?"
By the look on the man's face, it would seem that this idea hadn't occured to him; and now that it had, he didn't find it all agreeable to his beliefs.
"As if a beast like that could care for anything."

Nathanial opened his mouth to retort. He had no idea what he would have said - probably something incredibly insulting, he supposed - but the girl made a strange muffled sound behind him. He turned to see her almost doubled over, her one clawed hand clamped over her mouth. The hostility was completely gone now, replaced with what could only be called raw terror. A stream of water ran down her skinny, ashen legs, and made a decidedly larger puddle than the tainted drool had.
At first Nathanial was confused, and thought maybe she had been so frightened she'd wet herself somehow. He was twenty eight, but had no intention of getting married in the near future, and absolutely no intention of having children at all. He had never even been around a pregnant woman before, he realised. This was probably why it took him a few moments to figure out what had just happened. He had a flashback of a hospital program he had once watched when he was on the brink of going stir crazy. He remembered one particular detail of the serial, and something clicked in his mind. He looked up at the girl as if she had just mutated into something slimy and blind. He heard himself mutter the Lord's name in vain under his breath, and was sure Harold was frowning at him for it.
Fuck Harold! The girl was
(poppi-))
-giving birth right now! He couldn't just stand here all googly eyed with a mouth full of teeth.

Sometimes we do things we regret. For years after an event, we will torture ourselves by lying awake at night and wondering what would have happened if we had done something different, if we had just done somethin else instead. What iffing can drive you mad, but you do it anyway. You do it because everyone has an in-built shame system that seems to truly seperate us from the rest of the animal kingdom.
If there was ever something Nathanial regretted, it was turning away from the car, turning his back on the girl. If he had just stayed where he was and asked Terry for his cell phone, he might have been in time to make a difference. If he had been in time, some of the Christian idiots may have been alive today. But he wasn't. And they aren't. It would have been no good tormenting his mind with what he should and shouldn't have done, he knew that. But he did it anyway. He supposed that if some all-powerful God wasn't going to punish him, then he was going to have to punish himself.

It all happened very quickly. It only seemed longer years afterward because you replayed every element in slow motion over and over again in your head. Nathanial reached for Terry's cell phone which he knew was in the big breast pocket. Whether he was being rude or not he didn't think about, an probably wouldn't have cared if he had. So far, they'd all been unhelpful sons of bitches, and if they weren't going to help him he was just going to help himself... to Terry's cell phone anyway.
He remembered touching the material, remembered thinking about how synthetic it felt and thanking God -or perhaps himself - that he didn't wear awful things such as this blazer. Distantly, he heard a strange ripping sound, and he wondered whether he'd torn his pants down the back or something. If he had, Woolworths was going to have Hell to pay. They were brand new and shouldn't have ripped just because he bent a little bit.
But the ripping sound was... wet. Not the dry little hiss that it would have been should the material of someone's clothes have given out.

But Nathanial didn't pay the sound any attention until one of the men started screaming. One long shriek of agony that seemed too high pitched for a man's voice. He turned, and it was all like a nightmare. No matter how fast he tried to whirl around, it was too slow.
A blend of colours. Frightened voices, the girl opening her mouth in one shrill scream that sounded uncannily like a hiss at the same time. This was what vocal cords without a tongue sounded like, Nathanial supposed, randomly, as utter chaos erupted around him. In the confusion, it took him a few moments before he could see what the hell was going on, and what had gotten everybody so excited.
Flane burst before their eyes. Just one single, huge flame, as if an enourmous candle had been lit. They all stared at the black centre, surrounded by blue, and then at last by orange-red.
There was power radiating from it, Nathanial could feel it. It was almost as if he was standing before an ocean kept back only by a thin sheet of glass. Glass that only you knew would buckle and shatter outward with a single touch. A frightening prospect, a frightening power. It would crush him, and yet here he was; standing in front of it.

The muttered prayer behind him became louder and a great deal more shrill. Nathanial only stood like an idiot, completely at a loss for what to do. He felt as if he were shining a flashlight down into Hell - and mark you, he didn't even believe in Hell. He could imagine himself kneeling down in the dirt, squinting down into a completely dark hole in the ground. In his mind the hole is a perfect circle. Curious, chittery sounds come from within it, rustling sounds. It made him think of bats just waiting for you to see them properly before swarming at you as one.
It would look like a well... without the actual well.
Stupid thoughts. They seemed to have taken forever when looked at by an outsider. But thoughts didn't have to be like words, spilling from your lips. A sentence that would have taken time to be said, could occur to your mind in a split second. And this is exactly how it was. Quick images and flashing thoughts all taking place before a second ticked off the clock.
Afterward, Nathanial imagined he'd taken longer thinking than he actually had, and cursed himself for it. Maybe the time wasted could have been put to more heroic use.

The flame grew long, burning, whip-like tendrils in the blink of an eye. They coiled elegantly above it, arching to illuminating the shocked faces of the men. And then...
And then the next thing he knew, Nathanial was literally the only man standing alive. As fast as the tendrils could whip, all of them fell as one. Hearts stopped. Breathing bubbled and ceased. Brains dimmed, fluttered weakly, and then went out completely; surrendering themselves to the inevitable rot that would soon follow.
This is not happening, this is not-
(not, not)
Happe-
(yes it is. It is. It is.)
-ning.

The girl was still screaming. Nathanial couldn't recall whether she had taken time to inhale, or if she was still going on the same breath. She was now tugging against the chain that bound her to-
Who tied her there anyway?
-the Toyota. Nathanial couldn't see her face, her dark hair had swung down to cover her expression like a great greasy curtain. A fish net came to mind. The snake in her mouth hissed - it almost sounded like a curse - and the metal actually began to buckle. There was a tinkle of glass, and he saw her flinch. It took him a moment to realise that the flame had moved, quicker than the eye could see, and smashed an almost hand shaped (limb? growth?) through the window. Fire curled up from the thing, and it was obviously blasting hot, because the end of her hair sizzled, and the paint of the car began to bubble in protest. There was a metallic ping as some part of the door popped out of shape. The leaves around its "feet" now no longer existed, and it was only a good thing that earth couldn't really ignite.

The bodies around him didn't even look surprised. There was Harold (was he really dead?) lying on his back with his arms sprawled above his head. His eyes had taken on that glazed look that only the dead seemed to acquire. No wonder there were always jokes about "seeing the light" and "seeing one's grandfather". Harold looked as if he did indeed see something miraculous and secretive. Really secretive, actually. Especially as Harold was going to open his mouth for no one now. That thought made a lump form in Nathanial's throat, and his eyes suddenly become hot. Lord knew why. Getting all choked up over Harold's hairy old carcass was not something he had ever believed he would ever do.
It's not over Harold. It's over respect for life. Or death. Or both.
His temples began to throb, and it started to feel like he was in some strange, drug-induced illusion. Everything suddenly looked ethereal and blurry around the edges. The bodies were not really bodies, were they? Two seconds ago they had been truly, annoyingly alive. Who was going to shove the cross into his face now? Who was he going to shout at for preaching about Jesus for hours on end?
His eyes lowered, and he saw that Harold's crucifix had melted into a twisted, meaningless lump of metal. Bits of the stuff had rolled over Harold's beefy shoulders, searing the flesh and loosing a few bloody patches over his flesh. Nathanial watched it drip from the man... the body... and onto the dirt.

"Mortal."
For a minute, Nathanial didn't realise the thing was talking to him - yes and this time, he perfectly agreed that it was a thing - because he was staring at the runnel of blood running from one of the men's lips. The voice was so wheezy that he mistook it for the wind. Shock had a good hold of his body, though he didn't realise it. His pulse was racing, and he felt detatched from the whole thing.
This was only a dream, or a vision he was having in a hospital somewhere, in a coma. Maybe he had simply lost his mind. Any way it went, it still wasn't real. None of it.
"Nathanial Bambi Stein."
Were all the crucifixes melted? It seemed so. Everywhere he looked, he saw running bits of silver, gold, pewter; dribbling between fingers, sticking to flesh, spilling out of pockets and crawling over the ground. One had the stuff matted in his hair, burning a premature bald patch into the man's skull. Nathanial wondered distantly about why the hell the moron had been holding his cross to his head.
Then there was heat. He barely noticed it at first, like the first few seconds of holding one's hand over a candle. But once it started getting hot, it got hot very fast. There's nothing like a first degree to snap you out of a shocked stupor, and Nathanial sprang backward, looking dumbly around for the source of the pain.

The thing had taken a rough, fiery form of a human. Head, arms, legs, torso; even fingers. But it seemed not to have bothered with facial features, toes or even a resemblance of hair. It was simply a stick figure made out of fire, fingers clasping themselves around the girl's upper arm. It seemed not to have any affect on her, the skin looking just as hard and stony as it had before.
"Nathanial Bambi Stein." it said again.
"Don't say my second name." his response was automatic. If he could do anything to get rid of it, he would have. But he would have hurt his mother's feelings, and she thought "Bambi" was irresistibly cute. Obviously, she hadn't thought much about the fact that her little baby boy would grow up to be a full grown man, and full grown men didn't suit the name "Bambi" anywhere in their names.
The thing laughed, still holding onto the girl as if scared she would run away. She couldn't. She had done admirable damage to the car door, but she was stuck to it.
"Very well, then. What do you wish me to call you?"
"Just call me Mr. president." his lip curled.

The creature of flames turned to look at the girl. She shrank back from him, nose wrinkled and eyes wide. She looked almost normal what with her mouth closed (her most prominent deformities seemed to rest in that orifice. And, Nathanial thought to himself without much humour, something's going to come out of the other orifice pretty soon.) and the flames illuminating her skin in such a way that it almost looked beautiful. She definitely looked young now. Hardly old enough to be having a baby.
Also, another thought arose in his mind-
Who would want to boink her?
-but he supressed it as quickly as it came, merely because it was a horrible thing - especially now - to think about her. She hadn't done anything to him, aside from luring a monster to kill his associates.

Was she in pain? Nathanial couldn't tell. He knew absolutely nothing about pregnancy. None of the practical stuff anyway. Biology had told him how the little tykes were created, had told him the stages, the uses of the placenta and all that utter crap. But when it came down to the real thing, he didn't know when the contractions started or anything. He'd been under the impression that the woman just screamed and pushed for a couple of hours, before you could say hello to your new family member. Little stupid, really. Next girlfriend he had, he would really have to ask.
Oh sure, great come on line, Nathan. "Hello, sweetheart. Could you tell me the practicalities of pregnancy?". I would walk home with the woman's red handmark imprinted on my cheek.
No honey. His mother's voice now. It was more likely the "sweetheart" part.
"He has a distracted mind." the creature said, apparently to no one, "Tell me, Nate. Do you have any idea about how much of a fool you are?"
Nathanial smirked. It was the last thing he felt like doing. In truth, what he most felt like doing was making a brown mess in his pants. But that wouldn't exactly do much for his situation or his ego. So he settled for a smirk instead.

"Fool or not, the part of that that really offended me was the Nate. Worse than calling some random female a sweetheart. Surely you knew?"
The woman... scratch that... the girl, was staring at him as if she thought he needed to add a few marbles to his collection. He couldn't blame her, not when he was standing amongst the bodies of his so called friends, facing a walking bonfire as if this happened every day. Hell, leave it. Perhaps he was just happy to be alive.
"I figured you'd prefer it to 'Bambi'."
"I figure you'd like to tell me what the fuck's going on, you insignificant..." Nathanial stared at the thing for a couple of seconds, "...spark..."
"There isn't much you can do to insult fire, is there?"
"There's plenty I can insult about you, however. The fact that you're literally missing yourself a pair of balls is one of them."
It was true, but Nathanial originally thought he'd refrain from mentioning it. If you were captured by a dozen sexless aliens, and they started sticking probes into your eyes; the first response you gave them geneally wouldn't be along the lines of: "Ha! Ha! You have no wieeeeeeener!". He wasn't sure why. Probably wasn't a dignified reponse from a tough as nails hard ass.

The worst was, now that he'd started, he couldn't stop. What he knew for sure - fool or not - was that he didn't like this thing very much.
"After all, Mr. Bonfire, you can hardly chastise me for being unable to defeat you. Fire is easily overcome, but you just need something to blow."
The thing was quiet for so long that Nathanial was sure it was about to send its tendril of fire - now there was another sexual inuendo - right into him. But it didn't do any such thing, it turned its back on him and faced the girl, its faceless visage seeming to radiate anger. She cringed again, and started hissing something, her arms groping for his chest. She shot Nathanial what was clearly a 'help me' look, and tried to sink down into an uncomfortable kneeling position. Uncomfortable, why? Kind of hard to grovel when your one wrist was tied above your head, and your belly was protruding rudely out in front you. She managed though.
"Shut up, Manichee. Your pathetic whining doesn't change your situation."
"What exactly is going on?" Nathanial asked in a tired voice; "I am not having a good day. I have a pregnant broad tied to my car, there's a guy made of flames taunting my name, my pestilences are all dead, and top it off, I'm going to have to have that door fixed." he gestured at the one she was tied to.

Why didn't you kill me?, was another question he wanted to ask. But he was afraid that if he did, the walking bonfire would put a hand to his chin and say: "That's a good question. Perhaps I should kill you."
The creature yet again didn't answer him. It was starting to piss Nathanial off. He moved forward, no longer caring whether or not it could make his eyebrows become two charred worms sitting above his eyes. Fire or no fire, he didn't like seeing any female getting bullied, not even by another female. Hell, if a guy was getting picked on, he hated that too. Human beings were so petty sometimes, and whilst Nathanial was more than willing to roll his sleeves up for a spar if you goaded him enough, he did not approve of it. Unfortunately, society was sexist. In both directions. If you were a man, and you couldn't fight, both men and women - most of them anyway - would think of you as a gutless wuss. All goddamned stupid, humans. So were walking bonfires. Fucking stupid.
Nathanial didn't bother to ask himself why he was damning all of existence when in the middle of such a bizarre situation. Blame it all on the shock, ladies, not my fault. I've just seen more than ten men killed in fucking unison, and I am not in the best frame of mind right now.

He took a gentle hold of the woman's arm, aware but not caring, of how pathetic this gesture was. If the creature wanted, it could knock his teeth so hard they would blast out of the back of his head. But it just stared down at him, or seemed to. It was almost as if Nathanial were something of interest, as if there weren't a million other opinionated assholes in the world.
"What do you want with her?"
"She will not be harmed, Nathanial. I came only to make sure she fulfilled her promise to me. She has quite a doubtful reputation when it comes to honouring her word."
Nathanial stared at the creature as if it were out of its mind, then gestured toward the group of bodies he could no longer look at, "What did you kill them for?"
"They are Christians. We always try to kill them, because if we don't, they come after us with pitchforks and knives and..." the creature paused, then as if to explain, went "Tchew!"
Recognising the cold whine of a bullet even when it was crudely done, Nathanial nodded. He felt too numb and lucky to be alive to argue much, as well as suddenly very tired. He wants to ask what it is the thing would want from the girl, but realises there is no time. She is cringing over herself, hands over her belly and knees touching each other. Early stages or not, her stages of labour might be completely different to a normal human being's. For all he knew, she might be in need of medical assistance right now.

"I'm surprised you didn't ask me what she promised."
"I don't really care, and even if I did, the chances of you telling me are very slim. I am not in..." he sighed, rubbed his temples and didn't finish. He suddenly wished he could be at home, curled up next to his doberman by his old fashioned fire. He wished he hadn't just lost so many people, and he wished he hadn't been the only survivor. Why was he talking so calmly to this beast? This murderer?
"It's a protection, provided by your brain." the creature said, as if Nathanial had spoken his thoughts aloud, "Call it a padding from insanity if you will. When you fall, you land on it, and it saves you. If you fall too many times, or if you once fell from too high and too hard, it would break. But for now, your sanity is safe."
Nathanial didn't think he agreed, but kept his mouth shut for the umpteenth time that night. Goddamned record if you asked him. Since when did he not express exactly what he thought in the most disdainful way he could manage? He'd have to go see a psychiatrist, or something.
Doc, tell me. Is it normal to lose your pigheaded self when facing some sort of fire alien thing?

Haw. He could just imagine the guy's reaction to speaking of fire aliens. Good God, but Nathanial didn't want to have to answer questions about his friends' deaths, no sirree. He couldn't very well say that the alien did it, could he? They'd have him cackling in a strait jacket before he could say "Ho-bag", and off to the padded room for you sonny. You're not well, not at all. Unwell people have to stay in bed. We've gone one up from that. You're going to stay in a room made of bed.
Nathanial almost burst into hysterical laughter and bit it back at the last second. He'd read it was normal to laugh like a lunatic in very stressful situations, but it didn't make it feel any less crazy. The girl looked frightened enough, if her supposed saviour started acting like a loony, she would probably wet her pants. Which to choose? Scary walking bonfire? Or handsome, crazy saviour?
He bit his tongue even harder, and even the pain seemed horribly funny. Funny because it was awful; awful because it was funny. Ran in a vicious circle, didn't it?

The walking bonfire in question left them all standing in silence, merely watching Nathanial as if it considered him a rather interesting specimen. Its head was tilted, thoughtfully, the flames licking up where its ears should have been, the face like an oval sun. Featureless, and horrifying because of it. Because everything you could not look in the eye somehow seemed just that fraction more scary. Probably the reason, or one of the reasons, why Death himself was always either a skeleton, or a hooded figure. Of course, there was the mystery element as well. Something was just not as fascinating if you could see exactly what it was.
"Mr. Bonfire, sir." Nathanial's voice betrayed him, rising, almost high pitched from the lump of laughter caught in his throat, "You come here, kill all these people, and rant about a promise. None of it is making sense to me, but I doubt it wise to argue with a walking pile of flames, no matter how tough you are."
He was babbling, he knew he was, but the way the thing stared at him with no eyes just happened to be very distracting. It always had a sort of expectancy in its silence, the same manipulating silence his mother sometimes used on him when she wanted him to talk and he was being secretive. He hadn't succumbed to it for years before now, yet he couldn't seem to stop.

"You killed them all, as if they meant nothing. Sure, they were pricks, I didn't like them much myself. You know, the whole Christian thing..." he paused. What had his point been again?
The girl saved him from the mountainous weight of what he wanted to say, to ask. Why did you kill them? They were fools, yes. But they were still people. They had been living, breathing, talking. Their thoughts were probably cut-off in mid-sentence, their families expecting them home to come to bed, and all they had awaiting them were cold funerals, meaningless condolences and just that extra empty spot in their souls that used to be their hubsand, or son, or father. It wasn't fair, not to die merely because they'd been brought up by religious nuts.
These questions, would never be completed with a good answer. Because the alien thing didn't need a good reason. Pointless to ask, but it still had to be questioned somehow. More than ten lives had been destroyed, and there being no reason made things much worse. No real reason, no real answer, no real satisfaction.
The girl gripped onto him tighter, interrupting him from his babble. Sweat slid between her eyebrows, and her hair stuck to her cheeks. The snake was poking out between her lips, looking limp and yet still cold, the way snakes always look. Nathanial hoped it wouldn't bite him.
Headline: Death by Tongue Snake!

He braced himself for the bray of laughter, closed his eyes, and found none left in him. There was only an empty pit where his answers should have been. What was he doing? He was standing next to a pregnant lady and a great big shapeless flame, the bodies of those he hadn't liked very much littered around him. How was he supposed to feel? Was he supposed to feel a great biting cold, as if he were entirely blank, waiting for someone to tell him what emotions he should be feeling?

"I don't want to bore you with long, boring details of Manichee's labour. Although..." Stella's mouth tilted up, "it's also partly because my knowledge of childbirth is abysmally limited."
She paused then, to lean back and grab her glass of water, standing upright against the upper part of her thigh. She brought it to her lips with a thoughtful silence, her other hand absently stroking along the length of The Book of the Bringer of Light's spine. The single black nail traced over the well worn symbol of the goat, as if trying to memorise the feel of it by heart. She didn't need to do this. Deuce remembered her painstaking efforts to draw the thing, and by the time she got it right, she most certainly knew ever line.
"Goddamnit, I can't get all the points even! I hate precise drawing, Deuce. And this has to be as precise as possible. For my Pater."
She said "Pater" as "Patri", and Deuce had the idea that it had something to do with Satan. It sounded a little like father, maybe, for when she said "Frater", he knew she meant "brother".

She placed the glass down again, regarding his much loved face through her dirty ice eyes. They seemed more alive when they spoke of Deuce's past, almost inspired. She spoke of each character as if if they were a family member, or a very close friend. Nathanial especially, she always got a mischievous glint in her expression when she spoke of his thoughts.
"Let's just say that Manichee had to give birth right there. You can imagine the scene can't you?" she held up her hands in a square as if she were taking a picture, "Pitch black night, the only light coming from Nathanial's car headlights. The road where all their cars were parked as barren as Harold's body. Small breeze... swirling leaves... watched over by a respectable army of trees..."
Here Stella closed her eyes, she leant back against her bedside table and rested her hand comfortably against her stomach.
"Hours pass by. Unbearably long hours for both Nathanial and the girl, I imagine. He can't do much but rest her head in his lap and give unhelpful comments like:"'Breathe, sweetheart, just breathe" or: "Maybe you should push now, or something". At any rate, lucky for Manichee, the bleat of a newborn baby was heard when the sun was just starting to tint the sky a faint grey."

Manichee... how did I just know you was going to name at least one of your characters that?
"The creature of flames stayed with them the entire night. He was as silent as the dead people, and didn't answer any of Nathanial's impatient questioning. Whether "Mr. Bonfire" is evil or not, I don't think he ever found out. Maybe that's a good thing, for we both know Nathanial's opinion of the word evil, don't we?
Another thing he didn't find out, was the promise the girl had given to the other creature. The mother of the boy - did I mention it was a boy? - only got to hold him for a few moments.
Perhaps, Deuce, her life was worth nothing. She had the look of a person who had been on the run for a long time, and was tired of it. She was an unimportant speck on the Earth; nothing but an object reserved for gawking, ridiculing and rejecting. However, I feel we have to respect her... this Manichee. She was brave in her own quiet way. Perhaps she couldn't wield a sword, or save the Christian men's lives, or the pain suffered by their families..."
Stella hesitated again, and Deuce saw that the story had genuinely affected her. She swallowed, frowned, opened her eyes, and looked at Deuce with an emotion he couldn't identify.

"Maybe some would consider her meaningless, and perhaps in the standards of our society, she was. But she delivered a truly special person into the world, she gave Nathanial the first bit of real joy he'd had since he was a little child, and if anyone else had been there, maybe she would have inspired them to know that being special didn't mean you had to become famous and change lives. Changing one life is a hard enough task, and I mean really changing it, not just putting in a tiny bit of effort in a thousand lives. I think she changed Nathanial's life that day, and even though she had no one who cared of her death, or would even remember her, she was special. I for one, admire her. So should you. After all, she is your mother, Deuce."
Stella seemed to take Deuce's silence as a reverent one, ignoring the fact that he wouldn't have been able to speak even if he wanted to.

"Maybe you wonder why I say she is your mother, instead of was. I suppose you don't ever really stop being a mother, even when you're dead. You lost her as a person on the day you were born, but that doesn't mean that she suddenly isn't your mother. She loved you, and that doesn't deserve to be waved aside by a mere was."
Deuce agreed.
"I think she intended Nathanial to take care of you almost from the start. I don't know. Nothing about the way she held herself, or pulled her expression, gave any impression that she expected to live. Indeed, once she had you in her arms, she pressed her lips to your forehead and used the rest of her remaining strength to roll onto her side, totally ignoring Nathanial's pleas that she not move.
Her talons were excellent for what she wanted to do, for I don't think her fingers had the sufficient strength to do it precisely. But Manichee had will. So much will, in fact, that even our stubborn Nathanial realised he couldn't stop her, and just let her clutch her infant as she dug her talons into the dirt, drawing lines."
Stella gestured into the air, as if she were the one engraving lines into the earth, spelling out the letters as she spoke.
"D-E-U-C-E. That's what she spelt with her trembling fingers, ignoring the way blood was still pooling around her legs in a slow puddle, despite the fact that the placenta had already made its exit. Then she held you for a few moments that may have seemed like eternity, or no time at all. She loved you, Deuce. The look of pain on her face was heart wrenching, as she laid you down upon your name. If she'd had the choice, she definitely would have kept you your whole life long."

I was raised by Nathanial. I already knew that. But you never before spoke of my parents.
"As for your father..." Stella sighed, frowned and chewed on her lower lip, "I do not believe you are ready to hear of him yet, Deuce. I shall tell you in time, but rather when we are both older. After all, who am I to disturb you in your prime? Right at this moment, you're a warrior of the legions of Hell. You fight with flame and ice and you use your mind to cloud the senses.Dwelling upon this knowledge will be for the times when you can comtemplate your life, silver haired and silent upon your rocking chair out under the night sky..."

Stella opened her eyes and examined Deuce as she had done a million times before. Her mother didn't much like him, but that much was understandable. Even Nathanial, opinionated but fair, had first looked upon Manichee with absolute horror. Deuce would be a right sight if he were seen walking down the street, at his huge 7 foot five, most people would be lucky if the top of their heads grazed his collar bone.
But it wasn't just his size. Deuce was somehow both beautiful and grotesque. His expression was very human, but his face was not.
He had inherited his mother's grey skin, lighter than hers and tinged with green. Stella would have bet it was as hard and durable as hers was too, but she would never find out. Not when he was trapped on paper and confined within a frame covered with a cruel sheet of glass.
Rising from the right side of his back was a feathery, white angel's wing. From the left a bat-like demon's wing, spine tipped, blood covered and as lethal as his talons. Stella had insisted this was because he was both good and - God forbid - evil, like any human was. In fact, strange as he was, Deuce Sian Aineal had probably shown more mercy than any normal human would have.

"But they judge anyway." she said, anger fleeting over her expression, "The bonfire had things right, didn't he? None of those idiots would have given your mother a chance, and they probably would have had you destroyed as well; merely because you have fangs and wings and grey skin. They would have ignored how beautiful your eyes were, they would have ignored your exquisite bone structure, or the way the left side of your face dimples when you smile. They judge, they always judge, even though they're not supposed to."
Her hand tightened around her precious book, the nails making marks in the surface of it. He could almost see Nathanial in her face, the hatred twisting her features into an almost masculine mask. Stella had all but waged war on that particular religion, probably because she'd had one too many idiots in her face telling her she was going to burn in Hell. One too many telling her witches deserved to be burnt and one too many claiming that animals had no souls.
It mattered not that not all Christians had done this, because as far as she was concerned, the majority had. More than enough.

Is that why in nearly every story you tell me of myself, you place a Christian in it where the plot could have done without one? Even what you told me now, the group of Christians with Nathanial had absolutely nothing to do with my mother or how I was born, yet you had to include them anyway, just to kill them.
Stella didn't answer him. She hadn't heard him. Her head was lolling back against the bedside table, and she was staring at the circular hole in her ceiling where an overhead light had once hung. She could do this for hours on end if she had a mind to, and sometimes Deuce thought he would have given anything to know what she was thinking. Perhaps she was remembering how she'd torn that light right out of its fixtures and hurled it at the mirror. Maybe she was wondering why she'd done it in the first place, because Deuce still didn't know. Sometimes he thought he knew her better than anyone; but at times when she went from perfectly calm to perfectly irrational, he wondered if he knew her at all.

"He's in the mirror." was all she would say for a long time after that, "He's in the mirror. He's in the mirror. Pater help me, he's in the mirror."
And he had done nothing. Not so much as held her hand or patted her on the shoulder. He had hung on the wall and stared off into the distance, the expression of mild interest still on his face. Stella had created his life, his past and his family, and he couldn't do a single thing to repay her. Not as she'd cut her hands on the remaining shards, not as she'd raged and ranted about nothing that made sense. Her Book of the Bringer of Light discarded carelessly into the middle of the floor, pages splayed apart and spotted with blood. She had ignored Deuce completely, as if she could not bear to look at him. Maybe if she had, she would have broken his glass sheet too, and ripped his face into a million useless fragments. She would have regretted it to the point of depression later on, and her brain's sole way of protecting her was by averting her eye.
Placid now, all she did was stare. Perhaps she expected a sleek brown cockroach to scuttle its way out of it and fall into her hair, followed by snakes and spiders and scorpions. Maybe she even wanted it to happen.

If he were truly her father, as she often told him he was, she would not have turned out as she had. He would have taken her with him, down to the Order within the higher levels of Hell. She would have been safe there, protected by an army and all its leaders, as well as Deuce himself. She could have kept her Bringer of Light if she wanted to, and he would have let her wear her antichrist; but her hair would not be dyed jet black, but left to its own normal brown. She would not cake eye pencil into her eyes, coat her lips with black lipstick or cover her nails in that hideous nail polish. She would be pink cheeked and happy, learning how to fight with the rest of the children, dressed in the feathery white cotton garments that they wore.
Deuce studied her carefully as best he could through the corner of his eyes. She had provided him with a life, making it as real as possible.