Not on my new carpet...

​

Turning, I strode to the doors of the chapel and cast them open. It was close to noon, the street leading to my little church was empty. The main street some ways away was busy enough, for a Tuesday. It all seemed..... wrong. Boss fights were supposed to happen in the middle of the night shrouded in darkness that lent to the monsters' power with rain pelting the hero making things all the more difficult.

It certainly wasn't supposed to be a balmy sixty degrees in the middle April. As the light swept over my shadowed form it shrank away, showing me the pale skin stretched over shards of bones. It was a daunting process to shift between this form and that of simple Damascus, the local priest. But with Cook and his minions gone I shouldn't ever need this beast again.

With a sigh, I released the monstrous shadows pooled over this beast and with a shock of pain shifted back to plain old me.

There was a stash of clothes hidden in the pew nearest to the door. It had only taken me a good month to think of that. Parading around naked was frowned upon in my profession. Which was a pity, as I happened to think I look rather dashing with nothing but my skin. Now I donned my priest's clothes and took some time buttoning the clean white sleeves as I meandered barefoot through the carnage.

I wish I could say the broken forms of children were heart wrenching. I wanted desperately to claim a wash of sadness came over me and that I sank to my knees – crying out to the God whose house I stood in to bring me some answer in why this all had to happen. As it stood, I did none of this. Death and I went way back, and even the mangled corpses of children – children who I had known very closely – did nothing to stir me. Once you'd seen one dead child, you'd seen them all. My old profession had brought me far more monstrous things than this.

What I did feel, staring out at my bloodied little chapel, was a sense of relief. It was over. No one would truly know the lengths I had gone to. I felt a twinge of annoyance at this, as a parade in my honor would have been quite welcome. The townspeople knew of the vampires, and most of them even knew I had set to hunting the monsters. No one knew of the deal I had made, and the price my power had cost me-- would continue to cost me. And just as well.... if they knew I would surely be chased out regardless of how I had single handedly abolished our murderous neighbors when no one else had been ballsy enough to even try.

“Well... I am certainly not going to clean all this up myself...” I muttered to the statue of Jesus standing untouched above the stage. He was good company, when I ignored the rather judgmental stare he cast about the place. I quietly wondered if the plucky little cat that frequented this building had made it through, or if the brave little thing would ever come back, Todd was an excellent conversationalist.

Lazily, I found my cellphone where I had set it neatly on the podium lined up neatly with my keys, wallet and sunglasses. Though I had come to terms with losing an outfit every time I shifted forms in public that didn't mean I had to go searching for wherever my belongings ended up-- usually flung to one side or the other among the scraps of fabric. I smirked thinking of how cool I must have looked, calmly placing my things here while the vampires were busy feeding. A few of them had noticed me before I was done but they had been too confused to really question my presence or actions.

Not for the first time I cursed all the little things I did to be bad-ass that were going completely unappreciated. If my story ever got made into a movie I was going to have to make sure these things made it in. Kyle would appreciate them, he appreciated all the little things I did to make myself seem cool.

I groaned at this. Kyle was a crutch at this point. He was a means to an end and the fact that my charms seemed to work so well on him only made me feel all the more guilty about it. The added sin of him crossing my mind in a fond way was worse-- it made me feel like I was actually starting to like him. That was an even bigger problem. I could never be allowed to enjoy my actions with him... though... I suppose that was part of the price as well.

“Come on, Volkov,” I chided myself, sneering at the silly things my heart had started doing when thinking about my eldest alter boy. “Call the sheriff, clean up your mess then pay your price.”