SYNOPSIS:

A Priest in rural Louisiana is befriended by several Vampires; a member of a cluster of Independents, a free spirited Sister of one of the most powerful Families in this country, a cemetery Ghost, and a former queen of the youth Rades. He is shown the Original Contract that made the Vampires, in an attempt to be a Mortal point of understanding. His independent friend is taken in an attempt to help the Rebellion and is rescued by an unlikely alliance between Vampires, a Ghost, an Angel and a Hell hound. Questions or inquiries should be sent to deaconks@nycap.rr.com. Although each is a separate story; those wishing to look at all three or at the very least in order, will be given more weight.

ETERNITY

{@>--<Additional Scene-22a>--<@}
I stood along with Guisette in the middle of the debris from the Rade just finished. The bodies and other associated parts, flotsam and jetsam strewn over the floor. But strangely not around the still swinging but disemboweled figure of the Mortal Paule. I looked at the two of us, blood, goo, ooze, sweat, gore encrusted, and part of me wanted to laugh. The part that one out was the one that screamed in the back of my brain; quietly if you could imagine it perhaps there is a better time for that.
I looked at her; swaying in the breeze that remained, she was still coming off the blood and Whiff high; as well as the sheer terror and joy of a teenage Vampire life being over…over at last. For that is Us; some of us will stay teenage forever, locked in the happy but twisted fate written down for us by Brother Adolphus in the “Book of Schemes”.
“You didn’t have to kill him!”
“Yes I did. He was mocking Us.”
The last of her words seemingly bouncing around the walls of the Hall.
‘They think of it as being respectful. They admire, even worship Us”
“Respectful!’ she glared at me and the look in her eyes spoke that if I was anything but her best friend, she would kill me just as easily as she did Pauli “Tia, you simply do not understand. They don’t understand! They think of it as play, as some twisted extension of their Halloween. They say ‘but we want to be just like you’, but they can’t they simply can’t. They can’t know the prison, the pain of what we are. The fact that we must feed to survive and they can’t. They disrespect our entire existence; defame our Houses and our Families. They do not give us our proper due; they don’t deserve what they are to get.”
“And we do?”
“More then they yes.”
“You realize this is the Whiff talking.”
“Yes.” She teetered a bit, but caught herself and kicked a piece of gore that had fallen to her feet “but that doesn’t change ANYTHING! They parade around in their black, and their eye shadow, and their chains and piercings, and say look at me, I’m a Vampire! But they’re just simply not. They can never be. If I had my way I would kill every single one of them. Maybe not stop at the Goths; maybe I’ll kill them all!”
“You weren’t this way on the plantation with Cousin Cossette.”
“No, I wasn’t; but then I still played with blocks, and wore pretty little silk gowns. And didn’t have a fucking clue as to whom and what I was. I’m leaving now, coming?”
“In a bit.”
I waited until she had cleared the room, and then a bit more and went over to the control box for the noose, and gently let Paule go to the ground. Untying the noose I cradled him in my arms, his chest splayed open, his ribs cracked, the blood just beginning to clot and dry. And I looked up in the sky and back at him.
“Hodie mecum eris in Patre Paradisio.”
I looked back for a moment and unfurling from my back was a pair of filmy translucent purple, green, and blue wings that extended outward for quite some distance and in truth yes were quite capable of lifting me airborne. For that is another laughable bit of you Mortal kind; every time you draw us, or pose as us in those racy underwear ads, you always make the wings too small. Wouldn’t lift a gnat if you asked me.
I looked around, part of me was expecting Guisette to come charging in; to deny this Man his due. For I was going to take him to Pippinne or Cousin Cossette, they would know what to do and how to do it. For as I saw him on the noose, I also saw the mark on his neck. I knew what it meant, and I knew with every bit of my soul, the horrible thing that Guisette had done. That eventually she would pay for it. But I Tia would have no part of this, maybe no part in what was to happen next.
I strode purposefully towards the door fading as I did so, tonight I would fly quickly to New Orleans and see this done. And then fly back to her, so that she would not know, never find out how I had guaranteed this Man, his Eternity….