Simon stared from his high back baroque chair, his lidless eyes, watching the flickering shadows dance on the cinder block cellar walls. He lowered his serpent gaze to his pets as they preened their selves, their pretty eyes fixed on him and him alone. These, his pets, the carefully selected women were hand picked from those who wronged him after his misunderstanding with that freak in the bone mask all those years ago.

Simon raised his hand to the bondage mask over his face. The thin leather was like a new face. It was the only thing he kept of his father, and what should be a disturbing revelation of Martin Bellar was a boon for Simon's unique condition.

Natashya pulled her long black locks of hair over her shoulder, stroking her thick mane of hair. Her chains rattled around her as she sat up and against the cold, rough cinder block wall, her hazel eyes locked on Simon's. Natashya Medvedeva yawned, wiping her forehead with her wrist, and cooed cutely at Simon. The others followed her lead. Doctor Melissa Kinsley shifted onto her knees, raising arms over her head as she stretched, and pushed out her chest. The assistant District Attorney for Driftwood, Cassandra Powell lay flat on her back, and stared at him with affection. Heather Mullens, his former teacher from highschool twirled her hair with a finger playfully. Beyond his three favorites, the rest of his pets sprang into motion, chains jingling pleasantly as they played.

A promise made, a promise kept.

Simon's collection varied. Blondes, brunettes. A redhead. Tall, and short alike, he collected a certain pedigree of woman. He sought women with success, power, and confidence. Education was important. In every new pet he instilled a promise. A promise made, a promise kept, so long as he could count on their cooperation.

Of course he knew they were liars.

Not forever, not even for too long a time... but newly captured prospects would say anything if they thought it would liberate them from his cellar - his keep.

They would do anything, and usually they did.

Their cooperation changed nothing, of course. He put everyone to the prod. The things he could do with a strobe light, horse tranquilizers, and a cattle prod insured their domestication.

Simon did not want to hurt them, but he needed their undying, unyielding love and loyalty. Love and loyalty took time, and Simon was in a hurry.

Of all his pets, Natashya, Melissa, Cassandra, and Heather were his favorite, and his best. This was no solely because of their beauty, but who they were.

More specifically, who they were to him.

After his little mishap with the monster in the moonlight, Simon had what Natashya Medvedeva called a psychotic break. Melissa Kinsley, the doctor who attempted - attempted and failed - to repair what of his face she could, had a hand in seeing him committed to Hillside Driftwood. Cassandra worked with the district attorney to try and condemn Simon for the death of that woman the monster in the mask killed the night that it took his face.

Now they we're his pets. They were all his pets.

Simon eyes felt uncomfortable in his face, and drew an eyedropper from his coat pocket. He removed the lid, and leaning his head back, dropped three drops in on either side. Simon rolled his eyes in their sockets as saline tears rolled out over the eyelets of his bondage mask.

The trash media called it inexorable. Unstoppable. They said it couldn't die.

Simon stared at his pets,.and sighed. "Who wants to be Daddy's favorite?"

✟ ☧ ✟

Bane stood in that familiar place atop the small hill over a dying place (...park. It's called a park).
"Be silent." Bane's whisper carried no farther than the space from his mouth to his mask.

He stared into the sky at the storm clouds, blinking away small droplets of rain as they spattered against his mask, and into his eyes. He lowered his gaze to the rusting park, the yellowed grass, and wondered for only a moment why everything there was dying, despite the constant rain - rains that persisted since his arrival into this prison world of men.

(You know why)

Bane shook his head sharply, and arched his neck first to the left, and then to the right. Those remnants of Jonathan Walker were less persistent anymore, but they were still there. They came more often if he had to sift through the boy's memories for something he did not know, as though he were waking the memories from fitful slumber. They were echoes - nothing more than echoes - but if echoes were somehow self aware. Aware enough that the body once belonging to the tortured witch hunter should be dead, mouldering in the soil. Those less than dormant echoes seemed somehow aware that the spirit that possessed this limited flesh was a foreign entity; someone - something - that did not belong.

Bane let go his legs, collapsing onto the grass in a dense thud, sitting in a place that somehow was not his to sit. The hill (our knoll, hers and mine) had the smell of memories all about it. Old emotions ran through the air, darting and racing around him. Old memories lived here, just out of his reach, and those feelings just beyond the scope of his understanding.

"Do you ever bother, anymore?"

Bane glanced over his shoulder. The girl who gave him the witch by the water (creek) stood behind him, her hands resting on holstered pistols on her either hope. He caught her eyes sidelong, staring over his shoulder, and said nothing.

"You've got police, and Inquisition looking for you. You've killed both. You've overstepped."

"...you have come to stop me?"

Gina stared down at Bane, considering his question. There was no challenge in his voice, no fury. "I'm not here to stop you. I didn't know you'd be here. I'm out for my own reasons. Disappointed."

Bane shrugged, and returned his eyes to the park. This place was something once. People celebrated here. There was reverie. In the short time in the world of men, Bane saw more, and more of Taal's kingdom bleeding through. The deterioration of the physical world from the dead god's corruption showed in small ways.

The tar in the roads were cracked, and crumbling. They took on the texture of oily grit, and grimy chunks of gravel. It was subtle, though. Not entire roads, or thoroughfares, but noticeable to anyone not in too much a hurry to stop and see the signs. At the edges, the highways, and the mountain roads, in the older parts of Driftwood, and especially in poortown - and sure it was expected in places where resources were lesser - but the decay was faster. Sooner. It was more, and more often.

It was not only the roads. It was in the people, those weaker willed than the faceless hunters slinking through shadows, or the swine whose conjuring was upsetting the balance... a balance that until his arrival, he did not care.

What were the troubles of mankind to a creature born from nightmare and flame?

They were his troubles now.

He turned his head slowly, sensing her beside him before he saw her, the girl from the creek.

"This used to be pretty."

Bane stared at the girl's profile. She was unfamiliar. Unspectacular. She stank of the faceless hunters' rites and blessings (so do you), but she was not one of them. His compulsions to destroy were absent. He could reach over in an instant and snap her into halves. He could break her bones, and tie her in knots, and leave her for the crows to pick at like so much carrion...

...but he did not want to. It was not some memory, or force out of his control that stopped him, not like the heathen girl Suheila for whom he acted out of his nature.

Bane shifted, staring at her complexion. This was choice. This was his decision.

"Take a picture, green eyes. It'll last longer."

"Leave."

"Make me." Gina returned his gaze, and felt her cheeks warm.

"Idiot girl, leave."

She smiled, and Bane felt the urge to shake his head. Stupid girl. She mistook his demand. Bane was on his feet before she could react, his pistols drawn. Gina rose up to her feet, her hands reaching for her holsters.

She was too slow.

Bane thrust a heavy booted foot out, kicking Gina square in the chest. She fell back, and he began firing as soon as she was clear from his line of sight.

Gina coughed, trying to catch her wind. She was vaguely aware that Bane was not shooting at her, and though it hurt to move, she rolled onto her stomach to see his target.

Across from her, only a few yards from where they were sitting, she watched as the hail of gunfire riddled a woman. To the woman's credit, she was still standing, a butcher knife in hand. She would not be standing long. Gina heard Bane's weapons click, dry firing.

The woman made a small gurgling gasp, and collapsed where she was standing.

Gina felt the rush of adrenaline, and pushed herself onto her feet. She stared at the dead woman, and then to Bane. "You saved me?"

Bane stared at his revolvers a moment, and holstered them. "Leave."

Gina ignored him, and crept carefully to the dead woman, closing the distance in a slow and steady walk. She stared down at the woman. "Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit. It's the assistant DA. The one who went missing."

Bane stared. What was a DA? He sifted through memories, and found very little. DA... district attorney. Someone people considered important enough. He did not know this woman, and she wasn't in Jonathan's memories.

"I don't understand." Gina's voice was low. "I didn't sense her coming."

"Not coven. Nobody."

"She's somebody. You've killed police, Inquisition, and now you've killed the assistant DA. This isn't going to go well for you."

Bane shoved Gina aside, throwing her to the grass again as he drew his blades and thrust them put. Gina watched the long blades spin through the air, the first missing its target - a second woman, the next blade planting itself in a third, dead center in her chest. She collapsed into an forward roll and slid on her back and skidded to a halt.

The second woman was running toward them with a small sharp objects - a simple nail file - screaming her shrill scream as she ran. Gina was on her feet and rushed to intercept. She took control of the woman's weapon hand, turned her wrist in, and pushed as hard as she could into the woman's rib cage.

She collapsed in Gina's arms, gasping. Gina dropped her.

"Oh, fuck me." Gina frowned, staring down at the woman as she drowned in her blood. "This is Doctor Kinsley. She's been missing. What the fuck is going on here?"

Bane scowled beneath his mask. The mortal world was rife with self important titles, and self proclaimed stations of their so called duty.

Gina drew her pistols, arms out, barrels pointed at Bane. He stared at her, his hands resting on the emptied revolvers on his hips. She had him dead to rights. It would not kill him, but it was going to hurt.

"Duck you moron! Down!" Gina yelled. She could not kick him down, or put him on his back herself. She was strong, but not so strong to put the giant on his back.

Bane grunted, his eyes wide under his mask.

"Drop, goddamnit!"

Bane coughed, and Gina watched in horror as blood seeped out from beneath the bottom of his mask, and down his throat.

Bane finally went down.

Behind him, a lanky man in a blood spattered tuxedo, and a black leather bondage mask grinned a toothy grin through the unzipped mouth of the mask, and stared down at the metal rode jutting out of Bane's corpse. "Inexorable, the headlines called him. That Belmont quack. The unstoppable spite killer."

Gina's voice caught in her throat and was scarcely more than a whisper. "What have you done?"

"You can lower your weapons, pretty pet. He won't hurt you."

"What have you done?"

"I saved your life, precious." The lanky man in the blood spattered tuxedo arched his neck to one side, his grin looking more and more as grimace.

Gina coughed, trying hard to clear the lump in her throat. "I'll kill you."

"Kill your savior?" The man stared at Gina, his eyes unblinking, his teeth glinting in the pale light of the park lamps as the blood on his tuxedo ran down in thinning streams, mixing with the rainwater.

"You just killed the only hope Driftwood had."

The man tilted his head, examining Gina in a way too similar to Bane. Gina felt a chill run down her back. Her hands were unsteady, her twin pistols shaking visibly.

"That's better. A little respect goes a long way. Now, listen so you understand me. I am not going to do you any lasting harm. A promise made is a promise kept, beautiful pet... so long as you cooperate."

"Fuck you." Gina's hoarse voice sounded like Bishop's in her ears, without any of the threat or menace of his station. Without any of the authority of her station. She squeezed the triggers is rapid succession, the twin desert eagles recoiling in her hands with each swift explosion of sound, the matte black finish like dulled black satin in the flickering park lights.

The man in the blood spattered tuxedo stood there, his terrible eyes fixed on her, his teeth clenched in a perpetual skull like grimace as her every shot passed him, each missing the mark.

Gina, against her own will, took a small step backward. She could shoot this man dead here, and now. She could hold him from the ground by his slender pencil neck, and wrench his head from his body. She was certain she could - if she tried hard enough - punch through his ribcage and tear out his still beating heart, and feed it to him.

All she wanted to do was run.

All she could think of was Billy McGinnis, the mental kid that lived down the street from her, and his impossible strength. The way he pinned her down. The way he laughed that moronic laughter. The way he thought she wanted it, because he wanted it.

Cameron saved her, breaking Billy McGinnis' arms, and legs, and that was before all the bullshit of rites and blessings. That was before things were ugly, and complicated. That was before he beat her along the banks of the creek where she left her girlfriend to die at the hands of Bane. She loved Brenna... but that love was born of an unnatural bond created through the unclean works of Brenna's craft. Brenna was just another Billy McGinnis, forcing her will on Gina... just in a different way.

Now this man, this lanky, terrifying man with the predator eyes, and the drooling, leering forever smile wanted his turn... but Cameron could not help her. She pushed him away, and now he was gone, off on some mission for his Inquisition.

"That's not cooperation, my little mesomorphic plaything."

Gina holstered her pistols, her body shaking as the man took ginger steps around Bane's body. He spared a last moment glance as he passed around Bane, and advanced on Gina.

"You stay the fuck away from me!"

✟ ☧ ✟

The incredulous bitch. Uncooperative. He said the words! He saved her life ! A promise made is a promise kept!

She owed him.

Now, she backed away. She intended to run, and that was not going to happen. She intended to leave him, and that was not going to happen.

"This is your last chance, beautiful thing. I saved you. I can still save you. You live in mediocrity, a victim waiting to be a victim. I can make you stronger. I can give you purpose. I can make you whole."

The girl in the leather catsuit, wide eyed and terrified took another step backward. Fear, yes... but something else. Not anger, no.

Fury.

Rage.

"If you come near me, I will kill you dead where you stand."

"Aren't you tired of being a victim in a world of monsters who would see you as prey?"

The girl stared at him, her bottom lip quivering as she sank to her knees. An ugly gutteral sound crept from her throat as she began to sob.

She understood. She knew. He could be her only savior. He was her Ascension beyond mediocrity as only he could be. He, and no other.

✟ ☧ ✟

The pain was new. It was precise, a precision from someone who knew what they were doing. It was unfamiliar, but unfamiliar was good. Pain could no longer excuse defeat.

He pushed himself to his hands and knees, and rolled sideways, sitting upright, the pain in back excruciating, the pain in his chest worse than the pain in his back.

He reached for the thing stuck in his back.

It was small, wet with his blood. His fingers slipped off it, and then he heard her scream.

He turned his head toward her, and saw the girl on her knees. Her screaming was not in fear, the hysterical blubbering not weeping, but mad laughter. The one who hurt him - the man in the formal clothes (tuxedo - he's wearing a tuxedo) stood before her, with his arm outstretched, hand open to receive hers.

She stared past the man, her eyes locked on his as he rose up slowly to his feet. The pain inside him throbbed. His head ached, every beat of the weak heart in the body pulsed like seismic rhythm in his skull. His legs were heavy, his arms sluggish at his sides. The only pain worse than hammering in his head was the pressure he felt in his eyes.

✟ ☧ ✟

Gina laughed, though her throat was raw. The rain soaked man in the blood spattered tuxedo lashed out, and slapped her across the face, but Gina laughed harder. "You're so dead, bug-eyes. Dead, dead, dead, and you don't even know it."

"I think..." The man said through his bared teeth.

"Don't we all?"

He shook his head, reached for his bondage mask, and pulled it free from his head. "In time you'll learn to love this. Relax, and you may even enjoy this. I know I will."

✟ ☧ ✟

Bane did not come into the world a creature of opportunity. As a guardian of Ehts - the dark tree that binds two worlds - Bane was the Yan'Shuf, largest and strongest of eight.

That was before the outlaw.

After the outlaw broke the barrier between two worlds, even as something immaterial, the Yan'Shuf lingered. Its presence was no longer bound by the will of Taal, and there it stayed until through the veil of nightmares it saw him, the boy whose soul he would displace. Into the eternity of Taal's dark kingdom the boy would go, and into the world of men the Yan'Shuf would be reborn.

Into the very moment, even as he crept upon the unwitting man who would take this woman by force, he still felt Jonathan Walker got the better end of the deal. His scope of vision was and always be limited to his two eyes, his movement bound to the laws of the physical world. No matter how strong, fast, or big... the same natural laws that governed all things governed him, too.

...but a hunter of opportunity he was not.

Head on, face-to-face, hand to hand, these we're his methods; his reflexes, and impossible strength, enhanced by Jonathan's rites and blessings - the rights and the blessings imbued to the flesh, not the soul - his great size, and solid mass a result of the spirit that inhabited the flesh. He was created a predator, born into existence with the knowledge of efficient, brutal violence... and born again into the world of men, enslaved by the emotions, compulsions, and memories of someone who no longer existed.

He preferred to take the fight directly to the enemy... but this enemy bested him, and he