I can't tell where I am, I'm seeing everything double, but it's _freezing_. I should have brought my coat, or I shouldn't've been lying on the ground. Frozen earth and scratches of dead grass, with towers of something blocking out the night sky. Where the hell am I?

The towers across the sky resolve into solid shapes, and I see headstones. Too dark to read, but the layout is so very familiar. It looks positively barren without seven or eight snarling faces blocking out the sky.

Mount Hope Cemetary. Waterloo.

_Fuck._

Someone's filled in the hole since the first time I was here. We were here.

I sit up and reach for a cigarette. (I don't smoke. Gail smoked, I quit). My hands are a wreck, split and scraped, three fingernails ripped clean off and the index and middle finger on my right hand shredded down to bone. It's too cold to feel anything. I light the cigarette to see if my hands work, and for a minute to think. The lighter gets mud and blood on it, goes back in my pocket. I stand up, staggering a little--so stiff it's not funny, how long was I lying there? It's miserably dark. The streetlamps on Regina look as dim as tea and flicker so that it hurts to watch, and the cemetary is barely far enough away from black to see in, and all the outlines are swimming. It's like staring into your closet in the middle of the night, trying to figure out what kind of face you're seeing.

I turn my back on the street lights to give my night vision a chance to kick in properly, and damn near drop the cigarette when I see the table in the middle of the graves. It's nothing special--dark wood, squat oblong top, four legs--but it really shouldn't be out here in the middle of winter. It's been polished, and the tabletop reflects light from somewhere with red highlights, cherry or mahogany. For a minute I wonder if I'm dreaming, but it's too damn cold. And my right hand is starting to thaw a little from the cigarette's heat, and it hurts too much to be a dream. I stick the damn cigarette in my mouth, hoping my hand will refreeze, and walk towards the table. Its top is barely halfway up my thighs, and I hop up on top of it.

The vantage point is much better, but even turning in a full circle I still can't see anything except the cemetary and the dying lights on Regina.

"Rosemary." From behind me.

I whip around, except my feet are nailed to the tabletop. Metaphorically speaking, I think. There's no new pain. I want to turn around so hard but I _can't_move_.

"Aspic.

"Maestrich."

Now I can move.

He's standing there in the stones and dead grass in that beat-to-shit duster he liked sometimes, long brown hair straggling loose, hands clasped neatly in front of (behind?) him. I can't see his face, but I recognize his voice and silhouette.

"Ross?"

"You don't sound happy to see me, Rosemary."

My head's gone fuzzy again, I can't think. "Aren't you... angry at me?"

Last time I saw him, I was tied (taped?) to a chair, head pulled back, and he was dripping lye in my eyes, and I could still see him even after they bubbled out and ran down my cheeks and into my ears. A rite of contrition, he said. And his face never changed the whole time, that slightly pained expression, and the disappointment and exasperation that never interfered with what he was doing.

"Why would I be?"

"I don't know. Didn't you..."

His head tilts slightly to one side. "Yes?"

I don't remember, exactly. "...play with your food, again," I finish. He shouldn't be there. But he's always been there, from my first night here.

He brings his hands out--they must have been behind his back, or I'd have seen the knife before--and shrugs expansively. The filigreed gold blade he uses for the Vinculum glitters as he steps forward.

Ross extends his arm, blade pointed towards me. "You are going to need this," he says calmly, flipping the knife around and handing it to me hilt first.

"I'm glad you're not... angry... ehm." I take the knife from him. The cold agate handle sucks the last of the heat away, and the pain goes with it. My fingers leave smears of ashy filth on the delicate ridges of the hilt. I think I see something crawling.

"Ross, I'm going to get it muddy."

"You're going to get it bloody."

"That's not so bad, I guess..." My head's clearing a little, and I gesture with the knife. "You know I can't use this properly. I'm not a priest. I can't be a priest."

Ross shrugs. "Either way, you need to have this. If not for yourself then for those who are coming."

"You mean Allan?"

"No," Ross smiles and slaps me on the shoulder, "I mean you." He begins to walk away but stops. His head drops low and in a sad voice he speaks up again. "I'm sorry I won't be there for you but you'll do alright."

"Ross, _wait._ I can't--" I lunge after him, slip, and fall hard to the table surface. The red gleam on it now is a thin slick of blood. I lost track of him in the split-second flinch of the fall and now he's gone.

"Shit. I don't know what you're _talking_ about," I mutter to no-one.

This is miserable. It's freezing, it's dark, there's no-one around, and my hands are so dirty that I wouldn't swab the blood off the table if it was still warm, which it most definitely is not. I push off the table and start towards where I think the cemetary gates should be.

"No one? I'm hurt."

I whip around to see a short, slim man standing before me. He is smiling at me. Why is he smiling at me? He starts speaking and I guess I'll find out...

"Yes, you will."

"Will what?"

"Find out, Ms. Aspic. That is what you want, is it not?"

"Always." I'm smiling too, at least in that all-my-teeth-are-visible sense. Ross here was fine. Ross is one of mine. _This_ guy... Looks like some Father Knows Best wannabe, reads like Jeffrey Dahmer. I take a step towards him, one to the side, not wanting to get within lunging distance but profoundly curious. "Where'd _you_ come from?"

"If I told you to find out?" That smile is getting annoying.

"I'm sure I would." Quick look at the ground around him, though the dead grass seems too thin and scratched to leave tracks.

"Then I suggest you find out. Besides, where I came from is much less interesting than why I am here."

My eyes narrow. Even Fedor wasn't this cryptic or annoying. And what's with the Aspic? Nobody calls me that.

"Okay, why are you here?" I ask. More like demand, but I'm hoping Dahmer wasn't going to take this as an insult, at least not a bad one. Calculated risk.

"To find you, of course."

I'm really starting to hate this guy, and my fingers are itching for claws as I dip my head slightly and spread my arms. "So, Reynolds, you've found me. I've found out you want to find me. Now can we find something else to discuss--like what the hell you want from me, or who you are--or shall we both find our separate ways out of here?" I'm trying to keep from snarling, but it's getting very hard. I've met scary before, but he's top end of the scale, and I have no clue what the fuck he wants.

"What I want? Oh yes, I guess the next step is to come to Ottawa to collect you. I had best be going now. A pleasure."

With a smile and a nod he turns away, humming as he walks into the foggy night. A shudder works up my arms and my fingers flex, but I don't go after him. Dismissive arrogant bastard, but what the hell, this is him _walking_away_ and I can crush an impulse or two if it means I don't have to deal with him. I light the cigarette--my hands are fine now, and less frozen--and watch him fade into the fog, grass crunching gently like young finger bones under his feet.

(Collect me? Fuck that.)

The night is warmer now, and tracers of ground mist are creeping around the markers. I can't see him or the table anymore, and I can't remember which way I was going before he showed up. I pick a direction and start walking slowly into the mist.

As I walk, I begin to notice the size of the cemetary. It's truly expansive, far beyond what it was last time I was here. There are headstone as far as I can see. I pay little attention until them until I come across a giant monument at the top of a great hill. The statue is of a proud man who has broken. I look into his eyes and I'm overcome with... with... something. The emotion is far too intense to put into words. I crumple to the ground and begin to sob.

I must have been on the ground crying for a long while before I realized the tears were salty, not the sweet-coppery taste of vitae. I wiped my face with my coat sleeve and the deep crimson hue I expected was not there. These were mortal tears and the feeling I felt was pure. This may explain why I didn't recognize the fear and sorrow in my heart. The Beast was silent and I was flesh.

I try to get a grip on myself, slowing down the sobbing. It takes me a while, but I get it down to long, shaky breaths. I'd forgotten that rainy taste your breath gets after a crying jag. The tears don't stop, but they've slowed down and I can actually see. It's unnaturally peaceful, this being upset without wanting to rip something apart. I'm exhausted, and I want to just curl up and lie down and sleep, but I start getting to my feet. Falling asleep when I'm mortal, in the middle of the night, in an unlit cemetary where the dead walk and the damned have been known to claw their way screaming out of the ground, seems like a bad idea.

I'm not dead. Was I dead when I got here? I thought I was. Maybe Ross would have mentioned if I wasn't? And I felt angry enough to be dead, when Reynolds showed up--I wanted to start at his scalp and rip his skin off all the way down, peel his stomach open and--

Eugh. _Christ_, that's disgusting...

....although compared to some things I've seen and done...

My stomach seizes up for a minute, and then I'm down on my hands and knees again, trying not to retch. I started thinking about it and now I can remember screaming. There's a specific tone you get when you push someone over the edge. It's not even the pain. It's the sound you get when they don't believe what's happening.

I'd do it again if I had to. I would. But I can't stop thinking about the people I've done it to, and there's nothing in me now that makes me want to laugh and scream back.

Throwing up on an empty stomach hurts.

I grab the statue's plinth with one hand and get to my feet. My fingers slip on damp lichen, and a strip of it peels off like dead skin. Dirt's sketched across the stone beneath, in lettered grooves. It's too dark to see them properly, but with the lighter and a minute of peeling, some of it becomes clear:

"No greater grief than to remember days of joy when misery is at hand"

Cheerful. I'd been hoping for a name. Dates. Something. I step back and look up at the statue, feeling another wave of sorrow. The man didn't look familiar, I thought, but the lighter flickers and when the shadows move there's something about the eyes, the set of the mouth, that rings faint bells.

"Who were you?" I say quietly to myself as I get ready to climb up onto the base of the statue. Maybe I'll recognize him, or maybe the vantage point, low as it is, will let me get a better idea of which way to go to get out of here...

I struggle to pull myself up to the first rise. I'm surprised how fatigued my body is, a bone-deep dull ache. I vaguely remember about throwing up but I'd forgotten about this part. My arms and legs are like lead, and the sweat tickles like wet cobwebs, but with effort I manage to climb up. Victory. A small one, but one nonetheless.

As I sit catching my breath I hear something--footsteps. I raise my head slowly and turn towards the sound. Down the path from me is a tall, thin man with long hair walking towards me. I recognize the face; it's the same as the one on the statue above me. He's dressed quite differently--a long, brown duster and a fedora--but the face is unmistakable.

I reach for the knife that Ross gave me, cool agate handle and filigreed blade. It seems lighter now. He said I might need it and given that I'm climbing on this man's grave I figure now might be the time.

The stranger stops about three feet away and looks up expectantly. He couldn't have seen me reach for the knife. It's too dark and he was too far away. Yet he just stares and waits. I can feel and hear my heart pounding. My grip tightens around the little knife and I wait for an opening but the stranger just stands there, staring and waiting. Finally I scream.

"_What!?_"

"Do you need a hand down, my lady?"

I choke. Or laugh. My shattered nerves. I'm starting to miss the earlier normalcy of running into the dead spiritual advisor of my pack of blood-sucking corpses. "I'm fine. I--" Damn this fog, I can't see if he's breathing.

I'm on his grave, why the hell would he be breathing? (On the other hand, maybe he's a relative of the statue? Twin? Ghost?)

"Do you mind if I stay up here a minute? It's... it's very odd down there tonight. Who are you?"

"I don't mind at all. Be careful, though. I heard that one was a real bastard in unlife."

"...ah." So many things wrong with that statement, I am hard-pressed to pick just one. I look briefly back up at the statue--bastard he may have been, but the broken sorrow it radiates suggests it caught up with him. There's a catch in my throat, and I swallow before I say, "You look like him. Are you being coy, or is it just a family resemblance?"

The man grins. "He's as related to me as he is to you." He walks up to the monument and hops up, sitting just to my left. He points a finger at you and cocks his head. "You are Rosemary, right?"

"Yes. You? And who is he?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

"Trust me." The man looks around. "It would have been a lot easier to find you if you had just stayed where Ross and Reynolds found you." He starts fumbling around his pocket and pulls out a packet of cigarettes. "Would you like one?"

"Eh, sure." I take one, light it, offer him the lighter. "Wouldn't believe me if you told me who you were or who he was?"

He mumbles a thanks and takes a long drag off the cigarette. "Both, actually. If it makes you feel better you can call me either Richard or Eastwood, your choice."

"I'll break the R-theme. Why are you trying to find me?"

"Well, because I was told to. That, and there are three ghosts."

"You're having way too much fun with this." Fingers twitch for a second as I think of putting the cigarette out on his face--if I get _one_ more cryptic answer set up to produce two more questions... "Who told you?"

The stranger purses his lips and nods. "Alright, you want to play like that, do you?"

"Honest answers, who'da thought I'd like that," I mutter, but he ignores me.

Slowly he lowers himself to the ground and points to the statue. "That is who's fault this all is. All of it. Your miserable existence and mine. That, my dear Rosemary, is your Dark Father. That is Caine. As for who told me--well, that would be Reynolds. Guess you'll have to ask him when he gets to Ottawa."

"Caine's not--" I cannot finish that sentance, looking at the cold features that match the status behind me. Oh, fuck it. Back to mortal, talking to dead--_really_ dead--people, Caine might be dead. Or in a grave without being dead. Or something. "Who the-- _what_ the hell is Reynolds? Are you three the ghosts, or do I get to meet someone else? Why the fuck do _I_ rate all this attention?"

"Reynolds is like you, a vampire. As for why you rate all of this attention, I'm not sure but I don't make the decisions. Now, if you'll excuse I have to be going. Besides, it's almost dusk and you need to wake up."

With that, Eastwood turns his back and begins to walk away. He takes his right hand out of his pocket as he does and pulls out a rosary, begins playing with the beads.

"Get--"

Dismissive bastard. Maybe I'm just tired. But the plinth is a decent starting point for a flying tackle, and I'm in the air lunging for him before it occurs to me that if I somehow missed it when I stopped being mortal (I probably didn't. How can you miss being dead?) that rosary is going to hurt like a bitch.

"-- _back_ --"

That's about all I have time to think. Eastwood starts to turn around. I'm not quite sure if it's his elbow or his shoulder that hits my head, I'm guessing elbow, but I hit him. And then we hit the ground. I've got some kind of grip on him, I think, but I'm seeing stars.

" --here!"

The fog slowly begins to leave my mind and I realise I'm wrapped in a tight embrace with Eastwood and he's reciting something. It makes me a moment to figure it out but when I do I'm terrified. It's the Last Rites. Struggle against him but it doesn't matter. He releases me the moment he finishes and rolls off.

Immediately the Beast roars back to life. It's hurt and angry. I can't figure out why at first and then it hits me. I'm on fire.

I feel the flames creeping up my skin and I shriek. I'm clawing at myself, ripping off my face, tearing it all away--I peel away in raggedly joined clumps, like dead leaves in spring runoff. And I'm holding my face and my skin and the fire in my hands; it's falling apart in my hands, rotting silk or leather, and I sling the smouldering mess to one side, and it lands in the grass with a runny splat.

Eastwood has picked himself up and is yelling. "This is your fate--eternal fire and slavery to your nature! Stop fucking around and you can be saved--"

I hit him. I was trying to rip his face off and I crushed the idea last-minute, changed a swipe to a fist. Don't want to kill him or need him to talk. Can't tell. My hands feel wrong, knotted, too many knuckles and barbs, and I twine them into the front of his duster. My teeth feel too heavy in my mouth.

"I'm _not_--fucking--around." I want to find out how he screams. It's hard to step back, harder still to unwrap my hands from his duster, like fighting gravity. "Just being fucked _with_. Play head games, hints and teases, say you can save me?"

"That's why Ross warned you. That's why Reynolds found you. And that's why I'm here."

"See? Answers don't _hurt_ so much--" Eastwood lifts a hand, and I stop, step back again. Hands down. Stand straight. It hurts. I can smell myself burning in the dead grass. Eastwood looks exasperated.

"You're wasting time."

"I'm trying to not want to rip you open." He looks unimpressed. "Didn't say I _could_, just trying to stop wanting." I relight my cigarette, then offer him one. He doesn't take it. "I'm trying to apologize, okay? Talk to me. I don't want to burn."

"Then don't."

With that the sky cracks and rumbles and it begins to rain. Gentle at first, but it quickly becomes a torrent. Flames hiss in protest and fall silent under the shower. The Beast quiets again and I once again find myself on my hands and knees. This time I'm choking and trying to draw air back into my lungs. It's difficult at first, tricks my throat and lungs had forgotten, but persistence pays off. I'm breathing again.

Eastwood walks up and wraps an arm around me. Instinctively I flinch, but there is no pain and no malice. He embraces me and rythmically rocks back and forth. He's talking in a hushed whisper. I don't know what he's saying, but it sounds old and powerful, whatever it is, and somehow that makes me feel a little better. It's good to know that not everything old is out to get you.

He finishes speaking, and I listen to the rain falling for a minute.

"I was talking to Rusty once," I say into the silence. "He was complaining that if he didn't do what he was told he'd get beaten up. I asked him if it wasn't important enough to get beaten up over, what the hell was he bitching about? And now I've got no clue what the hell is going on, only that it _is_ important."

"There's more important things to deal with than getting beaten up."

"Yes, but..." I absently touch my throat; pulse still going, which is strangely reassuring. "I'm just used to thinking of things in terms of how much pain I'd be willing to put up with over them. It's a-- a really frequently applied criteria. And I start thinking that way about everything."

"It doesn't do you so much good on abstractions or deductions."

"I know. It's a hard habit to get into. Out of. I'm *trying*."

"That's a start." The rain is tapering away to a drizzle. He glances up at the sky and steps away from me. "You do need to wake up, and I should be going."

"Wait. Please. Reynolds."

"What about him?"

"Can you tell me anything?" I'm tensing up again, I can feel it, but it's not anger this time, just the thought of that Jeffrey Dahmer poise. I wonder if this is what mortals feel like around undead, all the time. "He said he's coming to collect me, and he scares the hell out of me, and you at least knew that he was here. What's going on?"

Eastwood grimaces briefly and nods. "Alright, but I'll take one of those cigarettes now."

He reaches forward and pulls one out gingerly as I extend the pack. His hands are shaking. I don't think Eastwood is any more comfortable around Reynolds than I am. He takes a long slow drag of the cigarette, as if to gather his thoughts. He looks down at his feet and begins to speak nervously.

"Reynolds wasn't my idea. Then again, being here isn't my idea either."

I roll my eyes. Not another evasive answer. But just as I'm about to write this off as well, Eastwood explains.

"Reynolds was picked, just like I was. He is one of you, a vampire. And from what I have been led to believe, an extremely old and powerful one. His name is Elimelech and I first encountered him in the Bible."

I'm stunned. Not only is Reynolds one of the most powerful vampires in the Sabbat, he's apparently worth the direct notice of God. I want to say something, but I can't think what, amd Eastwood continues after another long drag.

"This is apparently his penance. He has wronged the Lord and now he has been tasked to gather His chosen and protect them."

I hesitate, but I want to know. "From what?"

Eastwood looks up, a little surprised. "The end. It is coming. Look around you. Read the names on the headstones. They are all your brothers and sisters."

He points to a cluster of three and begins reciting; each name echoes in my head like an iron bell, funereal tones. "Those are Allan, Nick and Winston. That one over there is Fedor. Over the hill behind us you'll find Vykos, Kyle and The Shepherd. The mosoleum in the far corner has the names Pascek, Robin, di Zagreb, Guil, Streck and Luncide. Your world is about to die and Elimelech is to take you to the Ark."

Eastwood stops abruptly and takes one final drag from his cigarette before dropping it into a puddle where it hisses into death.

"I'll be leaving now. I have a lot of work."

I look around the cemetary; the sky has gone from black to wet slate-grey, still dripping with clouds, and the air smells like wet earth and stone. Spring smells in winter. There's a vanishing trace of my breath on the air. I choke down the fear welling up inside me.

A sudden thought comes to me, and I turn to see if I can still spot him. He's making his way between the rows of headstones, still close enough to yell to.

"Hey! Eastwood!"

He pauses and looks back over one shoulder.

"What's your real name?"

He stops and turns back slowly. "Dane. Sullivan Dane."

With that he turns and continues to walk away.