WAR: WIIGF 26 (Patreon)

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The cracked asphalt under the man’s feet didn’t do a thing to slow or stumble his measured pace, worn leather shoes steady and staid. Ken’s own steps were more of a shuffle, his legs a restless counterpoint to Keane’s own.

Tap. Tap. Tap.His tongue worked inside his mouth, poking at the taste of dried blood as he stared around at the park they made their way through. The blood was a gift from his own dumbassery, a high-speed jump after a railgrind sending him crashing to the floor harder than he could’ve walked away from two months ago.

Now, all it left him was a headache and a scab on the left side of his cheek.

My fault, anyway.

It was, honestly.

Not for attempting the grind, really, considering he’d gotten good enough over the last week to pull off a few tricks like that and the board almost made it easier to learn the more work he put into it.

No, it was his fault for trying to pull off a move like that in this shitty park. His eyes trailed over the same space he’d almost busted his head in, the same place he’d grown up playing ball in with both his dad and Weegee. 

Ragged patches of grass as brown as the skeletal tree trunks around them stared back at him from the sad space they called Mellville Park. Dead as it was, he doubted the one patch of life would get any better than this — at least not while choked out on all sides by the concrete decay of his neighborhood.

Hell, the whole gray city, honestly. 

Kenny fought back a sigh at the sight of a couple of junkies doing the gravity-defying lean not too far from the rusted-out husk of a jungle gym. Faces slack and empty eyes rolled back, they looked more like the undead than anything human and it was only the fact that the sun was still out for another hour or so that kept him from thinking otherwise. 

Fuckin’ mess, man. Kenny huffed, the sound quiet as he pocketed his hands. Another Sunday in paradise, right?

Green eyes slid over to the man still walking beside him, their little stroll a quiet one; something that hadn’t changed since they met almost another half-hour back.

‘We need to speak, Kenneth.’ Those were the words the father had spoken to him on the phone a few days ago. A simple message, a request to talk, another lecture probably waiting to happen. ‘This Sunday at Melville.’

Ken rolled his eyes the other way. Least it’s not in that Lemon-Pledge-ass office again.

So here he was, walking side-by-side through a dead park with the black-ops priest, just waiting for the other shoe to slap him upside the head.

He’d almost expected the priest to drop the answer to the actual question he’d thrown at him last week. What’s a Dead Apostle? The two words had been sitting in his head since he heard Keane use them; after all, it was especially hard to forget something you heard while watching a nugget of a vampire going through Vatican-approved enhanced interrogation techniques.

Even still, the words had been a jagged piece of a puzzle he didn’t have the box for, just itching behind his eyes.

But Keane wasn’t talking about that.

The man wasn’t even talking about anything, really.

Just walking.

Traffic vibrated off in the distance, all the cars rumbling along the road as Ken’s fingers found a loose thread on the cuff of his hoodie. That’s it. I’m gonna just do it. “So y-”

“How long has it been, Kenneth?” Keane didn’t even let him have the chance, already out with a question before he could form a second syllable. “Since your first slaying?”Kenneth blinked at the man in the cassock, unbothered eyes staring back at him behind those round glasses. Wha- The shift in topic was enough to stall his brain for a good half-second. Why the hell is he asking that?

It was especially weird when there was no way the man didn’t already know the answer. The whole creepy-ass church knew the answer, considering they pretty much kidnapped him the day after. “A month… I guess.” Ken frowned, looking up into the gray sky. “Maybe a little more.”

He almost couldn’t imagine life before his eyes, before his chakra, and before he could spit jutsu like it was second-nature. A month ago might as well have been ten years, because what did it really matter when it felt like a lifetime of blood, ash, and hiding torn clothes from his mom. 

“And the Sacrament?”Ken’s eyes fluttered, thoughts stuttering for the second time in ten seconds. “Sacrament?”“The artifact you called upon that night. Your first use of your gift…” Keane’s eyebrow went high as he continued his explanation. “The handkerchief you described to me, Kenneth.”“I…” Kenny blinked again, lowering his head as his mouth worked. What happened to that, actually? He’d been looking for the white cloth for a while now, turning his room upside down just trying to find the thing. He even asked Cece, considering she was always sneaking in his room, but she said she didn’t take anything so… 

“I don’t know where it is.”

“...unfortunate.” Keane nodded slow, the movement deliberate as his tongue clipped the edge of the word. “It would have been useful.”“I mean…” Not sure how useful it would have been all used up. “...yeah, I can see that.”“Mmmm.” Keane’s nostrils flared as they began nearing the edge of the park. “I suppose you wish to know the reasons behind why I asked you to stand down.”

He gave the man a sideways glance, a scoff almost pushing past his teeth as he grinned his way. “Figured you called me out here for that. Priests don’t really walk around Melville looking for junkies.”

Keane didn’t bother with a smile of his own as he kept walking, steering the both of them down a winding path that bled out of the park. Soon enough, they both came to the cracked sidewalk of the avenue.

They kept walking in more silence, Ken’s half-forced grin fading away with each step. By the time it was almost a frown, the cinderblock structure of one of Bludhaven’s older free clinics loomed up on their right; a line of people stretching out the double doors and snaking down the block.

The teenager’s eyes slid over a woman shivering in thin denim, two little kids clutched in her grip, as she stood at the front of the line; an old man coughing out his lungs into a stained handkerchief right behind her, and a half-dozen teenagers looking more jittery than anything else behind him.

“What do you see, Kenneth?” The priest came to a halt, hands clapsed behind his back. “Tell me.”

Ken followed the priest’s eyes, scanning the line again as he wondered if it'd be worth it to spin up the Sharingan. His eyes were more than good even without the red dots alive and burning, though; nothing jumping out to him other than tired and broken people. “...it’s just another blood drive.” A finger went up, pointing to the faded red-lettered sign taped to the clinic window beneath the big red cross. 

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“Nothing weird there.” The city’s clinics had them running all the time, pretty much everyday even. Whether it was the public places, the private clinics, or even the donation buses, there was always somebody tapping a vein and handing you cash as soon as you got up.Keane looked his way, eyebrow high. “And you see nothing strange about this?”“I mean…” Ken looked up and down the line one more time, frown deepening. Some of them are kinda shady, I guess. A bunch of the smaller ones that didn’t ask any questions about your age or whatever — like a lot of the buses — and just sent you out the door with a couple twenties in hand… “Not…” 

Yeah, those are a little weird. Even still, the teenager just shrugged his shoulders. “Not really?”“Kenneth…” The pastor’s dark green eyes peered over wire rims as he locked onto Ken. "When have you not seen one?"

“Wha—” The teenager blinked slowly, hands working in the pockets of his hoodie. Last week? No. Last… last m… year? Wait… Kenny ‘s frown pulled at his face as he trawled through his thoughts, racking his memory for a single time when the local gyms, community centers, drive-by buses, or pop-up tents in strip mall parking lots weren’t begging for pints. “I… I don’t know, for real. They’re just… just…”Fuck. Bright green eyes blinked slowly. They’re just always around.

“You see now, don’t you? Blood drives running year-round, from dawn to dusk, in all my years here.” Keane nodded at him as Kenny opened his mouth, the taste of blood in his mouth still there. “Five years in Bludhaven and I have not seen a single day of rest. Money offered up for blood, given for free, constant advertisements in hospitals, clinics, schools and private businesses. Everywhere in this city, Kenneth. An unending demand for blood. Is that not odd?”“I… I guess.”There was no guessing at this point because Ken knew it, all the pieces falling together as soon as the priest laid it out like that. His eyes trailed back over the line of desperate people, a red sign promising seventy-five bucks. Holy shit, we’re being farmed.

"For centuries, this city has known crime in all its forms." Keane’s eyes stayed on the clinic’s doors as the woman entered with her children. "Rampant crime and murder. But only in the last seven years has there been such fear of a notable serial killer? This Butcher?"

The dry lump in his throat felt stuck there no matter how hard he tried to swallow. "I..."

“A haven for blood.” The Irish accent thickened on both words, disgust clear in the father’s eyes the longer he looked. “The vast majority have no need to hunt, simply reaping the harvest. And those that do hunt are a rare few; the starving, the feral, and the notably sadistic. And yet those numbers increase as the years pass. The balance tips day by day.”

“Why though?” Sneakers scraped the pavement as Ken stepped forward, the first question pushed out past all the others on his lips. His eyes itched in his skull hard enough to almost distract him from the craziness around, Sharingan begging to be put to work as if they could help here. “If they got… like, this whole system feeding them, why go wild in the streets at night? Why fumble the bag?”“That…” The pastor turned away from the clinic, polished shoes resuming their steady march down the avenue. “That is another question. And one I can’t promise an answer for that wouldn’t be more of the same.”

What… Green eyes blinked at the man’s back as he kept walking, Ken jogging a half-step to catch up as heat flared in his chest. “Keane!” Annoyance pushed the name out, disrespect his mother would smack him for already spoken with that same fire. “Keane, you better stop talking in riddles, man. Just give me something!”The man didn’t.

They walked another full block like that, silence between them all they shared as Ken tried his best to think about what other ‘normal’ shit he could have missed growing up; what else could be another vampire trap.

“There was once a boy, Kenneth.” Keane broke the silence again, a few minutes later.

“What boy?” Narrowed eyes glared at the priest, Ken’s hands out at his side and clenched to fists. “We talking about vampires and blood farms, man? What boy?”

“A boy from Ireland.” Keane’s murmur left quiet through lips that barely moved, gaze fixed past the corner bodegas and liquor stores on the hazy horizon. “A long time ago, this lad had quite the rough go of it. Lost his family young and fell in with quite the bad bunch, he did. Never had the taste for blood, though, that boy.” 

Keane shook his head. “But he had a skill for it. A natural mind for violence; the most terrible and unfortunate of gifts, some would call it.”

Yeah. Green eyes itched a little more, almost begging for a flare of energy as the sun sank closer to the edge of the world. Yeah, tell me about it.

“By fourteen, he was a mad young fella doing a number of things for older men, worse men, men he didn’t even respect.” Keane shook his head. “And one day, that lack of respect had him shot. Left for dead, even, in a piss-stained alley at that.” The priest unclasped his hands from behind his back, coming to rest at the sides of his cassock. “But by the grace of the Lord, he was found by a man and woman of the cloth. They took him in, cleaned his wounds, and showed that fool boy… showed him a different path.”Ken frowned, eyes narrowed as the story went on. Okay?“Not long after, another wounded found their way to them.” Keane’s tone shifted, warmth draining from it as he kept his eyes forward. “A man, bleeding from a dozen cuts at least. The father and the nun left the safety of the church, to help; willing to offer the exact same kindness they had offered the boy.”Keane stopped walking, Ken right behind him as his sneakers squeaked to a halt.

“But the wounds were a lie. Same as the form of man.” The priest’s jaw tightened, muscles clenched under plae skin. “A Dead Apostle on the hunt for his favorite prey, those sworn to the Lord.”That first jagged puzzle in Ken’s brain found another piece. Dead Apostle.

“The truest form of bloodsucker.” Keane’s whisper was somehow loud enough to be heard over traffic. “A walking curse that spreads to consume and overtake humanity. That Apostle killed them both before the boy even knew what was happening and that boy nearly died a second time running out to help.” The priest turned his head to face Ken again, dark green eyes distant behind those wire rims. “And he would have, if someone else hadn’t arrived. Someone who knew what the monster was and exactly how to slay it.”

Hands clenched tight into fists as Keane kept talking. “On his knees under the rain, the boy begged to be taught, to be trained to kill monsters like that for his own revenge. And that same man sent the boy to the Vatican, to learn the sacred art of slaying the unclean.”Traffic roared past as the priest fell quiet for a moment, a bus hissing air brakes at the corner of the street.

“That boy became an Executor.”Exec-

“One of the Church’s chosen weapons.” Keane answered before Ken could even finish the thought. “A modern paladin; a sword of the Lord whose only duty was to bring a true death to the demon, the heretic and the false god.”

Ken watched the priest’s face as he told the too-specific story. A boy from Ireland. A soldier for the Church who hunted vampires. The math wasn’t hard to do. “What happened to him?”Keane tilted his head. “The boy?”“Yeah…” Ken shifted his weight, hands still in his hoodie. “The Executor. What happened to him?”

The wind whipped down the avenue, the smell of exhaust carried down towards them as it rustled the heavy fabric of the priest’s cassock. “The boy died.”