How insidious is evil? Can it become genetic? Can good be genetic? Where does that leave freedom of choice?

Estacado had asked the soldier to investigate Darko's organisation before he went after Darko. He knew that this was meant to keep him from hunting down the wizard straight away, he also knew that Estacado was disgusted by him and thought he was uncouth just because of the way he acted. The soldier sneered as this crossed his mind. At least he was bluntly honest about what he liked and how he enjoyed killing. Estacado didn't seem to enjoy it as much exept as a means to an end.

During his investigation into Darko's activities he happened to come accross an intoxicating scent on some laundry he had be tasked to do. This, he had discovered later was Darko's personal scent, the aroma of 1000 year old blood, a blood so refined that it would be the best thing he had ever tasted. Once he had discovered the the man's stench he saw no further reason to wait for Darko to return from where ever he had gone to. The soldier would begin the hunt now.

He began with the cook. Charming her out of her clothes and then getting her to tell him when and where the acolytes meals were taken. At the height of her passion just before she could find release he pulled out of her but before she could complain, he moved his face down to her femoral artery and drank from there.

Her orgasm occured but she didn't find a release in the normal way. The pressure on her femoral artery caused her juices to flow through her blood instead of being released from her vaginal opening.
Her death was the greatest orgasm of her life.
After the soldier had drained her body he lifted his head in ecstasy. "That," he said to the empty room, "meal was orgasmic." He laft the room chuckling at his joke.

At six thirty in the evening he took the meal to the dining hall where the senior staff of the Darko Group ate their meals. After compelling several men to only drink instead of eat he had a veritable font of information and once he found what he needed to know he drained all of his informants but one.

When the final acolyte woke he had a splitting headache but it disappeared when he saw his murdered colleagues. At the sight of his brothers in the dark arts lying in gruesome parodies of prayer, his fear levels spiked and he ran as the vampire had intended. The vampire pounced savouring the smell and taste of the fear in the man's blood.

He'd discovered that Darko was in Arizona but because the acolyte was newly raised, he was unsure of where in Arizona the magician was. This didn't matter to the soldier, in fact it pleased him; with an added level of difficulty he would enjoy the hunt more. If he'd known that his hunt would lead to his eventual death he probably would have done it anyway.

* * *

Estacado wasn't really surprised that the vampire didn't obey his instructions. He had realised shortly after recruiting it that his control over it was tenuous, only working because of certain bribes and benefits he had given the creature.

It still pissed him off as he had to cut short his search for the ones the Stern woman had told him about. He had thought of taking control of their organisation more than once. He had meant what he said to the woman, getting a prostitute addicted was bad for business if one was running an escort agency. Still he would have liked to have the formula to control his enemies. 'Magic and cocaine' he thought 'brilliant idea'

It wasn't difficult to find the vampire, he just needed to follow the tracks of Arizona's newest serial killer. He soon found himself in Flagstaff, where the town was in a panic. It seemed that one of the junior football teams from the area had gone missing.

The Darkness in Jackie seemed to enjoy the irony that the news about the Arizona serial killer didn't even concern these people because the killings only started after the children were kidnapped. He wondered what these parents would do if they knew that the 'serial killer' was actually after their children's kidnapper.

After the sun went down Estacado sent out a few darkings to find the vampire's trail. It seemed that the vampire had already found the warehouse site and had destroyed it when it saw Darko had already left. However, a second look at the area surrounding the warehouse proved that Darko destroyed it or else Darko had been in a fight that caused it to come crashing down. The vampire probably had only destroyed the remainder of the structure looking for the wizard.

The darkings had difficulty in finding the soldier because he was the single vampire who had not been involved in the Wars of Shadowand therefore had no aspect of the Darknesses demonic taint.

Even though the vampires that the Darkness had experimented on were only the portion of the vampire nation that became nightwalkers. The Darkness, unbeknown to others had been involved in the entire war. The holder of the Darkness at that time was one of those who started the wars and he devised a gas not disimilar to the on Estacado used on Gleason before he became Ella. Except unlike Estacado's version of only working on one person, that era's Darkness Host developed it to infect any and all vampires involved in the wars.

However the vampires of that era weren't cleansed by Celestial fire and reborn as the current vampire queen had been and that was why the daywalkers also had an aspect of the Darkness in them. The gas that the Darkness had released during that era had bonded to the race on a genetic level but the soldier had escaped receiving the impurity because he had not taken part in those wars. After killing the emperor he had decided to explore the world and so did not even know these events had taken place, until he returned three centuries later.

The Darking found the vampire just before dawn. The soldier had found a campsite that had recently been abondoned. He hadn't found Darko, but he had found something that had peaked his curiosity. It was a scent not as sweet as Darko's but almost as aged and that person had been surrouded by children. The vampire's throat began to burn in anticipation of possible delicacies.

The soldier continued to track Darko, thinking that there might be some extra delicasies at the end of this hunt. The darking continued to follow the vampire who had suddenly realised he was being followed. He walked to the side of the road and stared out into the dark, pretending to look for something. The darking observing him from 20 feet away didn't take into account the vampire supernatural senses. It was ripped to pieces by an enraged vampire.

The darking's death was the only thing that alerted Estacado to the fact that they were on the right trail. When a darking dies, the soul that it used to be goes free. The Darkness usually feels this as a chill and cold shivers as well as a loss of weight, sort of like clothing had been removed. Estacado had no idea where there darking had found the vampire, but he knew the general direction that he needed to go to find it.

* * *

Geoff and Sarah were descended from a long line of witches and unknown to them, they were distantly related to Jennifer Kale. In their family line women had always been the holders of the power, however there was a prophecy about twins. These twins would come into their power in the same decade as the world discovered it own innate power.

The prophecy was definite on the fact however, that the female would be first and that while she would carry on the family ability, the male would follow the majority. Nobody had ever understood the phrasing of the prophecy, but it happenened now. Sarah carried her genetic lines magical power and Geoff carried the metagene that the majority of the world's metas had.

Geoff had flown to Sarah's aid. He could hardly believe it, he could fly. As soon as he touched Sarah she recovered from the magical state of incapacitation thrust upon her by Darko. Although she was free from her magical constraints her bones were now badly broken and some were even crushed from Darko's torturous punishment.

* * *

Darko had been about to slice the throat of Sarah Robinson when one of the windows had shattered and a an indistinct shape had followed through with the breaking of the glass. Before Darko knew what was happening the vampire had it's mouth at his throat. Ironically the thing that saved Darko's life was the thing that would have destoyed it if he'd been alone. Geoffrey's rescue of his sister.

The vampire had distracted the black magician from Sarah long enogh for Geoff to get her out of the warehouse. On the way out he paused, looked at the warehouse and blewthe gust of wind that was released from his body was so powerful that the warehouse was totally destroyed. He flew back to the mountain ridge that James White- Eagle had set their camp up at and prayed that the white sorcerer could help Sarah.

The distraction that the boy had caused saved Darko's life and now he stood facing the vampire.Vampire's have one great fear: the fear of fire. This caused Darko to throw flame at the creature. The soldier just dodged out of the way. Any other vampire would be terrified but the soldier wasn't, Darko didn't understand why and he had to move very quickly to avoid the psychopathic creature's counter-attack.

Unlike a normal vampire that had been infected with the Darkness, he felt no fear of certain types of light. Fire carried the type of light- vibration that Darkness-cursed vampires feared did not affect the soldier.

The soldier was born without the ability to express of feel human emotion which lead him to do extreme things to discover what feelings were. Over time he discovered self-harm could, to a certain extent bring about knowledge of the feeling of pain. Although he wasn't searching for the understanding of physical feeling, he wanted to understand emotion. Over time he found that making others suffer brought out a feeling in him.

People had described joy to him and he could only equate other people's suffering as causing him joy. This led him to look for increasingly gruesome ways to kill people. Over time he had learned about feelings; happiness, sadness, anger, fear etc. By the time he had met Estacado he felt and understood emotion. Now he only caused others pain because he enjoyed it.

Darko and the soldier went at it again. The vampire moved first managing to sink his fangs into Darko's neck but missing the jugular. The vampire's eyes shone with excitement as Darko ripped himself free from the creatures fangs. Blood was streaming down his neck and the vampires mouth was cover in the blood of the man he wanted to eat.

"You just do not realise how long I've been waiting to taste your blood wizard," the soldier said. "You know" he continued conversationally, "I'm actually grateful that Estacado told me to wait, had I come sooner I wouldn't have taken the time to savor you but now I will."
Darko was shocked, "You work for the Darkness? I thought your kind hated the darkness ."
The insane vampire gave an evil grin, "I make my own way in the world and I don't follow the rest. The Darkness and I have a mutually beneficial working arrangement. "
He continued, "Now be a good boy and let me eat you before Estacado gets here."

That was a surprise. If Estacado was in Arizona it meant that the Angelus had left New York. Darko was only here because of his original intention to work the spell that he had prepared to get the Angelus to leave New York. He didn't want to admit that he was scared of the vampire but even though he feared it, he would have fought it one to one. But learning that Estacado was after him when his acolytes weren't there to protect him terrified Sonny Darko. Estacado might appear to be a lush, by demon standards, but he was far from it.

He emptied his pockets, collecting any items that would give him extra magical abilities. As he dropped them on the floor he muttered a spell and all of the trinkets flared, using up any spare magic that would aid him in his travel spell to New York. "Huh?" the vampire muttered as his eyes adjusted to the after- effect of the magical flare only to find Darko gone. It didn't take much guesswork to figure out where Darko had gone. The soldier chuckled as he said to himself, "Won't he be surprised when he gets home."

Estacado finally found the vampire sniffing around a recently used campsite. "Did you find him?" he asked the vampire abruptly. "Oh yesss," said the vampire, "and he tastes delicious."
Estacado cocked his head to the side, "So you killed him then?"
The soldier grimmaced, "Almost. He got away."
"Away? Explain this to me."
"I attacked but he escaped. Escaped back to New York" the vampire told him.
Estacado was about to ask him more but the creature had gone back to smelling the area. He shrugged and left it to it's own devices. There was no talking to the thing when it got involved in a hunt. At least Jackie thought that was what was happening.

Before he walked back to the town he said to the vampire, "I don't care who you eat but if you bring your mess to New York I'll kill you."
The soldier shrugged, "I found something interesting I won't be back for a while. Our business dealings have come to an end." He walked away, leaving the Darknesses host alone with his darkings.

Darko had tasted exquisite but the soldier could always go back for him. It was the new scent that now had his attention. A scent belonging to a 700- year old white sorcerer, his young apprentice, her metahuman brother and 7 children.

* * *

Charles Victor Szasz was in a government run mental facility in an undisclosed location in Paris, France. Gone were the days when he was surrounded by a gaggle of assistants due to his formidable intellect. Szasz was a physical vegetable but his intellect survived. He was however, unaware of anything exept for the mathematic equations going around in his head.

Jacques and Stephanie walked through the corridoors of what appeared to be an empty hospital and they stopped where the corridoor came to a dead end. They stopped in front of the wall and a voice coming over a speaker asked them to wait where they were as a red beam and then a blue one scanned their bodies. After it had finished there was a short buzz and a click and the wall began to rise, in a similar fashion to a garage door.

The matron of the facility had confirmed what Szasz had said, when he could still talk, that his only living experiment was his heir. Everybody else assumed he was mad when he said that...because he was. That statement was one of the final lucid things he had said.

She was only able to come to this facility because Marie- Elise had convinced the Ambassador that it was important to some work that Stephanie was doing for her. So this visit, although a personal one for Steph, was in government records as a trip taken for the French embassy in Australia. The cover story that Szasz had threatened her. Which after going over the records of the previous ambassador's court transcripts would actually prove to be true.

Stephanie was wearing a a sweatshirt with a hoodie and she concealed her face as soon as the door to Szasz's cell opened. Steph walked in and immediately began to release a chemical that would make people alert to all except her face. On Charles it had a further effect of bringing him back, for a short period, to his surroundings. Although she would have preferred to see the madman alone, that was not going to happen because the matron and Jacques wouldn't let her see Szasz on her own. Perhaps they thought she'd try to kill him.

If she been around Szasz in any other situation she would have killed him, but she was here to get answers. The pheromone worked very well as Szasz looked at her and knew straight away who she was and what she carried within her.

"It worked! It worked!" He cackled from where he was seated. The matron looked stunned, here was a man who for all intents and purposes appeared to be a vegetable only mere seconds before. He spoke clearly now, "You are my crowning achievement." He then turned to the matron, "I never stopped being a patriot here is my final gift to France." He opened his mouth and stuck his finger down his throat. His final act looked like it was designed by the madman to kill himself because as he removed his finger from his mouth, he dropped dead.

His death was confirmed as a suicide when they found that when he put his finger in his mouth he had touched a synthetic growth that he had developed and grown into his own body. They discovered that this was designed to release a fluid into his brain. The overall conclusion was that in his madness he decided he still worked for the government and that he designed something that would kill him if he were captured by the enemy.

But Stephanie knew the truth. Szasz decided that he would take over the body of his experiment because then he would have the new bodies power and his own intelligence as well. The synthetic growth was to tranfer his consciousness into the body of his experiment, effectively taking control of it. What he didn't account for was that his brain had begun to fail due to the gas he had developed to get the staff at The Chateaux to serve him.

In the end he transferred his intelligence to Stephanie but his mind was unable to deal with the transfer and he died. Stephanie however, received all of his knowledge while remaining herself. With all of his knowledge came all his memories, most were not very nice but even a man like Szasz had to have some redeeming qualities. Those were the parts of the man she chose to think of.

Szasz was a genius, but insanity had driven him and without restraints he had become a criminal genius. Stephanie was shocked by what these memories told her. She was the heiress to a criminal empire worth over 100- millon dollars, earning $50 -70-million a year for black market work; and that was only the monies coming in from illegal activity. She was getting $10-million a year from legal activities as well.

Steph would have to consider how she moved from here. The French Government considered Szasz penniless as they didn't know about his hidden dealings. Other criminals would consider him dead but she knew that once she touched that money things would get very complicated. She needed advice but who could she trust with this information? Jacques, certainly. Dani, she didn't know. Dani was a force of Light, she might not approve of what had happened. Steph was afraid of losing their friendship.
* * *

Jackie Estacado had been back in New York for a day and was very pleased with the things Butch had found out for him. The developers of the addictive magic and cocaine were none other then a very minor splinter sect of the Black Mage Order, they thought the order was too focused on the arcane and did not have wnough dealings in the mundane world. He threatened to discuss their extramural activities with their order's leader if they didn't give him the formula for the magic addiction. ' This,' he thought, 'should disturb them.' Even though this splinter group had differing views on how things should be done, they were still working under the auspices of the BMO as it gave them protection and validity.

"The wizard in charge grinned and said, "I don't really care what you do. However, if you give me the essence of a darking, I'll give you the formula."
Normally Jackie would never have done this. This time however, he made an exception.
"I don't need the cocaine only the formula." he told them.
"Maybe not coke," said the dealer, "but the magical addiction must be tied to a physical substance."
Jackie smiled, "I've got just the thing."

Estacado left the small apartment where they had done their transaction and as he walked away he took out what looked like a mobile phone and dialled a number. However it wasn't a phone, it was a remote detonator. He pressed the button and the building imploded on itself, when the daking was crushed, it triggered a mini explosion desteoying everything in a 15 metre radius of the darking. He then took out his real mobile telephone, "Yeah...Butch tell Mika Stern she has her revenge."

He laughed out loud, "That was worth the loss of a darking."

* * *

The new Vampirella of the vampire nation had done something amazing, something that none of the others had thought was possible. She had formed a council af night and daywalkers. But this didn't happen overnight.It had started out when she sent out word that she was forming a taskforce to hunt down the rogue vampire.

Every state would be divided into sections called sects. There would be up to 4 sects in every state depending on the size of that state. That sect was loosely based on the design of human law agencies but, unlike human beurecracy answering to an ever increasing hierarchy, the person they answered to directly was their Vampirella. One of the abilities she had as the vampire queen was to communicate with any of her subjects telepathically, no matter the distance.

Each agent hunting for the rogue would be partnered with another. Each daywalker would be teamed up with a nightwalker. This had the effect of ensuring daywalker and night waker families were introduced to one another, as daywalker family groupings are closely bonded and nightwalkers are protective of their own.

There was an initial distrust but vampire society turned out to be much more adaptable to change than humans. Their initial distrust of each other caused them to form a council to ensure partners didn't take advantage of each other. As the night and day walkers began to trust each other again they began to see no reason for the council.

Vampirella had nothing to do with the council that had formed out of mistrust but when they were going to disband it because they saw no reason for it Terak came to her with an idea. "My Lady," he said formally, Ella shook her head ruefully, he could be terribly pompous at times. It was probably because in his human life he'd been a noble in the service of an emporer. "It might be useful if this council of day and nightwalkers working together was seen as working for thegood of all vampires." he finished.

This was a good idea she realised and was a way of reforming her splintered nation. She found that as the race drew back together she was getting stronger. Not only physically, but her mental power over the others increased.

* * *

It was a dark night with clouds blocking the moon. She'd just come back from a vist to her mother when she found him in her room. "Who are you and how did you get in here?" She demanded.
"I'm impressed," he said, "I'd heard the Vampirella had better senses than other vampires."
"Again," she said, "What are you doing in my room?"
"Why, my dear I'm surprised you even needed to ask," said Darko. "I'm here to kill you."

* * *

I look forward to finishing a chapter every week. When people leave comments for after the chapter it is really appreciated as I can then see that my work is appreciated.