When the Angelus looks for a new vessel She is weak. The Darkness seeks to gain the upper hand.

I wish to thank Top Cow for such great characters and give them kudos for showing the development of a lesbian relationship in mainstream comics.

This chapter gets a little darker shortly after the beginning, It does not stay dark but this part is necessary for part of the future plot. For those who don't want to read it, I have marked it with a line of like this ++++++++++ . A short while after you'll see anothet line of +++++++. Then you can start reading again.

The warehouse seemed abondoned but in truth it had just been bought by Sonny Darko, Sonnetine's newest alias. The second Monday in June was the day that Darko Enterprises officially opened the dock warehouses to store overseas merchandise.

Documents would state that the first shipment were books. This was true and anyone touching or opnening the book would see and feel the paper that made them up. However, if they were to open them they would see only two sentences on every page.

What the governent officials didn't know was that shortly after the warehouse was bought a magic ritual was held to triple the space of the warehouse nobody who didn't need to know this would find out because the only people who could find that space were the one's who created it.

Whereas the books that were shipped in would be stored in the main warehouse, the weapons that would be created from the two spells on every page of those books would be stored in the hiddem storage areas.

Each book had 300 pages, each page had a spell to materialise the actual physical weapon in working order and the second spell was for the ammunition needed for that particular item. Each crate could hold 30 books (they were poster size and each page page was 10 cm thick).

Most of the weapons were guns, rifles and other modern weaponry such as genades; there were even a few bazookers. However, three of the books were different in that they contained magically enhanced swords and shields which were meant for the inner circle Darko family. The ones once known as the high priests of the church of the Darkness.
* * *

"What can you tell me about this Darko family?" Jackie asked Butch 'The Butcher' Babliano (named for his favorite method of interrogation).
"The boss is is some guy named Sonny Darko who brought their organisation out from Eastern Europe. Reports say they were the biggest, baddest dudes in Communist Europe, people say that every country they've acted in leaves them alone 'cos they've got their hands so far up some of the arses of the Eastern European polititions that they're pretty much running their own countries and the politicians are just figureheads. Puppets.

Butch looked at Jackie with concern, "Be careful boss the shadow mumbo's" he said, referring to the Black Mage Order who would now and then act as Jackie's own personal magicians, say Darko's a match for you. Butch was Estacado's highest lieutenant and he knew all about the Darkness.
* * *
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Gleason's agony wasn't physical, it was mental and emotional. In fact, the physical sensations that he was feeling were so amazing, that they described the reason for the word 'mind altering'. He did everything for Estacado, because he unwilling to stop the sensations that he felt, if he didn't do what he was told the wonderful sensations would stop. They'd stopped before and he thought the lack would kill him.

Intellectually Gleason knew that he was be used. A part of him knew he should find a way to end his life. However, another part of him knew that if he did that he'd be lost forever and the Darkness would have him for what could very well be eternity.

He'd heard Estacado talk about some woman called the Angelus and he realised that this may be the only person alive that could help him. He would just have to wait and thank whatever god there was that the pain wasn't physical.

Estacado's most recent experiment was using Darkness and getting darkness gas to create oestrogen in his Gleason's body by stimulating the pineal gland which in turn stimulated everything else. He had begun to change, to become more feminine looking but he had begun to change in other ways.

The Darkness running into his brain had begun to warp his morality and he craved something that his food did not give him. And one day his food no longer tasted appealing.

His skin darkened as well as his irises, everything about hin began to darken. Whenever Gleason looked in a mirror he felt sick. Maybe that why vampires didn't look in mirrors, not because they couldn't see themselves but because they felt ill at the sight of themselves.

"Well, Well, Patricia," said the big boned, woman who gave her her first anal sex experience "it seems that our beloved Jackie has decided that it's time that we played together again."
Gleason stared at her with what were becomine his... no he had given up on remaining a man... her black eyes and felt a wave of lust running through her body, but didn't realise that it was not entirely sexual.

That other woman had hurt Gleason that first time on the plane and although she had been having and enjoying all types of sexual experiences as Patricia, the woman tried to hurt her whenever she took her. She ripped of Patricia's clothes where she stood but as she moved closer Gleason smelled her blood. Her teeth ripped into the woman's carotid artery and Gleason felt the warm, liquid life that tasted so sweet flow down her throat quenching some of her desire. The woman was dead before Gleason let her go.

Suddenly The good feelings that had made Gleason want to do things for Jackie ceased. They were super-ceeded by another need, a new type of hunger awoke in Patricia Gleason.

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* * *
She no longer felt the need to listen to the Darknesses meat. She felt no desire for anything but the taste of mettalic blood running down her throat, soothing it, quenching the neverending need to relieve the thirst that she felt.

She came back to herself in an alley only to find her hands and mouth slick with blood, kneeling over what looked like a homeless man's corpse. Her mind was in a fog and she just sat there not knowing what was going on.

Slowly, she came back to herself. She looked about herself in a daze ... and realised what had happened. She raised her head and screamed. What had he done to her Jackie Estacado had turned her into an abomination. A thing that's only use was in a horror story.

She tore the dead mans shirt off his body and used it to wipe the blood off her face and hands.
She sat back down and tried to figure out what to do. Two hours later she was still there when a red dress was thrown on the floor in front of her. A gruff voice spoke to her, "Get dressed my litte Vampirella there are things to teach you and the others don't forgive daywalkers, trespassing on their land after dark."
* * *

Danielle was over the moon. Her breasts had finally begun to bud. She has been happy to wait as her bone structure had been becoming more and more that of a young woman's. She thought that she had never be more excited than when two weeks after joining with then Angelus, her voice had risen in pitch and evened out at a nice contralto.

She had been filling out nicely and even though the Angelus had told her that she need never buy more clothing than one size and set for a season because (for a reason that was never explained) somehow the clothing would adjust with her body. With her new developments she just had to go shopping for new clothes, espescially lingere and so every fortnight she would go on a shopping spree with new work colleages.

Dani had made friends surprisingly quickly for someone starting a new job but she thought it might have been because of who her mother was and possibly, in the beginning it was. But after working there for a month one of the girls ran into the women's bathroom while Dani was touching up her make-up.

Stephanie had just broken up with her boyfriend and she was in an awful state. Tears were streaming down her face and she had the shakes from nervous energy. Dani had stayed to comfort her. When she had calmed down enough Dani took the overwrought girl into the staff room. Half an hour before the end of the work day, no one was there and they had the whole area to themselves to talk.

She listened to the girl, who thought she had done something wrong and had caused her boyfriend to break-up with her. Dani looked her straight in the eye and told her that that was not the case. "But how, how can you be sure?" stephanie asked.

"Steph, you forget who you're talking to here, I may have been a girl my whole life but I was born in a boy's body. I'd love to tell you I'm innocent and pure of bad things but that would be a lie. When I was at primary school all the boys knew I had a boy body even though I wore a girls uniform (yeah I was outed, but that's a story for another time).
"Anyway" I continued, "to keep from being beaten up I would tell the boys which girls liked them. While I did this one of them was telling his best friend what his brother did to his girlfriend to make her break up with him and let her think it was her fault. What he did still makes my skin crawl. And from what you have told me it seems like the same thing's been done to you."

I went on to tell her about Finch and how beautiful and accepting she was, that when she died I thought I'd lost her. Although I didn't tell her anything else about my strange new life I was able to point out that Finch was still with me even if we wern't together physically. I told her "Life goes on and if you get lonely there's alway's someone out there.

"I don't subscribe to the belief that every person only has one soulmate". I hoped by telling her this that she would understand my implication that there was someone for everyone. Even after death.

Finch and I had talked about soul mates in length and had come to the conclusion that because a soul also has a vibration. The many souls vibrating at similar levels will be attracted to each other. We agreed that was why people could love more than one person at a time.

It was just over two months since I had begun working at the embassy. Steph and I were out one Thursday evening because we had decided to go out for coffee instead of clothes shopping. I glanced at a newspaper that someone had left on the table next to ours. There was an article in the world events section about a spate of murders that had happened in New York and Manhattan that the press latched onto as the vampire-butcher serial killer murders.

What was so odd about these murders was that they were all completely drained of blood. There were no blood spots anywhere, even though the victims appeared to have been butchered to death. Another thing was the fact that all the victims appeared to be in homeless.

"...Hey daydreamer what's so interesting about that menu?"
"I was just looking at..." I realised what she had said. The newspaper was a menu and the article I had read wasn't there. I blinked feeling slightly flustered.

I was about to tell her about the imaginary newspaper when therewas a crash coming from the kitchen. Some poor waitress must have dropped some plates. It was just about then when Finch called. I didn't know how to respond I was out in public. How could I just disappear? I was with a friend.

I'm still unsure how they did it but it seems that one of my warriors managed to set off a fire alarm and everyone was asked to leave in an orderly fashion. Steph and I were jostled by the crowd but she'd latched tightly onto my arm. I pretended to trip and fall, forcing her to let go of me. As she got swept along with the crowd.

It seemed like Steph and I got separated in the crowd of the mall and when I was sure no one was watching including the CCTV cameras could see me, I vanished. And arrived in a familiar place with the weight of responsibility on my head and Finch in my arms.

* * *

Through the course of May and June while Dani had been settling into her new human life, Finch had taken on the task of showing the Angelus warriors how people lived in the third dimension. They were shown the battles people faced daily, choices they made, why choices were hard because all humans had aspects of Light and of Dark within themselves.

They were shown that even though the original Woman carried Light and the original Man carried Dark. In humans Light could hold sway in men and Dark, women and vice-versa. Most humans balanced both to a lesser or greater extent. The warriors saw that Light and Dark weren't always clear cut.They had difficulty grasping it but began to understand the concept: 'Shades of Grey'.

This couldn't be given as a greater example than when they were observing the way people live. As the watchers observed unseen by others, they saw something Finch had only heard stories of during her human life. Vampires.

She saw the meeting between the newly made Vampirella (who was the man and then woman named Patrick/Patricia Gleason and was now something new as well). They saw that the woman vampire had been tainted by a by-product of the Darkness. And had only escaped with her soul in tact because her vampiric nature was stonger than Estacado's hold on her.

It was all Finch could do to hold herself back from attacking what felt like the Darkness and she was relieved that she hadn't let the other warriors move fully out of the Light Realm and onto the Earth-plane for that exercise. She doubted that she would have been strong enough to hold them back from attacking.

Finch and the warriors began their research into vampires (well...for some, they actually remembered but even though, they resarched vampires because there were always parts that one tended to overlook). It was like reading from a novel. A story.

There were vampires that could walk in the sun and ones that could only come out at night. The first vampires in history were energy vampires. These drained the energy of other people and were people — granted they were wizards — they were trained in this power so they could act as human weapons during war.

At some point in history energy vampires warred against each other and to ensure that their side won, the one side experimented on captive soldiers and came up with a way for their own soldiers to ignore the energetic manipulation and energy stealing of others but, it came at a cost. They had to eliminate all emotion from the wizards, the wizards — in essence died- they were only able to sustain themselves with blood of the living, and while the war was won by the blood-drinking vampire creators. They also lost. It was lost the at the instant the first blood-drinker was made.

After the stunning victory over the opposition but after a short period, the vampire creators realised that by creating creatures who in effect shut off their emotions they had given the blood-drinkers abililty to destroy humanity. Due to the fact that vampires were notoriously difficult to kill, mankind had created, for not the first time, something with the ability to bring about the destrution of life. The scientists died by their own creations.

This point was the first time the Darkness and Angelus's goals were similar but for different reasons. The Angelus tried to destroy the vampires but the Darkness only tried to cull the numbers. It wanted to train them as soldiers loyal only to Him.

The Darkness was never able to control them fully. Their bloodthirst overrode all genetic manipulations. However due to It's meddling there were now two kinds of blood drinker vampire. The daywalker and the nightwalker.

Unlike the tales night walkers don't burn in the sun, they are just weakened by it. Almost incapacitated and could be likened to the state of complete inebriation that affects a person who is drunk for the first time.

Daywalkers are weakened to a lesser degree at night, they lose their sight. They have no night vision and even in a room with lights on they are blind between moonrise and sunrise.

* * *
Finch and Dani only had to glance at each other and all the information gathered on vampires was shared. Information, in it's purest essence is called the light of knowledge. The Angelus is Light and therefore received the information from Finch through the light in her eyes. "My, my. You have been busy haven't you?" Dani smiled at her warriors.
An assembled, "Yes mistress" floated through the air..

"Well let us be off and confront this new situation." She said. They appeared over the New York skyline and anyone looking up, would have sworn that they saw and army of angels surrounded in flame.