Rupert Alderton preached of revolution.

"Brothers, sisters! Hear my cries and know that I care about each and every last one of you. Every creed, race, family, never doubt that you are as pure of blood as I am! We are here to curtail the rule of man! We shall have our day of reckoning, ye gods of the night!"

The man's words sliced through slate black night. Loud and booming and passionate, they echoed off of the wrecks and rubbish of that Alabama junkyard like gospel resonating inside of cathedral walls. Hundreds of eyes watched Rupert Alderton from the dark, hung on his every word as if everything, every pretty little lie, was infallible truth. Monsters and humans alike and their voices rose in roars of brainwashed agreement and tapered off into a single wounded animal cry.

"There are those who shall try to share our glory. Those who are tainted, those who are thin of blood, uncertain of their own pedigrees. The orphans, the mutts. We shall never be forced to break bread with these underworld bottom feeders ever again!"

That late night in Dixie, with a derelict Volkswagen as his pulpit and the twinkling stars holding court as witnesses, Rupert Alderton preached until he was red in the face. He preached until his believers had bent forward like panting dogs in the Summer heat and stared up at him with vacant eyes that mirrored empty hollows where souls may have once been.

That night Rupert Alderton preached of extermination.

Violet pinched the bridge her nose between two fingers and approached Cuyler and the wounded giant named Zipper. The others stood back. They knew their place, but they were already becoming restless in their fear and it clung to the back of the desperation already saturating the air.

Cuyler lifted Zipper to his feet easily. Violet shot her a look, one that said that she needed as much privacy as possible and Cuyler bowed her head in understanding, turned and headed off to join the rest of the group. Zipper could barely stand but he had made it back. Violet was surprised at how relieved she was over that fact. She stroked his bruised cheek gently and smiled at him. It was weak and forced but it was enough to conjure up a far more genuine smile on the man's face.

"Charlie, what?d they say? Any good news?"

She kept the question as silently as she possibly could, but privacy was a rare thing. Even with the sounds of Alderton and his gang, her crew could have heard a pin drop in the ocean. Zipper?s eyes, dulled hazel marbles set deep in sunken in sockets, rolled up and told her everything she needed to know before he ever opened his mouth.

"No," he pressed his face into the palm of her hand.

"Did they elaborate, Charlie?"

"There's nothing in it for them to gain by helping us. Not now. What little power we may have had before was torn apart when Alderton put half of us down last month.?

Violet straightened up and went eerily quiet, her eyes staring off somewhere in the distance.

"And what of the others?"

Her voice caught in her throat and she peered down at him from over her shoulder. Zipper set on the ground, his long lanky legs stretched out in front of him. He looked as if he had taken a spill.

"Charlie? What of the others? What'd they say?"

The redhead could sense the urgency in his sire?s voice and he looked up with eyes that stared and stared and stared at everything but Violet.

"They said that if we came looking for help from them again then they would put their money on Alderton. They're laughing at us, Vi. They're calling us 'Violet's Folly'."

It would have been easy for Violet to say she wasn't shocked. To say that it didn't come as surprise. The thing was, however, that she had been waiting for this very thing. She heard familiar footfalls approaching from behind and turned to find Cuyler walking up. Beaten, broken and half starved and the little hick still had a lopsided grin on her face.

"Yeah well, they'll get what's comin' to 'em. Uncreative sombitches. 'Violet's Folly?' Who in the hell came up with that? I could toss Scrabble tiles int'a toilet and come up with a better name."

Both Zipper and Violet were transfixed with what they were seeing. She took the spot next to Zipper on the ground and slid her arm around his shoulder.

"And what would you call us, Cuy?"

Whatever glee had prompted the miscreant's outburst was short lived.

"How ?bout the 'Skewed and Screwed Brigade'?"

All that Rupert had to do was whistle and all of those eyes, as vacant as empty parking spaces, fell upon Violet's crew. They crept closer, their bodies twisted like snakes snd pieces of errant flame. Teeth gnashed and slashed and clattered in the air until it sounded as if a cavalry of skeletons had come to join them.

Violet found out quickly that any form of mental smackdown was deflected, something that she attributed, with all of her hatred, to Rupert. She watched her crew take up their weapons as the first line of minions descended upon them, fingers curled into claws and fists and faces so blank that even when the garden tools tore through skin and sinew and bone, they didn't flinch.

Some of them crumbled to dust before them, some of them took the long and far less pleasant route of straight up decomposition while the humans in the group- of which there were many- folded into piles of flesh and blood. But for every two they killed, another ten were on them. Violet struggled to stay afloat in the sea of bodies. She could only watch helplessly as the rest of her crew went under as flesh was stripped from her bones.

Everything hurt. Perhaps Alderton had been correct in his disregard for powers yielded and controlled through humanity, but in his haste and hubris, he forgot about the beasts. He had effectively done something that not many could do concerning his flock; he had cut them off from their monsters, divided them as easily as a slice cut from a cake.

And thus he had overlooked other demons.

Pain flooded Violet's whole world. It threatened to pull her into some sort of living hell where exposed muscle and broken bones were things *wished* for. In those fleeting moments between white cold and red hot, Violet didn't care for her crew. She didn't want to win. She only wanted to die. Yet something stirred deep within her, a lion dropped of its chain, and everything melted away into the most primitive of desires.

Surivesurvivesurvive.

Her eyes snapped open and torn limbs pushed through the pile of uncoordinated bodies. She clawed at every inch of flesh that she could reach, ripped into limbs and necks with rabid force. Every drop of blood that hit her tongue was something savored and the creature wearing Violet's face didn't care from whom or what it was taken.

She would be marked for this, she knew but those things didn't seem so important anymore.

Aided by borrowed blood and age, her body began slowly healing itself. Around her, bodies exploded into bone dust and curdled into mush and the distraction allowed her to take a few seconds rest amongst the carnage.

Cuyler stood a few feet away, leaning awkwardly against her shovel and almost every inch of the grave robber was covered in blood and gore. Her eyes were wide and mad and wild, her tongue hanging from her mouth. Nearby, Charlie lay halfway out of an overturned oil barrel, one side of his face a wretched mess of raw meat. She saw no evidence of Dashell, no sign of Tip or Rocky or Beau and her heart sank, reality colliding with her like an oncoming train.

"What you suppose 'at is"

Clyde's voice- and bless the halfbreed's heart, she was alive- spun Violent around to the source of her question. Twenty more minions flanked the car that Alderton had been perched upon, but now the man was walking towards them.

'C'mon', thought Violet as she licked her lips, 'C'mon ya little prick. Show Mama whatcha got..'

"I have to say that I'm impressed. It seems you found a loophole in my plan after all. Cut off the choice meat and all that you're left with is the fat. Bravo."

He clapped and Cuyler started for him, only to be stilled by a glare from Violet.

Indifferent, Alderton continued.

"You've all proven to be quite the little test audience."

He got no further than that. Powerful or not, Rupert Alderton was still young and a stupid young at that. Violet tackled him to the ground, her hands pressed against the sides of his skull until bone gave way and for once she glimpsed fear in his eyes.

"Listen, Rupie. I've had it up to my eyeballs with yer sh*t. You and your dogs leave..and.."

"Violet! Just kill him! Dammit, just kill the bastard!"

Violet confused Cuyler's hysterics for something other than the hatred that her words carried and she shook her head and snarled at the girl in such a way as to stop her rant.

"It isn't our way, Cuyler Quinn. You know that. All the things I've taught you. Tonight was pointless, useless. He doesn't know his rear from a hole in the ground. I'll let him go and let him be the Prince's problem from now on. "

Alderton squirmed beneath her, wheezing in his panic and then..and then Violet let go. The little man stumbled to his feet, blood trickling from his ears and puddles painting bruises on his scalp. Violet turned to her crew, intent on leaving, on chalking this battle up to another loss, but Alderton simply saw it as another opportunity.

He gathered the heavy blade from his side and swung it with such fervor that he nearly fell down again before it could make contact with Violet's neck.

As the remaining members of her gang watched in horror, her head fell to the ground. It didn't roll like they did in the movies. It smacked against the muck and the mud and stayed there, the light fleeing from her eyes before her body could crumble into its base components. Everything that had been Violet Robinski melted away, fast forwarded through all of the things that would have happened had she been human, and soon nothing was left but a pile of ick.

In the end, it wasn't merely hope that ferried Violet Robinski off into that goodnight but mercy too. It was the latter that Cuyler Quinn lacked.

They were huddled up like cold kittens in the basement of an derelict restaurant, surrounded by dusty chairs and tables and the droppings of hundreds of rats.

"Again, where are we going?" asked Charlie. "We can't stay here forever."


It wasn't something that Cuyler had been dwelling on, even as word spread about them and a crime that was so confusing that not even they were sure what it was. Besides, those wounds were still too fresh. When Cuyler gave no answer, Charlie blissfully fell back into his beloved silence.

"How 'bout Rhy'din?"

They turned their heads slowly to Clyde, questions ripe for the picking on their faces. She peered at them through the busted lenses of her aviator goggles and pushed another spoonful of fifty year old canned beans into her mouth. At least they hoped they were beans.

"Rhy'din? C'mon! Shots was talkin' 'bout it forever an' a day."

The hybrid drew a circle over her head with the spoon and happily ignored the confused glares from her companions.

"It's on another planet. Got two moons!"

Charlie opened his mouth, intent on telling her exactly how insane she sounded. He wanted to tell her that no one in their right mind listened to Shots Shepard but Cuyler cut him off at the pass..and proved his point all at once.

"Another planet?" she asked.

Clyde nodded, bean juice dripping from her chin, and smiled. She was very pleased with herself.

"Or another dimension or somefin'."

"Then it's settled. We're gonna head off to this Rhino place and start over fresh."

Charlie found himself far too content to humor them. Even a crumb of happiness went far when you were about to drawn and quartered by an enraged mob of bloodsuckers.

"Well, perhaps we should wait until the effects of whatever it was that Alderton placed over that junkyard wear off. Until then, we're just really strong apes with above average intelligence."

And for that, Charlie was pelted with a can still half full of beans. The girls erupted into a raucous laughter and what anger he felt melted away. Temporary, sure, but it was a good sign. It was the first stitch of many for the wound that Violet's death had left behind. The first one many in the smaller gashes left by Dashell and the rest.

Maybe they would never face it. Maybe what they had seen and what they had done, what they had lost, would be pushed down so far that it would seem like it was something read and not experienced.

Charlie listened to them as they rough housed and pilfered speakeasy era booze from holes dug out in the dirt walls. It was when he was relaxed, when the crates he leaned against ceased to hurt his back, that his own pain bubbled up and lingered just on the edge of his thoughts.

"Rhy'din", he grumbled and both girls flopped down next to him, reeking of coffin varnish and each other.

"Rhy'din", they confirmed in unison and then Clyde began telling them all that she could remember of Shots' stories about the place. Dragons and elves and creatures no different than themselves that were free and wild.

The morning sun found the trio curled up together, though it still hadn't figured out a way to break through walls. Perhaps their desperation had drawn them so close, or perhaps it was something else entirely. They dreamed of Rhy'din and all of that fantastical creatures that supposedly lived there.

But above all they dreamed of escape.