Armande felt the support from Valeriya and Rowan. But it was time to peel back the veil. He remembered the first time his Beloved had seen for him. The experience had left him feeling drained, empty, after having sensed the divine that had been there. Since then, it was always similar. That is, until Rowan had joined them. Suddenly it had changed again. He could see, could actually feel as they intoned. The fire singeing his skin, broiling his flesh, trapped in that cage, that experience still lingered.

The fact that Rowan's brother had found them was the final nail. Evasion would only work for so long. Sometimes a moving blindspot became visible for being invisible. All it would take was an enterprising AI being given parameters to seek out absence rather than presense. A moving blur would stand out, then.

No. They had to go. He bid them to sit with him and he leaned forward to look at the skin. The map was crude, but the features were clear enough even without a legend. Heavily dotted with forests, two conjoining rivers, a ridgeway, and a crater or hole of some sort. He looked at both of them. "What Rasputin kept safe, he did for the future. The Khylsty themselves." He gently touched Valeriya's cheek. "The Eye herself, my queen." Then his hand touched the soft cured skin. "And this map. Since ascending, I did some searching. He was from the east, coming from seemingly nowhere to plant himself at the very center of Russian power. But obviously, he did not come from nowhere. And the Khylsty did not spring up over night."

He looked to his partner, studied her for a moment. Her eyes were deep and held things long hidden. "Is there anything you can share, my love?"

@"Valeriya"
@"Rowan Finnegan"

Their trek through the wilderness had yielded many pictures some of which Sierra would have to pull from the card before delivering it to the National Geographic.  She might be called a hack photographer for such images - but they weren't faked or modified, and any true photographer would see that, but newbs wouldn't.

The stayed in a small village on the edge of the wilderness they'd come from. Sierra needed the electricity to power the laptop and send her final photos on.  She sat staring at the flowers and the tree man they'd seen, no one would believe it - she wasn't sure she was.  Sierra wasn't exactly sure if she really believed she'd met Tristan either. Except he was real even for all his talk about fairies and trolls. She wasn't sure about any of it, but she could talk to wolves and men could do magic and there was a walking tree - what were fairies and trolls in comparison.

But what was next?  Follow Tristan wherever he wanted to go?  That felt right, pack felt right.  But there was pack back in Moscow - except the city was full of concrete and pollution and the wolves avoided the city - except the pups they pulled into that world.  Never happily played with the pup of Tristan's.  Never didn't understand why she couldn't speak like him, but it was a friendship he was happy to have.  She was glad to have met Tristan.  

The strange flower sat next to her laptop still warm, still in bloom even after having been plucked days ago.  It was a strange thing, but she felt attached to it as much so as she did to Tristan himself.  Their night in the dream had yet to happen in the real world. Though maybe that was a good thing.  He felt like coming home and Sierra wanted to stay there - with him - home - pack.  It was hard to explain.  

She said out loud to nobody in particular "Photos are sent. Now what?"

She stripped off her gloves, unslung her backpack filled with medical supplies, tossed the gloves inside and placed the backpack on the floor of the chapel. She took a flashlight and hooked it to her belt.

Nina started up the scaffold ladder. The entire structure trembled slightly as she went. The lashed ladders zigzagged up the scaffolding frame. 

The air had become very cold by the time she reached the top platform. The last part of the climb had taken her some time. She didn’t want to fall. Slowly she climbed right up past stained glass windows, and the wooden beams that pendulum slightly from the vibrations of her ascent.

Nina had no head for heights at all, but she was damned if she’d let her beloved Bas down. The floor of the chapel was so far away now, the backpack on the floor was the size of a small doll.

“Crap,” she whispered, as she finally dared to stand up on the top. Rising to her feet. So high up. The chapel boards did not quite meet, and she could see the drop between them. That was so much worse. That, and the vibration.

Look up, she told herself. The painted dome was just above her face. What had looked splendid and golden from the ground was peeling and rotten up close. She could see the gilt peeling like scabs from the blind faces of the disintegrating saints. Mother Mary’s face had discolored so much she looked as dark and dead as the patients at the Guardian. So old, so very old.

“Bas?” 

Left hand out for balance, Nina walked along the boards, plucking her flashlight from her belt and switching it on. The tight bright light shone in the cool gloom.

She saw the hole. The smell of incense was more intense here. It was another ceiling through the hole, aiming her light. 

"Holy crap"

Religious images, figures, faces, glass, ornate lettering in traced silver, lines and constellations, a hint of some vast organization covered this area.

It was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

A metal table spread cold across his forehead. Jensen lifted his head just enough to rub the burn from his eyes. Smears of dried blood were spattered beneath where his face lay. He knew his own appearance: bloodied but not of his own, dirty from the explosion, ashen from the fires of the school. Meanwhile, harsh lights angled shadows across the face of his interrogator.

     ”I promise I am telling the truth, as ridiculous as it sounds. That doctor lured her. I was worried about her, so I asked permission to go along. What we found was out of a horror movie.”
Jensen’s recount of the tale was shared with all the emphatic storytelling of a master orator. The detective’s expression left little for interpretation, and Jensen knew how bad this looked. He was accusing powerful people of fraud and murder while suggesting the police themselves were involved in the coverup. Drug lords and custody officials were tangled in the barbed wire of the guilty, but Jensen feared Ascendancy enough to exclude him from the details. That he was the husband of the governor made the investigation treacherous, and he had to consider how much longer it would be before his wife’s goons fetched him for official summons home. How much did she know?
Anything? Or everything?
     He shivered and returned his head down on the table. Shortly after, the bars of a holding cell surrounded him. Strangely, the hefty sound of the lock wasn’t as defeating as it once was.

     The next day, he was awoken by the grinding mechanism of the locks unlatching. A man and woman in matching black suits entered. The blur of sleep washed quickly away by sudden intrusion, and his heart thud in his chest for no apparent reason.
“Mister James, come with us please,” the woman said. They had to be some kind of agent. What he initiated last night must have escalated quickly. He pushed his hair behind his ears as he rose to his feet. What a filthy sight he must have cut.

     ”Where am I going?” He wasn’t cuffed or in any way threatened by either presence, but he cautiously peered into the hallway bustling with activity last night. Today, or maybe it was still the middle of the night, it was a ghost town. Somehow, the emptiness was more ominous. Prayers tickled the back of his mind, but Jensen didn’t partake in their tempting comfort. Instead, he mentally tested the boundaries of the Gift.

     No answer was returned as he was escorted from the station. Dim light outside told him it was dawn. It had been almost an entire day since Cayli and Axel died yet mourning didn’t wrack tears from his body. It was an odd sort of numb stamina. Maybe this is what shock felt like. The agents deposited him into the back of a car. The Carpenters would now know the fate of their children by now but were unlikely to understand why. As soon as the doors sealed them in, a video screen woke. Jessika’s immaculate face appeared. She looked angry. He’d been summoned. 

     “Jensen, you idiotic buffoon. You ruin this for me and you’ll wish you’d never been born,” she said. She was all done up, hair big and makeup heavy. She looked ready to go on camera. For reasons unknown, his chest tightened. It only took hours for him to break his promise to be the penitent husband.

     He could see an image of himself in the corner of the screen. Drenched in darkness, dirty, and slimed by the filth of jail, death, and betrayal, he was a ghastly sight. “You knew all this was going on. What those doctors were doing at that school. Is that why you agreed to shelter the Carpenters in the first place? It wasn’t love for me that embraced them with charity. It was a pre-arranged deal to deliver an innocent teenager. You made a deal with the devil. What I don’t understand, Jessika, is why? You’re a good person. You’re a mother and a friend,” passion cut the words from his chest. He loved her as he always had, and could not believe the person he knew his whole life was so cold-hearted. Finally the tears began to form. Tears he couldn’t shed to mourn innocent loss of life. These were tears shed over the loss of happy memories. The loss of his whole life. “Why?”

     His accusations did not penetrate the armor she wore.
“Jensen, you poor fool,” was all she said. Looking into his eyes, even Jessika struggled to hold her own defenses.

     She looked over her shoulder then, called forward to something going on in the background. A man appeared in the background. He was dark-haired, older and distinguished, but also cut a severe expression. He seemed familiar, but Jensen couldn’t place where. He said something he couldn’t discern, and Jessika moved to leave. “Get yourself cleaned up. I expect you to behave,” she said. Jensen frowned with concern for where this was going.

     ”But what about the Carpenters? What about—” but they were disconnected before anything else was said. The female agent in the front seat turned and pointed at a package in the seat alongside him. They didn’t seem concerned about the conversation overheard, and Jensen had the distinct feeling that everything he reported to the police was about to be wiped from existence. Maybe it wasn’t the drug lords or the pharmaceutical companies in charge of the whole operation.

Oh God. Maybe it’s my wife. He thought he was going to faint. 

     By the time they arrived at a television studio, he was hurried through paparazzi, obscured by secure delivery, and deposited into a bathroom with a bar of soap, hair gel, and a clean suit.

Continued from Sisters of the Moon

After Nox discharged himself they had a chance to sit down and talk about what he'd found in the tunnels.  Dorian had already debriefed Lih and Sarkozy, but it was Nox's expert opinion he'd wanted.  And there really wasn't - Alistair Pavlo was dead - good and dead - Nox had decapitated him himself.  Surviving without a head would be hard-pressed.

The only thing left was to inform the girlfriend and his company.  The girlfriend was emotional but she had already prepared herself.  Dorian had stayed to comfort her for as long as it had needed.  

Now Dorian was standing in the lobby of Vaia Plus waiting for a meeting with Dr Flynn.  He wasn't Alistair's direct superior, but he was the CEO and he had taken an interest in the case from what he understood.  Though Dorian didn't really understand why he cared, but Dorian would indulge the man.

Dorian's sat comfortably in the reception area waiting on Dr. Flynn's last meeting to end.  The man was busy after all.  And it wasn't like Dorian had anything better to do.  Only a missing blood sample to find.  Nox was certain that was a dangerous thing to have out and about.  He couldn't tell Dorian why, but Dorian trusted Nox's assessment of monsters - he'd learned from a great hunter.  And Dorian was a cop first and foremost - not a hunter by any means.

Evelyn pulled her hair in front of one shoulder. Then pushed it back and pulled forward the other side. Nope, it was too schoolgirlish. She never worried so much in the past. Her advisor suggested a taut bun and a conservatively high collar in an attempt to “age her up.” Honestly, Evie considered the idea to change her look, but dismissed the entire idea in favor of her more traditional appearance. Here she was though, in the Members bathroom, staring into a cracked mirror, illuminated by bad fluorescent lighting, and Evelyn was questioning her life choices. Maybe the heels were too high after all?

Well. There wasn’t exactly a wardrobe of suit swaps in the last stall, so she was stuck with her current look. Evie shrugged and prepared her best smile. The underground hallways were busy with the typical traffic of staffers. She passed a couple of older Republican Senators, both of whom ignored her.

At the appropriate point, Evelyn stood from her place in the Chamber to seek recognition and address the Chair: “Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to address the House for one minute and to revise and extend my remarks.”

Without much fanfare, the Speaker responded in drone monotone, “Without objection, so ordered.” Evelyn smiled slightly then proceeded to the podium in the Well to give the speech. The Chair informed her that when her one minute had expired she would be allowed to finish her current sentence, but no more time would be allowed to her. It was typical House rules on Decorum and Debate in practice since Thomas Jefferson wrote the Order and Debate manual.  

Surprisingly, no flutters turned her stomach. She’d spoken the one-minute deliveries many times since her election. She was also quite familiar with the rules. For instance, although old tv cameras pointed their black eyes her direction, she was not allowed to reference the televised audience. Today, she was going to break several rules, but nobody would notice once they heard the topic of the following minute’s attention. Representative Avalon spoke to the sleepy members and the mindless glass like they were her best friends.

“Thank you Mr. Speaker for the recognition to address our colleagues in the House of Representatives as well as the American public.”

“As the only Powered Member of Congress, it is my sincere recommendation that the Chairman reconsider H.R. 8011, Global Century Integration Act. This act was declined by committee over the years, but I have new information to rewrite ordinances within the resolution that I believe committee will find favorable.”

She was of course referring to the proposed dissolution of the United States. It wasn’t the first time that Members spoke in favor of integration into the Central Custody of Dominion, but it was the first she spoke of it.

“Powered and non-powered individuals, channelers or non-channelers, may divide our entire world if we allow it. Global integration into a wider network of inclusion is a natural evolution during these times. I understand that I have previously taken differing opinions on HR 8011, but I have firsthand experience that has swayed my opinion.”

It was like she could feel the Speaker’s eyes burning holes into the back of her head. Luckily, her hair held its soft curl under the incinerating heat of old men’s judgment.

“I hope to solicit a bipartisan effort toward these ends and look forward to working closely with my colleagues toward a resolution that reinvigorates the country and serves the people. You will find these submissions in the hopper by the end of the day. Thank you for your time,” she said before the Chairman could warn her of the time allowance.

She folded her speech up and vacated the Well in order to retreat to her offices where no doubt the calls would flood in.

Vatican City, ~5 years ago

Angelika's arrival in Moscow was unceremonious as it should be.  There was no one to greet her at the airport.  There were no signs, no limos.  Just her baggage waiting to be claimed.  The Atharim were a secret organization that made no one think twice.  Angelika was a researcher first and foremost - that she worked for the Church was not something most knew.  Sante knew of course.  He knew her job.  He was a freelancer within the organization.  Someone they paid when someone needed help cleaning up a mess.  The Atharim weren't his only clients.  They'd met once upon a mission where the dreyken had escaped and killed three priests in the Vatican before it was put down.  That was over 20 years ago - how time flew when you were busy and having fun.  Their son, Simone was 7 going on thirty.  Such a strong head on him, so like his mother.  The thought brought a smile to Angelika's lips as she walked down Nikolskaya Street where the Baccarat Mansion once stood - where a crater now sat.  The entire building was gone -  melted.  

Such a tragic loss.  But with loss came new beginnings.  Eventually, things would settle down, but the more curious things in Moscow were happening.  Terror and gods reigned the modern world, but it was the unknown monsters from two hunters.  Granted those hunters were dead or worse now, but still, the problem remained of these unidentified creatures.  And the only way Angelika was going to find them was to find the traitor.  The girl was dead, but he wasn't.

He was being tracked and hunted by the Inquisitors and Angelika knew it would be no time before they found him.  And in the meantime, she would set up her lab here in Moscow, but first to commender a safe house with the right facilities to do the job.  It would need containment for the creatures as well as a place to set up the sterile facilities she would need.  Containment was of the utmost importance.

Mother: Anastazja Woźniak
Father: Iwan Helwing
Partner: Sante Ricci
Son: Simone Ricci

Age: 53
Origin: Warsaw, Poland
Occupation: Doctor/Scientist in the Atharim

Powers/Supernatural Powers: Atharim knowledge - intimate knowledge of the monsters the Atharim hunt.

Personality: Angelika is a hard worker devoted to the Catholic Church and the society within called the Atharim.  She is scholarly but enjoys her family time when she manages to take a break, which is rare.  Angelika can be short with people when they try to tell her about the monsters, she avoids fictions of all sorts her reality is strange enough to immerse herself into.  (strength: knowledgeable in all things occult weakness: poor people skills)

Description: Angelika has chestnut-colored hair that runs past her shoulders she usually keeps it tied back in a low ponytail to keep it out her face.  Her eyes are a shard darker than her hair.  She looks younger than she actually is thanks to lifelong beauty treatment and avoidance of the sun. (Dreyken and monsters typically lurk during the night and hide in the day time after all.) Angelika has an athletic build from years and years of martial arts training.

Biography:

The Helwing family has been part of the Church for as long as the family can remember.  And they have been with the Atharim for just as long if not longer, but it is not the cause that keeps the Helwing family with the Church or the Atharim, it is the mysteries of the unknown that pulls the family towards their own goals.  Every generation for as long as there have been Helwing's, a child has been part of the Atharim.  And in 2046 that is still the same, though Angelika does not go by Helwing.  Her father was a zealot of a man.  He believed with all his soul that the gods of old would return and one day try to rule the world.  He died chasing the mortal enemies of the Helwing's the Dreyken.  They are the reason the Helwing's joined the Atharim in the first place.

The story goes:  One long ago a man corrupted by darkness took the fiance of the first Helwing son in generations.  The man was cursed so the legends say.  He drank the blood of his victims with razor-sharp talons.  Helwing devoted his life to finding his lost love and in the mystery of the corrupted man.

Helwing met a man of the church hunting monsters of the deep.  A man-like creature with razor-sharp talons drinking blood.  Together they found his love, but she was long since dead, the creature kept her alive for years before she died of blood loss.  But they captured the creature alive and Helwing discovered many mysteries of the man who was not a man.

The man from the church told Helwing of the Atharim and all the glories of his travels and Helwing spurred by the mysteries of the unknown began his quest to understand these damned creations.  

Helwing went on to marry another woman - a woman inside the Atharim and born him two children.  Each child entering the Atharim, and ever since a Helwing has been part of the Atharim.  Father to son, and son to son on and on until Iwan died shortly after his wife gave birth to their only child - a daughter - Angelika.

Anastazja let the church take her daughter at thirteen and train her in the ways of her father, but the girl was never a Helwing except by birth, but she continued in the path of her father. 

Not only did Angelika continue with her father's work, but she also studied lore and traditions of other cultures as well as medicine far and wide.  She obtained her PhDs in forensic medicine, infectious disease, and anatomical and clinical pathologies.   The Helwing legacy proceeded Angelika but she made a name for herself.  Not just studying the creatures of the night, but how they affected their victims - how they died, what mechanisms killed them. 

In between her research projects with the Atharim Angelika found the time to fall in love, and have a son whose father raises him in Rome.  When he is 13 - another 6 years or so - he too will join the Atharim, but until then her son would live a normal life.  Angelika rarely sees her family due to her travels, but she loves spending time in Rome with them.

Angelika currently has an Atharim Lab in Vatican City underneath the Cathedral itself, but a strange new monster has brought her to Moscow - where their Regus had fallen and the worst of the worst was happening - a reborn god was in power and not just of Moscow but most of the modern world as they knew it.  Times were dire, but Angelika didn't care about the politics, only the monsters - just the monsters.