An Avenging Angel

* * *
[St. Petersburg, Russia, 1990's]

Vladia walked down the street as the rain pounded down around her. She could
hear the honking of traffic off in the background, she tried to remember if
there had been a hockey game this evening or not, or even if it was the right
season for the riot causing sport. She had never understood the fascination of
watching most sports or getting violent if your team didn't win. She shook her
head idly and then shivered as a rain drop fell down her collar and traced its
way down her backbone.

Neon lights were fuzzy in the rain, she thought it was the only good thing
about the night sky when it opened up in upending buckets. She passed herself
in the reflection of a store window and had to chuckle to herself. Her long
blonde hair was plastered to her head, her make-up running down her face, she
looked like a pathetic, wet, miserable, yet expensive, escort. Her leather
bomber jacket was zipped up to the top, but her business suit looked a little
worse for wear with the splashes of water as she walked and from the drips and
drops that fell within the jacket. She sighed. If she were lucky she wouldn't
run into anyone she knew. She couldn't wait for the season to grow cold once
again and for snow to fall upon the ground. Winter was her season, that was
when she was happy ; and not just because the nights were so much longer. In
the winter she could dance the ice under the stars.

She could hear voices of some of the street thugs, probably early teenagers
out proving their worth to one another. She sighed. While she had lived for
close three hundred years now, she still looked the nineteen years old she had
been when she had officially died. She smiled softly, she didn't look so bad
for a corpse. Yet, she should be careful, a nineteen year old woman was a
tempting target to the wretched humans that walked the streets these days,
even in mother Russia. Perhaps, a voice whispered to her, she should think
'especially' in mother Russia. Things were so bad.. so many people went
hungry.. and she could only help so many without the government become
suspicious. It was from helping a family she came tonight. The girl, her music
was so beautiful, but she got so cold she could not even play. Vladia had
brought the family wood, stolen from a government truck ; a shipment they
would hopefully never miss. So many opportunists took advantage of the less
fortunate.

As she neared an alley way she could hear the thugs, four boys playing with
something, laughing cruelly and heartlessly over some marvellous joke. It was
as if they were the first to think of these things. A small mewl grabbed
Vladia's attention and she did her best to go down the alley carefully and
silently. The streams of water thankfully quieted her high heels as approached
the boys as they huddled around something held down against the wet ground.
Another muffled meow came from the wet lump that they held down. "C'mon, don't
let it swallow the fuse!" one of the boys hissed.

Vladia's anger rose, to harm innocent people was bad enough, but innocent
animals? By the size of the lump of fur it was but a kitten, and a street
kitten at that. Her eyes narrowed and she reached forward to grab the nearest
of the boys, strength already rushing into her limbs from borrowed blood. The
boy whirled to glare at her, his eyes wide in surprise. "Let the kitten go."
She told him, not particularly expecting him or his friends to listen.

"Hey! Look! New toy!" One of the boys said with glee, his Russian broken and
accent speaking of the south and west.

Vladia just glared at the apparent leader, as his wolves started to circle.
The kitten huddled now in the rain, too scared or hurt to move. "Flee." she
ordered, calling upon her gifts of to have this cruel piece of work listen. If
she caused him to flee from a young woman, apparently defenceless, in an
abandoned alleyway, he would never again have the respect of the other punks.
Perhaps that would be enough to get him to turn to better hobbies.

The boy's eyes widened and he pelted off into the night. The three others
looked back and forth between their retreating leader and the woman in front
of them. "What the fuck..?" One muttered, trying to figure out what it was
their leader had seen that they could not.

"Why do you harm this animal?" Vladia asked, approaching the next biggest.
While she stood almost six feet tall, this boy towered over her by a good
five inches, his shoulders twice as broad as her own.

"Why the fuck not? What's it to you? Some sort of animal lover?" The new alpha
sneered, taking an aggressive stance.

"Bet she's got some pussy.." One of the others leered.

Vladia turned to the second and ordered him "Quiet!", he shut up, never
knowing why. She turned back to the leader. "The innocent are to be cherished,
to be held, to be respected. Innocence lost is something never again to
regained. You will learn this."

"Yeah, whatever, freak-bitch. Tell it to the brother."

Vladia's face revealed her losing of her patience with these disrespectful
young punks. In her day, they would have been thrashed within an inch of their
lives by the lords for talking like this.. Vladia's hand snaked out and
grabbed the punk by the throat, he gargled slightly and started to turn
purple. The two others pulled out knives. Vladia just picked up the boy-man
and threw him into his comrades.

"This chick is on drugs or something! Lets get the fuck out of here, she is
not worth the effort!" The first declared as he picked himself off the other
two. It wasn't long before they were off into the night, running shoes pelting
against the cobblestones.

Vladia didn't even watch them go, she had already turned to the kitten that
still lay huddled in the alley. She gently picked up the poor feline and
cradled it in her arms. It let out a soft mewl, a choked sound around the fire
cracker that lay in its mouth and throat, wedged against one of it's vertebrae
at the back of its neck. Vladia pulled the device out as gently as she could,
trying to see past blurred vision as she tried to understand the horrible
souls that would do this. Blood came with the fire cracked, the boys hadn't
been gentle. How long had the poor cat been bleeding?

She tucked the kitten in her jacket and started to jog down the street, she
knew where there was a vet, one who would help her, one who would understand.


* * *


She pushed open the door after knocking frantically, not waiting for an
answer. The hugely built man who had an abnormal amount of hair and only one
eyebrow to speak of glared down at her at the rudeness. When he saw her
expression he lightened up his glare into a look of merely put out. "Another
hurt animal, eh Vladia? You bring me so many, I can not save the entire
world." She just held out the poor kitten, it had started shivered and
shuddering a block back, its mewling ceased and it's breathing ragged. "I will
look at it, for you. I would not do this for another you know." She just
nodded and looked up at him with her green eyes pleading him. "Ah Vladia, how
you survive our world, I do not know." He muttered as he took the kitten into
a back room, the blonde vampire padding after him.

"I do my best to help those who need help. This one needed help." Vladia said
as if that explained everything.

Pietr who had known Vladia for close to fifty years and had been trying his
best to save all the animals she brought to him and occasionally people when
he was closer than a doctor didn't bother commenting. He wished that all who
lived the night could have souls as pure and special as Vladia's, so many of
the kind gave in to the beast, gave into their feral nature and lost that
sight. He always did his best for the girl. Even though she was probably a
century older than him he couldn't think of her as anything other than a girl.
He bent his head and concentrated on the kitten.

It was two hours past when Pietr finally raised his head with a soft shake.
"I am sorry, Vladia. The hypothermia, the wounds.. The kitten was half
asphyxiated for so long and also she was malnourished to begin with.."

The medical terms meant nothing to the elder vampire, she bent over the table
and looked at the fallen form. Pietr shook his head. So few he had been unable
to save, but always Vladia took it so hard when he couldn't.. He stood and
left her to say goodbye to the kitten she'd known but for a few hours but
already had become part of her soul. She pulled the stiffening animal into
her arms, feeling the soft fur against her cheek as tears of blood softly
fell unhindered.
SAUCE00Avenging Angel                     Spirit Wolf         Hallucigenia        

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