Seraphina stood in silence for a moment, contemplating the cross on her altar. It was a simple, elegant work of gold and enamel, beautiful... and utterly inappropriate. She removed the cross and studied the empty space it left, smiling slightly. Then, in its place, she hung a simple, unornamented dagger of steel. A symbol and a weapon at once. Her smile faded as she knelt before the altar, bowed her head, and prayed her own prayer for the first time.

"God,
I do not stand before You, for that is not my right.
I lost such privileges when, by my own hand, I refused Your gift of Life.
I have indeed chosen the shadows, but I do not embrace the flames of Hell.
I wield them.
I am not Your wolf, nor Your serpent. I am not Your Warden.
I am Your Weapon.
My place in Your plan is not as a shepherd, leading the lost back to Your side.
It is as Your hunter, culling the wolves from Your flock.
Those who will not know Your light, I send to the darkness they crave.
I confess it freely.
I need no forgiveness.
I cannot be absolved.
I will not repent.
I am the Fallen Angel.
And in my Damnation, I am Justified."

As she rose from her knees, Seraphina felt a curious sense of relief. Smiling once again, she closed the trunk that held her altar and moved to the door. If she was His Hunter, then a-hunting she would go.

Seraphina stood back in the shadows, watching the alley where the two men haggled over the price of a nine-year-old girl in a short skirt and high heels. Her eyes burned with tears and outrage as she studied the girl's blank expression. She remembered that look... she had seen it in a mirror, when she wasn't much older than the child in the stinking alley. Her tears gave way to the Wrath building inside her, and she wrapped that around herself like a cloak. Her tears would not help the child. Her Wrath could save her.

( The Hunt )

Seraphina passed the child again as she left the alley. She did not look at her, but dropped several bills on the ground as she walked by. Behind her she heard the soft scuffle of sound as the girl scrambled to gather the money. She knew it was somewhere around five hundred dollars. Perhaps it would be enough. Enough to send the child home, away from this miserable life. Once the tapping of the little girl's shoes had faded away, Sera turned back one last time to look at the alley. It was so dark. Even she, with her vampiric vision, could barely see the bodies from this distance. The police would find them... eventually. But that wasn't her problem.

Seraphina gazed out the window of her room in Phoenix, studying the vast, empty skies. It was quieter here than in DC, although she wasn't exactly sure how. It may not have been the nation's capital, but Phoenix was still a busy, bustling city. She leaned against the glass, pressing her forehead onto the smooth, cool surface, and turned her thoughts inward. There was the quiet she was musing over. It was inside her head, a silent, empty place where the chaotic, violent emotions of her incautious Sire had been driving her mad.

I still remember
The world, from the eyes of a child...

Looking through the peace, Seraphina contemplated her memories of Rosa. Angry in Milwaukee, first ordering her like a recalcitrant child, then dismissing her to fend for herself in the world of darkness. At the Casa in DC, broken and tired, apologetic and lost. Back, farther, to the first days of Seraphina's Requiem. Not quite patient, but trying. Trying to teach, to make Seraphina understand the differences between her old life and her new one. Standing beside Aroex with gentle encouragement on her face as Sera tried to stammer out a simple "Good Evening" to her grandsire. Bloody but unbeaten as she demonstrated to Sera the resilience of the vampire body, allowing her prey to wreak havoc on her before killing him. Trying to break the death grip of Seraphina's fears. Back to the night of her Embrace, the gentle beauty and soft words that made Seraphina think her an angel, then the harsher words that explained her Damnation to her in such a way that made Sera almost proud to serve as a warden of Purgatory.

Where has my heart gone?
An uneven trade for the real world
I want to go back to believing in everything
And knowing nothing at all...

Without the confusing roil of Rosa's emotions, Seraphina was suddenly able to find her own reactions to each memory. A growing sadness... each night, each hunt, each lesson another step in completing the perversion of her Soul that the foster care system had started. What little touch of innocence had remained with her had been smothered slowly under the weight of the night... and had extinguished completely the night that Seraphina had given in to Rosa's despair and her own Wrath and destroyed her room at the Casa De La Cruz.

Slowly sinking in her regret, Sera raised her head from the glass and willed her reflection onto the mirror-like pane. A blurred image of a young, wraithlike woman with tousled dark hair and glowing eyes stared back at her. She studied her own eyes in the reflection and realized that, despite the regret in her mind, there was nothing in her eyes. No pain. No sorrow. No outrage. Just a calm acceptance of her place in the world. Still watching those calm, blank eyes, she studied her regret in her mind, turning it over and over like a curious object in her hands, and recognized it for what it was. Wistfulness. Self-pity. A vague recollection of a distant, simpler time. A time that everyone loses eventually. She was just forced to face reality a little earlier and a little more harshly than most. Her life was no longer easy. She was no longer ignorant, nor innocent. And though she had believed she missed the safety of those conditions, she was slowly beginning to realize that innocence and ignorance were not safer, just the opposite. They were a dangerous and fragile state of being. Better to be shed of them early and learn the truth of things.

I still remember the sun
Always warm on my back
Somehow it seems colder now...

Where has my heart gone?
Trapped in the eyes of a stranger
I, I want to go back to believing in everything...

Seraphina allowed her reflection to fade from the window, looking one last time into the stranger's eyes before they vanished away to leave the glowing nightscape of Phoenix alone in the glass. She would not cry over something she had started to lose long before meeting Rosa. It served her far better to simply accept it, embrace it, and learn everything she could about this new phase of her life. To survive, to grow strong and clever. She was a Warden of Purgatory, and it was time she started to fulfil her role in His plan.

Sera braided her hair back quickly as she strode to the door. To be strong, she needed to feed. And the city was teeming with life below her. Somewhere in that sprawling maze of humanity, there had to be worthy prey... some sick, twisted hunter of children, someone she could kill without feeling remorse. Tonight, she wanted to kill something. As she slipped through the door, Seraphina felt one last wave of melancholy for her own lost childhood, the innocence she had sacrificed to the system. Then she locked away the useless emotions. She would always feel that loss. But she couldn't dwell on it anymore. Not tonight, anyway.

Oh I, I want to go back to believing in everything..."

Seraphina paced quietly in the garden, marginally aware of something going on in another part of it. But whatever was happening, it hardly concerned her. The rhythm of her steps, the dull thunk of the knife into wood, was soothing and helped her concentrate. So many thoughts whirled through her mind she could scarcely catch even one of them to examine it. Visions of memories flashed intermittently, images from the events leading to her Embrace, from the Grand Ball, from the night after, and the confusing whirl of raging emotions that caused her to embarrass herself badly in front of the family. The memory of the frightening but kind Brother Sebastian returned often, and echoes of Aroex's words following her apology at the end of the evening. The pearl beads of her rosary clicked almost inaudibly in her left pocket as she paced, and every so often she slipped her hand into her pocket to finger the beads before tossing the knife at the tree again. Stronger than Aroex's voice was the gentle but unwavering tone of Rosa's voice when she handed the rosary to Seraphina and told her that she was released. That Rosa would no longer be responsible for her actions, her errors or her life. The first inevitable flash of joyous freedom had quickly faded as Seraphina realized just how much she didn't know about who and what she was. Now, weeks after the earth-shattering changes of the events in Milwaukee, she was still coming to terms with their meaning. And so many other questions that rose from the advent of her release. Legally, she was still seventeen. Still a minor, parentless and with her education still incomplete.

As her mind turned farther and farther inward, her steps grew slower and more measured, her knife less forceful and more accurate. Eventually, she entered an almost sleepwalker-like state of semiconscious meditation.

*In a dim, empty cathedral, late in the night, a shaky, despairing voice echoes from the stone walls. The voice belongs to a dark-haired teenage girl kneeling in the second pew.*

God, I don’t understand.

I have been Your faithful servant, Your obedient and loyal daughter. I did my best to live my life according to Your commandments. I have turned the other cheek. I have forgiven time and again.

And so I say to You, I don’t understand.

I don’t understand why I must suffer so much. What lesson am I to learn from this pain? My parents were taken from me, suddenly and violently. I was only ten, Lord. It destroyed my world to lose them. I grieved. But I held fast to my faith. You have a purpose for everything, Father, and if Your purpose for me required that my parents be taken, I was willing to bear that pain for You. But I could not find my path in the darkness that I fell through.

People, Lord, who are supposed to be Your children. How can there be so many heartless, Godless people in the world? To the good ones I was invisible, or perhaps a servant. A pet. Something worthy of careless cruelty or neglect. And these are the people who care for your little orphaned ones. But they were the best of them. The worst of them… hurt me, Lord. The men… *voice cracks and falters, continues in a bare whisper* I was only a girl, God, and I wasn’t strong enough. I couldn’t fight them. And I couldn’t bear the pain.

I ran, Lord.

I ran for my life. I could not bear Your testing anymore, if that was the truth of it. And if it was not, I could not bear Your indifference.

I have been alone, Lord. Too long I’ve been alone, and hungry, and broken. I’ve learned to survive, to protect myself. I’m trying to be strong, but I’m not strong, Lord. Not this strong.

What purpose can You have for me? What must I do for You that is so vitally important that I must endure these trials to be worthy of it? I’m only a child, God, but I have seen the evil that hides in the shadows. I have seen too much of it, Lord. I fear that I may be a part of those shadows now. I have done evil things to survive. I’ve given up pieces of my soul along the way, and I fear there is little left of it for you to claim. I’ve lied, I’ve coveted, I’ve stolen, and, Lord, I have killed. But I have never placed another before You. So please, I beg You, lead me from this darkness. Show me my path, the path You have chosen for me. Don’t let me fade into the shadows. I can’t become the monsters I have faced.

I have become the monsters I have faced.

Please Lord.

Help me understand.

*a wrenching sob echoes and a flash of silver turns in her hand in the low light*

Save me from the shadows, Lord.

Please.

I don’t want to die. But I can’t live like this. Either way is Hell.

*the girl raises her eyes to the cross hanging high on the wall*

Are You there?

*her eyes remain on the cross for a long moment, then lower again to the silver in her hand. in a broken whisper the voice says "Thou shalt not kill"*