Gina was awake, drinking coffee in the kitchen when Bart came down stairs in his night clothes. "Feeling better?"
Gina stared at him, and sipped her coffee.
"What is it, Gina?"
"Who is Jonathan Walker?"
"He's my grandson." Bart locked eyes with Gina. "He died fighting the Sharif Coven."
"The Sharif Coven."
Bart attempted a somber nod. "Traitors to The Order."
"...yeah. I did a little digging, boss. The Sharif Coven was killed to the last person. Except Suheila. Suheila wasn't there that day. What happened to Jonathan?"
Bart felt warmth in his cheeks. Embarrassment. Anger. "He died, Guerrero. Drop it."
Gina frowned. "You know, I would be less angry with lies, than half truths. I'm not a suck-up to The Order. Man, I thought we had this talk. When are you going to stop covering up for the asshole at the top?"
"I'm not covering for the Judge. I can safely, and with honesty say that Grifford had nothing to do with it."
"Which Grifford. Grifford, Randall? Or Grifford, Samael?"
"Neither. I know Judge Samael Grifford did your mentor wrong, but I told you before. Our ranks are too thin, and our bloodlines too few to march around killing every idealist, or adversary that dons a duster, and a cowl."
"Bishop aside," Gina sniffed at her coffee and made a face. "Where is Jonathan, really?"
"Dead."
"Besides dead, where is he? Did The Order stash him somewhere? Is he pulling aftermarket off-the-books jobs somewhere else, like Cameron?"
"He's dead. He died fighting the Sharif Coven. "
"Who is Bane, Bart?" Gina let the question roll off her tongue as though she were asking what he wanted for breakfast.
Bart scratched at the back of his neck. "It's not who Bane is. It's what Bane is."
"Okay." Gina nodded, sand took a deeper drink of her coffee. She wiped her mouth with the palm of her hand. "...but who is he?"
"Bane isn't a he. He's not a person. He's an it, and it's that kind of something's attention you don't want."
Gina stared at the black coffee, no cream, no sugar, in her cup. She considered it a moment, staring at the reflection of her eye in the surface of the drink. "Bart, who is Bane?"
Bart wiped his brow, and moved past Gina to the percolator. He pulled a cup out of the sink, and did not care whether it was dirty or clean.
Bart poured himself some coffee.
"Bane is a monster. Whoever it was before it became Bane, that person is long gone."
Gina sighed. "Who is Bane?"
Bart flexed his fists, and wanted to pull at his hair. He arched his neck to the left until he felt the satisfaction of a pop. "We don't speak of him."
"Speak of who?" Gina drank down the rest of her coffee, and set it on the counter next to her. She folded her arms.
"It is not my place to say. "
"I need to know how to get into its head. How to trick Bane, and confuse him so that when the time comes, I can destroy him."
Bart scowled, eager to end the conversation, but Gina was not having any of that. "You can't trick Bane. You can't trap him, or deceive him. I'm not even sure it can die."
Gina tilted her head, eyelids relaxed to half last. "He can bleed. If he can bleed, he can die. If he can die, it's just a matter of finding the right way to kill him."
Bart shrugged. "Sure. Everything dies. Coven dies. Citywalkers, they can die. I've read the files. Harder to kill, sure... but they can die. Vampires can die."
Gina shook her head. "No such thing."
"You're willing to hunt and kill Coven because they use magick."
"Yeah?"
"Magick. You're willing to believe in magick, and witches."
Gina smiled. "I've seen coven work their will. I've been closely acquainted to the consequences. I know magick exists."
"Did you read Gerald Dean's report on The Lockdown?" Bart stared Gina in the eyes, his expression grave. "The one before ol' green eyes went and tore the place apart?"
"The one with Blanca, Ammielle, and Crimson, sure."
Bart sipped his coffee and made a face. "There are things in this world that we cannot understand, but they do exist."
"Crimson was sick. Maybe she thought she was a vampire." Gina frowned, and wiped her forehead. "There's no such thing."
"I believe you believe otherwise. Maybe you don't want to face it, but I think you know better."
Gina scowled. "Bart, I wonder how you can stand the smell, you know?"
Bart, cautious, cleared his through. "Smell?"
"Yeah, well... You know. The smell?" Gina's brow furrowed, her eyes narrowed, and her voice took an edge. "...from all the bullshit you're vomiting up."
Bart gave Gina a curt smile. "Clever, girl. You're not very bright, but you're clever."
"Straight "A" student, baby. All the way to graduation. I'm an educated herspanic. Throw me a something."
Bart shrugged. "Check the MacAllen ruins."
"Why would I do that, Walker? You'd have me chasing nothing if you could."
Bart grumbled, and rubbed the stubble on his face. "I'm trying to keep you alive, Gina."
"He ran at you last night. Even when I had him down, he wasn't after me. He walked away."
"He was outnumbered. "
"Two to one." Gina point her thumb behind her in no particular direction. "Last I heard, that didn't work out so well for the hunters involved."
Bart flinched.
"He tried to kill me. It's mutual. I tried to kill him. He walked away. Do you know what that tells me?"
"It tells you he's out of ammunition."
"Bane could snap me like a twig. It was up close." Gina blushed. "Personal."
"Peculiar."
"No, it's not peculiar. He prefers not to die ." Gina shook her head. "He would rather live to fight another day."
"So, what is it then?" Bart cradled his coffee cup in both hands.
"If he wants to live to fight another day..." Gina played with a lock of her hair. "...if he even suspected the odds were against him, it tells me Bane can die... and he may even be aware of this."
"I don't know, because I dont know who Bane is. It wears a mask. Everywhere."
"Bart, who is Bane?"
"Go and see the ruins. Maybe you'll find your answers there, if not the monster itself."
Gina nodded. "I respect that you're a man of many facets... but right now you're a pain in my ass."
"Go in your fatigues. Wear Kevlar. Bring my daggers."
"I'm not wearing armor. It's too heavy."
Bart grunted a noncommittal, but nodded. "At least your fatigues, and a dagger."
"Don't you have something a little more me? Maybe a catsuit, light armor, and some braces so he can't break my bones. "
"That's oddly specific," Bart stared at the into his cup, raised it up, sipped his coffee. "I don't have anything like that. It sounds uncomfortable, stiff, and slow."
"Well, fuck." Gina uncrossed her arms. "Give me a dagger."
✟ ☧ ✟
That late afternoon, beneath the cloud choked storm skies, Gina went alone, not that the great Bart Walker wanted anything to do with her expedition into the lair of the inexorable monster itself.
The old, dry floor boards creaked beneath her heavy boots, and Gina winced every Every step.
She was not sure how long she spent searching Bane's lair before she found them. Gina grimaced, staring at the word "spite" carved in angry, ugly jutting letters.
Not too far from the word was a valentine heart.
There was painstaking quality to the carving, a perfect valentine heart etched into the floorboards, the initials N.S. and J.W. carved inside it, and a date, September 9, 1978.
Gina's eyes welled up. She removed her right glove, and dropped it beside the carving. She touched the letters inside, traced the valentine heart with her finger. "...you love her."
Gina wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her duster. Bane loved her - loved Nadjia. He never knew her, but he loved her all the same.
A single tear drop fell from the small stream running down her cheek, the droplet falling in the initials. Gina did not try to wipe her face this time.
"He loves me."
Gina was on her feet, guns drawn and trained on the silhouette of Suheila in the gaping hole of an entrance into the lair. Behind her, Gina saw the bone mask, and green eyes. "You're a witch. She's a witch! Bane, she's a witch!"
Bane stared down at the top of Suheila's head, and back up to Gina. "I know."
Gina pushed her arms out straight, her hands shaking. "She has to die!"
Bane nodded, and wrapped his arms around Suheila.
"What are you doing?" Suheila struggled in his arms to no avail. "No! No! Not like this!"
Bane held her tight, and Gina fired her pistols, hot lead chasing the empty space between she and Suheila until the slides in Gina's pistols were locked back.
Bane released Suheila, and she crumpled onto the aged floorboards, still, and dead.
Bane stared down at his woman's corpse, and felt his pulse quicken, heat burning in his skin, pressure building behind his eyes. It was not supposed to hurt him. He knelt over her body, grasped the cord around her neck and pulled it free, the cord snapping, the black glass token gleaming red-black.
At least Suheila's sorrows in the world were over. Bane resisted the urge to give Suheila her last rites.
Suheila's eyes were wide open, staring into space, unseeing, unblinking, the expression of shock and betrayal frozen on her features. Somewhere in the depths of Jonathan's stagnant memory, Bane heard echoes of the dead boy's past, and shuddered.
Gina reloaded, dropping the magazines from her pistols, and seating new magazines into the magazine well, and racking the slides back. "Bane, she was bad news."
Bane only stared down at Suheila. He inked back the sensation of burning in his eyes, and raised his head, his eyes locking on Gina. "You."
"Hey, you held her!"
Bane shrugged.
Gina stepped back an involuntary step. "She was a witch!"
He nodded. "...and She died for it."
"...you couldn't do it yourself. " Gina raised her pistols. "I had to do it for you."
Bane tilted his head, staring at Gina from beneath the bone mask, a mask that bore her no expression. "...and you will die for it."
"The fuck you say!" Gina fired a shot, and Bane dodged it, glancing over his shoulder as though watching the bullet pass him.
Gina fired again, and Bane side stepped the shot, the bullet tearing through the rafters of his leather duster. She peeled of another shot, and felt the impact. Bane's hands were up, and over his mask as he stumbled and fell backward.
"Booyeah, motherfucker!"
Bane sat up, the abrupt force of his rise throwing his dreadlocked mane forward. He shook his head sharply, and slapped the side of his head with an open palm. Bane turned his attention back to Gina, a large dent in the bone mask, cracks reaching out like spider's web.
"I was just kidding, big guy. Get it? Get it?"
Gina heard the giant release a gust of breath, his shoulders slumping. Bane sprang forward, his great size deceptive of his speed, and tackled Gina onto her back, his green eyes bloodshot through the orbital sockets of his mask, as he stared into Gina.
She heard him cock his revolver, and felt the muzzle of the barrel as he pushed it up under her chin.
Gina felt time slow as she fought herself from going into shock. She felt the surge of adrenaline wash through her, numbing her, threatening to pull her mind away from the moment.
He had her dead to rights, her pistols out of reach. She struggled beneath his weight, fumbling with gloved fingers along the pouches on her belt. She pulled free the first thing she could, a small canister of oleoresin capsicum - common pepper spray - and raised it up.
It was one of Bishop's tools.
Fuck, this is going to suck so much.
Gina pressed her thumb into the top of the canister, and hoped to God it was pointing in the right direction. She hear an audible click, and nothing happened.
Gina felt his finger squeezing back on the trigger, heard the cylinder turning into place, the hammer cocking back beneath Bane's thumb.
Gina was about to let loose a long string of expletives when the canister exploded in her hand.
✟ ☧ ✟
The world was pain, and noise.
Gina coughed, gasping for breath somewhere between choking, and swallowing back bile that burned worse going down than it did coming up.
She heard Bane bellowing, his weight off her now, as she fought against the burning in her eyes, and her lungs.
The world a blur of acid tears, and burning skin. She pulled herself away from Bane, struggling against her instinct to wipe at her eyes, and curl up to alleviate the violent spasms in her chest as her body begged for air.
What the fuck, Bishop?
Her left hand felt raw, and numb at the same time, and she could not feel her fingers on that hand.
Gina crept for her pistols, and found purchase on the grip. She continued to pull herself away from Bane, pulling herself away until her back was up against a wall.
Across from her, Bane rolled onto his side, his groaning muffled beneath his massive hands, beneath his mask.
This was a new pain, a new agony.
Worse than any wound delivered by bullet, or blade. Bane saw only black spots in his field of vision, and bright blotches of white light when he squeezed his eyes shut. His lungs felt as though fire burned inside them, locking up with his each attempted breath.
Gina raised her pistol, trying to level it on the writhing giant in the bone mask.
He felt pain.
He could bleed.
He could die.
She a squeezed off a shot, and it went wide. Gina tried to steady her hand, holding her breath against the excruciating stabbing in her lungs. She raised her left hand to steady the pistol. She was missing three fingers. Her favorite three. The second, third, and fourth shots missed their target, and she lowered her weapon.
Bane struggled to his knees, even as Gina struggled to her own, pushing her back up against the wall behind her, and sliding up the wall onto her feet.
Bane stood on shaking legs. He turned, and rushed Gina, stumbling along the way. She raised her pistol, and he was on her before she could aim, or pull the trigger.
Gina gasped as Bane clutched her by the throat, and raised her up off the ground, pulling her away from the wall.
He thrust her forward, Gina dangling in his massive hand, and slammed her into the wall of the MacAllen ruins, shaking the structure.
Gina felt her pistols slip out of her hands, and heard the dull clatter of their weight when they landed on the floorboards below.
"...I am the wind, and the rain, and the storm..."
Gina reached for the sheath on her belt, and drew Bart's dagger.
She raised up her boots planting them on Bane's chest, struggling against Bane's raw strength, pushing hard as she could to keep him from crushing her against the wall.
Bane stared into Gina's eyes, tightening his grip on her throat. Gina felt something straining in her throat beneath his vicegrip clutch.
God, please. Please.
Her arms were heavy. Splotches of black popped into her field of vision. She fought against the consuming darkness, and raised her arm. She held Bart's dagger, the tip pointing down, and she thrust the blade into Bane's face. There was a brief, dry sound as the sharp point of the blade slid off the mask, etching a score into its polished surface.
Bane pulled Gina away from the wall, and pushed her back into it again. He felt the rush of her breath in his eyes, and tilted his face away from her. Gina in one hand, Bane balled up his free hand into a tight fist, and punched her across the face.
Gina felt the impact, felt her cheekbone sink into her face, and saw a bright flash of stars. She held tight to Bart's dagger as the second flash of stars burst across her vision. She clutched at Bane's massive gloved hand on her throat, and willed her hand heavy grip high, dagger still in hand.
Bane cocked his fist back, and Gina thrust Bart's dagger down.
Please. God, please.
Bart's dagger slid down the brow of Bane's mask and Gina felt her stomach drop. This was it, then.
The sharp point of the dagger continued dow. The brow of Bane's mask, into the hollow between the brow ridge of the polished bone, and into the eyelet.
Bane howled, arching his face back and away from Gina.
She felt the hilt of Bart's dagger slip away from her grip, and she was falling, falling, crumbling onto hardwood floorboards as her lungs sucked in a painful bounty of burning air.
The splatters of black that threatened to overtake her melted away. Gina touched her face, and winced at the swollen flesh, her right eye swollen shut.
Bane's howling echoed around her as Gina lay there wheezing on the floor. She felt around the floorboards and found one of her pistols.
Coughing, she pushed herself up, her back to the wall.
Gina racked the sliderail back on her pistol, and felt the bullet pop out onto the back of her hand, and roll down onto her lap. The next round was chambered, locked in place, begging to find it's way into Bane.
Maybe it saved her life.
Maybe it prolonged death a while longer. She released the slide rail, raised her pistol up in time to see
Bane pull the dagger from his eye, dropping the blade. It clattered at his boots, his pierced eye stuck on the blade, a large deflated ball.
Blood crept out over the eyelet of his mask, and he stared down at her through his remaining eye.
Gina aimed her pistol with both hands, her sights trained on Bane's bleeding hollow. She fired.
The shot went wide.
Bane collapsed to a knee, his hands flat on the floorboards. Gina fired again, the pistol heavier, and heavier in her hands. She watched as one of Bane's dreadlocks fell away from his head, severed by the missed shot.
Gina fired again, and the bullet went low, splintering the floorboards near Bane. "Bad luck."
Bane lifted his one-eyed gaze up to Gina. He stared at her, and she stared back, raising a gloved hand and waving once at him.
He inched away from her, pushing himself back, his dark, thick blood pooling beneath his masked face.
"Where?" Gina raised her gloved hand. "Where you going?"
Bane fell onto his hindquarters.
"There was a time..." Gina stared down at her pistol. How many shots did she have left? "...I thought I loved you. That's bullshit. Not love. There was a time I lusted you."
Bane held the palm of his right hand up over the bleeding eyelet of his mask. He winced, the pain still too fresh.
It would heal, of course... but it would not come back. He would never see out of that eye again.
Memories shuffled through his mind, olive skin, and intense electric blue eyes. Blue-black curly hair bouncing of her shoulders. Her smile. Her empty sockets, black hollows staring out into the void. Her bloodstained clothes.
Bane shook his head despite the pain, and felt rough scores in the floorboard beneath the bare tips of his tattered glove. He lowered his gaze, the strange shape, the strange marks inside it. Not too far from the strange shape (it's called a valentine heart), a word he knew. One of two words he knew how to spell in the tongue of mortal men.
Spite.
Bane lifted his head, his eye locked on Gina's.
"I knew it." She grinned, her bloodstained smile swollen in her broken face. "You knew it. Take that damned thing off, man."
Bane pushed himself back onto his knees.
"Come on, big guy. Let me see his face."
Bane reached for his mask, the last piece of what he used to be. He grunted as it slid up he face, and over the top of his head.
"You look like him. Like David." Gina laughed. "You're better looking. Scars, and all."
Bane touched his face. "Jonathan Walker..."
"...is dead. Yeah, you're not him. I know. I wanted to see who she loved so much... but those eyes. That eye."
Bane held a gloved hand over his empty socket.
Gina drowned. "That's not Jonathan I see."
Bane pulled his mask back over his face.
"That's fair. Shall we?" Gina lifted her pistol.
Bane rose up to his feet, and glanced at the dead Suheila on the floor over behind him, and then back to Gina. He drew his long blades.
Gina fired a sloppy shot, and it found purchase in Bane's shoulder. He flinched. She fired again, and the shot pushed Bane back a step. Bane rolled his head around in his neck. Gina aimed, hands shaking. She trained the sights on his throat, and squeezed the trigger.
Bane ducked the shot.
Gina stared down at her pistol, the sliderail locked back. She pulled the lone bullet from her lap as Bane advanced on her. Gina pushed the round into the empty chamber, and released the slide, chambering the round.
Bane was at her boots when he knelt. "Fast. Painless. Not a trophy." He pushed the tip of his long blades to her chest.
Gina brushed the blades aside with her pistol. "There's only one man who gets to play rough with me, big guy. Ain't you. If someone is going to kill me, it's gonna be a woman." Gina turned her pistol in on her chest, pressing the muzzle of the weapon over her heart.
"Wait."
Gina refused him.
Bane tilted his head, and flinched when she pulled the trigger, a spatter of blood spraying across his fractured mask.