Black-Winged Angels

A crossover between The Crow: Stairway to Heaven and Vampire Hunter D

© 2002 Lucidscreamer (aka Cyberkat)

Disclaimer: Vampire Hunter D belongs to Urban Vision, Streamline Pictures, Hideyuki Kikuchi; The Crow: Stairway to Heaven (and Hannah Foster) belongs to James O'Barr, Pressman, etc. For entertainment purposes only. No monetary compensation is being made from this story, and no infringement of any kind is intended nor should be implied.

Warnings: Rated R for violence and dark themes; some 'adult' language.

Author's Note: There are no "pairings" in this story, nor romance. It is action/horror with a touch of cyberpunk-Western/gothic sci-fi for good measure. I have attempted to recreate the 'feel' of D's strange future world, as well as to remain true to the characters (as portrayed in the two VHD movies and on TC:StH). I hope you will enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Black-Winged Angels

(1)

And I may return if dissatisfied with what I learn from having died.

Robert Frost

She had been walking for days, or maybe it was weeks now. Time was no longer a priority in Hannah Foster's life, and hadn't been for centuries. One day bled into the next with a stultifying sameness that would have sucked the will to live right out of her...if she'd had any will to live left. And if she were alive.

She hadn't been truly alive for more years, hell, more millennia, than she cared to think about... or to remember.

The ground was hard and dry beneath her feet, and with each measured step, her heavy black boots kicked up a small cloud of dust. Along the roadside, the weeds were yellowing, wilting in the late summer heat. The arid, stultifying odor of parched earth and dying vegetation filled her nostrils when she took an unnecessary breath. Even the wind was silent; only the occasional distant bird call or faint insect rattle stirred the oppressive stillness. The air was thick with heat and tasted brittle, like the sun-baked grass and earth.

Despite the sweltering temperatures, Hannah walked easily, her fair skin oddly unstained by perspiration. Her short black hair and worn, utilitarian clothes spoke of an individual more concerned with ease of care than fashion, and her boots were hard-wearing and comfortable. A good thing, since she had used them a great deal since the loss of her last means of transportation. She still hadn't forgiven the werewolf for slashing open her horse's belly and spilling its biomechanical innards all over the ground.

Of course, the werewolf hadn't been too happy when she had promptly returned the favor.

But, as momentarily satisfying as her retaliation had been, it still left her on foot. She scuffed one boot in the dust and wondered idly how far it was to the next town. Out here on the frontier, human settlements were few and far between. Not many survived the harsh landscape and strange, mutant creatures-some the product of twisted nature, others the warped output of long-abandoned laboratories. Still, there was the road which, though sparsely traveled, wasn't entirely overgrown with grass and weeds. That meant people somewhere in the vicinity, perhaps a village or a small town. Maybe she could purchase a new mount there.

As if conjured by the almost wistful thought, the muted thunder of horse's hooves sounded behind her. Turning, she saw a lone rider on a cyborg horse approaching at a gallop. The rider was dressed all in black, his face mostly obscured by the wide brim of his traveler's hat and the high collar of his cloak. The wind of his passage swept his cloak behind him like a pair of great, dark wings. He carried a long sword on his back, the hilt just visible over one shoulder.

Hunter, she thought, seeing the sword, seeing the black armor beneath the billowing folds of the cape. And in a hurry.

He rode past her without stopping, for which she was grateful. She was tired of fighting, tired of men who saw a solitary woman and had only one thought. Tired of the imperative of kill or be...well, not killed. Not exactly.

Even after all this time, she still hadn't come up with the proper word for this state of existence, this damned limbo in which she dwelled, neither fully alive nor completely dead. This perpetual hell on Earth.

She laughed softly, amused by her own melodramatic musings. Drama Queen of the Damned. She shoved her spiky bangs back from her eyes and watched the rider disappear into the distance, a swirl of dust hanging in his wake like a disturbed wraith. Hell, maybe she should've asked him for a lift. Fending off a few unwelcome advances might have been preferable to however many more miles of her own foolish reveries. Not that he'd given her the opportunity to ask.

A shadow fell over her, racing along the parched road ahead of her, then wheeling back. With a sense of foreboding, she stopped and held out her arm. A few seconds later, the huge bird landed on her forearm, its talons digging into her flesh with painful familiarity, and regarded her with intelligent black eyes.

In its wicked beak, the crow held a child's silver rattle.

Hannah sighed, resignation and fresh anger welling up in her as she reached for the crow's tainted offering. As soon as her fingers touched the toy, the child's fear flooded her mind. Her hand clenched around the rattle, tight enough for the seams in the metal to bite into her palm, as the images assaulted her.

A broken window, a darkened room.

A sleeping babe.

Hands as white as moonlight reaching into the child's crib and lifting the baby, who cries, frightened at being handled so roughly by a stranger. The silver rattle, falling unheeded to the floor. Fog swirling at the open window. The sparkle of ruby eyes shining in the starlight. A woman and... blood.

Lots of blood.

The empty crib and a mother's anguished screams...

"Damn." Her own heart clenching with remembered anguish, Hannah broke from the vision and carefully tucked the baby's rattle into her pocket. A black tear glinted in the corner of her eye, but her expression held only resolve as she met the patient gaze of the crow. "Show me."

The bird took wing, gliding swiftly along the road in the direction the lone rider had taken. Hannah followed at a run, her boots pounding on the hard-packed earth, the heat and her futile thoughts forgotten. There was only one thing on her mind now.

She had a job to do.