A/N: So it's been two seasons since I posted the first chapter, which was originally going to be a one-shot. The show has had its up and downs since then, but I liked season 4 reasonably well (it couldn't get much worse than the last few episodes of season 3, after all). I was surprised by how much I liked human!Julius, and have been playing around with more mini-plots and backstory for this OC since writing the first chapter. I might continue this as a multi-part fic, revolving around the OC meeting/interacting with other characters in a disjointed but nearly-chronological fashion. I was thinking of doing Phil next, since I've really loved his arc these past two seasons.

I'll likely give it a few days, then rename the fic and keep Memory of the Sun as the first chapter's title.

Of Men and Monsters

As she often did whilst bleeding onto a beautiful forest floor, Fiona contemplated the events leading to her partnership with Dmitri.

The progression of history and time had always fascinated her; the never-ending cycle of action and reaction and consequence, of dominos falling one after another into perpetuity. If she had not attempted to kill the Red Baron; if he had not burnt her home and family to the ground on charges of witchcraft; if her mother had not taught her the ways of the old gods, of the power of blood and the earth; even if Julius Caesar had not conquered the Gauls, then she and Dmitri never would have met. She would have had no reason to be stealing into the room of the Red Baron the same night a visiting Russian diplomat was set to arrive; she would not have been caught by an unaccounted-for personal guard, would not have been thrown into the dungeons and beaten half to death, and would not have ran into a certain intrigued vampire in the resulting escape attempt.

That one night, the culmination of all the moments before it, had set her current path, and the falling of dominos in its wake had led her here, to staggering through a forest and a field before collapsing next to an ill-used dirt road. A few sparse trees lined it, and she dragged herself underneath one to lean against it's trunk, methodically shedding her jacket and shirt, applying blood to the black ink of a Celtic symbol that rested over her heart. Magic burned beneath her skin, the heat not quite painful, and with laborious focus the edges of the gash across her stomach began to close. In less than a minute, the spell was sapping her strength faster than the flow of blood was slowing, and she let it fade, chest heaving for breath.

"Caw." Devon said insistently, flitting from the ground to her knee; he would have preferred his rightful place on her shoulder, she knew, but her current state was making him too anxious to keep still.

"It'll be fine, Devon." Fiona assured him with a weak smile, slipping her ruined shirt and then jacket back on with as little grimacing and gasping as she could. "We've had worse. I'm sure they haven't."

The raven cocked it's head, hopping in place irritably. "Caw." He repeated, louder.

"If you're so bloody worried, go look. But I can't imagine any of them survived, and I need a rest."

Fiona's familiar ruffled his feathers, gave her knee a quick and somewhat rough peck, and lifted to the air in a flurry of noise. Fiona sighed heavily, gingerly pulling a flask and dagger from the various pockets of her jacket. Sometimes I wish he weren't so paranoid, she thought, taking a long drink from the flask and setting about carving a symbol into the bare expanse of skin that was her right forearm; at one glance it appeared to be an archaic Celtic sun, the next a tribalized flower. When she was done, she extended her arm to rest in the sunlight and called upon her dwindling reserves of magic to activate the spell, and the skin around the bleeding symbol turned greyish-green and spongy.

It was an interesting spell, one that allowed the caster to leech some energy from the sun's light; the advancements of science had taught Fiona that this was an imitation of photosynthesis. Still, it came with the ever-present cost of blood and energy to maintain, and if the ashy skies did not produce enough sunlight to surpass both the drain of magic and the normal functions of her wounded body, she could very well pass out, a possibility she weighed heavily as she sat in vampire-infested territory.

For a long while, she simply rested and allowed the spell to oh-so slowly pull together the skin on her stomach, sipping from her flask intermittently and keeping a vague awareness of Devon's location in the back of her mind.

As time dragged on, her mind wandered to her quarry, and her past experiences with him; though she could assume many things about the warlord, she truly knew admittedly little of Julius, even given their interactions, as Dmitri had once called them with a disapproving sneer. The line of thinking quickly brought her back to Dunsinane, the fortress she had constructed in the heights of the Rockies. There, supernatural beings were able to conduct business away from the dangerous eyes of the modern world. She had once managed much of her business and spent most of her time in that compound, yet she did not often miss it. There was a reason she had named it for the place where Macbeth's ambition became his downfall; one never felt quite safe there, surrounded by creatures who would so easily and willing kill someone like her if they so wished. Even with all the wards and magical oaths that prevented violence within its grounds, she'd always had to keep her guard up at Dunsinane, yet Julius's proximity was a reminder of the fun that could nonetheless be had in such a tense place.

Fiona didn't realize that she was nearly dozing until Devon's insistent pecking and approaching voices snapped her awake. One hand went automatically to her dagger, the other- the one with a fiery sun tattood on the palm- encircling the red pendant that hung from her neck. Three figures were coming into view from down the road, and with the ease they walked in the sunlight, they were human. The knowledge calmed her, if only somewhat; humans she could deal with.

One could almost imagine the group to be a family; a tall man, an athletic brunette, and a young girl. But as more details became apparent, reality slipped back in. The man was well over six foot and solidly muscled, dwarfing Fiona even from this distance; something about the shape of his face, the movement of his body, was familiar, but deija vu was not uncommon for a being as old as her, and she was more concerned about the rest of his group. A wicked black hand-ax and two pistols hung from the woman's belt, and the child's hands were loosely bound with thick leather straps connected by a small but solid chain.

The witch shifted at noticing that, bending one leg to better lurch to her feet if need be. The movement drew the group's eyes, and they froze in place, squinting at the humanoid form lounging at the base of a tree; the woman drew her ax. For a second, both parties simply surveyed the other. They were too far for Fiona to make out many details of their faces, but the fact that they didn't immediately try to kill her was perhaps a hopeful sign, and the insistent tugging of memory drew her curiosity to the man.

No sooner had the thought crossed her mind than the wind picked up, blowing her scent towards them, and the child suddenly darted forward, every inch of her body trained on Fiona with predatory intent. The witch's hand tensed around her dagger, Gaelic words resting on the tip of her tongue, but the girl had not gone ten feet before the woman lunged forward, snagging the girl's jacket and dragging her back, holding the child tight against her body. The girl struggled, hissing and twisting and trying to continue her path forward, and years of experience sent a wave of grief and anger through Fiona's cold heart as she recognized an un-child, a vampire turned well before maturity. Conversation passed quickly between the man and woman, the pair both glancing in Fiona's direction. She could not make out specific words from this distance, but she could recognize tone and body language; the woman was speaking softly, insistently, and the way she looked at Fiona- calculating, determined, yet with the barest hint of guilt- gave her the impression that perhaps now was not the time to appear disposable.

"I can help her." Fiona called; after all, she was a businesswoman at heart, and perhaps a deal could be struck. If not, drawing them closer would also bring them into range of her spells.

The pair paused, exchanged a glance. "How?" The brunette called back, incredulity lacing her voice.

"Let's have a talk, and I'll tell you."

The pair of adults huddled closer together, exchanging hushed conversation, after a moment they slowly began to close the distance between them. Seventy feet became fifty, then thirty, and Fiona's eyes widened in shock as she made out the details of the man's face.

Julius.

Another ten feet, and he stopped short, recognizing her as well; each stared at the other in shock, the woman looking searchingly between them.

"Fiona." He said dumbly, quietly, gaping at her with chocolate-brown eyes and sun-warmed skin. A thousand thoughts flew through her head: meetings at Dunsinane; the current tensions between Julius and Dmitri; the carnage both were capable of. Her mind focused in, oddly enough, on Balthazar. Zar had headed the Elites for nearly half a century, been among their ranks for another two decades before that, and the restoration of his humanity by the Van Helsing girl had changed neither his station nor his loyalties. Yet two hundred years had honed Fiona's insight and intuition to a dangerously fine edge, and something about the cast of Julius's face and set of his body suggested a much more drastic alteration.

"You know each other?" The woman asked, though the real question was obvious in the mistrust of her eyes as they flickered from witch to warlord: How do you know her? What sort of villain is she? It snapped Fiona back to the reality and immediacy of the situation; she forced the shock from her features and plastered a wicked grin onto her face, sweeping a gaze up and down the man.

"Humanity looks good on you, Julius." She said with a wink, and the warlord's face flushed, eyes not quite seeming to meet hers for several seconds. Then an idea seemed to poke through the racing mind that accompanied their current meeting, and Julius suddenly snapped his gaze down to meet hers, deep anger burning in chocolate-brown eyes.

"Did Dmitri send you?"

"Dmitri?" The woman- the Van Helsing, Fiona's addled brain finally realized- snarled, pulling the unchild back as her grip on the ax tightened; disgust and hate washed immediately over her face as she glared down at the witch. Fiona noted the reaction from her peripheral, but found herself unable to tear her gaze from Julius's form. She'd seen him box once when he was human, but to see him like that again, after eighty years of blood and debauchery, was hard to process. The warmth and health in his complexion was a sharp contrast to skin that had once been cool to the touch; the initial absence of tension, of hardness on his face suggested something almost like gentleness, a foreign idea to try to associate with this hulking warlord.

"Come on, Caesar, you know me better than that. The leeches can't send me anywhere I don't want to go."

Julius began to say something decidedly contrary in tone, but Vanessa abruptly cut him off. "Why are you here?" There was no attempt to hide the aggression, no effort put into concealing the bloodlust. If Julius had not been so relatively calm, Fiona got the distinct sense that that ax would be against her neck by now. She regarded Vanessa for a long moment, and found herself searching for more of Gabriel in her; perhaps one day she would stop comparing every Van Helsing she met to that one, but it seemed that that day had not yet come.

"I wanted to see what all the commotion was about." Fiona said with a shrug. "It's not everyday that someone lands a blow on the Czar, but it seems you can do more wondrous things than that." She nodded to Julius at the last statement, once again taking in the all-too-human pallor of his skin and cast of his eyes.

"Oh, I'm full of surprises." Vanessa said, lips pulling back into a predatory smile. There you are, Gabriel, Fiona thought bitterly.

"I'm sure you are." The witch returned levelly, not a hint of centuries-old loathing in her voice before she was once again drawing her gaze back to Julius. "Stick with her, Caesar, and you probably won't make it through this mess."

Julius didn't seem to notice the quip; he was staring at her intensely, rage and, more startlingly, grief painted across his face.

"Did you kill my mother, Fiona?" He asked, low and hoarse; she'd never seen this kind of emotion on him before, and for a moment she didn't even comprehend the statement. When it finally registered, she let the confusion play across her face.

"Why on God's bloody earth would I kill your mother?"

"Dmitri sent someone to kill her- to punish me." He took a threatening step forward, started to say more, and several things happened at once. Fiona instantly shot to her feet- or tried to, anyway. Her feet were under her when dizziness hit her head and red-hot pain shot across her stomach, the half-healed gash tearing slightly at the sudden exertion. She all but collapsed back against the tree, hand shooting to her stomach, trying to staunch the flow of blood.

Van Helsing and Julius had both tensed at the sudden movement, weapons held ready to strike, but neither them nor Fiona had the most volatile reaction to the situation; that came from Devon, who, at his companion's sudden pain and fear, shot forward in a fury of black feathers, screaming and clawing. He was on Julius in a heartbeat, talons tearing through the arm the warlord threw up to protect his eyes. His forearm was a bloody mess by the time Fiona could fully comprehend the commotion.

Bloody fucking- She let out a shrill whistle, and Devon shot back to her shoulder, feathers puffed up to nearly twice his regular size. Julius was cursing, Van Helsing was yelling, and Fiona calmly ignored them both, soothing Devon's feathers down with a blood-soaked hand.

Julius abruptly fell silent, and Vanessa wavered, looking at him questioningly. He stared at Fiona, wide-eyed, his torn and bleeding arm caught halfway lowered from his face.

"You're hurt." The blatant concern caught her off guard; it was not a trait she had ever associated with him.

"So are you. Sorry about that. You know how dramatic Devon can be."

Annoyance blunted the empathy, and for a minute he was almost familiar. He had never been a fan of her deflections- or perhaps it was just their frequency that aggravated him.

"What happened?" He took a tentative step forward, and Devon let out a sharp warning caw, feathers puffing up again.

"Hush, Devon." Fiona chastised, sliding back down the tree trunk, and Julius eased forward- a watchful eye on the raven- to stand in front of her. His looming might have been imposing, if he weren't looking at her with near puppy-like eyes. She searched his face for a long moment, and let out a derisive snort that immediately stretched into a grimace. "Seeing you like that is… odd, but I can't say I'm surprised."

It was more deflecting, and he let out a bemused huff. "Why's that?"

"Good men make the worst monsters." It was meant as a statement of fact, perhaps even as a compliment, but Julius dropped his gaze, face falling into a century's worth of guilt and shame, and Fiona felt a familiar stab of guilt. She often spoke too bluntly, too harshly to her people at Elsinore when returning from a trip; working with blood-suckers led to a certain forgetfulness about the existence of human emotions.

"Apologies, Julius." Fiona said genuinely, and his head snapped up, unsure and evaluating. To further the sentiment, she added, "And if you must know, I made one too many snarky comments to the Princess. She sent some Elites to remind me of my manners- some of Zar's. You just can't train them like he did, especially now that he's dead. Such a waste."

"Anastasia's out here?" Julius asked, equal parts surprised and uneasy, and Fiona grinned.

"No one was more surprised than I when that particular gopher finally left her hole. Don't worry, she's not around here. Devon clocked her yesterday, twenty miles to the south and heading west."

"How many with her?" Van Helsing interjected, glancing around wearily; Fiona noted that she did not seem surprised by knowledge, and came to the sudden revelation that the boy who had been traveling with her- Muhammed, whom Dmitri had thought held such potential- was nowhere to be seen. Fiona swept a honed gaze up and down the Van Helsing and the un-child, looking for anything else she had missed in her wounded and surprised state.

Finally, she answered, "Three. How many did she have when she found you?"

The air seemed to shift, making room for the sudden tension. The brunette's jaw clenched, and she twirled the ax around her hand in a decidedly aggressive fashion. "You tell me. Seems like you know them pretty well. What are you, exactly?"

Fiona flashed her coldest smile and said, low and smooth, "Oh, I'm a lot of things. Deal-maker, patron of wounded creatures, friend to most and enemy to few. I've stood with and against monsters you've never even heard of." She paused, preparing for the reaction to her next words and glancing disdainfully to that ax. "But more importantly, lass, I'm out of your bloody league."

Fiona expected some kind of outburst, most likely physical and most likely dramatic; Gabriel certainly wouldn't have stood for such a direct insult. Instead, Vanessa snorted derisively.

"That's a lot of talk for someone who can barely stand." She said, and the Celt grinned.

"Fiona-" Julius warned, immediately alarmed. The word was only halfway from his mouth when Fiona placed a blood-soaked finger to her eyelid and uttered a single syllable in Gaelic. For a fraction of a second, nothing seemed to happen.

"What the fuck did you do!" Vanessa screeched, cradling Dylan to her, ax held in front of them as though to ward off an attack. Her eyes were cloudy and white, completely blind.

"Fiona!" Julius snapped, taking a step towards Vanessa as though to help, and thinking better of it when the ax was jerked to point towards the sound.

"Give it back!" Vanessa snarled, panic and aggression lacing her voice in equal measures. "I'll rip you to fucking pieces! Give it back"

Fiona winked at Julius, tapped a finger against her lips, and silently mouthed another Gaelic word. When she next spoke, her voice sounded from behind Vanessa.

"I'm quaking in my boots, truly." She intoned, and Vanessa whirled to face the phantom voice, ax flashing dangerously through the air.

"Fiona, that's enough." Julius interjected sternly. "You made your point."

"Why do I get the feeling that you're not as much fun as you used to be?" The witch replied lightly, snapping her fingers. Sight returned, it took a solid second for the disoriented Vanessa to get her bearings and turn to face the pair once again.

"Do that again-" Vanessa began menacingly.

"Really? You think another threat is the way to go?" Fiona challenged, and Vanessa paused. "Now, lets at least act like we're civilized people."

Silence stretched for a long second before Vanessa asked, "What are you, some kind of witch?"

Fiona grinned wickedly. "Aye. A world class draio fala. What you modern kids might call a hemomancer or a warlock. I'm probably the oldest living blood-witch in the States."

The Celt saw Van Helsing's interest catch on the term blood witch, and watched her connect the term to Fiona's initial offer about Dylan. "You said you could help her."

"For a price, and with certain… supplies. Luckily, I'm feeling quite generous." She waved her bloodied hand pointedly.

"And the price?" Julius queried.

"You always had plenty of blood to spare, Caesar. I'll do what I can for the girl, after I've done what I can for me."

"What can you do for her?" Vanessa challenged, with renewed suspicion.

"Well, there is a chance that I could turn her back."

The pair of humans stared at Fiona for a second, gaping, before both spoke at nearly the same time.

"Are you sure?" Van Helsing asked; she was trying so hard to appear deadly serious, but desperate hope was creeping into her eyes.

"Wait, how long have you been able to do that?" Julius followed a half-second later.

"Almost a century." Fiona said to Julius. To Vanessa, she said, "There's a chance. The young and the willing are easiest to turn, but nothing is guaranteed."

"Hold on," Julius interjected, "So when we were-" He glanced almost imperceptibly at Vanessa, and instead said, "When we worked together, you could have turned me back?"

Fiona, unable to tell quite how he felt about that- and doubting if even he knew- simply shrugged. "Sure, I could have. And you would've fought me every second of it, and probably been promptly murdered if it'd worked." She, too, glanced to Vanessa and back, and with a near-lecherous grin added, "Handsome vamps aren't so easy to find that I'd just throw one away. Not before I'm done with 'em, anyway."

Julius blushed deeply as Vanessa looked between them, distinctly uncomfortable. "This ritual of yours," she said, pointedly changing the subject, "What happens if it doesn't work?"

"Not much. A bit of retching and spasming, but nothing fatal, if that's what you're worried about."

Van Helsing paused, evaluating. "Alright. Say we try your ritual, and it doesn't work. What do we get out of helping you then?"

"Fair question. Your kid doesn't look like she's in great shape. The un-children need to feed often, and if all else fails, I just so happen to be a great blood-bag." Fiona began to push herself to her feet, and Julius offered a hand, which she took. He hauled her up, and she swayed slightly, right hand keeping pressure on her stomach as she extended the left towards Vanessa. "Those are my offers. Do we have a deal, Van Helsing?"

Vanessa stared into her for a long second, hate and suspicion and hope in her eyes, before she sheathed her ax and shifted her body sideways, holding a newly-struggling Dylan away from the witch. The pair shook hands.

"Splendid. Now, for our first order of business." She turned back to Julius and drew her dagger from her jacket, flipping it deftly around her hand to offer him the handle. "Prick your finger with that."

"Just a prick?"

"Aye. Humans can be fragile, and a slower flow of blood will keep things from moving too fast." She leaned back against the tree, pale and unbalanced despite her unconcerned facade, and shed her jacket. Julius did as he was asked, and Vanessa pulled Dylan a few yards back, predicting the struggle that came when the young vampire saw fresh blood.

"A tiny bit bigger." Fiona instructed, rolling up her left sleeve to reveal lean, hard muscle underneath an interlocking web of Celtic tattoos, the symbols beginning at the palm and disappearing, seemingly without pause, under her shirt. Julius again dug the point of the dagger into his index finger, barely wincing as blood welled to the surface. "That'll do. Hold that finger on this symbol on my shoulder. Next one down- there ya go. Now, mate, here comes the important part: I need to know if you start feeling light-headed, cold, clammy, or if your hand goes numb. Try to be a tough guy about it and you might lose that finger."

"Okay, I hear ya'." Julius affirmed. Then he added, with a quizzical look, "Were there always this many side effects?"

"Oh, sure. But vamps are tougher, and more expendable- don't give me that look. I wasn't any more reckless with your life than you would've been with mine." As magic knitted the flayed skin on her side back together again, Fiona nodded towards Dylan and asked, "Who sired her?"

Vanessa gave her a black look. "Your friends didn't tell you?"

Fiona had invested enough of her concentration into magic that the term 'friends' did not immediately clarify the answer. Then Julius said softly, knowingly, "They didn't. She doesn't approve of-" he gestured noncommittally towards Dylan.

Rebecca.

That highborn prick said he'd keep her in line. Bloody leeches and their bloody schemes.

"I should have fried her." Fiona said venomously, mostly to herself. "I had her life in my bloody hands, and I let him talk me out of it." She shook her head as though to clear it. "I'll need a reasonably fresh vial of the bitch's blood for the ritual. Five milliliters will do, but the more the better."

Vanessa's face fell, and Julius shot her a sympathetic look. Fiona glanced between them, eye narrowing.

"She wasn't turned the normal way." Vanessa explained. "They did it in a lab. That doctor, Sholomenko, he said she'd die if I turned her back."

The Celt pursed her lips. "That's a complication. He has a mind to rival Mendel, if not an ounce of his balls. I suppose I can find him and pick his brain. You say you've talked to him. Where did you see him last?" Vanessa glanced away, lips pressed into a thin, angry line. Fiona frowned, and pressed, "And they had to use a sample from someone to transmit the virus, so I'll still need the sire's blood."

"They're dead. Both of them."

"Well, fuck." The witch said with her usual elegance, unsurpised. "I should've guessed that a Van Helsing would go on a killing spree."

"You work with vampires, and you're going to lecture me about killing people?" Vanessa snapped.

"Pardon me for holding humans to a higher moral standard than the leeches."

"Fiona," Julius cut in before either could throw more insults, "Is there anything else you could use? Maybe my blood could work. Me and Rebecca were turned by the same person-"

"Look, Caesar, you can't just pull a I Can't Believe It's Not Butter substitution with blood-magic rituals." The warlord appeared wildly confused by the statement, so Fiona clarified, "I need the real thing, and without the blood of the sire, there's not much I can do." The Celt glanced to the un-child again, then to Vanessa, adding, "I'm sorry. All I have to offer her now is a meal."

Uneasy surprise entered Van Helsing's face at the seemingly genuine apology, followed by a flicker of hope at the prospect of feeding her child.

"And you won't turn if she bites you?"

"Not with magic and a little vigilance." She mumbled a few words in Gaelic and added to Julius, "Hand me your other arm." He did as he was told, expecting her to collect more blood from the deep scratches in his forearm, but instead she gently held his wrist in her hand and passed a hand up his arm, repeating that same foreign phrase. His skin became almost uncomfortably warm under the touch, but the wounds began to knit themselves back together as the hand passed over them. "You're good, mate. Thanks for the donation."

Julius dropped his hand from her shoulder and leaned on the tree next to her, distantly amazed by the improvement a few minutes of magic had made in her; the Celt's face was no longer tensed in pain, and her movements were surer, her complexion warmer. For having been used to produce this wondrous effect, he himself felt only one small side-effects, with his heart pounding as though he'd been sprinting. The witch settled smoothly on the ground again, drawing her flask from her jacket and looking back up at Vanessa and Julius.

"The kid has three minutes once I start this next spell- less, if she's sucking me dry too fast. Witch's blood has a certain allure to it, and the kid's starving already, so she's not gonna be easy to pry off me." She stared intently into Vanessa's face as she added, "If you don't get her under control quick enough, I will, and it'll sting."

Vanessa's mouth set itself into a hard line, but she nodded. She drew Dylan closer, the girl primed to fall upon the Celt at the slightest opportunity. Julius shifted closer, ready to intervene if she latched onto anything more vital than an arm. Fiona took a deep breath and long drink from her flask, noted the time, and recited a string of words in Gaelic. She held her bare forearm out with resignation.

It did not take much guidance from Vanessa for the unchild to clamp down on the arm with hands and teeth, fangs sinking into the vein of the wrist. Fiona grimaced and thumped her head back against the tree, cursing lowly in what sounded suspiciously like Russian; the child certainly had no concept of gentalness.

"How's Cormac?" Julius asked conversationally, a thinly veiled attempt to use one of her favorite subjects to distract her from the dagger-like teeth shifting in her arm. Fiona flashed a rare gentle smile for the sentiment.

"My pride and joy, as always. He's grown into the finest druid on this side of the Atlantic."

"Better than you?" Julius teased, folding his hulking form to sit next to her.

"Another decade and he will be. I've got experience on him, but I never had a particular talent for the earth magics. If Gaelic were his native tongue, he'd have been unparalleled in the Druidic arts years ago." There was no small amount of pride in Fiona's voice.

"You have a kid?" Vanessa asked as she took in their conversation, judgmental and almost suspicious.

"Cormac isn't my- well, that's not true. He isn't blood, though." Fiona glanced towards Dylan, and for a long moment those dark green eyes were far, far away. She took a long drink from her flask, and the grim, sympathetic look Julius was given her made her suspect that he knew she was thinking of her own children. He should have known little about them, and likely wasn't even sure exactly how many she'd had, but he knew that they had met early and gruesome deaths.

"Quick looking at me like that, Caesar. It's too weird seeing pity out of you." Fiona glanced at her watch and then to Vanessa, seemingly oblivious to Julius's sheepish expression. "Sixty second countdown, Van Helsing."

Julius stood, bracing to help. Vanessa tightened her grip on Dylan's collar and wrapped an arm around her small waist, and Fiona yelped as the unchild immediately clamped down on her wrist, hard.

"Vanessa-!" Julius exclaimed, worried, at the same time that Fiona snapped, "Van Helsing!"

The pair were able to pry Dylan from the witch's arm, the latter shouting curses in various languages all the while. The minute the unchild was relieved of Fiona's wrist, the Celt cradled it to her chest, drawing a clean rag from her discarded jacket's pocket and pressing it to the wound, speaking smoothly in Gaelic. She noticed that Vanessa was watching the ritual keenly, though Julius, having observed the practice several times before, was much more interested in bear-hugging a thrashing Dylan into submission.

Fiona deftly tied a strip of cloth around her wrist using teeth and one hand, and climbed to her feet to slip her jacket back on. Devon alighted to land on her shoulder, rubbing his head affectionately against her jaw.

"It's been a- well, its been something doing business with you, Van Helsing. Julius, come here a minute. I've got something to show you."

Julius glanced to Vanessa and passed Dylan off to her, and crossed to stand before the Celt. The raven eyed him distrustingly, and Fiona glanced towards Vanessa with a similar expression.

"Transference," She explained simply, and Julius, familiar with this vaguery, leaned down slightly so she could place two fingers to his forehead. Vanessa watched around Julius's shoulder as Fiona's eyes turned cloudy and white, as though no pupil or iris had ever existed. A moment later, the witch blinked, normal eyes returned, and they broke apart. "It's called Elsinore. There's a pocket of human civilization there. If you ever get tired of trailing at Van Helsing coattails, you're welcome there."

Julius grinned. "You tryin' to recruit me?"

"Course I am. Look, mate, I don't know what you think of yourself right now, but I've watched you for over eighty years. You're tough, you're good-hearted, and you're smarter than you let on. And that's without the training I know you have. We'd be grateful to have you. Just keep the location to yourself, yeah? There's not a vamp out here that knows about it, and I want to keep it that way."

"What, not even Dmitri?"

"Fuck no. That highborn prick is a good ally and a horrible houseguest. He thinks every place is his." She glanced towards Vanessa, ignoring the way the women glared at her with renewed murderous intent. "There's a couple with a camp 'bout thirty miles northwest of here. They take in kids, sometimes help out travelers. Stay away from them. An unchild could get close enough to rip them apart."

"And why should I care about friends of yours?"

"I'm a neutral party, Van Helsing. I run supplies and jobs for every major organized faction in this wasteland, and a good few of the minor ones. These friends happen to be good people who know nothing about you. I, on the other hand, have lived long enough to see that death follows Van Helsings like a shadow, and unlike yer cult of a family, I'd like to spare as many civilians as possible."

Vanessa narrowed her eyes at the Celt, no doubt sensing a deeper chasm of emotion running underneath the last statement. There was personal history there.

"What do you know about my family?"

The witch smiled, thin and cold. "That he who hunts monsters should be careful not to become one. Devon, find me a path, north by northwest." The raven lifted to the air with a satisfied cry. Fiona put two fingers to her forehead in a lazy mock salute to Julius. "I hope to see you at Elsinore, Julius."

"Yeah. Maybe one day." His tone suggested that he very much doubted that eventuality. The witch smiled wryly, shot one last disapproving glance to Vanessa, and spun on her heels, meandering off the road and following the raven's silhouette through an open, overgrown field. She half expected to feel an ax being buried into her back, especially when she heard hush voices rise from behind her, but Julius and the Van Helsings slowly faded into the distance as she walked. When they were finally out of sight, Fiona let out a deep sigh, some of the tension leaving her muscles.

Devon swooped down to join her as she walked, and she extended a forearm for him to land. He cocked his head at her, a deep rasping sound rumbling from the back of his throat.

"Yeah, it is bloody weird. A human Julius, and a half-breed Van Helsing. Hey, is that why you were such a dick to Julius?"

The raven replied with a rumbling, almost grating sound.

"Fair, I guess. I'm more surprised about Vanessa. This is the first we've walked away from a Van Helsing better than we walked in. But good God did she remind me of Gabriel at times."

Devon made a comforting clicking sound with his beak, and Fiona stroked the feathers on his chest.

"Thanks, mate. Follow them a bit, see which way they go. They were good sports. We'll give 'em a few days head start before we tell Dmitri."

Devon cocked his head, clucked at her disapprovingly, and shot into the air anyway. Fiona watched him go and then drew her flask, sipping it as she strolled leisurely through fields and forests, enjoying the physicality of the travel.

She really had been spending too much time administrating. Perhaps she would stay in the field for a while longer, and see how things played out.