Miller high life was one of the better beers when it came to the cheap stuff. First bottled sometime in the early twentieth century, this “champagne of beers” quickly rose to stardom as one of the better American pilsner’s on the market. In all honesty they hadn’t changed the sweet taste of it since the first long-necked bottle was first capped. It was a piece of Americana that you seemed to forget but always remembered. It was also the only thing palatable at the corner market.
Titus Morgan sat on the side of the street somewhere in Little Vietnam in the Ninth. Behind him the building cracked and popped while the fire in the first two floors continued to blaze like it did an hour prior. He was dressed in his normal executioner’s gear, save for the fresh layer of dirt, soot and blood (not his for the most part) that covered him. The only vibrant thing about him right now was his blue eyes that looked over the many emergency vehicles surrounding the building. The Location commander declared the old abandoned three-story a lost cause, so now they just made sure the fire didn’t spread from the lot it was in. As flames licked up to the third floor and the late morning sun began to peek over the buildings, Titus popped the cap to his fourth beer and reflected on how much trouble he’d be in once this got out.
It was a simple execution of a few new vampires that decided to turn Bourbon street into their own personal blood fountain. Three girls and two boys dead all in all, not including the vampires, were counted up at this recent rash of renegade vampires. Titus had made note at the start that he hadn’t seen any older vampires moving about recently, though he’d been getting execution reports from vampires no older than ten years old post death. Those were easier, they still held on to the mortal coil enough that they didn’t quite know how strong they were. It was good news for a mostly human executioner. So the warrants were signed and he came down to this little spot in the middle of the Ninth. Since Katrina, some of the newer breeds had been setting up shop here since the place still had a few dark corners. Titus knew this place well enough that he started calling it a second home. So Titus showed up bright and early and decided to get his execution on.
It was a pooch screw from the start. Titus got in simple enoughand found the den easy enough in the basement. These guys had the class enough to set up beds and a few amenities, but that was about it. Titus went to work as quickly as he could but the first shot he fired woke everyone up faster than he expected.
The next four hours were a cat and mouse game and Titus was wearing cheddar cheese boxers. It came down to the last one and Titus was unfortunately out of bullets. The last thing he remembered was popping a flashbang and shoving it into the mouth of the last vampire he thought was in there.There was a loud pop and a white flare from where the vampires head was, and then Titus was out.
He woke up with the room in flames. Hazy, Titus made it to the first floor as the floor started to buckle. He leaped across the chasm of flames and made it outside and into the morning sun. The rest was standard. Police and fire units arrived and Titus gave his statement. The smell of the building in flames could be smelt for miles around and the occasion hiss and pop of a vampires exploding shook some to the core. Titus just sat and gave his statement. To pass the time he went down to the corner store and picked up a six pack and then brought back a few dozen donuts for the crews sitting with him. It was his mistake so he thought free donuts was the least he could do.
He finished the six pack of High Life and then turned to the fire as the flames began to die down. The fire finally died down and he signed the warrant papers showing a successful execution. He’d have to move through the rubble to get an accurate head count but he was sure he had gotten all that had been warranted.
-When the call had come over the wire about a fire in the ninth, and the possibility of vampires in the rubble it had been flung to RPIT officers faster than you can say coffin bait. Regular outfits were already on their way from both the fire department and police station, but they wanted knowledgable people there in case one of the fangs got up out of the disaster zone and got a bit frisky. Not a bad plan since an accident in Seattle had something similar happen, guess you really could teach an old dog new tricks.-
-Chris was one of the detectives sent out to investigate the site, and when she crossed the yellow crime scene tape and looked over the rim of her glasses to see Titus standing there with one of the officers on duty she couldn't help but give a shake of her head. Moving towards where Titus was sitting with his beer and a box now nearly devoid of donuts she stood over him and made a soft sound clearing her throat to have him look up at her.-
"What is it with you Marshal boys? Can't do your jobs without setting a city block on fire? I swear ya'll are worse than the cops in movies."
-Around her she could hear the snickering of other officers, knowing they enjoyed any joke at the expense of the higher ups. But before they could really get their jollies she lifted a hand and used a finger to lower her mirror lensed sunglasses down her nose and stare at them with those primal amber lit eyes.-
"Don't you boys have better things to do than stand around here chowing on this mans donuts? This ain't a bad cop joke, now get your asses in gear."
-The ribbing could go both ways. Looking back down to Titus she held out a hand gloved in tight fitting brown leather and offered to pull him to his feet. Then she slipped the glasses off her face, folded the arms, and slid one of the arms into the pocket of her black jeans. Really she only wore them to keep the media from getting a shot of her eyes, but the uniformed officers were now maintaining the lines and keeping the camera crews back.-
"Here I thought we'd be meeting next over whiskey and a good steak." -Glancing back over her shoulder at the building that was now just smoldering rubble she chuckled.- "Guess this suits me more anyway. Come on hoss, I'm supposed to walk the perimeter with you before they can let the fire marshall or rescue crew through. They want to make sure everything that should be dead is dead before they start bringing the bodies out."
-Vampires were funny like that, sometimes you thought they were dead, and usually that was when they woke up and bit your damn neck out. Which was why any executioner, Federal or not, knew to make damn sure the undead were good and truly dead before declaring such. Moving alongside Titus she opened her shield enough to scan the area for the scent of the vampires he had killed, even after death that was a scent that lingered.-
"So, you wanna fill me in on what happened here? Or should I just wait to read it in the reports?"
Titus would be lying if he said the sight of Parker wasn’t refreshing. He had done away with the six pack a few minutes before then and was discussing the reasoning behind the burning building to one of the uniformed officers before she interjected.He smiled at the ones laughing, it was kind of funny and yeah he did set the building on fire.
“Well Detective Parker, I thought I’d get your morning started off right. A little arson and execution does the body good this early in the morning.” He took her hand, he wasn’t that proud, and stood up to his 6’3’’ status that he somehow kept bottled up. Few would say he was that tall because Titus tried to hide everything about him most times, save for when he had to intimidate, which wasn’t often. Titus gave his award winning smile that met his eyes before he turned towards the slowly smoldering building and offered her towards it. “Well the meeting with whiskey and steak is still on if you’re savvy. Aside from that,” Titus said as he began to walk the area around the collapsed building, “this was a routine job. Three to four youngbloods that were positively identified as the ones killing that string of people a few blocks off Bourbon, were hold up here. I got the execution order and arrived here at first light and went in. I executed the first one easily enough, but the other three were a bit…fighty.”
Titus bent down and looked into a hole where he assumed the basement was. The smell of charred body came up from the hole. “I got into a firefight that cost all my ammo, but downed two. Then the last one I had to go hand to hand with. Luckily he was young and didn’t realize the speed he had just yet. I popped a flashbang in his mouth and let it pop. It knocked me out for a few minutes and when I woke up the place was an oven. I guess they had a hobby of collecting gas soaked rags or something. I got out and then called it in. All in all a bad day.”
Titus stood back up and popped his back before looking back towards Parker. “I didn’t think I needed the back up. Lately I’ve been getting these little executions from baby vamps no more than a few months old. Someone turned them in Podunk, Mississippi and they came to New Orleans to get a taste of the sweet life. Personally I blame Anne Rice.”He rubbed his nose and then continued his walk of the area.
"I'm just gonna assume that you staked the place out first? Made sure no humans were squatting in here?" =A quizzical brow rose as she glanced over at him and asked the question that was probably more important than any other.= "It'd be a shame, but the Fire Marshal needs to know what he's sifting through once he gets his men in here."
=As they walked Chris kept her attention channeled through the essence of her beasts. The air was rich with smells that her mind had to sort through in rapid fire succession and try to determine what was important and what wasn't, and her ears strained to hear any type of movement beneath the rubble. Glancing towards the East where the sun was cresting the horizon and making the site look more garish by the moment.=
"Fuckin' daylight. I told the Cheif that any vamps would be dead bodies once the sun rose regardless, but that Seattle job has everyone all riled up." =It was in Seattle that a corpse had grabbed onto a human from the remains of a burnt out building and right there in the sunlight both corpse and human had gone up like a fireworks display. Would've been sort of interesting if it hadn't made the network news and scared the shit out of all the law abiding citizens who tuned into Fox.- "But you know how well they listen."
=Stopping at a particular spot she crouched down to peer into the rubble like an animal that's caught a whiff of scent from what it's tracking. One vamp, toasted, blood, the scents mingled in her nose and she reached in the pocket of her coat for a marker she could plant on the site to let the boys in blue know there was a body there. Then she stood and continued on her way beside Titus.=
"God I wish they were more like Anne Rice's vamps, well, more like Louis at least. If real vampires were as morose and emotional and self hating as Louis and Edward Cullen then our jobs would be a hell of a lot easier that's for sure."
=All told it would probably take them the better part of an hour to search the structure and let the firemen do their job on the wreckage. By then they were standing on the sidelines, Chris with her back leaned against a patrol vehicle as she watched the bodies of the vampires beind pulled out of the rubble. They were dead alright, shot, burned to shit, and right now the sunlight was frying them up even more beneath the sheets the EMTs were trying to lay over them.=
"You gonna head down to the morgue and sign off on the incinerations? I can give you a lift if you'd like."
“Yeah I walked the place from the third floor down. No other persons inside but the four. I got the four so it shouldn’t be dangerous save for the rubble itself.” Titus would have been able to determine if there were more vampires in there, but it was daylight and his power was nothing more than an itch behind the eyes. He bent down beside her as she took the scents in the air and made sense of them all. His nose wasn’t as good as hers and in his head he had cleaned out the vampires completely. All that was left was the double checking.
“Yeah, too bad fiction isn’t real. Executions would be a lot easier on the body” Titus was sure that he killed the four. Three of them with silver buckshot through the heart and the fourth was in fact missing his head.
Titus wiped the caked blood from his cheek and then continued on. When he got a chance he took a bit of water and cleaned his face off of the undead blood and leaned against one of the fire engines. He watched the teams clean up and now that he was warming a bench he took a moment to relax. Titus let out a small laugh as he watched the medical teams trying to protect a smoldering corpse. After a while they simply let it burn down.
“Yeah I could use a ride down there. I need to hand in the execution orders anyway.” He leaned forward at the waist and popped his back again, age. He was done here anyway. Save the rubbernecking for another day.
=Pushing away from the patrol vehicle she watched as Titus cracked his back and it made her lips curl in a vaguely amused smile. The huntress watched him as her beasts paced restlessly within her. This close to the scent of burnt flesh and recently spilled blood it took all of her carefully won control to keep the animals in the shadows from having their way with her. Sliding the sunglasses from her pocket she slipped them back on her face and gave a nod to Titus.=
"Just remember to smile for the camera boy and give them your good side."
=Chuckling she led him out past the yellow tape and through the small crowd of early morning pedestrians and reporters who had descended like vultures to see the crime scene. Her car wasn't parked far away, the 1969 Dodge Charger gleamed a perfectly polished black in the sunlight. Pulling the keys from the pocket of her bomber jacket she unlocked the doors and climbed inside waiting for Titus to join her.=
"So how long you been on the job Marshal?"
=There was a lot she didn't know about Titus, and despite what it sometimes seemed like all executioners weren't familiar with one another. Putting the car in reverse she looked out the rear window as she backed out of her parking spot and headed towards the street. The Charger handled like a dream on the asphalt as she steered towards the morgue.=
“I've been a Marshal for about eight years now. I signed up fresh out of the Rangers.”
Titus slid into the car with ease, being mindful of the vintage vehicle. He had no sunglasses on him, so his near emerald eyes were alive with what was going on around the crime scene. Amazingly he left no sign of his being there, not even a piece of soot. He had to admire classic vehicles and his 67 Impala was getting to be more of a priority than it was a wish list. Maybe he'd start on it next year.
As for the reporters, Titus had an innate ability that couldn't be counted as a power, but more of a luck thing. Whenever someone tried to take his picture he happened to be turning or moving in a way that blurred his face. It was hell on Christmas but he'd count it as a blessing nonetheless. The evening edition would show nothing but a blurred image or at best a picture of his ear.
“How long have you been an executioner?”
Titus actually knew a handful of executioners but that was about it. For his career he had kept to himself mostly and tried not to make enemies, which meant he also made few friends in the business.
=Her car was about the only thing she put love care and attention into on a regular basis. Some people preffered pets, she preferred good old fashioned Detroit steel. Being an only child, her father had related to her through cars. No matter what was going on in her life working on the car just seemed to calm her in a way nothing else really did. The leather seats were well maintained and soft, the interior pristine, and she felt comfortable caged inside the Charger.=
"That sounds about right. The timing I mean, when I got out it just seemed like a good option, something my superior told me about. They train us for it, and I don't think that's the sort of thing I could've been happy walking away from to pull down a nine to five. I know some people who did it and seem to enjoy the quiet life, but that was just never for me."
=She didn't have a great story about revenge seeking or any higher calling making her want to hunt down the bad guys. For Chris is was just simply that she'd been trained for this kind of work so she did it. Not much more to it than that. Glancing across at Titus she smiled as the sunlight made him squint.=
"When they gave us the option to go Fed it just wasn't right for me. I like being part of a team. Plus, truth be told I like sticking to one place and working there. A little stability isn't such a bad thing."
=Pulling into the parking lot of the county morgue she got that skin prickle reaction that her beasts always had to such places. She drove up to the front and pulled the car up next to the curb so that Titus could get out. Putting the parking break on she leaned back against her seat.=
"Want me to wait here and give you a ride to your car once you're finished up?"
“Yeah, once I got out of the seven five, there wasn't much more I thought I could do. I went into the Marshal's from the start though. At the time they weren't handing out licenses because of the bill so I just skipped the middle man. Besides, in my spec ops days I was kind of a maverick with what I was doing. Marshal work never bothered me, if I want to fight I can apply for field work, and if I want to relax I can sign in as a court Marshal. It suits my tastes.” Titus stared out the window as he said it, hands rested on his knees as he watched the world pass by. His story of revenge was still coming, still raw in his head, but that was for another time all together.
As they pulled up to the morgue's section of the police plaza, he straightened up. “Yeah, if you want that'd be great, if not I am sure I can find a ride back.” He left it up to her.
Once inside he went about his normal routine after an execution; He met the bodies at the door and signed off on each warrant as they passed him by. He checked for signs of life, though three of the four were missing their hearts and the fourth had no head to speak of. To be safe though, Titus staked the fourth on principal. After that, he handed the warrants over to the clerk for the bodies to be cremated immediately. The sun had done the majority of that work already, but the Judicial system demanded thoroughness.
He took an extra ten minutes, but showed up in the parking bay with a fresh Marshal's polo on with a pair of khaki cargo pants. He took a moment to wet-wipe his boots down and scrubbed his face in the bathroom in the Federal building next door. All in all Titus was gone for about twenty-five minutes. He carried a duffel bag with all of his body armor and the spare bits of executioner gear he had on. He looked like the poster boy for the modern day g-man, but this was all he had loose in his office and a person got a lot of looks riding around in full tactical body armor, even in New Orleans.
Smiling towards Parker, he walked up, opened the door, and slid into the passenger seat. “Once more, thanks for this, I'll owe you for it.” He pulled out his pair of red Oakley's from the side pocket of his pants and slid them on before they disappeared into the sunlight.
