@fatheralexanderfanderson Here’s a short little bit of writing from the perspective of Iscariot, finding out Father Anderson’s become a vampire. I certainly hope it’s to your liking!
“St. Ferdinand’s Orphanage is under attack!” ranked pretty much near the bottom on the list of things the Iscariot Operative expected to hear when he woke up this morning. Straight out of bed to hear the alert that one of the most secure locations in the Vatican had taken a hit. Nobody quite knew just what was going on.
Communications were jammed quite badly, with a thousand different calls going in and out from a thousand different operatives in a hundred different locations.
“Somebody get Maxwell on the horn!”
“Are the children safe?”
“Where’s Anderson?”
Anderson and two squads of Iscariot agents were all that had been stationed in the orphanage. Usually, that was all that would ever be needed to hold off any threats to the childrens’ safety.
Maxwell was off conversing with Section III: Matthew agents, somewhere deep in the Vatican.
Yumiko and Heinkel had been elsewhere, performing their holy duties somewhere not privy to the Iscariot rank-and-file.
The Operative and roughly a platoon of others had been sent to the Orphanage as part of a second wave of reinforcements. The first wave had assisted in evacuating the children and the Matron, as well as any surviving non-combatant personnel. All survivors from the first wave rendezvoused with his platoon, and they established a perimeter around the Orphanage.
All of the children were shuttled into vans, taken as far from St. Ferdinand’s Orphanage as they could go. The Matron had told them something about a rat infestation, the Operative couldn’t hear over the commotion inside.
God Almighty and Lord Jesus, whatever was going on inside can’t have been pretty. All security systems were down, and nobody could reach Father Anderson or any of the members of the two squads that went in with him. The Matron and a technical specialist were working to reestablish communications with inside, though she was having much more luck in this endeavor.
He didn’t like not knowing what was going on. Nobody did. Especially not the Matron. The stream of expletives coming from the smaller woman’s mouth as she worked were… Let’s just say the Operative was glad the children weren’t there to hear it.
It had taken several hours, but they were able to get some of the security cameras back up and networked again. They had been severely damaged in the attack, only four or five cameras of the original several dozen were still working. What these cameras were showing was… Not good.
The interior of the orphanage was a mess. There was blood everywhere. And… The bodies. Not a single one of the rank-and-file troops sent in with Anderson was still breathing. And as for Anderson…
Oh, Heavens above.
The red eyes. The fangs.
“Someone… Someone tell Bishop Maxwell right NOW!” It had been the Matron who spoke. She singled out someone to tell the Bishop the bad news and jumped into action, barking orders left and right. Mostly to get hammers, nails, and Bibles. The platoon-and-a-half of Iscariot agents began nailing pages above windows, doors, anywhere Anderson could conceivably exit the building.
The way the Matron talked about it, this wasn’t the first time he’s lost control and become vampirized. Something to do with his nanomachines. But this was the first time this had happened in the confines of the Orphanage.
It had taken less than half an hour to cover the windows and doors of the building. Now they just had to sit and wait. For two days.
An hour after the call had been made to Maxwell, they were informed that the Swiss Guard had been fully mobilized to secure the Pope and the College of Cardinals. The second one, which sent a chill down the spines of all present, was that the Papal Knights of the Military Order of Santo Stefano di Toscana were on standby if the situation got bad enough.
They all hoped against hope that the situation wouldn’t escalate that far. The Papal Knights were, next to Father Anderson himself, the premier vampire hunting force of the Vatican. These guys didn’t get called in unless the situation was bad enough to demand a full-fledged crusade.
But the thought of what Father Anderson could do, were he to escape the building… It would certainly call for that kind of force to put him down.
A shout came from inside. It was his voice, Anderson’s voice. Loud enough to be heard clearly even through the walls of the Orphanage.
“Children! Nothin’ tae fear from me! Come le’ me out an’ we’ll all have ae good laugh about it!” A collective shudder went through the bodies of all of the Iscariot agents present to hear that.
As the evening turned to night, they could still hear him shouting. Shouting to be let out, shouting for others to come in. And the blaspheming. They decided as a whole that Father Anderson, when he came back to his senses, could NEVER be allowed to find out the kind of things he’d been saying as a vampire. The sheer shock of it, they were sure the man’s soul couldn’t take it.
A vampire Anderson. And they had to wait and stand guard for two days.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, this was going to be a long two days.
The Rose-Clad Demon Doctor 