Update: 2/05/07: Chapters 3-11 have been reposted, unedited. I'm going to finish this thing first before any edits. and as one final message: AH 1 will be my final story in this account. The sequels, AH 2 and 3 will be on the accounts of aka Meteor-Infinity and Underground Constellation. Heh... after that? New account probably, start again unknown and fresh.

Update! A/N update Jan 18 2007: Now that it is my birtday, I have decided in a new solution for old and new readers alike. After several days of debating and planning; I have decided to use THIS current storyline and continue it. Angel's Halo: Requiem of Tears will still be posted, which will be used as sort of a prologue story for our vampire hero, Dante.

Angel's Halo 1 will be continued, and chapters will be brought back, maybe slowly. There will be some changes, minor at the very least (like the Dante-Raye relationship, most notably). Old readers of this baby, stand by, be patient, and get ready to be blown away once again! (editing will take a while, so be patient while I repost ch1 and 2 (note: not edited yet!))

(Update: 2006) A/N: Yeah! I started writing again! I decided to write the new version of Angel’s Halo. If you read this before, expect this one to be more bigger, badder, and longer. There are several things I added to the story, along with changing several other little things, which hopefully answers some of the holes I left in the original.

Chapter 1

Tonight, she would be the ninth, the ninth victim of a rape-murder spree. After midnight she would be raped, killed, and then dumped somewhere in the alleys of the city.

Like the others, she was young, recently turning nine a month ago. In her way home from school, she was kidnapped by a group of kidnappers, her guardian murdered on the very spot. She was brought somewhere blindfolded, in a room where there other girls like her, kidnapped, alone, and scared.

For the past few days, one of them would be randomly selected, never to come back again. A few hours ago, another one was taken, leaving her alone in that room, trying to hide in the corner, covered by a ragged blanket, hoping, praying, that everything would be all right.

Before the last one before her was taken, one of the guards told her that she would be next in a few hours, laughing loudly as she dragged the second to the last victim away from the room.

What seemed to be hours passed by, closer and closer to her fate…

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Only a few blocks away from that building, inside an apartment room…

The young man left the bathroom, clean and fully clothed. Wearing a black jacket, he covered the short, black hair from his head with a cap, then covering it again with the hood from the jacket. Everything he wore, the jacket, the pants, the sneakers were black. Hidden under the jacket, was a pair of 9mm pistols, while a combat dagger was hidden in the left sleeve of the jacket. He finished by wearing sunglasses, covering his eyes from the world.

The apartment room was cramped and definitely not much of a place to stay in. Seeing that he was prepared and ready to go, he opened the door and began to walk outside in the hallway. The apartment he was in was a hotbed for drug dealing and prostitution, so it would not be uncommon to have someone walking around with his face covered by a hood and sunglasses.

He cursed silently, finding out that the elevator was broken. The stairway down was lonely, most of the lights broken, instantly making the stairs down a very dark and dangerous place to be.

Just between the stairs from the third to second floor, he would find a drunk, seemingly unconscious, sleeping on the floor. Ignore him, was the first thought passing by the man without saying a word. But as he reached the steps again, the sound of a gun cocking had echoed the empty stairway.

“Give… give me your wallet!” The young man had stopped walking down the stairs, standing still as the robber slowly moved towards him. “Give me your money, or I’ll blow your fucking brain out!”

The young man slowly turned around, staring at the robber, who was moving closer and closer, apparently still drunk due to the way he slowly moved.

“I said give me the wallet!” The robber said as he proceeded to slap him with the gun. Several hours later, a tenant of the apartment would find the body of Brad Williams dead on the stairway, throat torn apart, hand still clinging to the gun.

After exiting the stairs, the exit of the apartment was easy to find. In the street, the young walked farther away from the other people passing by, ignoring the voices of the bums, the prostitutes, and drug dealers. The streets were lit by blaze of neon lights: the artificial sun of the night. Walking a bit faster, he soon found his target after turning a corner in the street.

The White Cross building, the main headquarters of the largest pharmaceutical company in America, and secret base of the White Cross Cartel, distributors of illegal drugs, which were several times worse than average cocaine. He soon found his way to the back of the building, guarded only by three heavily armed guards.

“Off limits, pal.” One of the guards said, a burly man who could easily look like a wrestler. The young man however, kept on walking, hands slowly reaching into his jacket.

“Hey, he said—“ The second guard had little time to finish his sentence, a lone bullet passing through his skull, sending him to crash down on the floor. The burly guard was next, no time to pull out the shotgun as a hailstorm of bullets tore through his chest and neck. Finally, Will, guard number three, fueled by the death of his two friends, had enough time to pull out his gun, a .357 magnum, and unloaded all bullets on the target.

He did not know if the man was hit or not, as he dived for cover in the shadows. Will, the guard, took the gun from the dead body beside him, frantically looking around for the young man. A few seconds later, he took out a radio to alert the others inside.

“Intruders! There’s a fucking intruder out here in the ba—“ A pair of hands clasping on his neck stopped the communication. The guard felt his life fade away, his neck slowly broken in two as he felt the hands, cold as death, go tighter and tighter.

“…Idiot.” The young man whispered, crushing the radio with his sneakers. Now that everyone inside was alerted, the attack would begin. Loading his gun with bullets, the young man kicked the door, opening it.

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Noises, that was all the little girl could hear. Voices in loud tones yelled to one another, cursing, screaming. She had thought she would be taken in by now, but all she heard was the noise. Strands of her blond hair would cover her eyes once in a while, though she kept still in the corner, covered in the blanket.

Just outside her room, the barricade of guards stood in wait. Armed mostly with AK-47s, they were supposed to be one of the best soldiers in the underworld, but the news of one man, one man tearing through their ranks in the floor below was infuriating.

“Get ready to shoot anything down that passes by here!” the captain of the small squad of ten said. Calm down, he thought to himself. They were only surprised in the ambush, that’s all. Just get ready to nail the bastard when he comes near.

“Captain! The squads before this corridor had just been annihilated! The target is coming near!” As if to stop the group to silence, one of the doors in the corridor slowly opened. The entire squad stood their ground, pointing their AKs toward the door. The captain of the group took a few steps forward, hurling a grenade toward the door. It landed just beside the wooden mahogany door, exploding upon impact.

Debris and clouds of smoke filled the area, while the initial explosion shook the building, leaving a hole near the place where the grenade had landed. A small object rolled toward the feet of the guards; a small helmet, the ones the elite guards would wear, along with the head who had worn it. The captain who had thrown the grenade picked it up, looking at an inscription written in blood.

“…Wrong target…” It was far too late to realize that, as a swarm of bats came from the destroyed doorways, flying madly toward the barricade of guards. The group tried to retaliate, spraying anything in front of them with bullets. But there wee far too many bats, flying through them, biting the guards when they were close enough. After at least a few seconds of blood and screaming, the swarm subsided, leaving only the captain to survive, bloody, left arm badly wounded.

“Tsk. You’re still alive…” A voice from behind the captain said. Turning around, he saw the young man standing before him.

“Aurghhh!!” Wasting no time, he opened fire from his own gun, with almost no effect. The bullets, all of them, had hit the young man at the chest, which seemed to fall toward the floor as if they were only sticks. The young man had stood in front of the captain then, looking at him with a thin smile on his face.

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Silence. First noise, then explosions, finished off with a bloodcurdling scream. The little girl looked on the door, silent, heart beating like a jackhammer. Whatever was happening outside, it was finished, just outside her room.

The door to her room crashed open, a body being flung inside, arms crushed, face to broken to identify. Seconds later, a young man stood outside, immediately noticing her in the corner. He seemed to be staring at her, though it was hard to make sure with the sunglasses on his eyes. His mouth opened to speak, a few words that the girl would follow.

“Stay here.” The voice was somewhat cold, but was commanding at the same time. Nodding her head only once, the young man left the room, leaving the girl alone with the dead body.

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A few minutes later, the young man stood in an elevator, going straight to the top floor. Guns in hand, he stood ready as the door opened. The top floor had only one room, the young man immediately finding his target sitting behind the desk at the far end of the room, surrounded by a very large amount of bodyguards, armed to the teeth.

“Come in boy.” The man from behind the desk said, an old man in his late fifties, who still had a presence of an intimidating leader. A little overweight, but carefully hidden by his suit he wore. Nothing covered his head, which made it look like a shiny brown ball.

“I’ll accept your offer…” The young man said, walking to the center of the room. Slowly, the sounds of several guns cocking began to echo in the room, the young man paying no attention to the sound, pointing his own gun at the man.

“You must have some pretty big balls for coming in my base, kill my men, AND pointing that gun at my head.”

“What can I say? I’ll just blow your brain out now…”

“Give me your best shot.”

As the first shot was fired, one of the guards stood in the way, shielding the man behind the desk. Shortly after the body fell, a bullet tore through his kneecap, separating it from his body. The young man fell to the floor, looking at the man, sunglasses removed as he fell.

“Yellow Irises. I had already known it was a vampire attacking the premises, but I never thought it would only be a lesser vampire…”

“…” The young man was silent, right hand only inches away from his gun.

“So tell me. Who sent you? Interpol? CIA? FBI? Or are you one of those crazy X Numbers, released into the wild on a vigilante spree?” The guard who had blocked the way earlier slowly stood up, as if nothing had happened.

The man behind the desk smiled. “As you can see, I have enough influence in my reach to get these Zombie Gunmen, as well as equip them with the best silver bullets to tear you apart. I had been targeted by your kind a few years back, and they all met the same fate you had…”

“…”

“But tell me, what name do you have before I let my guards destroy you?”

“…You don’t need to know that… You who will die soon enough…” Jerking his hand to the side, he reached fro his gun. Too late, as a hailstorm of silver bullets tore through his body and head, leaving him a bloody mass bathing in a pool of his own blood.

“Hmph. These lesser vampires don’t even stand a chance with my Undead army….” Pressing a button, he spoke to a receiver. “Get someone to clean up the mess here, and alert the damn police—“ His voice was cut off, by a bone chilling, hollow laughter coming from the corpse.

“Heh… Don’t underestimate me, old man!” The body disappeared, turning into mist, red as the blood on the floor, slowly covering the entire room.

The old man fell from his chair, struggling to breathe in the foul, red mist. The sound of gunfire and falling bodies echoed the room for quite a long time, long enough to be considered hellish. As the mist cleared, the young man was seen, standing in the middle of the room, surrounded by the dead bodies of the undead, body parts scattered on the floor and walls. The black jacket was on the floor where he originally fell down on, revealing a white shirt stained blood red.

“W-what the hell are you…!” The old ma said, back pinned on the wall.

“You don’t know? I’m a lesser vampire, someone who sucks the blood of people…” He said with an evil grin. “And for the record, my name’s Dante…”

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The young man returned, eyes meeting with the little girl’s.

“…Your name is Mina, right? I don’t think you can return to your parents now…” The little girl’s parents dying flashes in his mind, an aftereffect of draining the old man from his blood. “…But if you want, you can stay with me…” Dante said with a smile that was almost father like. Saying nothing, the girl walked towards him, holding the hand he held out.

“FREEZE!” And the police finally came, pointing their guns at Dante and the little girl.

Dante had a sly grin on his face. “You’re lucky there’s a kid here…” Then, holding on the Mina’s hand, he whispered, “Hold on.”

Seemingly melting into a black mass, the two disappeared, flying past the policemen who tried shooting the swarm down, with zero effect. Seconds later, the swarm flew out a window, disappearing in the night. The late nigh news would report this as a terrorist attack; though it would change into a vigilante attack in the morning news the following day when information about the company’s illegal distribution of drugs, as well as the confirmation of the company’s CEO being a pedophile.

It had also become confirmed that a vampire was the culprit, but there were no suspects at that time. Dante left the city on a private jet, the child named Mina along with him. For now, Dante wanted to go home.

--Chapter 1 end.—