Edit 2 of the Viktor Kirsanov series.

Reeve had expected the necromancer to be the only tenant of the ramshackle apartment—instead, he was the only living occupant in the whole block. The entirety of South Street was abandoned, complete with crumbling buildings, cracked pavement, and broken windows. Though if Reeve were honest with himself, it wasn't all that different from the rest of the slum.

It was easy to see where Viktor Kirsanov lived; there was an overgrown vegetable garden beside a stoop, and electric lights shone dimly through the curtained windows. The street outside the townhouse was pocketed from revolver slugs, and only one seemed to have resulted in a blood splatter. That was the reason Reeve had decided on Viktor Kirsanov over the rest of his ilk.

As an exorcist, Reeve had killed dozens of necromancers; the majority of the lot were wretched, narcissistic lunatics obsessed with gaining power. Of those, only a handful were truly worthy of the term 'necromancer'—for they could do more than a couple death-based cantrips—and those were the ones who kept Reeve up at night. Viktor Kirsanov was one of those.

And yet, according to the grocer who brought supplies to the apartment once a month, the man could be described as 'affably evil'. He was nearly always polite, tipped well, and didn't turn the woman into a toad on the occasion when she'd forgotten his lemons. In fact, he'd merely shrugged and allowed her to bring them the next day instead. The grocer, Miss Janine Long, had become somewhat of a local celebrity after that.

Reeve, for all of his Order's insistence on self-reliance and purity of the soul, needed a necromancer. He tried not to think about the fact that he would be kicked out of said Order for soliciting a necromancer at best, outright executed at worse. Unfortunately, it was something that needed to be done. And hopefully done quickly…

Hope was something he seemed to have an abundance of, for he went to the front door and knocked politely. If politeness didn't sway Kirsanov, Reeve figured there wasn't much else to be done. He waited for a moment—and then the sounds of running feet and growling made him turn on his heel. He couldn't see it in the darkened street, but whatever it was sounded close.

Reeve knocked again, more insistently this time, and the necromancer's front door swung open. Something darted out from the vegetable garden, but Reeve was already through the door—he slammed it shut on the creature's face. The door shuddered in its frame, but it held. Reeve heard a snarling whine as it began clawing vigorously.

Reeve drew his pistol and steadied it for the moment the creature broke through. Then there was a yelp. It was followed by more wet-sounding thuds and even a pop. The door handle began to turn, and Reeve decided he didn't want to meet whatever thing was on the other side. He turned and fled.

Up the stairs or to the basement was suicide, for there were no convenient doors or ground-level windows to escape from, so he ducked into an adjoining room. Astonishingly, there was a pile of unread mail heaped upon a dining table with a single chair, along with half-filled mugs of tea and coffee. More impressive was the stack of empty liquor bottles that took up half of the sink basin. The rest were placed haphazardly in the open oven, which looked as though it hadn't been used in quite some time.

Reeve slipped on a pamphlet that had avalanched from the table—ironically it was a religious tract—and got an interesting view of Kirsanov's water stained ceiling before he plummeted. In the split second before he hit his head, he thought about all of the dire situations he'd survived and how painfully hilarious it was that a filthy kitchen did him in. Chaotic even. Then he thought nothing at all…


Reeve woke with a throbbing headache, and his limbs felt a curious mixture of numb stiffness. He opened his eyes, and found himself staring into the glass bottle-green orbs of Viktor Kirsanov. He tried to sit up, but even if he weren't strapped to a metal table, his body refused to obey. It was still in shock from the fall.

"Good evening," he said stupidly, because it was better than just gaping.

"What were you doing in my kitchen?" the necromancer demanded in halting disbelief, a moderate accent peppering his speech.

"That was a kitchen?" Reeve couldn't help but ask, "Good god, tell me you don't eat in there—"

"Why did I even ask?" Viktor rolled his eyes in exasperation and began wheeling the table—a gurney, really—across the room. Reeve tilted his head at an unnatural angle and saw he was headed for an enormous cell bolted into the corner of what seemed to be a lab. Worryingly, the cage was populated by ghouls.

At the sound of the approaching cart, the creatures perked up and began salivating. One even pawed at the ground, its canine maw snuffling against the bars. Reeve jerked futilely against the restraints.

"W-wait!" he cried, turning to catch Viktor's gaze again, "I need your help!"

"That's one I actually haven't heard," the necromancer snorted in amusement.

"Have you heard the one about the Old Gods and the Blood Taint?"

Reeve nearly laughed in relief when Viktor paused, an eyebrow quirked as he looked down at him though his rounded reading spectacles. Viktor drummed one of his long fingers against the sole of Reeve's shoe, causing his foot to twitch. Reeve squirmed again.

"Go on," Viktor teased, rolling the gurney another few inches closer to the ghouls for emphasis.

"You're still studying it, aren't you? The effects the Old Gods had on humanity," Reeve started, feeling the constructs' hot breath ghosting against his overlong hair. It smelled like the refuse bin of an unsavory butcher.

"Oh? And here I thought the Order exclusively taught that the Taint was a mark of sin," he drawled.

"I'm not here to argue semantics; I'm here to offer you the opportunity to study one—a real god," Reeve insisted, "—and then I want you to kill him."

Viktor stared at him before his lips twitched in what passed for an amused smirk. He sighed and chuckled to himself, removing his glasses and polishing them on his lab jacket. Reeve assumed it was a bad sign.

"That explains a lot of things," he gave Reeve's boot an awkward, sympathetic pat.

"It does?" Reeve asked hopefully, inclining his head to see him better.

"Indeed; you're a lunatic."

"I am not—I have proof! Check my pockets; you'll find my identification and photographs of him."

"I've already checked your pockets, Father Marlow; photographs can be altered."

"I have the negatives."

Viktor cocked an eyebrow and produced Reeve's wallet from his own pocket. He rifled through it again, this time more thoroughly; a trio of film negatives were tucked in with a small sum of paper bills. Viktor squinted and held them up to the light.

"Ah."

"Those photographs were all of the same man, taken within seconds of each other."

"You say a man is in these photographs?"

"Not just a man; a reincarnated god."

"So you say," Viktor mused, studying the negatives in further detail. The first portrayed a shadow in mid-stride from across the street—and yet the figure only had the outline of a man, as the inside was comprised of writhing intestines and lidless eyes. The next was similarly haunting, for this time the man was made of sloughing skin like a badly shed snake, complete with spikes protruding out from odd angles. In the third, he was simply a mallard; nothing more, nothing less.

Viktor stared questioningly at the duck. It was the single piece of evidence that was slowly convincing him that Reeve wasn't just a madman with a death wish or an elaborate hoaxer with an even more impressive death wish. A duck. It reeked of chaos, which in turn reeked of the Old Gods, a group who according to his studies reeked in general. Viktor also didn't like ducks.

"And how close is this reborn god to realizing his powers?" Viktor asked evenly, tucking his glasses into his breast pocket.

"'Realizing'?" Reeve blinked at him.

"Don't be foolish; if he were master of his abilities, the Elder Gate would be open, and all sorts of unpleasantness would be slithering through," Viktor rolled his eyes. "I mean to say, how old is this individual?"

"Twenty-three," Reeve replied after some thought, "He's twenty-three."

"Twenty-three," Viktor repeated. "Interesting… Am I being paid for this endeavor?"

"What?"

"This house doesn't run itself. Unlike my ghouls," Viktor shifted the cart again so that the snapping jaw of a ghoul slobbered into Reeve's hair before the gurney retreated back to relative safety, "I cannot survive off bones."

"You can have my Book," Reeve blurted with a grimace. It was his prized possession; the book of holy spells given to each exorcist upon their entry into the Order. An exorcist without their Book wasn't an exorcist at all. Aside from his guns, it was all Reeve had to trade.

Much to the ghouls' disappointment, the cart began to slowly, slowly, edge away from the cage. Viktor tossed them what looked suspiciously like a femur as a consolation prize. Reeve let out a sigh of relief, which turned into a wince when he heard the bone crunch beneath a more than one set of teeth.

"So, Father Marlow, where do we start?" Viktor asked, a hint of a sneer crossing his features.

"Perhaps you should untie me first."

I've completely revamped the Viktor Kirsanov series. Some parts reminded me too much of my United We Fall story, and it was lacking a real plot. Anyways; enjoy!