Adrian Lewis
From Edge of Darkness Wiki
History
I guess you could say that I have spent my life living a lie that was bound to catch up to me one day. I was always very resourceful when it came to my own survival, I had to be in order to live long enough to enjoy some of the perks of living like that. I have had many names, more than you'd think a guy could keep track of, but like i said I was always very resourceful. Smuggling was my trade for about 10 years of my life, and while i could give you many sad reasons as to why i chose to live my life like that I wont. Because truth be told I don't have any, I just did it. I was pretty good at it too, although i suppose you're thinking “If it caught up to you, you cant be that good” and I'm inclined to agree with you. Except, it wasn't the law that caught up to me, it was something else.
It started when I was contracted to move a container across the border to Huston from just across the border to Mexico - a relatively simple job in my book, but the contractor insisted on increased security. I never ask what's in these things, and if you ever get in my line of work I'd suggest you don't either. There are two very obvious reasons for this. First; If you get caught you have plausible deniability. Second; people who ask two many questions often get too many answers. Anyway, I accepted the job and picked up the container from the agreed location, and i made sure it had the fake paperwork I'd set up for it. The man I'd spoken to had set up an escort of 4 armed guards to take me to the border, but once I was inside the US they could no longer follow. On the other side of the border I would pick up a new escort to take me the rest of the way. At least that was the plan.
Once i got over to the other side I went to the place where my escort would meet me, and found nothing but an empty lot. It was early evening, and I had made good time. I figured I was early, and stepped out of my truck to have a smoke and call a girl i knew in Huston, and received a blow to the back of my head for my mistake. When I woke up I was hanging from the ceiling in chains, surrounded by three other guys who were likewise just hanging around. They all seemed to have been severely beaten, and were all unconscious. I called for the guard and he came with two companions, the guy with the scary teeth. They interrogated me for hours on end, the guy with the scary teeth keeping back at first. When he got involved I knew I wasn't getting out of this one alive, but his interrogation was mercifully short lived. I was thrown in a small room with no windows, and told they would be back. Once they left I took a small piece of metal I had hidden in the seems of my pants, and began working on the hinges of the door.
It took me hours to work away the crumbling concrete. By then I was exhausted but I knew I couldn't rest, so I steeled by resolve and smashed open the door. I was in a hallway, and I could hear them coming for me. I ran towards the stairs and caught one just as he was coming down, charging him with all my strength. I hit him low, and he was thrown back, smashing open his skull on the concrete stairs. I grabbed a night stick he had been carrying, and moved up the stairs. I could hear them going at someone, and his screams were a sick mix of garbled curses and throaty roars. I looked into the room and saw only the guy with the scary teeth, his back turned to me as he sunk a knife into the belly of the guy hanging from the chains. I moved up behind him silently, although between the roars he wouldn't have heard me if I had driven a tank up behind him, and swung the night stick to the back of his head as hard as I could muster. The skull caved in sideways and the guy fell to his knees, turning towards me. I felt a dread creep over me, but i resisted the urge to flee and instead swung again, this time cleaving his lower jaw clean off his head, breaking every tooth in his mouth. His eyes drove into my skull as he attempted to speak, and I swung again, this time crushing his skull from above. Limply he fell to the ground, and I turned to the woman hanging from the chains.
She was still, and even though her blonde blood soaked hair covered her face I could see her beauty. She asked asked me to help her down, and as i lifted her free of the chains her arms fell around my neck, and i felt all my strength draining away. I woke up a few hours earlier to find myself laying at the back of my truck, groggy and I felt a hunger unlike anything I knew. I drank from the second of scary tooths guards who she had brought with us, for further interview. She kept me from killing him, and as we arrived in Huston she explained what she had done. She never apologized for taking my life, but I sensed she had not meant to. When she realized that she had taken it, she couldn't stand the thought of killing her savior, and so she brought me into her world. We were Carthian, and she was a messenger from Mexico city, bringing word of an alliance between enemies of the Prefect in Huston. We stayed in Huston, and while I fought alongside her I learned the tricks to being one of the Lords. She taught me what her sire had taught her, and she taught me about our enemies. But she learned from me as well, and we fell in love to some extent. We drank deeply from each other, and I experienced love more acutely than I had ever thought possible.
I thought we were going to be together forever, perhaps naively. One evening I went to meet her, but found her haven in ashes. Someone had set it on fire, and my hopes of finding her safe in the cellar room she slept in were quickly crushed. A gas leak the firemen said, but I knew better. In the nights after I mourned her destruction, but slowly I began hearing of her feud with one of the families of the first estate. It didn't take me long to piece together what had happened, and i vowed to take everything from them as they had from me. A year passed as I gathered information and allies to my cause, and then – finally – the family fell out of favor with the court as I had planned. As they, one by one, fell out of favor I was waiting for them. I caught the youngest of their brood in an elevator to his haven, he stepped inside but didn't step out. The elevator suffered a malfunction and dropped to the ground floor, crushing him with it. He was long gone before he hit the ground however, but it wouldn't do to leave a mess for the kine to see.
His sire I caught on his boat after a party for some of his “contributors”. After a brief struggle I put a stake through his heart and brought him with me for interrogation, since I had no real plan for taking down his sire. It took me three nights to break him, but I did and I came away with a plan. The reward for his cooperation was torpor, and not final death. There would be little chance of him coming back though, because I left him at the bottom of the mexican gulf, chained to the spare anchor of his yacht. He was in torpor when I left him there, but for good measure i made sure he had a stake through his heart. It would be hard for him to ever come back, and he would most likely be eaten by crabs or whatever lived 7000ft below the sea. I had taken almost everything from my love's killer, and now it was time to take the rest. I began a slow process of taking away his main assets, taking most, but destroying enough to make it look like everything was being destroyed. It was mostly art pieces in secondary havens, and even gold bullion hidden away in vaults. Over the next year I earned my nickname Hunter, and I grew wealthy beyond what I had even believed possible.
It took longer than I had anticipated, but he learned who was taking everything away from him, and gave chase. At first it was simply his servants who came after me, but I left them alive and confused when they returned to him. I planted false leads, and ran him in circles until he began giving chase himself. Then, it was time for my final act. I left clues for him to chase into the outskirts of the city, and as he went out there I walked into his main haven and took everything of value. When he returned he was furious, and the next night he went to the Prince demanding action. The prince summoned me to his court and I went, dutiful as ever a servant of the court could be. He asked me if I had truly done all these things the furious alder Daeva was acusing me of, and i protested calling on my friends to account for my whereabouts on the days in question. They backed me up, and the Prince found no reason to hold me, and warned the alder Daeva that next time proof was needed before again summoning me. He was furious, and humiliated by a mere neonate in front of the whole court. His childer gone, his servants and assets all but depleted he turned to the source of information I had anticipated. The Prefects childe. I had made a point of becoming his friend over time, and had given him false information about my place of rest. During the next day the house was set a flame, but I was not there. The house belonged to the Sanctified Primogen, and was one of the new sites for his newest members to stay. It didn't take long for word to spread, and soon the hunter became the Hunted. A blood hunt was called and I watched as the seething masses of angry Sanctified dragged the alder Daeva down, and buried his staked corpse in a landfill outside town. A month later, when all the excitement had died down and I was sure the landfill was no longer watched I dug him up, and whispered in his ear what had become of his world. What I had done to his childer, and would do to him now as he laid there defenseless as my love had been in her haven when he burned it down. When I was done telling him, i took every last bit of vitae from his veins and watched as his body crumbled away. I reburied the remains, but took the stake to remind me of him.
The following nights i mourned again, for now my vengeance was complete and I had no longer any love left in my heart to spill for her. I could hardly remember her face any more, and as I watched the Kine on the streets I knew I had lost something of myself. My days as a smuggler had taught me how to hide assets, and how to gain and new identity. I decided it was time I left Huston, since all it had left for me now was sorrow and grief.
I wandered across the US for a time, trying to regain what I had lost of myself but it was hopeless it seemed. I found myself in New Mexico near the border to Mexico one night, and i walked into a bar hoping to find a little respite from the road. Midnight was nearing and I wanted to wait until around 3AM before crossing the border, when the guards were less watchful. I didn't notice at first when I sat down at the bar. I ordered a drink to keep up appearances and when the bartender returned with it and my change she asked me if everything was all right, and there was something in her voice i recognized. I looked up and i thought for a moment I saw my love, but the mirage faded quickly as i realized it was not her but someone who looked remarkably like her. We talked for a little and I mentioned she looked like someone I once knew, and she laughed at me, telling me i needed a better pickup line. I shrugged it off and she realized i was sincere, and apologized. She said she never thought she looked like anyone but herself, but her mother had always said she looked like her late aunt Nikki whom she was named after. I was stunned. I asked if her name was actually Nikki, or if it was perhaps short for something else, and it was; Nicole. I asked her if she had a picture so i could see the resemblance later that night, and she smiled and said she did.
She took me home at 4AM when the bar closed, thinking I was interested in no more than her body, but I was more interested in the picture. She took me into her living room, and there on a shelf was my Nicole looking back at me from 50 years ago, her smile bright as ever. I took hold of her mind and asked her to find more pictures and she found everything her mother had given her. It was incredible, and I was breathless as i looked through picture after picture of my Nicole. As i felt the sun growing ever closer to the horizon I grabbed a hold of Nicole's niece with my mind and began constructing a memory for the night where I was not present. We met at the bar, spoke for a little and I attempted a clumsy pickup. At 2AM i left the bar, and she continued working until the shift was done. She came home and decided to look through the pictures. After the mention of her aunt that night she had thought about her on the way home, and taken out the pictures, spending a few hours looking through them and thinking of her mother. She would call her mother the next day and they would talk of Nicole, and she would suggest they light a candle for her in the window tonight. I left the apartment with a picture of my nicole in my hand, a picture that must have been taken close to the time she was embraced. She was as i remembered her, all my memories coming flooding back into my head. I slept in the compartment under the floor of my trailer that night, with her picture clutched to my chest, dreaming of my Nicole and our time together.
The following evening i drove by the apartment and saw the single candle in the window, and I smiled.
