by Warren Smith
For over one hundred and fifty years Poe had been hunting down and murdering anyone who had been turned by Gabriel. The one person that he could never catch though was Holmes, he was as fast as a goddamn track star and seemed to never get winded at all. The chase usually ended when the two reached the wooded area that surrounded the park. Holmes would then make a peace offering of a pint of whiskey and the two would talk until the bottle was finished; which wasn’t long at all. Once every few months Gabriel would send Holmes to talk to Poe in an attempt to make peace between them. Gabriel never came himself out of fear that he might kill the famed poet. He actually really liked Poe and thought him to be irreplaceable.
The trouble between Poe and Gabriel first began on October 3rd, 1849. That was the night that Poe was found walking through the streets of Baltimore, half out of his mind and screaming the name Reynolds. Reynolds was actually Gabriel Fouche and he had been planning to give Poe the bite for quite some time. He saw the poet as being a self destructive time bomb whose days were numbered if he didn’t do something about it and he couldn’t let that happen. The two had met earlier in the day when Gabriel introduced himself to Poe as James Reynolds, a struggling writer. They talked for a while about various topics and then parted ways but planned on meeting up with one another later.
A few hours had passed and when Gabriel showed up to meet Poe the man was ranting, raving and sweating profusely. Something had obviously pushed him over the edge and Gabriel could smell the stench of death creeping in on his favorite writer. Without thinking much about what he was doing, Gabriel bit Poe and escaped into the darkness. By the time that Poe was found by a man named Joseph W. Walker he was delirious, nearly dead and shouting the name Reynolds as loud as humanly possible. He was taken to Washington College Hospital where he went through his painful transition all by himself and not knowing what was happening to him. On Sunday, October 7th, Edgar Allan Poe was pronounced dead at 5 a.m. Poe attended his own funeral service later on that day with Gabriel Fouche and Lisette Leblanc at his side. It was Lisette’s masterful knowledge of Voodoo that gave Poe the appearance of death in the hospital. She watched the poet shed tears at his own funeral as he stood in silence with a top hat pulled down over his eyes and a fake beard glued to his face.
That was many years ago and as Poe took a drink from his bottle of whiskey, he realized that he was focusing his hate on the wrong people. It was Gabriel who snatched death from his grasp and forced him into this beastly life, not the people who’m he had turned. It was almost impossible not to notice the pain in the poets face. Holmes recognized that same look on his own face at times whenever he looked into a mirror.
“Listen Poe, I know that we haven’t always seen eye to eye but we need to put our differences aside for now, we have a much bigger problem to deal with! Gabriel found Lisette and her son and he’s going to kill them both if we don’t do something to stop him. Gabriel’s father has been getting closer and closer and the only chance he has at killing him is if he absorbs the life force from another 3-form alpha, his son Antoine!”
Poe’s head snapped up from it’s down looking position and a low rumble trembled in his throat. His melancholy look was replaced with the look of the predator that he’d become. Both men hated Gabriel Fouche for different reasons. Poe because the death that he longed for was stolen from him and Holmes because he was never shown any respect no matter how much he proved himself. Lisette Leblanc was just like them, she was only doing what she was told. Even as the decades rolled by Lisette always checked up on both men. She treated them fair and showed them respect, and always went out of her way to help them if they needed it. She needed them now more than ever and it was time to return the favor. An evil grin slowly spread across Poe’s face as bristle like hairs began to sprout all over his body.
“I guess I’ll catch you next time Holmes, for now we have an alpha to take care of!”
To be Continued......
