My Tourniquet

In fact, that was what led to me becoming a part of the team. Was it only 2 years ago that I was one of the nuns in the academy training and hoping that one day I would join them in serving our lord or even simply support them in some way.

I knew that the only way I'd actually get a place on the team would be through accident, injury or death. And I also knew that once selected, I'd be under the same risk. I simply never expected it to happen this soon or that Sister Prudence would be the one I replaced. I could see Sister Patience falling in battle or simply retiring. Not because she isn't still in shape physically, but because she's pretty old; I think. No one really knows how old Patience is. When I looked back at the team the way they were structured, Patience was the strategist among them. She was the one who moved to a higher vantage-point and fired long range weapons, while directing the fight from a distance. She was the one who saw the big picture. But again she was and is old. I saw myself replacing her.

Then there's Penance...what can I say about her? Penance scares the heck out of me. I'm not sure she can really be considered a nun. Penance curses...I've heard her. And she's just too bloodthirsty to be a nun. Her battle strategy also seems to be a touch foolhardy. She rushes straight in, with no planning and no strategy. Penance uses brute force against most of her opponents and she usually out-muscles most men. Penance is also the largest of us all. She's built really proportionally and a lot of men stare at her, especially her huge boobs, but Penance is a nun, first and foremost. She's an angry, scary, blood-thirsty nun, but still a nun.

Now I find myself teamed with the two of them. I'm not really sure which position I fall into. Prudence was the natural leader and that definitely isn't me. But Prudence was also the best fighter among the three and that is also not me. I modeled myself after Prudence, but I don't have half of her skill or speed. I'm bigger than Patience, but not nearly the size of Penance.

I've heard myself referred to as the young one or the nervous one, but I'm only a year or two younger than Penance and she's been doing this for five years. I also don't see myself as being any more fidgety than the other two.

Being the new kid sucks. There are so many things that the three of them went through that are talked about or used as a reference that I have no knowledge of. It's always, "Remember the one in England did this?" when I clearly wasn't in England with them. I guess that time will tell, and truthfully over the 2 years that I've been with the team we have begun to generate some memories of our own. I truly am beginning to gain experience when dealing with some of the challenges we face.

As we wait in the parking lot outside of the hospital that our next opponent frequents, I go over the chain of events that brought us here.

A woman named Theresa Gilliam complained to her parish priest that she'd seen some sort of creature, the nature of which is still unknown. The priest followed the protocol. He tried to dissuade her, but reported her claims to the local bishop. The Bishop went to an Arch Bishop, who contacted a Cardinal. A few days later, we're sweating it out in leather in the bowels of the Bayou.

The first thing we did upon arrival was to visit the local church. I guess technically we should have gone to the Archbishop and followed the chain of command downwards, but we favor the direct approach.

Our idea was to have the priest direct us to Theresa, but we couldn't find her. After visiting the local hospitals and morgues, we found that both Theresa and the friend who had been with her on the night when she saw the creature had been killed. Strangely enough both bodies had been drained of blood. Because of the way the throats had been ripped out, the police suspected an animal attack. The three of us didn't say a word. We just silently looked at each other and nodded.

The detective who'd helped us was a parishioner and a very religious man. But like most cops he tended to want to be able to answer questions with what seem like reasonable and factual answers. So when you ask him what type of animal sucks out all of the blood from its victims, he says it was probably a wolf or a bear. When you ask him again where the blood went, he says it was probably absorbed into the ground after the victim bled out.

He's not a bad man, he just needs everything to fit neatly into little boxes that he can wrap his mind around. This will be my first vampire and both Patience and Penance have prayed that once we make our presence known the creature vacates the area. Most of them do. A few of the very old ones, like the one from two years ago can be trouble. It was a vampire that caused Prudence to leave the team. He was very old and very powerful. He had all kinds of mental tricks. He didn't kill Prudence but he was able to wound her. In the end it was a man, a civilian, who had rammed his car into the beast pinning it so it could be beheaded that had ended things. After that things get sketchy. What should have happened was that Prudence should have undergone a cleansing process to make sure that she was still untainted, and then returned to service. But for some reason she quit.

I've heard all kinds of rumors about why. At first I really believed the one that made the most sense. That was the one where dealing with the creature and barely escaping with her life had caused her to lose her nerve. Another theory was that she'd been so tainted by the creature's foul touch that she was no longer fit for service.

I didn't believe that one because it really didn't make sense. I got to meet Prudence a year after the incident. There were several weird things going on. My psychology classes prepared me for all of the things that might occur. I was prepared for her to resent me for taking her place on the team. I was prepared for jealousy. I was even prepared for her to try to challenge me, to see if my skill with a sword was equal to hers. I knew that I had to go easy on her because she no longer had her powers. I intended to gently but firmly let her know that although I respected her immensely, she no longer had what it takes, and I had earned my place on the team honestly and fairly.

I wasn't prepared for what actually happened. When we pulled up in front of the nicest house I'd ever seen, a tall blond hurricane rocketed out of the house and hugged Patience and then Penance. If she was tainted, neither of them should have let her touch them. But what came next shocked me to the core. She saw me out of the corner of her eye and enveloped me in one of her hugs as well.

It was surprising. I wondered how a woman who had fallen from grace could be so happy. And then I saw it. A man, a good looking one came out of the house and walked over to her shyly. Somehow, without trying to they ended up next to each other and then their hands ended up entwined and she glowed. All of my life, in the convent and before I've heard of people who had been touched by the spirit, but that was the first time I'd truly understood it.

Patience had smiled at the man and called him by name. Even Penance had paid him a grudging compliment.

"Hello, Man," she said. "I see you haven't run out on her or killed her joy yet."

"Penance, he has a name," laughed Patience. "And he's a friend."

"I don't have any friends who are MEN," grumbled Penance. She looked over at Jason then and gave him a very high compliment. "Do you want to fight?" it was the same thing she asked me when we first met.

We went inside of their house and their love was clear. The two of them could barely keep their hands off of each other and their eyes...were always on each other.

I guess the psychologists don't know it all. I began feeling like I, not she was the loser. I started to analyze the things she said and realized that I was the one who was jealous.

It was the man who brought up the subject but I was glad he did.

"So Piety," he began. "What's your weapon of choice?"

"I use a rapier," I said. His eyes lit up. "Do you want me to go to the car and snow it to you?" I asked. He nodded his head. I should have noticed then that Penance was shaking hers.

I guess I expected him to be impressed or awed by my sword. "Oh, a Pappenheimer," he said matter of factly. He acted as if he saw them every day.

"Can you use it?" he asked. I started to wonder exactly how much Prudence had told him about what we do.

"Of course," I said.

"Can you show me?" he asked.

"If you want," I said shrugging my shoulders.

"Oh shit," grumbled Penance. "This is how it starts."

We went out in the back of the house where they had a large sun deck. I unsheathed my blade. "Be right back," he said. He came back with a dagger and a mace. I laughed at his choice of weapons. This would be like child's play. First there was the fact that I had enhanced speed and strength. But even more obvious was the fact that my rapier was almost three times the length of the mace which was longer than the dagger.

"Ooh," gasped Penance. Jason smiled and showed her the mace.

"Are you serious?" I asked. I was sure that the longer reach of my rapier would allow me to simply sit back and pick him apart. He just smiled at me. I felt like Miguel Cabrera facing a little league pitcher. The problem was that Patience and even Penance seemed to like the guy.

I decided to end it quickly. Feeling no danger, I struck. Without warning, I launched myself forward in the classic fencer's lunge. I intended to lightly tap his shirt with the tip of my blade and show him that in the real world, having a few collectible weapons wouldn't get him far.

That was where my plan fell apart. I really expected to thump him, have the mock battle end and all of us sit down and have something to eat while we talked about it. But he moved. I guess all of my training in fencing worked against me. I had never actually fought a for real battle, but I had thousands of hours of training on the piste. In my mind, because of my experience fencing, I had the right of way. Like most fencers, he should have retreated to my attack or possibly tried to parry it. He did neither. Even as I moved into the lunge and extended the blade he moved towards me. It made no sense until I thought about it later.

By moving towards me he moved me into his playground. He was so close to me that my longer weapon was ineffective. He also sidestepped my lunge as if I was moving in slow motion. After the tip of my blade had passed him, which was an insult, he did what I thought at first was a parry, with the dagger. But then it all went badly. He pressed a button on the hilt of the dagger and two long prongs snapped out of the blade somehow. He twisted his wrist trapping my blade and then brought the head of the mace down onto my captured blade snapping it.

The shock on his face told me that he hadn't intended to destroy my weapon. I was in shock. My Sword was over three hundred years old and had been blessed by the new Pope himself.

"I tried to warn her, didn't I?" rumbled Penance. "The one thing men are good at is breaking things."

"I'm really sorry," he said. "I thought that you were holy and super, you know? I guess I'm so used to sparring with Pru, so I thought that you'd be as fast as she is and..."

"Jason, you still owe me a mace," grumbled Penance. "Can I have that one?"

"You know that it's not real," said Jason. "It's a battle ready modern replica."

"I don't care. It's pretty. Gimme," said Penance. "Now if you really want to be friends, you'd give me that sneaky dagger too."

"Penance, it's a replica too. It's a Paul Chen Trident Main Gauche. They sell them on EBay for about 90 bucks," said Jason.

"And you're not giving that one to anyone," spat Prudence. "I gave you that one for your birthday."

I was still in shock. "Jason, what did you mean when you said that you thought that I was as fast as Prudence?" I asked.

"I'm much faster than..." I began.

"Not even close," he said.

For some reason, I got angry. All of the psychological training I went through became pointless. From the very start, as soon as I joined the team, everyone myself included had been comparing me to Prudence. I even compared myself to her.

"Show me," I said. The anger in my voice was barely contained. Patience looked at me with concern in her eyes. Penance was too busy swinging her new mace around and looking at it the way a new mother looks at her child.

Jason walked back into the house. When he came back he was carrying two swords. He handed some sort of samurai sword to Prudence.

"The Bear?" she laughed. I noticed the way their hands touched as he handed her the sword.

"Come on, I wanted to make this interesting," he said.

Then he dropped to one knee in front of me and presented me with a rapier that was nowhere near as compelling as the look in his eyes.

"Sister Piety, I'm really sorry about breaking your blade," he said. "Until you secure a replacement, I'd be honored to have you use this one."

His sincerity alone began to melt my anger. I looked at the sword. It was a Pappenheimer like mine. It was finely made. I drew the blade from its scabbard and tapped the steel. The high pitched ringing tone told me that it was very good steel. The weight and the balance were astounding.

"What century?" I asked. "How old is this blade? It's very good."

"It came from a company called Museum Replicas," he laughed. "It's about six months old. But it won't snap like yours did."

I looked past him at Prudence. Maybe this would be the chance for me to put my demons to rest.

As Prudence came to stand before me, she was actually smiling. Her eyes still weren't on me they were on Jason.

As I raised my blade she touched it with hers. I advanced and then lunged. She did some kind of circular step that brought her around behind me. She tapped me gently on my back with the point of her blade.

"Sister, this isn't the fencing strip," she laughed. "Attacks can come from any angle or any direction. Didn't you learn that from Jason? We're not doing the fencing rules."

She had treated me like a novice and shamed me in front of my team mates. I had to beat her. I did a big circle with my blade and attacked again before the circle was complete. It was blindingly fast but she caught my blade as if she'd been expecting it. She moved her blade down mine until it hit the guard and then grabbed the guard of my sword with her free hand. She spun in a circle and ended up holding both her weapon and mine. And still she smiled.

"You know that is one scary move you just did. Now I know what it felt like from the other side," she said. Throughout our battle she had never stopped smiling.

Then I was even more embarrassed. I remembered then where I had learned the move. It had been when I watched videos of her battles. I had tried to use one of her own moves against her.

"The disarming move you did. Where did you learn it?" I asked.

"Jason made me watch a really stupid movie called Highlander. He made me watch about five of them. That move came from the third one. It was about a bunch of men who went around cutting off each other's heads. I have no idea why they did it. I just like watching movies with him. It's probably why I married him," she said. "Ooh! I think she kicked,"

"I didn't kick anything," I said.

"Not you, Sister," she laughed. "The baby." she held her tummy and Jason was there next to her.

I couldn't believe that I'd been bested by a pregnant woman.

"You still have your speed and your strength," I spat. "You were never tainted. Why did you quit! Do you want your place back? Is that why you invited us here? And you needed to beat me in front of my team mates to prove that you're better than I am, right?"

She just started laughing then. "Sister, you have quite an imagination," she said. "Do I look unhappy to you?" she asked.

"Well...no," I said.

"And I really am quite tainted and really unfit to serve," she continued. "Can you really see a pregnant nun? I'm not sure the church could deal with that. The new Pope does seem to want to return the church to the people, but I think even he has limits of propriety."

Her smile was infectious and it caused me to relax. "You're not tainted," I said. "I don't feel any evil coming from you. You were never infected were you?" I looked at Patience who couldn't meet my gaze.

"And I don't think you lost your nerve either. Excuse my language Sister, but what the hell is going on?" I asked angrily. "Why did I have to replace you when you didn't need replacing?"

Again, her smile disarmed me. "Piety, you're not seeing the big picture," she said. "I WAS tainted. I AM tainted..."

"But you still have your powers? I don't understand," I asked in frustration.

"Sister, being tainted simply means that you're no longer pure. I am tainted. I am no longer able to put the church first. Nothing comes before my husband and my child. And as far as the powers thing goes...who knows? They come from God. He decides what he gives us or what he takes away. Jason doesn't have any powers, maybe I don't either."

Even when she said his name her voice changed. She was right the two of them were totally devoted to each other. I wondered what that felt like. With the crisis over Jason went back to whatever he was doing and Patience went with him. Penance left the deck and went out among the trees, leaving Prudence and me alone.

"You know when you left the church it threw everything into a state of chaos," I said.

"The church is immortal it. It will go on long after both of us are dust," she said.

"But they were thinking that you could have been the next..." she shushed me before I could say it.

"Piety, just be yourself and you'll be fine," she said. "You have no one to live up to and nothing to prove. It's not your job to be the next me. All you have to do is become the best version of yourself that you can and you'll be great. Your Sisters love you already. They have faith in you and they trust you. If they didn't, they never would have brought you here." Then she hugged me again.

A few seconds later we heard a "Thunk" sound coming from the trees.

"Holy shit, this thing is...Sorry, I swore," grumbled Penance. She came running out from the trees. "Hey the flanges on this thing are so sharp that it might as well be an axe. Prudence, can I cut down one of your trees? I'll bet I can!"

"No, Penance. We like our trees," she said shaking her head.

When the time came for us to leave, I truly didn't want to. I left Prudence and Jason feeling both more myself and more a part of the team than I ever had. That had been year ago, but I still felt like the new kid. I came out of my memories as the man or whatever he was that we'd been following for two days came out of the hospital and approached his bike. My nerves were jittering as I prepared to face my first vampire. I still remembered Prudence's words. I don't need to be her. I just need to be myself.

* * * * * *

Mason

I still had about two hours before the sun came up. I figured I could watch some of the shows on my DVR before I fell asleep. But now I needed to scatter these Goth kids off of my bike before I could even do that. These kids were becoming more and more brazen by the day. These three in their leather outfits were actually sitting on my bike.