Saint Lemeux

#2021-03-23 22:46:59: 

#2021-03-23 22:48:42: 

#2021-03-23 22:59:15: 

. . . Lutetia City, the rat swamp, as some called it. Some parts of the city were absolutely gorgeous, especially near Saint Lemeux, with its old history and timeless buildings. During the day, the downtown area of Saint Lemeux was absolutely marvelous to behold with its carefully crafted old gothic-styled grey stone architecture and hanging green vines and air plants, large statues and menacing gargoyles, beautiful cherubs and angels, and bright red thorny rose gardens. Here it looked like Paris, with its cobble stone roadways and sidewalks, and the large St. Lemeux Cathedral with its enormous blue church staples, yellow clock tower and vivid multi-colorful stained glass windows. Saint Lemeux made downtown Lutetia look like a peaceful, busy little sanctum. At least during the daylight hours.

. . . But at night, this was a different place. It was dark, shadowy, cold, quiet, a little foggy and spooky. Saint Lemeux seemed like a ghost town at night, with the only real street activity being the presence of the parting monks in their black hooded robes and bone chilling vocals as they sang together in harmony without playing any other music, sounds or instruments. Their angelic voices echoed their Evêquec faith, giving the downtown area an aire of gothic mysticism and sanctified holiness that rivalled even the best gospel singers of the time. All the colors in the city faded to black, and the only light besides the moonlight came from the old black lamp posts on the sidewalks and whatever other hues could be seen cascading from the stained glass windows on to the cobbled streets.

. . . Nicole Mitchell Shang was sitting on the steeply pitched rooftop of the very tall clock tower as it began to chime, it's loud automatically functioning internal clock bell echoing over the city, signifying that it was now midnight once again. She watched quietly from the shadowy eaves behind a stone statue of a small hooded angel with its outstretched wings, somewhat bearing the likeness of the blessed virgin mother. Nicole wasn't a very religious person herself, having come from Tianshi City in Shintenchi and hailing from a family of mostly Shinto practitioners like her father. She had been buried at her family's ancestral tomb, which was a large stone rectangular sepulchre which sat above ground at the Tianshi Grand Temple, unlike the individually marked crosses and gravestones she saw at the Saint Lemeux Cemetery where her friend Eric Draven had been laid to rest.

. . . Nicole sometimes visited the church's cemetery in order to pay homage to Eric's grave, as well as to Sergeant Darryl Albrecht's grave. Officer Albrecht had been a police officer and a detective of the LCPD who had been killed in action while helping Nicole and Draven to take down a powerful crime syndicate, and Nicole sometimes left red roses by their headstones to pay her respects. Terra in general was a dangerous place to roam about at night, and Lutetia City was no exception. Especially here in Saint Lemeux, where werewolves and vampires like Alec Constantine of the Vankoryth Détente lingered, hunted by people like Marc Favre of the Ardalean Society, and where Lutetia City Police sirens and cruisers echoed throughout the night, followed by rushing firetruck engines and the occasional ambulances originating from Saint Abelard Hospital, usually to clean up the mess.

. . . It was here where pathologists like Ninette Segal worked together with officers like Élodie Blanc to try and solve some of the many cases that came pouring in every single day, some more stranger than others. Luckily for Nicole and Draven, they didn't have that problem. Sergeant Albrecht had taken the liberty of scrambling their case files and deleting all evidence of their existence before he died. The other detectives down at the LCPD were already aware of Officer Albrecht's misconduct and had planned to do an investigation on him after the Van Drake case, but unfortunately he was murdered in the line of duty before they could even put the pressure on or squeeze him for information. Darryl Albrecht had taken his secrets to the grave, which meant that nobody would go looking for Nicole Mitchell, or start suspecting her of anything, especially since she was already dead.

. . . But Nicole was not a vampire, or a revenant of the undead. She didn't bite people, drink blood or perform lycanthropic acts of cannibalism on unsuspecting victims. Nicole was something else entirely, like a ghost, a poltergeist or something beyond the normal happenings throughout the city. She had been summoned, brought back from the dead by a white cat named Gabriel in order to avenge her sad and despairing soul. Was her body possessed by an archangel? Nicole Mitchell Shang wasn't entirely sure what had happened to her, or how it all worked out, but she was absolutely certain that there had been a genuine reason for why she had been risen from the dead. With her father's killer now behind bars at Saint Lemeux Prison, she wondered how long she would be destined to continue roaming the planet, bouncing from city to city, fighting crime and taking out the bad guys until she could finally rest in peace.

. . . Nicole Mitchell gazed ahead at the giant yellow moon on the horizon, overlooking the nightly lit city streets below. The church's clock tower was amazingly tall and gothic, with its yellow clock face appearing almost as large as the moon itself, several tens of stories high where the wind blew evermore intensely with no buildings to obstruct it. Nicole's dark almond colored hair blew wildly behind her as her long black leather trenchcoat flickered and flowed along with the chilly breeze. Most people would have been able to see their own breath as they exhaled from that high up. But since she was already dead, when Nicole sighed heavily, no air came from her lungs. It was as if she had only been reinacting what natural breathing habits she had in life, for the act alone was useless. Nicole didn't need to breathe. She could neither drowned nor suffocate. She could not be harmed by flames, stakes or even silver bullets, for she had become something else entirely, something supernatural which could not be explained so easily. As the white cat Gabriel jumped up on the ledge of the rooftop and laid down beside her, Nicole began to pet him quietly while lost in her own thoughts, or what she could only perceive to be her own memories.

#2023-10-20 23:26:53: