Daniel Arima

Alright. You've picked it out of me. I'm older, much older than Virginia. I'm not surprised that surprises you - I learnt a rougher form of English than she did, and I had to adapt more. Virginia sounds a little strange now, but not by much. I would sound incomprehensible, or worse, insane.

I'm still younger than Karl, though. Thank the Lord for that. And better looking.

Why does a priest care about being better looking? It's a fair question, but I like to think that self-denial and abstinence only really count as an act of faith is there's the real loss of a chance. The two creeds I've known over the course of my life have shared a tenet, so I have to believe that its true: the essence of honouring someone else is disciplining yourself.

The two creeds, boy. Christian and Samurai.

It was the Jesuits who first came to Japan in the middle part of the 1500's. We counted time differently then, and I'm not one for history books, but you'd call it about 1540. It wasn't long before the Good News began to spread and by my father's time, there were 300,000 Christians, or Kirishitans as we were called then, in Japan. The Jesuits, who were smarter than your average missionaries, went to the Daimyo, the Feudal Lords, first. Rather than make it look like a threat from the common people, it filtered down from feudal lords to peasants accustomed to obedience. My father was one such. He took to Christianity very strongly. He named me Daniel. Arima Daniel, though you would call me Daniel Arima.

We were, for a while, high in esteem. When Toyotomi Hideyoshi expelled the Western Catholics from Japan and banned our faith, Father defied him as close to openly as he dared, and sheltered many Christians in our lands. I grew up with them. My brother Michael was sent away to court, and grew up far from the light of Christ. This was a fatal mistake.

They say now that my father was involved in corruption. That he broke the Eighth Commandment. Lies. Michael divorced his Christian wife to marry a non-Christian, to curry favour, to steal Father's lands. Lands that would have gone to me. The trial was trumped up. We were stripped of our home and exiled. My Father and I, who had fought in many battles, undone by treachery. Michael gloated as he told us to commit ritual suicide to expiate our shame. When we refused, he was livid. He was afraid, I know, of what we might say.

He ordered us executed. We put our faith in God's hands and went to the yoke. I kept my eyes open, staring at Michael, when the blade fell.

When I came back I thought I was the instrument of God's will. I went through my brother's house like a red rain, like a woodsman who was short on time. Red, I was, in vengeance.

But even when Michael died at my hands, I knew no peace. I understood it then, you see. Michael was not my killer. It was a demon in him which had killed us, and a servant of Beelzebub that brought me back. I had not done God's work in sullying my hands with murder. I had done the Devil's.

I was fair to middling convinced that I was in Hell for a while after that. I wandered for a while - I swam to the Phillipines after Japan closed its borders, and made my way to Europe and then to the Americas. I made my presence known to the Pope. He helped me understand that I had fallen victim to the Cathar heresy. The world was not Hell, and even the Devil's machinations could not defeat God's plan. God had chosen that I live, as I had chosen to repent of sin. I could not kill a man and remain a priest. But I could slay demons.

Such was my stock in trade for many years therefollowing. The Pope gave me the sword of St George, and I walked forth to kill the machinations of the Devil where I found them. But then the Pope died, and a new one was elected, and he had little time for revenants who slew demons. I went freelance.

I stayed that way until I met Karl in 1830. We were trailing a cult murdering nuns in Germany, trying to summon a Qu'aleth. I think from that first meeting, working together was inevitable. Karl, like me, would not kill a mortal man, though we were both willing to turn them over to the lawful justice of the state. We understood one another.

What? How does a Christian Samurai deal with a stone cold killer like Karl? And Virginia being a lesbian? And all the weird non-Christian paradigm stuff we encounter every day? How do I feel about the Rosewood Devil, for example? Look - it was a different time. It was a different Pope. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, boy. There is a time to every season under Heaven.

This is a time for justice.