Editing Darius Prescott (section)

==History==
The Prescotts have a distinguished history with the U.S. military dating back to the American Revolutionary War. His ancestor William Prescott gave the famous order at the Battle of Bunker Hill, "Do not fire until you see the whites of their eyes." Prescott men have almost always been military men: soldiers, sailors, marines and pilots. Darius was the third son of Lt. Colonel (retired) Amos Prescott, a decorated veteran of the U.S. Army who'd seen action in Korea and Vietnam. Darius' older brothers, as per the family tradition, went in for a military career; his oldest brother Alexander is a Captain in the Army and his other brother Cyrus is a military doctor at Walter Reed. Darius had no interest in the military, preferring to be as idle as possible. This attitude infuriated his parents who tried, without much success, to instill him with the Prescott values of duty, discipline and service. It was only after he'd been out of high school for a couple of years that his parents nagging finally broke him down. Darius was also realizing at this time that he had no real worthwhile job skills or prospects and was tired of living at home. So he enlisted.

Darius' time in the United States Army did not live up to the Prescott ideal. He was still lazy and shiftless and tried to get away with as little work as possible while avoiding reprimand. He did see action during the Persian Gulf War (the first one). Not long after his unit returned to the U.S., Darius got into an altercation with his superior officer. The two loathed each other, so the conflict was practically inevitable, but Darius was the lesser ranked soldier, so he received a dishonorable discharge. After that, his family refused to take him back. His father and his brother Alexander refused to even talk to him; only Cyrus was willing to extend forgiveness.

With only a little money and his future looking bleak, Darius kicked around Southern California for a few years doing odd jobs and manual labor. He made regular trips to Los Vegas to go on gambling and drinking binges. It was during one of these trips that he met Anthony Figarelli, a made man in the mob. After hearing about Darius' military background, Anthony suggested that Darius might be able to find good work in Vegas, if he didn't mind occasionally roughing people up. Desperate for some real money, Darius agreed, and thus began his life of crime.

For the next five years, Darius worked as a heavy for Figarelli - collecting protection, breaking legs, the usual mafia shit. After a few years working for Figarelli, Darius was offered a hit. The mob needed a guy who wasn't made, and therefore, off the Feds' radar. The money was good and the man he had to kill was a scumbag snitch, so Darius accepted. That's how he became a hitman for the mob. Darius' work was neither clean nor professional, but he got the job done and had a knack for not getting caught, so the mob continued to use him. As he was exposed more to the middle and upper echelons of the mob, he started to see a lot more... strange things. Darius was always a credulous kind of guy, so when made men referred to "the bloodsuckers" or "the vamps" he took it to be figurative. Even after he saw a few overtly supernatural things, he always chalked it up to the booze. He didn't want to see what was right in front of him. The idea of real-life vampires was more than he was willing to accept. (After his Exaltation, he's re-thinking his previous stance.)

After his eighth murder, when he was out on the town spending his ill-gotten cash, Darius had a sort of revelation. Not a bright lightbulb going off, but a sort of dim flickering that took most of the night to really take hold in his mind. This is what Darius jokingly calls his "half-assed revelation." He saw himself as he was - a murderer, a thief, a drunk, a gambler, with no hope and no future. Disgusted with himself, he took his car out into the desert with a loaded revolver sitting on the passenger seat. He stopped in the middle of nowhere and pulled off the highway. He held the revolver and thought about killing himself.

Then the other hitmen showed up. They had worked for the man Darius killed just the night before. They had followed him from the casino and were going to have their revenge. Two cars pulled up alongside Darius and six men pulled out Tec-9's and Uzis.

Then, the dawn came. Darius heard a voice from the east, from the sun itself. It said... something. Darius doesn't remember exactly what, which troubles him even today. It was a deep, powerful voice, speaking a language that was simultaneously strange and yet very familiar. When the voice stopped, Darius was standing beside one of the cars, his revolver smoking in his hand, empty of bullets. Six hitmen were dead, each with a single hole between the eyes.