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chapter01Although most don't realise it, the Others roam amongst humans. They are as real as death and they are dangerous - the handful of humans aware of their existence can do very little to keep the Other Realm separated from the reality humans live in. The boogie man story told to children that don't want to eat their vegetables is a tradition passed down from generation to generation to ensure dark places are closed and not peeked in during the night. The only reason parents assure their children monsters from horror stories aren't real is because more and more, the very same creatures prowling in their closets and under their beds are becoming more cunning, adapting so they can rule the night unchallenged.
Unresolved police cases, human brutality, surges of insanity. Not all of them are legitimate. Some of them are the work of the Others. They don't have a name for themselves, but have gained names through the legends. The vampire, the werewolf, the undead and the demon. These are well known figures that evoke one of the most primal sensations in Man: fear. The fact that it exists proves it has a purpose, a purpose of self preservation. Some have it more acute than others, and others were born with a burden upon their shoulders that pushes them to ignore the fear to protect themselves. Such is the burden of Black Blood, an unwanted heritage amongst those that have it and far more than wished among those that fear it.
On the twenty-fourth day of November, in a foggy afternoon, the heritage finally found a vessel for itself after many years, in the form of a newborn. Not consciously so, as the heritage is nothing more than an inherent thing - it has no mind of its own. Alas, it found a heir. A being barely able to open her blue eyes with no idea of what she was going to face for the years to come. Innocent and devoid of the notion of fear, she was but a small baby, with a lot of dark hair, the darkest hair you'd seen in a new born. The blood it covered her was washed out of her body and she was held almost carelessly by the woman who gave birth to her.
That day marked the beginning of Catherine Shaw.
chapter02
It wasn't until Catherine's twelfth year of life that a crazy turn happened. This isn't to say that she had a happy childhood, but she was as protected as possible, considering the circumstances. Her mother had a certain alliance to a patron of a strip-club (that was really a brothel), a rather shoddy place for a child to grow up in but surprisingly not that awful. A couple of strippers had taken quite a fancy for baby Catherine, so she was never dropped from her cradle nor suffocated to death during her late night cries. The workers of that place took more care of her than her own mother ever would ever care for. She was sent to public school as soon as she was old enough so she could have a moderately regular life. At the age of eight, her mother married an usual of hers. Although clearly a bad choice, he had won the lottery and that had been all it took for her mother to move in with him, dragging the young girl with the luggage, to London, to a nice little flat with warm water and food.
As expected, the money didn't last long. Catherine was far too young to comprehend it fully, but a kid such as herself managed to grasp the general idea. Her mother went back to the streets at night, came home drunk and drugged, sometimes beaten. The man she had married, he left them after not being able to live with a woman such as Catherine's mother when she was ten. From then on, they had to hop from place to place, though the girl did manage to go to school, though she always woke up tired every early morning for having to take care of her mother once she arrived home in a complete mess.
It was during her school years that she became passionate about gymnastics. The fact that she had the never-ending support of Tracy, her gym teacher, helped her. It made her forget about the situation back home. At the age of eleven, both of them had created a friendship that much resembled a mother/daughter relationship, something Catherine had always craved for. It didn't took long for Tracy to be aware of Catherine's situation. The teacher started to look into legal work on how to adopt a child in such situation and even was aided by a stripper at the club her mother had been working on, Helen. Unfortunately, luck was not on their side for on Catherine's twelfth birthday, Tracy disappeared without a trace, shattering the little girl's heart.
And that same night, she became aware of the existence of the Others.
At Tracy's apartment, where the girl had broken into to steal a picture of them as a memoir, she had an encounter with an eerie creature that ended up revealing himself as a vampire. A lot of what happened that night is completely gone from her memory. But after waking up drenched in blood all alone in that apartment, Catherine fled the scene. She knew, after that encounter, she knew Tracy was alive and she had to find her. Had to know why she abandoned her. Why she had shattered her heart.
chapter03
It was on an impulse. She got home late, very late. The stench of blood was still all around her. She didn't know whose blood was it, but she simply had to get it off of her. In the shower, she broke down and cried for the first time since the teacher had been gone. She cut her long dark hair very short there, a memoir of Tracy's fondness - she liked to play with it, braid it, and Catherine didn't want to remember that. So she cut it short, so short, chunks of hair falling all over the bathroom's tiles. She got dressed and stood in front of her mother's empty room. She didn't say goodbye. Behind, she left everything that made her, left all the memories and the sorrows, left behind her hair and her belongings and everything. She only took with her the dog tags and the photograph she had taken from Tracy's place.
And that girl with no home and no name would become Cat, never again acknowledging what she had once been, to fully become what she embraced the moment she left home, for home existed no more.
chapter04
While years of living with her mother taught her to overcome hard times and how to take care of herself without depending on anyone, Cat was still only twelve. Many times she wanted to give up and go back, to ask Helen for help, but she always fought against it, out of pride and shame. She endured what came her way and learnt how to survive on her own, how to be street smart, how to adapt. As she became more and more detached of human contact, she grew colder and stoic, grew uncaring of those around her and only focused on her purpose, on her life goal: to find Tracy.
Cat mostly lived on the streets, but she occasionally rested in empty houses. The homeless people of the streets that observed life all around them tipped her about when home owners were out. Sometimes Helen, the only person she still maintained contact with from her previous life, offered a room for her to stay in at the strip club.
The first time she shot a gun to kill was at the age of thirteen. During a quarrel, she managed to kick the gun out of the man's hand and when he aimed another one at her, she didn't even blink before pulling the trigger. It was a kill or be killed situation, however she wouldn't use the excuse. Her first kill marked an important era of sorts for her. A couple of nights after it, she encountered a strange being, a macabre jester-like figure. He introduced himself as Mister Macabre, a not very clever yet suiting name for the creature. He was an unique Other - no creature like him existed, if one could trust the words of such being. From him, Cat confirmed that Others did exist as she had never encountered any clues until then, and they reigned during the darkest hours of the night. He knew she carried the Black Blood heritage though he didn't explain to her what it was exactly - perhaps he couldn't really understand it, perhaps he wanted to have the upper hand, but it didn't take long for Cat to slowly begin to discover what it did and how it would be used to her advantage.
Albeit she tried to maintain a low profile, by the age of fifteen Cat had already earned a titled through the underground. Among the people that were involved in that kind of life, everyone was aware of Shadow Cat, even if some believe it was a myth just like the boogie man. And just like the boogie man, she was real - and the Others knew it. Some of them knew she was the one that carried the Black Blood, but few knew what it was. Macabre, for his own benefit, shared information in regards to the Others and their activities. Not because Cat was concerned about the well being of humanity but because she still pursued any leads that could bring her to Tracy, though more and more they were hard to find.
chapter05
A series of murders were happening during the time and Cat was the one to shoot down the culprit, who turned out to be a rampaging Other possessing a policeman's body. Cat was nearly caught by a private detective, Lawrence Blackmore. This man wasn't sure (couldn't be sure) of the existence of Others, but he let her go. From then on, Cat sometimes helped him and his friend Nikki, a photographer of Asian heritage and with the uncanny ability of the Vision, though it was very shaky. However, Cat mostly worked on her own for.
The Black Blood enabled her to resist the power Others had over humans. Control of the soul and mind didn't affect her and she was able to absorb the hits Others sent in her direction, a kind of stamina that the Black Blood provided her. This protected her during the quarrels she had with them and the fact it made her able to rip the core of their souls, where their immortality resided, gave Cat the ability to fight and kill them if she wanted, which she usually did so that Macabre was able to devour them, since it was the only way he could feed. The fact Cat aided him sweetened him up so he would share more and more info about the Otherworld.
When she was sixteen, she met a French reporter who was investigating peculiar case. Yvette Theuriau didn't know she had ran into something much more than what she had bargained for. While the case seemed to involve the kidnapping of women, it was more than just that. A vampire lord was involved in this and Cat was on his tracks and both ended up meeting when Cat infiltrated in an art museum, having followed a lead that his next victim would be there. Though it proved to be a fake lead, the reporter had spotted her. Thinking she was a thief, Yvette caused a scene but Cat managed to flee; the persistent French woman followed right after her.
With Blackmore, they ended up resolving the case which would lead Cat to another discovery regarding the vampires reign. While each Cast had their own Head, all of them reunited to discuss several problems in front of the Prince, one of the most powerful figures of the Otherworld. After years and years of waiting and researching, Cat managed to figure out a set date so she could infiltrate and learn about Tracy's whereabouts. Because no matter how long ago it had been, Cat never really forgot her real intentions, why she was still alive, why she was doing that.
chapter06
Able to infiltrate in the Prince's mansion with a little help of Macabre, Cat found out that many were worried about the Lady in Red, who some referred to as Dame Rouge. Powerful, the vampire seemed that she wasn't going to attend the gathering. While many took that as an offence and tried to convince the Prince (a character that always kept himself in the shadows so Cat never got to see his face), a servant of said Dame Rouge made herself present not long after the discussion had started. The internal affairs of the vampires could have been important, but Cat didn't care about them. She was following a lead on Tracy and couldn't care less about what happened or didn't with the Others - that was what they mostly discussed, on how to overcome Others by being a supremacy, thus able to claim a bigger number of victims, of power and territory. However, the servant of the Dame Rouge brought to the table a subject that directly interfered with her, since it revolved around the Black Blood. Wary of this, Cat decided that perhaps the Lady in Red was worth some sort of investigation. Getting out of the gathering wasn't easy. Nearly out she was spotted but managed to escape barely alive, with the help of Blackmore.
Later on, as she investigated the Lady in Red, Yvette got into trouble and disappeared, having left no trace behind. Moments before, she had contacted Blackmore telling she was going to meet Cat back at her hotel room. The detective quickly suspected something was up, since the girl didn't meet up ever, so he asked for her help to solve the case of the missing reporter. Cat confirmed his doubts when she said she hadn't asked anyone to meet her, especially not the nosy French, and while she didn't seem interested in rescuing the woman, she did help him and tried her very best to find her. After a month of working with Blackmore, both finally found a lead on Yvette and Cat didn't hesitate to follow it. It was, once more, an impulse of hers. Cat seemed to give into her impulses many times and that time it ended up being a deadly trap. She would die if the mastermind behind it wasn't someone who didn't want to kill her - not yet, at least.
What happened was that Cat would end up discovering something she had not even once thought about, not even regarding the why Yvette would meet up with Cat when she hadn't requested for it. The moment she met with the person was pretending to be her she discovered that her mother had had a premeditated birth in exchange for money. She was to be given to a rich couple, but she hadn't not because they had backed out but because they just wanted one child, and not two.
And that child they had received was today the Lady in Red. Her twin sister.
It wasn't a sibling bond that had brought Mary and Cat together, but the fact that the vampire twin had learned about the Black Blood and was surprised to find that her sister carried it. She was quite enraged because she herself had not been picked as the heir - she found herself a far better suitable candidate to carry such heritage than her human sister, who seemed to make no use out of it. She left her with a warning, saying that there was a way of killing the Black Blood heir and absorb it inside herself. The only reason she hadn't killed her yet was because she was useful to Mary and she was still searching for a way to absorb the power. Although she should have felt frightened, the new discovery of having a twin sister - identical, without counting the vampire's hair which was long like Cat had once had - had completely got to her.
As it was expected of her, Cat never told anyone about the encounter. She was able to find Yvette nearly dead in an abandoned mirror house. She took her to Blackmore, who drove the wounded reporter to the hospital. Since then, Cat disappeared for quite a while to gather her thoughts.
chapter07
Only after a long time did Cat appear again. By coincidence, that very same evening she was going back to gather information - now about both Tracy and Mary - she ended up getting into a fight with a Purged, an Other exiled from his home for having brought disgrace to his family. He managed to catch her off guard and stabbed her, but the proximity he risked exposed him to her and Cat was able to kill him. However, the wound was worse than she expected and she had to take shelter in what she thought to be an empty basement. Turned out it was also a shelter for an empath that was running from the rain, a Brazilian emigrant called Carolina.
Carol took Cat to an old orphanage where she and other kids lived. There, she helped her recover from the wound. While it wasn't exactly a friendship - the British girl refused to allow herself to get any friends - a certain bond was formed between them. Her recovery was fast and Cat soon left teenager Carol with her kids to go find leads on Tracy.
Blackmore found her during one of his cases, while patrolling late at night, and informed her Yvette was recovered and was living near his block, travelling back and forth to France. Nikki had gone to America and apparently was pregnant. Lastly, it seemed that there was a new file open on "Shadow Cat" at the police, led by a new transfer, a woman called Parker Mullen, Blackmore's niece. None of this was exactly information she cared much for, but she took it in. Helen was the next she visited, for she needed a place to stay. The woman gave her quite the scolding out of concern, something Cat didn't like Helen to feel.
The following month, Cat spent a lot of her time learning more about Mary than Tracy and, indirectly, about the Black Blood. It seemed that only humans were able to inherit it. Mary was becoming a bit of an obsession of hers. Perhaps because she felt threatened by her. The twin held a certain power over Cat and the girl didn't like that at all. However, she wasn't the only one investigating and Mary ended up slowly making connections and through that, she got to Carol. To get under Cat's skin, something she clearly found pleasurable, she sacrificed the empath and killed her while making sure the short-haired girl knew of it. This got to Cat so bad the girl put a hold on Tracy's footsteps to avenge Carol. She went on a manhunt for a vampire family that was extremely useful for Mary, slaughtering every member of it. It wasn't a most intelligent move, but Cat was far too tenacious to care. Such events eventually led her to her own demise. It seemed that Mary had far more influences than Cat was aware of and she was able to summon a gathering with the Prince to request his permission to form an alliance with a particular Other, a figure quite known in the underworld. He took Emil as his human name, an ancient Romanian shaitan who ruled over a small part of the Otherworld. Somehow, he agreed in executing Cat.
One night, after a brief encounter with the police officer Parker, Cat was ambushed by Emil. Macabre, the Other she still kept talking to for information, apparently vanished when she most needed him. The shaitan took the girl to a deserted space, where a textile industry had once been active, and they fought. Emil was so ancient that he had grown powerful enough to influence the Black Blood running through Cat's veins against her. He was able to twist it against the vessel and dragged out this long execution, making sure it was as excruciating as she could take without letting her pass out, before delivering the final blow, ripping out her heart. He dropped the still beating muscle and the dead girl to the floor and left.
chapter08
She was dead, but her soul survived since the Black Blood cursed her forever by not allowing the soul to cross over. A kind of Otherworld war went down until someone could claim it as theirs, but by either luck or misfortune, the Arcadia Realm salvaged the girl's soul. Amongst human stories, they were known as angels, however they were nothing like the Bible told. They were strict and austere, far from stories of forgiveness. With an authoritarian discipline, they made Cat one of their Omens, a very prestigious role among them, but it was short lived. Because of the Black Blood she had and the corruption it had withstood throughout her years of fighting against the Others crawling on Earth, the core of her soul was far too rotten and damaged to handle the essence of an Omen. Like most of them, she was to gain wings, but instead only managed to grow a deformed black wing.
As soon as she was allowed to go back to Earth, she immediately went to seek for revenge and drunk in her power, killed Emil cold-blooded, something an Omen should never do without fair trial, thus leading to a trial of her own. She was Judged traitor and expendable to the Arcadia, even if she held a power that would be very convenient to them. They ripped her wing out and Punished her by sending her back to her body.
Regrettably for them, the Black Blood always absorbed something it had been in contact with, so Cat was able to recover from what it would be a deadly wound and a rotting corpse due to the very few minutes the Black Blood carried the virtue of an Omen. This, however, came with a price. Like an Aquiles heel, her ability to quickly recover from wounds was diminished, though she seemed to still have more stamina than a regular human. Not only that, but her ability to identify an Other was muted to the point where she couldn't be certain, yet there was still remains of that power. And where once the broken wing had been was now a tender spot, a scar that would never heal - like the soft spot of a dragon's belly.
chapter09
Upon her return, she learnt that Mary had gone missing, so she went to focus once more on Tracy. That would soon prove to be impossible due to Parker's pursuit of the urban myth that "Shadow Cat" was - a name was sounding more and more pathetic as the girl herself grew. By that time, the myth had already faded, giving place to new urban legends of the underworld since Cat's feats were becoming increasingly more obscure as time passed. She was eighteen by the time she met with Parker again. The tempestuous detective was resolute in accusing Cat of all charges, but she was proven half wrong as they were caught by a famished ghoul, a lost Other that would feed on any kind of human being. While Parker nearly lost an arm, Cat strained herself far too much in trying to finish it off while protecting the confused officer. When she woke up again, she noticed she had been taken to Blackmore's place by the young woman, who later closed the file on "Shadow Cat" for good after finding rather plausible evidences that most of what had been archived in the file were merely urban myths.
Time went by. Cat still searched for anything that could lead her to Tracy and every little thing was precious to her, even if it meant endangering her life - she was used to that after years of doing so, but through those years, she had met all those people and slowly figured out that she wasn't made of stone nor ice and she did need the occasionally human contact, for she went to them when they didn't come to her. Her relationship with Blackmore was strong, the detective acting very much like a protector. Helen was a sure haven for when Cat needed rest, while Yvette made her feel like a teenager she had never been. The slowly developing affinity with Parker proved to be almost like the one she had had with Carol, an odd kind of friendship where Cat felt almost safe again.
As the English Autumn rain began to fall, Cat received a little visit from someone she hadn't seen in a long time: Macabre. The Other seemed rather changed, more powerful, but still comfortable in acting as a servant to the vessel of the Black Blood. He carried a valuable information that held the answer Cat had been searching for years and years, Tracy whereabouts. However, for this piece of knowledge, Cat had to give Macabre something in return, something he had also been searching for a long time. While he didn't tell her right away what it was, he did tell her if was she to accept this she should know it involved a trip to the Otherworld. It was known that humans couldn't live more than one hour there, but he assured that, because she carried the Black Blood, she should be safe for at least three hours, which were about two weeks in the human realm. Before she accepted it, Macabre disappeared for one day to let her think about it, knowing the pressure wouldn't let her sleep. She decided to tell Blackmore about Tracy then, making him vow not to ever say anything about it to anyone. He told her that if she was sure she would come out alive, then she should go ahead and do it, but in the end, it was her call.
Cat ended up agreeing to Macabre's preposition and the moment he appeared, she told him to take her to the Otherworld. She nearly regretted it as they got there, a trip only achieved by an enormous strain on her body as she had to dive in a lake that was skin cutting cold. She had to use all of her stealth and willpower to pass through the Otherworld until she reached the place Macabre wanted her to. It seemed like the ruins of a once beautiful mansion with a fountain that instead of water spat blood. As they got there, Macabre presented to her what he needed her to do. He needed her to rip the soul of a young Arcadian, a Herald, so that he could feed on him. The Arcadians had Judged her and Punished her, but Cat held little against them. But the fact she had to assist Macabre in killing one of them made her nauseated. However, he held the last piece of information she needed to find Tracy and she had very little time left to return to the human realm. Against everything she had build herself to be at that point, Cat ended up doing what the Other told her to and fed Macabre the wailing Herald in return to what she would forever regret.
chapter10
It was Macabre that took her to the place he had said Tracy last track led to. Still in the Otherworld and with very little time, Cat forced herself to endure the pain that realm caused her so she could see what this lead was. Macabre wasn't allowed to go near the place. It was pitch dark and she couldn't see a thing, but guiding herself by hear and touch, she managed to reach the place, a garden that was dead silent and empty. At first, she thought Macabre had tricked her, but as she walked further into that seemingly endless garden, Cat began to notice a woman laying on the floor, naked. She was sure it was the woman who she could call mother, so Cat rushed to her side and gently turned her while calling her name. And she wasn't wrong, it was Tracy, only a changed Tracy. A Tracy that had been corrupted by the Others, for she had turned into one of them and didn't recognize her. As a succubus, she had tried to simply attract a lost human to herself and as soon as the girl was near, the once human lunged at Cat and tried to devour her soul.
Barely escaping the encounter, she ended up crashing against Tracy's owner, one of the very first shaitans. Time was running out and she would soon crumble under the darkness of the Otherworld. It was pure luck Cat escaped the unnamed shaitan, narrowly managing to find another exit into the human realm. Because the time in the Otherworld worked in different way, the three and a half hours she had been gone had given enough time to the human realm to turn into Winter, so when she returned, the lake was frozen. It was a lot of luck, but the fact that lake was the one near Parker's new place was what saved Cat from drowning. The detective was just returning from work when she heard some odd sounds coming from under the frozen lake. She broke the ice, setting the girl free, and took her home to ensure she wouldn't die of hypothermia. However, the fact that Cat couldn't stop crying worried her far more than the fact she had been gone for nearly one season.
It took a while for Cat to recover emotionally and physically. Her body had been pushed to its very limits to endure her stay in the Otherworld, so she took quite some time for her condition to improve. Parker took care of her, though she told Blackmore that Cat was back the moment she had found her. During her rebound, she tried to make the girl live a somewhat regular, steady and normal life, though she seemed to have shut herself even more from everyone after the day she had been found in the lake. Slowly, however, Cat began to search for a new motive, and as obvious as it was, bringing Tracy to salvation was what she then decided to do. She just needed to find a way how to bring back an Other to their human souls again.
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