❷ the accomplice chapters
the allies
❚tracy josephine weis.
Tracy is very much the only person Cat has ever loved. Just like a mother to the girl, Tracy was her gym teacher when she was younger. She was always supportive and friendly to the girl and just like Cat loved her as a mother, Tracy loved the girl as a daughter. However, Tracy suddenly disappeared one day, kidnapped by an Other, which set a whole chain of events in Cat's life, who has been searching al her life for her only to end up with a broken heart once more as she found out Tracy had become an Other, Childe of an ancient, powerful shaitan who now Cat is looking for, as well as a solution to turn the woman back to the mother she loved, to destroy the darkness that resides now inside the woman's heart and soul.
❚helen patricia waits.
Helen is an old friend and one of the very few that knows about her past and her mother. Helen offers shelter and food to Cat. Having been a prostitute, she's also a good source of information to when it comes to what's happening on the streets. Although she doesn't really work much as a prostitute anymore, instead now owning a strip club, Helen still maintains contact with Cat. She's not aware of the existence of Others, but has a feeling that Cat isn't just fighting off gangs that try to invade her strip club. Still, the forty-five years old woman doesn't ask questions, though she worries about the girl more than any other person, mothering her everytime she comes by. She was one of the women who took care of Cat when she was a baby and her mother wasn't around.
❚john lawrence blackmore.
Blackmore is a private investigator with connections with the British police, having been one of them when he was younger. Now with forty-two years old, he works solo. Having met Cat when he was still working for the police corps as he was investigation the case "shadow cat", working underground, he soon created a fatherly bond with her. Months after, he quit the forces to become a private investigator, working with Cat with the more peculiar cases. Years after, he became aware of the existence of the Others, which made him even more fatherly of her. He's one of the very few people she trusts in. A close friend of Yvette and Nikki, Parker's uncle. Divorced with no kids of his own, he has the occasional date but he's one of those guys married to his work.
❚mister macabre.
Introducing himself as Mister Macabre, this Other is a kind of an ally of Cat, as he is the servant of the vessel of Black Blood, or so he claims to be. Macabre isn't always present nor when Cat needs him, but rather when it's convenient to him, always trading information for a favour, a quid pro quo as he likes to call it - in exchange for his service, he asks Cat to kill certain Others so he can feed on their souls. He's an extremely creepy creature, but he has not once betrayed Cat, even if his ways are quite doubtful. Macabre has taken the mission of finding about Tracy's whereabouts as Cat demands. He also serves as a portal searcher for Cat to be able to cross to the Otherworld.
❚yvette theuriau.
A French reporter that ended up getting tangled in Cat's life when she was investigating a case of missing women. She met Cat and Blackmore during that time and helped them solving the case. Yvette decided to stick around London for a while longer, becoming a freelancer instead while assisting Blackmore in his investigations. The twenty-eight years old woman is happy to give Cat information as long as she lets her in. Yvette has a bad habit of sticking her nose in private matters of others, which usually causes her to get into deeper troubles. Because of that, she found out about the Others. Ever since, she has moved in Blackmore's building to both feel protected and to make sure he doesn't go off investigating anything fun without her.
❚ana carolina de souza.
Deceased. A Brazilian emigrant who was a young empath, living in an abandoned orphanage along with a couple of street kids, mothering them. She met Cat by pure chance and was inevitably pulled into the girl's life after she helped her healing from a bullet wound in her stomach, harbouring her while she recovered. They shared a kind of friendship Cat was never really able to admit, being so afraid of such relationships. Unfortunately for Carol, she was kidnapped by Mary and the vampire tortured and killed the teenager when she was barely sixteen, all to get Cat's attention. This made Cat so revolted that she went on a manhunt to avenge her death.
❚parker joan mullen.
Despite the fact she has been transferred to the investigation department recently, Parker has repeatedly proved to be an agent with a lot of potential, very much following the footsteps of her uncle, Blackmore, from his sister's side, Joan, who is an accomplished writer living in Manchester. She was a transfer from Manchester to investigate the reopened case of "shadow cat". It was only the second time she met Cat that they became more allies than enemies - Parker was attacked by a famished ghoul and Cat saved her, earning the loyalty of the detective, which she proved by closing for good the case "shadow cat." Although Parker is very much still learning about everything, she still works of the police force, though does a bit of an outside job when she helps out her uncle in various strange cases that very much involve the Others.
the neutrals
❚nikki lee-armstrong.
Although she's not very close to Cat, Nikki is an old friend of Blackmore. A photographer, daughter of a human and an Other, she's far more than aware of their existence. Her mother's blood, an Other, offers her the power of clairvoyance by travelling through other people's nightmares. At the age of twenty-six, she got pregnant and decided to quit the investigating life, instead going to a design major to become an interior designer. Later on, she moved to Los Angeles with her partner, a vampire woman that called herself Nemesis, where she now lives with her twin babies, Damien and Lily.
❚khel, the fallen other.
During one of her joint investigations with Blackmore and Yvette, Cat found Khel, an Other running from his clan. She did not trust him but she didn't think he was a threat either, so she didn't feel the need to kill him. Instead, he proved himself to be a really nice guy, ending up getting hired by Helen. He sew off his three horns on his forehead to pass by as a human, even if he isn't. Since then, he's been working as a bouncer. Although nobody can confirm it, not even Helen, it seems that Khel and Cat had an affair once, albeit highly doubtful it was meaningful at all. Because Cat asks him not to, he doesn't meddle in her business, thus earning him a neutral place in Cat's book, which is to say he's a reliable person.
❚audrey english.
The only reason Audrey is any bit interested in Cat is due to the fact the girl once went on a killing spree. Being the Head of a vampire house herself, she decided to protect her own by meeting with Cat. Not exactly a friend of Mary herself, Cat's revenge didn't bother her the least. Audrey never really aided Cat in anything, though it was agreed that, to spare her house, she was to watch over Helen's club and fend off any Others that would eventually enjoy a bit of mass destruction or harming the workers of the club. Audrey herself isn't interested in the Black Blood.
the foes
❚mary kate white.
The discovery of Mary caused a turn of events Cat never once imagined. Identical twins, her existence was always hidden by their mother, having gotten pregnant because a couple paid her to give them a child. When it was clear she was having twins, they warned her they simply wanted one and picked Mary out of the two. When she was sixteen, Mary was Embraced. Her Sire was killed and left her as the Head of the house, a task she took with an iron fist, soon becoming an influential figure, though she is not the Prince. She has known about Cat for a fair time, mostly because of the link to the Black Blood. Jealous that she was not the one that became the vessel, Mary has been searching for ways to take the Black Blood to herself, no matter what she has to do for it to happen. Among the Others, she's known as the Lady in Red.
❚emil, the shaitan.
Deceased. Hired by the Prince to execute Cat after her vengeful manhunt, Emil was a powerful shaitan, son of Hades, another ancient shaitan that ruled part of the Otherworld. Emil did kill Cat, able to defy the power of the Black Blood, ripping out the heart of the girl right out of her chest. He couldn't guess that the Arcadians would take Cat as an Omen, which gave her the needed power to destroy him, before she was Punished by this act and sent back to her body back on Earth (a body kept safe by the very own Arcadians).
❚the unnamed shaitan.
Unbeknownst to Cat, the unnamed shaitan that took Tracy as his is Emil's father. Calls himself Hades after the God of the Underworld - it should be noted he isn't Hades himself, though he is old enough to be. Ridiculously powerful, the shaitan knows exactly who the Black Blood vessel is. Unlike a traditional Other, he does not seek to avenge the death of his son Emil, for he understands it to be a fair fight in which Cat both won and lost. However, the shaitan is far from a forgiving Other and he has his own agenda, which nobody seems to know. Why he has taken Tracy as his or why he hasn't killed Cat yet is a mystery; there's no doubt he could have killed her, but this shaitan has his own twisted reasons to wait a while longer. After all, he has already waited many thousands years for his moment of glory.
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