DOWN THROUGH THE YEARS

Van Helsing, 1888 - the Vatican

"You know what he is, don't you?" Carl said hesitantly. His words were half-way between being a statement and a question.

The Cardinal seemed to examine Carl closely before replying in accented English. "What have you learned?"

They were in the Vatican workshop of the Knights of the Holy Order. It was a comforting place for Carl, filled with a dull cacophony of sounds and voices, and permeated with the familiar odors of coal-fires, bitter chemicals, ozone, gunpowder, and hot metal. Carl had spent most of his adult life in the workshop, crafting tools and weapons to be used by the Knights in their unceasing war against the Darkness. Carl would have been perfectly happy to never leave, but the Cardinal had recently insisted that he accompany Van Helsing on a mission to Transylvania. Carl and Van Helsing had just returned from that mission.

As far as Carl was concerned, he had seen enough field-work to last him for a lifetime.

Carl frowned thoughtfully. "He's at least 400 years old. In the fifteenth century, he was the man who killed Dracula for the first time."

The Cardinal said nothing. He just looked at Carl expectantly.

Carl took a deep breath before continuing. "There are accounts from that time that refer to him as the Left Hand of God."

The Cardinal actually flinched, but still said nothing.

Both men were making a point of not looking in the direction of Van Helsing. At the moment, the Knight was at a nearby work table, frowning as he discussed a new form of exotic ammunition with a French armorer. Van Helsing didn't have a problem with the silver jacketing of the bullets, but he was skeptical about the claim that the silver was actually wrapped around cylindrical slugs of carved dragon bone.

"Your Eminence, what does it mean?" Carl asked helplessly.

The Cardinal gave Carl a sharp look. "It means that - as always - God has given us the weapons we need to fight Satan and his works. How could we expect otherwise?"

The Cardinal didn't miss the stir of resentment that appeared in Carl's eyes. It appeared that Van Helsing had made a friend.

Good.

"He is not just a weapon, your Eminence," Carl said carefully.

The Cardinal shrugged expressively. "I do not discount Van Helsing's humanity. However, all of his kind are weapons. It is in their nature."

Carl blinked in surprise. "All of his kind?" he repeated.

This time, the Cardinal couldn't help but glance at Van Helsing. "He is not the only one of his breed, Carl. There is a lineage that the Order has been familiar with for many centuries. They are powerful and potentially quite long-lived. Van Helsing has sons, grandsons, great-grandsons - and more. The breed are born fighting and they die fighting. And they hate the Darkness. That hatred is a part of them."

"Dracula called him Gabriel," Carl said quietly.

The Cardinal locked eyes with Carl. "Do not call him that in my presence."

Carl bowed his head obediently. But it seemed to him that Cardinal wasn't angry. It was more as if he simply couldn't bring himself to face something that he found to be... too much.

Logan, 1888 - Quebec

Two weeks ago, Logan would have sworn that vampires were just a story told by old men around the campfire.

Now Logan knew better. And he hated everything about vampires. It was a hate that seemed to go right to the very core of his being.

The vampire crawling through the gutter had been shot to pieces - its arms and legs shredded by buckshot. Once, the vampire had been a pretty half-Indian girl named Alice Standing Bear. But now it was just a bloodsucker that had spent a weeks worth of Quebec's long winter nights leaving behind a trail of bloodless bodies.

Logan slung the shotgun over his back and put his foot on the vampire's back, pinning it into place. The vampire hissed and scrabbled, trying to claw at Logan, but it couldn't find purchase.

Then Logan began pouring kerosene over the vampire.

In the background, two priests - one Russian Orthodox and the other Catholic - were softly chanting ancient words. Alice Standing Bear was gone, but they hoped her soul was not beyond the reach of Heaven.

Logan still wasn't sure why the two priests had come to him, but they hadn't hesitated. The morning after the first blood-drained body was found, they pulled Logan right out of his favorite whorehouse. It had been quite the sight. Father Lachat had calmed the furious madam and kept the curious working girls at bay as Father Sokolov literally dragged Logan out of the arms of an outraged Swedish prostitute.

"We need your help," Father Sokolov said as he used one arm to fend off the completely naked and wildly cursing whore. With his other hand, he tossed Logan a roll of cash.

Logan snatched the wad of bills out of the air, and then blinked in surprise. It was more than enough money to get him through the next year.

"Who do I have to kill?" Logan said with a wide grin as he reached for his pants.

Perhaps he should have noticed that the priest didn't smile.

His eyes cold as the frozen center of hell, Logan stepped away from the blazing fire of the vampire. Within the flames, the creature writhed and screamed, but Logan couldn't find any pity within him.

The last week had taught him everything he needed to know about vampires.

He hated them.

It was like he'd been put on this earth just to hate vampires.

Van Helsing, 1888 - London

In a Whitechapel pub, Van Helsing and Carl were having a pint.

Nobody knew it, but Jack the Ripper was dead. Even for two Knights of the Holy Order, this particular case had been unnerving. Nothing seemed to make sense.

"Demonic possession?" Carl suggested.

Van Helsing shook his head. "He didn't react to holy symbols."

"First stage lycanthropy?" Carl tried again.

"No," replied Van Helsing briefly as he gazed thoughtfully into his glass. "The killings spanned several months. He would have become a full werewolf during the first full moon."

Carl paused to consider additional possibilities. "A weak-blooded partial vampire? Like the ones we ran into in Florence?"

"They turned to dust after we killed them," Van Helsing reminded Carl. "Jack simply became a corpse."

"Jekyll and Hyde serum?" Carl tried again.

"He was normal shape and size. And not particularly strong or fast. That was the reason he hunted women. A full-grown man might have been too dangerous for him."

Carl fell silent for a long time.

"You're suggesting that Jack was just a man?" Carl finally said slowly. "But that's not possible - he could turn invisible."

Van Helsing finished his pint and shrugged his shoulders.

Carl's eyes wandered over the crowd of seemingly ordinary people who filled the pub. It had been a bad year. First the mission in Transylvania - and the death of Anna and Velkan Valerious. And now this.

"This is something new," Carl said quietly.

Van Helsing nodded again.

Logan, 1916 - Somewhere in France

"There's something out there," the sobbing soldier moaned.

It was night and they were between shellings. The muck of the trenches was pooled around their ankles and everyone was nervously counting their ammunition and hoping that they would be resupplied soon. The German's had just tried yet another trench raid just after nightfall and repulsing it had been a long and bloody affair. You'd think the Germans would have noticed by now that they never seemed to catch the Canadians unawares in this particular part of the line.

Somewhere out beyond the wire, a wounded German was screaming.

"It's just a dying Hun, you damned idiot!" growled a voice from the darkness further down the trench.

The crying soldier shook his head wildly. "No. No! I saw something in the flares! Just before the Huns fell back! They were picking through the bodies!"

"So some German medics with more guts than brains were searching for wounded men! So what?"

"They weren't medics! They weren't Huns! They weren't human!" sobbed the soldier.

Logan shifted off to the side and stepped up to an observation gap on the edge of the trench. Then he peered out into the darkness. The other men had long since stopped wondering why Logan was able to see, hear, and smell things that nobody else could. The reason didn't matter. The fact that Logan's odd talents helped keep them alive was what mattered.

Logan squinted into the darkness. There was no moon. Clouds obscured the stars. Neither side had flares up at the moment.

But...

But he could tell that something was moving out beyond the wire.

"Wait here," Logan said. Then he slipped over the top of the trench and underneath a carefully concealed gap in the wire.

"Logan! Come back here you bloody fool!" somebody hissed. One of the soldiers grabbed his ankle and tried to drag Logan back, but he kicked himself loose.

Cradling his bayoneted rifle in his arms, Logan began to slowly crawl towards the screaming German. He only had a few tens of yards to go when the screams suddenly stopped.

Logan froze. It was a trap. They'd let the German live, hoping his screaming would draw someone out.

He could sense them right in front of him. And to either side. And the soldier back in the trench was right - they weren't human.

Moving almost soundlessly, they came at Logan from all sides. He blew a gaping hole in the first one's chest with the round in his rifle and it tumbled backwards. After that, it came down to his bayonet and rifle butt against the fangs and gore-encrusted claws of the ghouls.

On both sides, soldiers trembled in their trenches, listened to the howls and roars, and wondered what the hell was going on out in no man's land.

Van Helsing, 1926 - Marseilles

Carl was long dead. He was killed in Egypt, in a battle with a reanimated mummy. Van Helsing had made a point of bringing Carl back to his native soil for burial. Then he buried Carl with his own hands.

After a few days of drunkenness, Van Helsing went back to hunting things for the Holy Order. He was alone again. Van Helsing said nothing to his superiors in the Holy Order, but they didn't assign him another partner.

"Do you have a brother?" the nun suddenly asked. She was young and very pretty. And every time she entered his cell to tend his wounds, she stared at Van Helsing.

Van Helsing had taken refuge in a nunnery, waiting for a nasty bite that encompassed most of his right thigh to heal. A madman had been using Dr. Moreau's notes to raise Nile crocodiles and then treat them with strange chemicals to enhance their size and intelligence. It seemed as if the works of Frankenstein, Jekyll, and Moreau never went away. The church had been hunting down copies of their books, notes, and articles for decades now. It was the only form of book-burning that Van Helsing was comfortable with.

An image of Carl's face appeared in Van Helsing's face when the nun said "brother". He forced it away. He had done his mourning. It was time to respect the memory of those he had lost and move on.

The memory of Anna's peacefully composed face on her funeral pyre made Van Helsing close his eyes and take a deep breath.

Move on. Those were brave words.

"I had a brother, but he wasn't related by blood," Van Helsing finally said.

The nun nodded and went back to changing the bandage on his leg. Nobody in the nunnery had asked his name, or commented on how quickly his wound was healing, or said anything about the vast array of weaponry that was scattered around his cell. Van Helsing assumed that the orders from the Vatican about the nunnery's strange guest had been quite strict.

"Why do you ask?" Van Helsing pressed, trying to use conversation to ignore the pain.

The nun met Van Helsing's eyes. They were blue, he noticed. And her skin was quite fair. He couldn't tell for sure because of the headgear she wore, but he suspected that she had blonde hair.

"There was a man I knew," the nun said softly. "He was a soldier. It was before I became a nun..."

She suddenly broke off. There was a trace of red in her cheeks. Van Helsing wasn't exactly in a smiling mood - most of his thigh had been ripped open - but his lips quirked anyway.

"He was a lucky man," Van Helsing said. And he meant it.

The nun efficiently tied off the new bandage and stood up.

"He looked a great deal like you. That's why I asked," she said.

"What was his name?" Van Helsing asked curiously.

"Logan. He was a Canadian soldier. He was about the same age as you are now, but he had a harder face. Otherwise, you two could be twins."

With those last words, the nun left the room.

Van Helsing waited until he was sure she was gone, then he took the locket from around his neck and opened it. Carl had made it for him and then left it to Van Helsing in his will. Inside the locket was a miniature reproduction of the portrait of Anna Valerious.

Van Helsing stared at the picture until nightfall made it impossible.

Logan, 1942 - Dieppe

As far as Logan was concerned, the raid on Dieppe was a complete cluster-fuck. The Germans had caught them on the beach and the raiders had nowhere near enough naval and air support. The Germans were dug-in, ready to fight, and pouring out a withering amount of firepower. The raiders had achieved none of their objectives and were unable to get any traction.

It reminded Logan a lot of the last war. Except you couldn't dig a trench into a wave-swept, rocky, shoreline.

It was increasingly obvious that a big part of the 2nd Canadian Infantry Division wasn't going to go home.

Before he died, Logan's lieutenant received a radio message. The platoon was supposed to hook up with a squad that was doing some damn-fool thing off to the east of Green Beach. The squad had been shot to pieces and only two of them were left. And for some reason, it was important to get them out. Something about one of the survivors being some sort of intelligence technician.

Logan was a just a corporal, but within a matter of minutes after his platoon tried to move eastward he became the highest ranking man in his unit. The lieutenant and all of the platoon's sergeants were either dead or incapacitated.

What was left of the platoon was taking cover behind a low stone wall. Logan slapped one of his increasingly shell-shocked privates on the shoulder to get his attention.

"Go back! Find a damned boat and get the hell out of here!" Logan yelled as he pointed back the way they had come.

Logan didn't have to say it twice. It was easily the most popular order he had given in his two stints with the Canadian Army. As his soldiers fell back, Logan ducked into a culvert and continued working his way eastward. He might still be able to find what was left of that isolated squad and get them out...

Then the culvert, weakened by shellfire, collapsed under Logan's weight and he crashed down into a cavernous storm drain.

Staggering to his feet, soaked with water and missing his rifle, Logan suddenly realized that he was not alone.

The creature was a good seven-foot tall. It resembled a cross between a man, a shark, and a frog. It had a dead German soldier cradled in its arms, and it had just taken a huge bite out of the soldier's neck and shoulder. It seemed to be considering Logan as it gulped down the mouthful that it had just taken from the German.

Logan fumbled for his belt knife, but like his rifle, he had apparently lost it in the fall.

Still staring at Logan with oddly bulbous eyes, the creature dropped the German soldier and hissed out an eager-sounding cry that sounded something like a moaning croak.

From deeper in the depths of the storm drain, there was a chorus of return calls.

Logan snarled a challenge to the creature as he groped in the water for something, anything, that he could use as a weapon. The best he managed to find was a chunk of jagged concrete.

The creature took a step towards Logan, its eyes dead and hungry. Then a pair of deafening shots slammed into the creature's back and spun it around. It collapsed into the dark water on its hands and knees, staining the water an odd shade of red. As it bellowed and struggled to rise, another pair of shots smashed into the back of its head.

A tall figure in a long jacket was perched on a rusty ladder the led into the drain. He had a huge, smoking, revolver in one hand.

For a long, frozen second Logan and Van Helsing stared at one another. The resemblance was uncanny. It was as if they were each looking into a mirror that somehow gave their reflections different clothes.

"Get out of here!" Van Helsing yelled urgently as he drew another pistol.

Logan didn't argue. He scrambled up a pile of rubble and out onto the above-ground battlefield. As crazy as it sounded, Logan was pretty sure that he was actually safer up there.

He surfaced almost directly into the two survivors of the missing squad. They were hiding behind the same stone wall that had earlier sheltered Logan's soldiers. After a few quick words of yelled explanation, they began crawling back towards Green Beach.

Van Helsing, 1955 - East Berlin

The Holy Order rated Communists somewhere between vampires and witches in its hierarchy of enemies. Van Helsing had been more than a little uncomfortable with that - he didn't consider himself to be an instrument of modern politics. But in the 1930s he eventually saw what Stalin and Beria had done to Russia. That was when Van Helsing was forced to admit that the Holy Order just might have a point.

In any case, the Holy Order completely lost its mind when it found out that a vampire witch was working for the KGB.

Helga Gorbat got her start in the evil business as a handmaiden for Countess Elizabeth Bathory. Helga preserved her own miserable life by helping the Countess torture and murder the peasant girls in whose blood the Countess bathed. The Countess thought she was preserving her youth and beauty. Actually, she was transforming herself into a particularly potent form of vampire. Helga became one of the newly transformed Bathory's first meals, and in the process became a vampire herself.

With the Holy Order's help, the King of Hungary eventually dispatched agents and troops to deal with the Blood Countess. And in the maelström of carnage, horror, and brutality that followed, Helga Gorbat somehow managed to simply walk away. Then she vanished until the early twentieth century, when she (perhaps literally) rematerialized in the service of the NKVD. But in addition to being a vampire, Helga was now also a talented magical practitioner.

The role Helga Gorbat played in perpetuating Stalin's rule probably resulted in millions of deaths. It took the Holy Order decades to discover what was going on. And when they finally figured it out, they sent Van Helsing to deal with the situation.

Which was how Van Helsing found himself in trouble. A lot of trouble.

The KGB safehouse was a wreck and Helga Gorbat's body was now in several merrily burning pieces, but her magic had been quite deadly and her KGB bodyguards were both numerous and well-armed. Van Helsing was laying in a puddle of his own blood, riddled with a half-dozen bullet wounds and burned by strange energies.

Any other man would have been long dead, but Van Helsing wasn't just any man. So he stubbornly clung to life even as a Anna's smile beckoned to him from the other side.

Through the gathering darkness, Van Helsing could hear the frightened KGB bodyguards talking.

"What do we do?" one of the bodyguards moaned in Russian.

"We report back and tell them that the demoness is dead," another Russian voice answered tensely.

"They'll kill us for losing her!"

"We have to report! We have no choice!"

Van Helsing felt a boot thud into his side, but that wasn't particularly painful compared to his other injuries. And besides, Anna was kneeling next to him and caressing his cheek...

"We have this one," a third voice said thoughtfully. "He's the Vatican's assassin. Moscow Central has wanted him for years."

Someone let out a bark of tired laughter. "So what? They won't let us live just because we gave them a corpse. Look at him. He won't last much longer. "

Van Helsing knew that the last man was right. It wouldn't be long now. He closed his eyes as he felt a pair of warm lips kiss him on the temple.

That was when the firefight erupted again. Van Helsing decided he wasn't particularly interested in what was going on and let everything go blank.

Later on, Van Helsing opened his eyes again and wondered how it was possible that he was still alive.

He was in what looked like the back of a panel truck. He was laying on the floor and had been roughly, but efficiently bandaged. A medic was working at giving him a field transfusion. And there was a group of armed men all around him, sitting on benches...

They weren't Russians. Van Helsing could tell by their arms and equipment. And they were quietly speaking to one another in English. The accents varied quite a bit. A distant, analytical part of Van Helsing's mind suggested that he was in the hands of some sort of CIA-NATO black-ops team.

One of the gunmen noticed that Van Helsing was awake and knelt next to him.

"Hello, again," Logan said. "Your bosses called in a favor from our bosses. You're on your way home."

Van Helsing didn't have the strength to respond. But he knew that he really had to talk to this man someday. So much of the past was still a mystery to Van Helsing, but he was certain that the man talking to him was one of his descendants.

Logan, 1978 - Saskatchewan

For Logan, life had become an empty blur of wandering.

Logan didn't know who or what he was. All he had was a pair of dog-tags, some fragmented and horrible nightmares, and the sure knowledge that he wasn't like other men.

All that was left for Logan was to continue searching for something that might not even exist - a hint about his past. He somehow knew that whatever he was looking for was in the far north. And he simply couldn't bring himself to leave until he found it.

Years passed with no luck. But Logan kept looking.

Then one day, an elderly priest came up to him and said, "Thank God you are here. We need your help."

A week of utterly epic confusion resulted. It ended with a dead thing that the local Indians called a wendigo.

"You're not who I thought you were," the priest confessed later on as they shared a simple meal in the tiny house behind the priest's small church.

"Who did you think I was?" Logan asked. He looked like he'd been run over by a truck, but by now he was mostly healed.

The priest poured Logan some more wine. "There is a man named Van Helsing. He works for the church and he hunts... things like the creature you just killed."

"Monsters," Logan clarified.

"Yes," the priest said with a thoughtful nod. "You and he have a strong resemblance. You must be related."

Van Helsing, 1993 - Detroit

"Your doppelganger was here a few days ago," the Holy Order agent told Van Helsing.

Van Helsing didn't ask who the agent was talking about. He didn't have to.

"What was he up to this time?" Van Helsing asked curiously.

"When he first showed up, it was the usual - he was looking for a mutant. Apparently that school he works for is still providing a home to unwanted children with powers."

"That's good work," Van Helsing pointed out.

The agent nodded. "Yes, it is - and God bless them. But right after he sent a mutant boy back east, he hunted down that pair of skinwalkers we called you here to deal with."

There was a trace of a smile on Van Helsing's face. "Are you telling me that I'm not needed?"

"I'm afraid so. I have no clue how he tracked them down so quickly."

"He has a talent for that sort of thing," Van Helsing said.

Logan, 2004 - Los Angeles

"His full name is Gabriel Van Helsing."

Logan stared at the Russian agent. She was a beautiful redhead named Natasha Romanoff. She was a bright and rising new star in the Russian intelligence service, known for her talents as a seductress and an assassin. Rumor had it that she was in line for some sort of secret Soviet program that was intended to produce agents with abilities that bordered on the superhuman.

At the moment, Natasha was trying her formidable best to conceal her emotions under a veneer of cold professional detachment. Against a normal man, she would have succeeded, but Logan could sense that she was barely managing to keep herself under control. He was very good at smelling fear.

They were sitting at a table in a seedy, but quiet, bar. An array of eight by ten photographs was spread out on the table between Logan and Natasha. A casual observer would have assumed that they were photos of Logan. He would have been wrong.

Picking up a photograph more or less at random, Logan examined it closely. It showed a man in a long leather jacket standing on a street corner. Except for longer hair, less enthusiastic sideburns, and a slightly more youthful appearance, his resemblance to Logan was uncanny.

"He is an agent of a specialized group within the Vatican that is known as the Knights of the Holy Order," Natasaha continued. "They track down and destroy supernatural threats. Van Helsing has supposedly been an operative for them since the 1870s. He is considered to be their most effective assassin."

Logan looked up from the photograph and met Natasha's eyes, but didn't say anything.

Natasha continued. "Almost nothing is known about Van Helsing before he began working for the Holy Order. However, he is believed to be hundreds of years old, and there are possible references to him that date back as far as the First Crusade. He has no known friends, family, or associates outside of the Holy Order."

Then Natasha hesitated for a moment before continuing. "However, there is some evidence that he has living descendants."

Logan smiled briefly.

"Van Helsing was responsible for the death of a high-level KGB supernatural resource. Moscow Central made several attempts to eliminate him in response, but all such efforts were expensive failures. Current orders are that any agent who encounters Van Helsing is to immediately break contact with him and report his presence to their superiors."

Reaching into a briefcase, Natasha pulled out a bundle of manila file folders and slid them across the table to Logan. "This is a copy of the old KGB records of Van Helsing's operational history. It used to be considerably more detailed, but in 1957 a Vatican operative managed to destroy the original. All information from before that time is a reconstruction and should be considered questionable. Due to budgetary restrictions, the FSB hasn't done a very good job of keeping it up to date since the fall of the Soviet Union."

Logan stacked up the photographs and put them on top of the folders.

"Anything else?" Logan asked.

Natasha had long since figured out that lying or otherwise trying to conceal something from Logan was a losing game. "There is something that keeps appearing and reappearing in the historical record. For some reason - even before his association with the Holy Order - Van Helsing was sometimes called the Left Hand of God."

Seeming to consider what Natasha had said, Logan nodded slowly.

After taking a deep breath, Natasha said, "I've given you what you wanted."

Logan got to his feet, tucking the files and photographs under his arm. Then he tossed a ten-dollar bill onto the table.

"C'mon," Logan said.

Natasha followed Logan out of the bar. It was a hot summer night and the neighborhood wasn't a very good one. A variety of human predators and parasites seemed to consider their options as Logan and Natasha walked down the cracked and litter-strewn sidewalk. However, nobody managed to work up the nerve to try anything. Logan and Natasha just didn't have the air about them of easy targets.

They entered a rundown parking garage, and Logan led Natasha to a dark, elderly sedan that was parked on the top - and most isolated - floor. Then Logan opened the trunk of the car.

Inside the trunk was a human form wrapped in thick chains. His feet and hands had been cut off and then crudely tourniqueted with baling wire. Oddly pale blood oozed from the stumps. A hood made of thick leather and canvas covered the prisoner's head.

Slowly and carefully, Logan stripped off the hood. The vampire hissed and snapped viciously at Logan with its fangs, but didn't connect.

Natasha's self-control finally slipped. She let out a long and relieved breath and then put her hands over her mouth, her eyes wide she stared into the car's trunk.

From where he stood, Logan could see the black and purple bite mark on Natasha's neck.

"Thank God," Natasha whispered to herself in Russian. "Thank God. Thank God. Thank God."

Logan tossed Natasha the keys to the car. "You've got maybe a day, but I wouldn't wait if I were you. Stake him, cut his head off, and then burn the body. That should keep you from turning into a vampire. Everything you need is in the back seat."

Natasha composed herself as best she could and began pulling a hammer, a stake, a bloodied hacksaw, and a container of gasoline out of the car.

As Logan walked down the parking garage's stairs, there was the sound of repetitive pounding, and the vampire began to shriek.

It occurred to Logan that Natasha wouldn't last too long with Russian intelligence.

She'd already shown that she wasn't willing to lose her humanity.

Van Helsing, 2005 - Naples

Sometimes, even the Holy Order could find itself at the end of its rope, with its resources stretched to the breaking point, and not enough Knights to deal with an overload of supernatural threats.

Van Helsing didn't really fit into the nightclub in which he was currently sitting. The decor was very modern, multi-colored lights were flickering unnecessarily, and the music was too loud and of a style to which he would never adjust. And as for the clientele...

Well, Van Helsing couldn't help but appreciate the crowd of sleek and beautiful women who seemed to be engaged in a competition to see who could wear the least clothes without actually stripping naked. And he tried not to be too harsh in his opinion of the softly elegant young men who posed and postured throughout the club in an effort to be impressive - it wasn't their fault they were growing up in such a shallow and over-prosperous era.

It all reminded Van Helsing of something he had seen many times before. The last stages of a decadent time, when the youthful nobility fell into greater and greater excess, occupying themselves with endless rounds of increasingly exotic entertainment and debauchery. Only this time, it wasn't just the nobility - it was the majority of the population.

For a moment, Van Helsing tried to imagine Anna and himself dancing in the club. A wry smile appeared on his face as he realized that Anna would adjust much better then he would. And she'd probably pick up the dance style in just a matter of minutes.

Then Van Helsing shook his head and took a long swallow of a really quite excellent red wine from an expensively fluted glass. The last time he had been in Naples had been a century ago. He spent his last night in town in a now long-vanished dockside tavern, drinking a much rougher vintage from a chipped ceramic cup, as he listened to work-worn fishermen talk quietly about boats, the sea, and their families.

Logan walked into the nightclub. He somehow managed to look even more out of place than Van Helsing. Even so, more than a few young women - and some young men - were giving him interested looks. Raw animal magnetism could apparently compensate for an utter lack of style.

For his part, Logan gave the interior of the nightclub a long and steady look. His impression of it was obvious from the grimly disgusted look on his face.

It didn't take Logan long to spot Van Helsing. He immediately walked over to the Knight.

"What the hell?" Logan growled as he sat down at Van Helsing's table.

"I heard you were available. And I need your help," Van Helsing said. "Oh - and by the way - hello, and thanks for your help back in Berlin."

Logan let out a frustrated sigh and glared around at the nightclub. "You're damn right you need my help. And hello to you, too. And I appreciate the save at Dieppe."

A waitress appeared. She put a glass in front of Logan and then reached for the bottle that was sitting on the table.

Logan grabbed the waitress by the wrist. She froze in surprise, her dark eyes gone wide. She could handle the usual touchy-feely drunk without much difficulty, but her instincts told her that these two men were something completely different.

"Leave," Van Helsing told the girl as he took a revolver out of his jacket and opened the cylinder to check its load. "There's going to be trouble. We don't want you to be hurt."

The waitress nodded jerkily. Logan let her go and she immediately fled.

Logan and Van Helsing waited until they saw the waitress slip out the back door. This was going to be a mess, but at least they had saved one innocent life. Everything else was in the hands of the Almighty.

Then Logan turned to face Van Helsing. "Why are they doing this? It's sure to attract attention. That's not the way they do things."

"Perhaps in the modern-day it's easier to hide in plain sight," Van Helsing suggested. Then he got to his feet, hefted the revolver, and allowed an extensible silver stake to fall out of his coat sleeve and into his hand. He flicked the stake open with a smoothly practiced move of his wrist.

Logan stood next to Van Helsing and extended his claws. They flashed silver and red in the wildly flickering light.

The bouncy dance music continued to play incongruously, but movement in the club steadily ground to a halt as dozens of vampires realized one by one that they really weren't the local apex predators any longer. Teeth grew into fangs, and fingernails became claws. Meanwhile, the still-human part of the crowd either ran, cowered, or stared at their masters in rapt adoration.

"When this is over, we need to talk," Logan said.

"Agreed," Van Helsing said just before he shot the nearest vampire through its head.

Logan, 2005 - Westchester County

It turned out that Logan had a flair for gifts.

Last Christmas, every women and girl at the school received a kimono made of exceptionally fine silk. They came from a shop in Tokyo that not many people could afford, but the owner owed Logan a life debt.

The Christmas before that, it had been incredibly tasty Swiss chocolate. Logan just smiled as every female in the school cursed him for their inevitable weight gain.

Before that, he had given them long and elegant hairpins made of steel-shod onyx and lapis. Logan then taught a special session in his self-defense class on how they could be used as quite effective weapons.

This year, he gave jewelry. Earrings, to be precise.

The evening of Christmas day, Ororo visited Logan's room wearing nothing but her silk kimono and her new earrings. The kimono vanished fairly quickly, but the earrings stayed on.

Sitting up on the edge of the now rumpled bed, Ororo examined her reflection in the window, tilting her head so she could examine her earrings.

"I am afraid the review on your gift this year is a bit mixed," she told Logan with an amused smile.

Logan got up and sat behind Ororo. Resting his chin on her bare shoulder and wrapping his arms around her stomach, he gazed at Ororo's reflection.

"They look great on you," he said.

The earrings had a definitely barbaric look. They were made of beaten silver and each of them supported a long, narrow, and savagely sharp tooth.

Ororo's smile became broader. "Some would say they make me look uncivilized."

Logan carefully nipped the edge of Ororo's ear with his teeth, and Ororo murmured a pleased response.

"I see you as a princess of Mars," he said. "With a radium pistol in one hand and a sword in the other. And the earrings."

Ororo raised an eyebrow at their reflections. "Who would have thought that you were a Burroughs reader? Perhaps I could have a loin cloth as well?"

"Nope. Nothing that covers your breasts, either. Let's not ruin perfection."

By now, Logan's hand were boldly roaming up and down Ororo's body. And Ororo was finding it difficult to concentrate.

"Logan... one serious question. Some of the girls have asked about this. The teeth in the earrings, they do not come from some endangered animal, do they?"

Logan's eyes suddenly went coldly narrow. "Not as endangered as you'd hope."

Ororo was about to ask why, but then their lips meet and conversation became secondary.

Van Helsing, 2014 - Scotland

The girl scrabbled backwards into a hollow between two trees, her eyes wide and terrified. She was wearing nothing but a nightdress. There was a light coat of dark brown fur on her face, arms, and feet. Also, the nails on her hands and feet were unnaturally thick and elongated, her ears were pointed, and her eyes were strangely golden.

Van Helsing had managed to get to the girl before the oncoming mob. They could both hear the roaring and shouting slowly increasing in volume. Van Helsing knew he had to kill the werewolf before it tore into the mob - killing many and leaving others to carry the taint of the beast.

First problem: contrary to all appearances, the girl wasn't a werewolf. She didn't have the aura of bestial blood-lust about her that Van Helsing knew so well.

Second problem: it was a girl. She was maybe thirteen years old.

Third problem: the mob was still blundering its way through the woods. And they certainly wouldn't be inclined to listen to reason.

With a soft curse, Van Helsing put away his silver stake and crouched next to the girl.

"What's your name?" he asked gently.

"Rahne," the girl said tremulously.

"Rahne - you're a mutant, aren't you?"

With tears in her eyes, the girl shook her head miserably. "Ah dunno know what ah am!"

Van Helsing frowned. "Can you change back?"

Rahne hesitated for a moment, and then nodded. After closing her eyes and concentrating, her flesh seemed to shimmer and ripple as the fur withdrew and the oddly proportioned parts of her body shifted back to normal.

Van Helsing quickly gave Rahne a hand up and then wrapped her in his long coat. Otherwise, Rahne's white nightdress might catch some stray flicker of light. Then the two of them slipped away into the darkness.

Logan, 2014 - Westchester County

Logan, Charles, Ororo, Scott, and Jean were in the Professor's office. It was the weekly senior staff meeting.

"We have a mutant kid who needs help," Logan said after the usual business had been dealt with. "Her name's Rahne Sinclair. She's a Scottish girl who can shift back and forth between a human and wolf-like form. We need to pick her up."

That was the most Logan had ever said at once in a staff meeting. Everyone stared at him as if he had grown a second head.

"Logan... how do you know of this?" the Professor asked slowly.

"A contact gave me a phone call."

"A contact?" Scott asked abruptly.

Logan picked up his coffee cup and looked at Scott expressionlessly. "Yep. A contact."

Jean and Ororo gave each other an amused glance. The Scott and Logan show was starting earlier than usual today.

"Where is she?" Scott asked through gritted teeth.

"London. Rahne is staying with the staff at Saint Paul's Cathedral. A guy named Van Helsing is keeping an eye on her until we show up."

"Logan, do you want to go get her?" Professor Xavier asked.

Logan hesitated before answering. "You know, that might not be a good idea. She's confused enough as is."

The Professor wasn't entirely sure why Logan considered that to be a problem, but he accepted his opinion. He glanced inquiringly in Scott's direction.

"We'll do it," Jean said immediately.

"I will go with you," Ororo added quickly. Something was going on and she refused to miss it.

Van Helsing, 2014 - London

Years ago, the Holy Order had taken a long look at the burgeoning mutant and supers situation and decided that it really wasn't in their purview. However, they did maintain extensive dossiers on all of the major players. It was all too easy for the uninformed to decide that a super-power was actually the work of the devil, and the Holy Order didn't like to make that kind of mistake.

Those dossiers made for interesting, and sometimes entertaining, reading. The one on Thor consisted of two pages of a dry and professionally detached discussion of his observed powers and recent history - and something like fifty pages of an angry, sputtering, denunciation of the idea that he was a god. And Magneto would have been surprised to know just how close of an eye the Holy Order was keeping on his activities.

On the other hand, the file on a retired medical doctor named Stephen Strange was well over two hundred pages in length and even Van Helsing wasn't cleared to read it.

So while Van Helsing was a bit disappointed that Logan didn't make the pickup, it was a pleasure to finally meet Jean, Ororo, and Scott. He'd read a great deal about them.

For their part, Jean, Ororo, and Scott were utterly flabbergasted to meet Van Helsing.

"Christ... there's two of them," Scott said to Jean in utter disgust. He was so shocked that he didn't even try to keep his voice down.

Van Helsing didn't respond to Scott's outburst. He seemed to be examining Jean and Ororo's earrings.

Logan, 2014 - Westchester County

Rahne was nervous at first, but Marie and Kitty were an enthusiastic welcoming committee. In no time at all, Rahne was warming up to the idea of attending a new school.

"Thanks for picking her up," Logan told Scott. Scott nodded abruptly, turned on his heel, and stalked away. As he headed out of the hangar bay, Logan heard Scott mutter, "One is more than enough."

Logan grinned cheerfully. It was shaping up to be a great day.

"You could have warned us," Jean said reproachfully.

Logan shrugged. "The whole thing is kind of hard to explain."

"So just who is that man?" Ororo asked curiously. "Your son? He looks younger than you."

"Actually, it's the other way around," Logan said dryly. "He's been around for a long time. I'm his great-great-great grandson - or something like that. The number of 'greats' is kinda up in the air."

Jean and Ororo both blinked in surprise.

Then Jean frowned. "Is he a mutant? He doesn't have a Cerebro signature."

Logan hesitated before replying. "Maybe he's a mutant. Maybe he's something else."

"Something else?" Ororo repeated. "What kind of something else?"

Logan took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. He looked at Jean, then at Ororo, and then he said, "He might be the Archangel Gabriel in human form."

Jean and Ororo stared at Logan.

Logan gave Jean and Ororo a sympathetic look and then walked over to introduce himself to Rahne. The girl seemed puzzled as he approached. However, Marie and Kitty immediately included Logan in the conversation and quickly helped sort out any confusion.

Van Helsing, 2015 - Stockholm

The mission was over. It had been yet another maniac experimenting with Frankenstein's mad reanimation science. Fortunately, he hadn't gone too far. Van Helsing settled for burning the man's laboratory to the ground and handing him over to the local authorities. Grave robbing was still a crime.

That left Van Helsing with nothing to do. Things actually seemed to be under control. So he was sitting in a downtown park, enjoying a moment of peace and quiet. A Vatican jet was scheduled to pick him up tomorrow.

Then his phone rang.

It took Van Helsing a sizable part of the twentieth century to get used to telephones. He finally managed to adjust to both the usefulness and intrusiveness of the device. Then they went and invented those damned cellphones. Now there was no escape.

With a sigh, Van Helsing put the phone to his ear.

"Hey," came a familiar voice. Van Helsing instantly began to worry. Logan wasn't given to unnecessary conversation. If he called, it was important.

"Logan, is something wrong?"

There was a long pause before Logan replied. "We've run into something. Something that's more on your end of things than ours."

Van Helsing tensed. "What do you have?"

"We were checking on this woman in Budapest. She's a cop. Tough as nails and really fast. So tough and so fast that at first we thought she might be a low-powered mutant."

Logan ground to a halt.

"Get on with it, Logan," Van Helsing ordered.

"What's your opinion of reincarnation?" Logan finally asked.

That was certainly was an odd question, but Van Helsing tried to answer honestly. "It's not a part of my faith, Logan. But there are many in the Holy Order to take the idea for granted. I respect their opinions."

"Okay. Look, I don't know what to make of any of this, but this cop says she knows you from... before. She says her name was Anna and that you and she have some catching up to do. And if you have any doubts as to if it's really her, I'm supposed to ask you about the time you went to the Count's ball and Carl brought down the house. Does any of that sound..."

"I'll be there tomorrow," Van Helsing interrupted.

"Where are you?" Logan asked

"Stockholm."

There was a pause on Logan's end of the conversation. Then he came back.

"Ororo says she can pick you up in the Blackbird. You can be here in three hours."

Van Helsing smiled to himself. It was certainly good to have friends.

"I would appreciate that."

They dealt with a few more details and then the conversation ended.

Van Helsing stood up and gathered up his bag. He had to get to the airport.

He had always known that he would see Anna again someday. He just hadn't expected it to be this way. And so soon.

Just before he boarded a bus, Van Helsing looked skyward and said a quick word of thanks.