Within a Forest Dark

A recent review reminded me that I abandoned this story, erm, 8 years ago.  I really loved writing this story, and always had a loose direction for it, but realized I wanted to start over with stories I had planned in more detail, and maybe with less fanciful names.  I sort of refused to acknowledge that I had abandoned this story for a long time, because I hated the idea of not finishing it, but I think 8 years is probably enough.  To give you a sense of closure, gentle reader, here are my notes for the rest:

Bello quickly winds up back in Santo's clutches (betrayed), but armed with new information.  My idea was that he actually knows extremely little about the paranormal world, despite his experiences with vampires -- vampires are the most prevalent, but there's magic and otherworldly creatures.  Santo turns out to have been a priest, centuries ago, who became disenchanted with religion when he realized there was no god, and turned to the dark arts.  He became a magician, and paid a high price for immortality a long time ago.

Bello's powers continue to manifest.  Healing came first, obviously.  It's revealed later that he actually makes the train move to smash the vampires in the subway, although this evidence is removed by Romeon, who is a sort of cleaner for vampire scandals.  Romeon was also some magical dude/creature, but I honestly cannot remember what.

Once Bello is back with Santo, his powers begin to reveal themselves as a result of the trauma/violence he suffers at Santo's hands.  Santo becomes obsessed with these powers--he's always been obsessed with power, his own or others--and finds increasingly horrifying ways to bring out new ones.  At the same time, he loves Bello for being everything he's ever wanted--preturnaturally strong, immortal, beautiful.  He tries in his own way to romance Bello, to convince him that everything he's doing is just, even for Bello's own good.  He believes firmly that people have to suffer for power, because he did, and so he spends a fair amount of time justifying himself that way.

While all of this is happening, Bello slowly learns more about both the extended paranormal world, and what happened to him to land him here--how he had angered Benedict by killing his latest vampire pet, and that Louis had not actually betrayed him.

It was going to take the length of the story for Bello to figure out who he was and what he could do.  I imagined a Beauty and the Beast library scene--Santo offers it to him as an alternative to freedom, maybe, or as a reward for putting him through the wringer again--and Bello becomes more and more obsessed with myths about monsters and gods, trying to figure out what Santo is, how to stop him, and what he himself is.  Somehow (it would have been so smooth!) I had planned to lead the story to old Greek and Roman mythology, and end with the reveal that Bello is, in fact, a god.  Specifically the Roman god Veiovis, who is a mysterious anti-Jupiter, as far as we can tell, and the patron god of runaways.  

Bello's knowledge and powers finally come together, after some undetermined darkest hour, and he destroys Benedict, his clan, and transforms Santo's enchanted prison into his own otherworldly lair, freeing all of the people Santo had magically trapped there over the years.  Perversely, he lets Santo live, although he strips him of all power.  Santo is, after everything, the one who gave him this metamorphosis.  Santo is actually more or less happy to be at Bello's feet, because he finally has a god to worship.  The story ends with Bello's new role as god, especially because he's both radically affected the global network of vampires/magic/monsters, and gone beyond any sort of hierarchy altogether, because he's a god.  Bello feels lonely at the top, and the story ends with him finding Louis again, and beginning to work things out with him.

This ending is probably not at all obvious from the chapters I had posted, and excludes the storylines for all of the other characters.  I'm sorry if it's not what you were looking for!  Feel free to imagine an alternative ending, if you'd like.