Blood and Darkness
Kat Hamilton

Disclaimer: I don't own them. This is fiction.

Note: The original idea for this fic came from my boyfriend.

Warning: This will have nothing to do with current WWE storylines.

About possible continuity errors (including age) and how I plan to justify them: If WWE can do it AND get away with it, so can I!

I awoke to a face full of sunlight. Groaning I rolled over onto my side and finally managed to get my eyes fully opened. I sat up and glanced around the room as I suddenly remembered what had happened earlier. Shit. I was in the Deadman's house! I found myself still completely dressed in my clothes. The only thing missing was my shoes and I found them near the door with my luggage. I had to sneak out. Then once I got to Smackdown that week I was planning on putting Teddy Long back in the hospital.

I slowly opened the door, not a squeak. Perfect. I slipped on my shoes and picked up my bags. I was going to make a run for it once I got outside. I could call a cab as soon I was off his property. I snuck down the hallway hoping that Taker wasn't in any of the rooms as I walked past them. Then came the steps, they creaked so loud I thought for sure he was going to hear me leaving. When I made it to the bottom I suddenly recognized the sound of a screaming crowd. I went to investigate.

In a large living room sat Taker on an oversized couch watching UFC. He seemed to be absorbed in the match, only occasionally looking away to take a drink of what smelled like coffee to me. "I can't believe he's getting his ass handed to him." His voice sounded different, it was still a low growl. When one of the fighters on the screen started tapping he got pissed. "What the fuck?" He slammed his coffee mug. "That was bullshit." He slowly got up from the couch and stretched, I could hear joints popping all over the place on him.

When Taker started to turn around I backed up and fell over my luggage. He saw me sprawled out over a couple of suitcases and stared at me for a minute. "So you finally woke up. I was gettin' worried."

"Listen, I got tricked into coming here. I thought Teddy Long was sending me to a resort or something." I struggled to get to my feet as he started walking towards me. I tripped over another bag and he was standing over me. I flinched and shut my eyes. When nothing happened I opened them and he was still standing over me with his hand out.

"Need some help?"

I grabbed his hand and he helped me to my feet. "I'm sorry I came here. I'm just going to take my stuff and call a cab and leave."

"You might wanna shower and maybe eat first. You've been out since yesterday morning."

"Yesterday morning?" I looked at a clock on the wall behind him. It was almost noon. "Holy shit."

"Not gettin' a whole lotta sleep huh?"

"You should know. It's your fault."

"Wasn't this covered the other night? I wasn't hauntin' your dreams." When he saw I wasn't buying it he let out a frustrated sigh. "The bathroom is upstairs across from the guest bedroom you were in." He actually thought I was going to stay? "Help yourself to anything in the kitchen and if you wanna leave after that fine. I'll be in the gym." With that he walked past me, patting me on the shoulder gently.

The shower I was more than happy to take. I hadn't taken one since that afternoon before Smackdown. Something wasn't settling well with me as I was in the shower. Something seemed... different about Taker. Different from how he was the night I screwed him out of the title-

"Wait a minute. Where the fuck is my title?" I rushed to finish the shower and bolted back downstairs to get in my gym bag. I searched frantically through it, it wasn't there. "Bastard stole my belt." I rushed back upstairs to get dressed, ready to give the Deadman a piece of my mind.

First I had to find Taker. I was guessing his gym was in the basement of the house and I walked through his kitchen trying to find a door. I found it already wide open with the sounds of someone hitting a punching bag. I tip-toed down the steps- going element of surprise- and heard some mumbling going on. I walked around a corner to see several workout machines and a few punching bags. One Taker was standing at punching away. It was a regular punching bag and he was wailing on it. The odd thing was, it wasn't moving, even when he threw what looked to be knockout punches, the thing wouldn't budge.

He stepped away from the bag for a second and looked like he was glaring at something. Then I heard him mumble, "I don't need you for this." He threw a vicious right hook letting out a cry of surprise as the bag went flying backwards and nearly hit him on the rebound. "Shit." He stopped the violent swinging of the bag and wiped sweat off of his forehead. "Temperamental bastard." He took a deep breath and moaned massaging his bicep. Taker looked to his right and went, "huh?" Then he walked over towards me.

"Shit." I tried to escape back up the steps but he was too quick.

"What is it?"

I was puzzled by his behavior a minute ago and almost forgot the question. "What the hell did you do with my belt?"

Taker frowned at me and turned around. "It's upstairs on the kitchen table." With that he went back to the punching bag and waited for a minute before he started punching it again. Just like before the bag wasn't moving.

I started to walk away and turned my head to see him shaking his head. As I made it up the steps there it was in plain site. I ran over and snatched it up and kissed it. "Daddy's never leaving you alone again." That's when I noticed something else on the table. A bottle of some kind of polish and a rag, then I looked back down at the belt in my hands, it'd never looked so beautiful. Taker had polished and cleaned up my belt for me. "Who cares? He did it just because he wants the damn belt." I went and threw all of my things back into my gym bag. I took out my cell phone and made an attempt to call a cab. Unfortunately that wasn't going on as planned.

"You ain't gonna get a signal out here." I turned around to see Taker standing there with a towel around his shoulders. "Hell, when I had satellite I could only watch TV about an hour a day." He walked over to me and stopped. "Phone's next to the fridge."

That's it. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"What?"

"Don't act all innocent with me. You've been all creepy and shit all this time around me and now all of a sudden you're- you're-"

"Normal?"

"Yes."

"You know I could ask you the same question. What the hell is wrong with you?"

Oh so now there was something wrong with me? "There's nothing wrong with me!"

"I think there is son."

"I'M NOT YOUR SON!"

Taker tossed the towel to the floor. He stared behind me for a minute. I whirled around only to see a quick wisp of what looked like black smoke. When I looked back at him he had is arms crossed. "See somethin'?" I didn't know how to answer. Was there something there I was supposed to see. "If you're so sure you're not my son then why'd ya have to have your little pow wow with your mom and brother?"

"How did you know about that?"

"I got my ways." He started walking towards the steps. "I'm guessing you'll be gone by the time I'm out." He started walking up the steps a groan escaping from his lips every other steps.

I quickly called a cab and got the hell out of that house. I walked back down the long ass driveway to make it out the road and waited for the cab. I sat down on one of my suitcases and just stared at the ground. Occasionally a car would pass and I'd look up hoping it was my ride. Time kept ticking away, it had to have been over an hour since I'd called that damn cab. I stood up and looked far down the road to my left. When I turned back around- "SHIT!" Taker was standing right next to me... In his trench coat and hat- in his entire ring gear. "What the fuck? I thought you were taking a shower." Taker cocked his head to one side. He chucked before he pointed behind me. I turned around to see the cab coming towards me. I turned back to look at him and he was gone.

It was the same cab driver that I'd had at the airport. "Fancy seein' you here again."

"Sorry to make you come all the way out here again." I was about to climb into the back when I looked back up at the house and saw Taker in the middle of the driveway. We stared at each other for a good minute.

The driver got out of the cab and came over to help me with my luggage. He looked at Taker but- "What are you lookin' at?"

So I got the blind cab driver huh? How do you miss that? I looked at the cabbie and pointed at the Deadman. "The guy in the trench coat." I looked back and once again he was gone. "You know what?" Something weird was going on and I was going to find out what it was. "I'm sorry I made you come all the way out here." I reached into my back pocket and took out two one hundred dollar bills. "I've change my mind but take this for your trouble."

The cabbie took the bills and inspected them in the light. "It was a slow day anyway. Nice drive out this way." He moved my bags off the road and slammed the trunk shut on the cab. "This is practically the middle of nowhere." He got into his side of the cab and rolled down the passengers side window. "Watch out for crazy people."

"Oh I will." Shit, I was probably one of the crazy people by this point. I grabbed all of my luggage and made the trek back up to the house. I heard the taxi speed off back towards the city. I turned around to see Taker behind me once again. "Could you at least help with my bags?" I got absolutely no response and no help from him. He followed behind me all the way up to the house. I stopped and waited for him to open the door. "Are you going to let me in or what?" I turned around. Once again... gone.

I turned around and the door opened by itself. From the inside I heard some kind of blues music playing from the living room. Taker was seated on the couch, dressed completely different. Now he was in jeans and a sweat shirt. How the fuck did he change so fast? Then I looked to see he had a controller in his hands, he was playing a fucking video game. One of the damn military games. I reached down next to him and grabbed what looked like the stereo remote and immediately he grabbed my hand.

Taker dropped my hand and snatched the remote away from me turning the stereo off. "What do you think you're boy?"

"How did you change clothes so fast?"

"I don't know what you're talkin' 'bout."

"Don't act all innocent with me. You're were following me outside."

Taker's eyes didn't leave me as he reached for another remote and shut the television off. "I was huh?" He stood up from the couch and walked around the back of it. "Tell me- Did I look like..." He pointed at something behind me. "That?"

I slowly turned around to see... Taker? I looked back at... "What the hell is going on?"

The Taker in the trench coat stepped forward. "He is here Mark. You should tell him." That voice sounded like the Undertaker I knew. Low, dark, scary, growling.

"Might as well, I knew I shoulda told him the second he saw you." The two stared each other down. "And I told you earlier, I don't need you for this. I can tell him everything myself."

"I shall remain right with you."

"This is a total mind-fuck."

"Edge, follow me upstairs." The first Taker- I heard the other refer to him as Mark- started up the stairs and I followed him down the hall into a room that looked like a small library. The trench coat Taker appeared by a window and sat down on the window sill. "Sit down." He motioned to two chairs and the bottom of a small stair case. As we sat down he looked at the figure across the room and pointed at him. "First off, you're not seeing things. Undertaker's there in the window."

I'm glad I wasn't crazy. "Then who are-"

"I'm Mark Calloway- we're the same person." He saw the look on my face. "I'm gonna explain boy hold on." He slid a book over to me, the cover read, The Layers of the Human Soul. "I was in college when I found this book. The guy who wrote it had an interesting theory about the human soul. He said that there are different parts to the human soul and with the proper procedure, some mediation, chantin', shit like that you could get in touch with the different parts of your soul. I was drunk one night and tried this ritual he had outlined in the book and out he came."

I glanced over the book while he talked. "Okay... And?"

"I don't think the author of the book thought it would work because he didn't write a ritual to put him back in. The only time he can ever come back into my body is when he possesses me."

I jumped up from my chair and glared at the... thing by the window. "So you did posses me."

"No I did not."

"Sit down Edge." I did as I was told and he continued. "I traveled around the country for years trying to find someone who could fix my problem. No one in the US could so I ended up in Canada where this famous witch was supposed to live. She told me there was nothing she could do because Taker was his own entity now. I went to drown my sorrows at a bar which is where I met your mother. The rest of the details of that night are fuzzy because he was the one that took over that night."

"I found your mother to be quite pleasing in many ways."

"You son of a bitch!" I bolted up from my chair.

"Edge that's not a good idea-"

Too late, when I was a foot away from Undertaker I felt myself flying backwards right into a bookcase. I felt books just fall on top of me. "God damn."

Mark got up from his chair and ran over to help me out of the mess of books. "You didn't have to do that. You coulda just vanished, the window was shatter proof." He sounded pissed off.

"It will not happen again."

"And don't say shit about his mother either." The reply to that was a growl. "I'm sorry. I tried to warn ya."

"What was that?"

"You believe in demons?"

"I'll believe anything you tell from this point on."

Mark helped me over to the chair and sat me down. "Just remember from now on, never attack him."

"But at Survivor-"

"I'll get to that, shut up." He sat back down. "Ever since he got separated from me I've seen the weirdest things imaginable. One night I was feverishly sick, it wasn't long before I came to the WWF, I died. He brought me back to life saying that he'd slain some kind of demon and taken all of it's powers. That's where all the lightning, fire, disappearing stuff comes from."

Undertaker stepped away from the window. "I gave Mark the suggestion to become a wrestler. I told him that with his athleticism and my power he would be unstoppable."

"So why didn't you know I was your son when I first started in the WWF? Christian and I were in the Ministry for a short time."

"Mark did not know, I did."

Mark's head shot over to him. "Then why didn't you tell me then?"

"We had better things to worry about at the time."

He got up from his chair and walked towards the door. "Edge, we'll talk more later." He looked over at Undertaker. "I'm going for a ride. I should be back tonight. Leave him alone and stay here in the library."

"As you wish."

"Wait a minute." I followed him back downstairs as he hurried around getting things together. "You can't leave me here with him. What if he hurts me?"

"Relax, I give him a command he has to follow it. Just stay out of the library and you'll be fine."

We ended up out in a garage with five bikes parked side by side. "So you want me to stay here too?"

He put on a pair of sunglasses as he opened up the garage door. "I need some time to be alone and think." He sat down on a bike and started it up. "How would you feel if you were keeping a secret from yourself for years? See ya later." He took off down the driveway leaving a trail of dust behind him.