One day, when patrolling the streets of his newest home, New York City, he witnesses the murder of an innocent woman in an alley and chases the man responsible. During the chase, the killer shouts "I HAVE DONE IT! AH HAHAHA!" and begins to change to a demon-like form of himself. Johnny fights the man, but is quickly defeated by the man's super-human strength. Johnny is tossed around and injured greatly.
He collapses from his injuries after limping back to the initial crime where a friend of the woman, a girl named Lizzie, finds him and cares for him. Being the research nut she is, she discovers his secret. He's an immortal who was alive in the days of the American Revolution and who has been protecting the country and fighting crime ever since.
While searching for the true meaning of the murder, Johnny comes across a tough gothic gangster named Blackheart. She explains that the man was of a gang rival to her own. He needed to kill someone in cold blood for his gang initiation and for his powers. Johnny and Blackheart team up and Lizzie tags along to find the gang responsible and put an end to them. Who knows what they shall find in the underground society of the city of New York?
Main character list is here, sign-in sheet is below
Johnny Freedom and Lizzie Rutlage
Johnny Freedom is a boy of unknown origin and age who wanders the United States in search of dangerous towns to clean up. He has been to New York City several times, each time worse than the last he says. Seeing evil forces at work, he has made it his job in life to curb the criminal element and make the homeland he fights for the place that the Founding Fathers wanted it to be. One day, he is injured when fighting a killer and found on the street by a girl named Lizzy Rutlage. The woman who was killed was her best friend and neighbor. While caring for Johnny, Lizzy happens to recognize his face from a storybook she read in the NYC library about an immortal man who has lived since the dawn of the American Revolution. Though he denies it at first, Johnny gives quickly and tells her that what she read is true. He simply came to be one day in the 1700's and doesn't remember a mother or a father, but does remember the rest of his life with perfection.
Lizzy Rutlage is bookish and small, but has a big heart when it comes to friends. She is only fourteen years old, but possesses the knowledge of a college student and reads many books in her spare time. When she discovered her neighbor's death she had just come home from private school, making her day an otherwise normal and uneventful one. The reason she studies so hard is because her mother is constantly either working hard to support herself and Lizzy or drinking herself to sleep. Lizzy wants to become a research scientist focusing on treatments for alcoholism because of this. Her father died when she was still inside her mother and Lizzy only has a locket picture of him and her mother.
Blackheart
A gothic girl packing heat and a back-mounted sword. Blackheart is just one of many in what she describes as an order formed among women whose sole purpose is the balance of shadow and light. To survive in the streets of New York, particularly the ones owned by "darks", Blackheart and her order have at least a rudimentary understanding of both light and dark magics. Johnny and Lizzy run into her on the subway, where she seems to recognize them and tells them about secret tunnels built inside the subway tunnels, known as the Stone Tunnels. She pokes fun at Johnny, as she finds him "Too chivalrous, too romantic and far too ignorant" to understand just what he has gotten himself into. Among her known facts, however few, are that she is in her mid-twenties but looks younger, is left handed but can work with both hands and shoots hard liquor all at once without even giving a flinch.
Jackalface Jesse
The newest addition to the Demoness Marglehold's underground magic clan, Jackalface Jesse has only just gained his powers to change to demon form and use real magic. Nevetheless, he wastes no time in using these powers to torture and kill those who are smaller than him, much to the Grand Mistress's dismay as she prefers a policy of silence and secrecy. Johnny Freedom found him in an alleyway murdering an innocent woman and gave chase, but he was able to change to demon form and get the drop on Johnny. He escaped Johnny once, but he does not intend to be on the run for the rest of his unnatural life.
Demoness Marglehold aka "Grand Mistress"
Although she looks like it, Demoness Marglehold is not an actual demon. She is rather a human who has allowed herself to be completely twisted by the black magic her clan possesses. The magic controls every aspect of her body and as such makes it very hard for her to be killed. She has used this to her advantage many times, creating within her clan a Darwinian society where only those with the strongest magic can survive. Her clan swells numbers by using these powers for different purposes, instilling hate, jealousy and even hypnosis into whoever is weak enough to succumb. Nobody knows her exact age, Demoness Marglehold is rumoured to have lived for hundreds of years past her natural age, aided by the black magic which keeps her alive. Marglehold's clan resides deep within the Stone Tunnels, the underground magical society of New York City. Her presence is acknowledged by all beings who live within the tunnels, but nobody to date has dared open their mouth against her.
