Interview With Valerius (The Reluctant Monster)

With the launch of my book “The Reluctant Monster” I have decided to have some interviews with some of the characters from the book, in hopes to give you the reader an inside look at the book before buying it to see if it’s something that you’d be interested in reading. If you have already read the book, first thank you very much. I hope that these interviews provide you with a look inside these characters’ heads to further your enjoyment.
This first interview is with Val. When asked about giving an interview he had this to say.

“It’s a hell of a thing, being asked to talk about the life I usually spend my time trying to bury. But if this “blog” of yours helps people understand the rot that’s spreading from New Orleans to the rest of the world, maybe it’s worth the breath.”

This is that interview:

Joe
what it’s like to be a repo man when the “property” you’re taking back has teeth, or what happens when a routine job turns into a rescue mission for a kid like Leo.

Val
It’s a special kind of hell. You go in thinking about the logistics—the winch tension, the salt-trap for the wards, the clearance you need to get the truck out of a flooded street. You’re thinking about the paycheck and the next dose of suppressants to keep the hunger from clawing at your ribs.

But when the property starts biting back? That’s just business. I’ve handled cursed relics that try to cook your brain and engines possessed by things that haven’t walked the earth in a thousand years. Teeth, claws, or ancient curses—you learn to treat them like any other mechanical failure. You don’t get emotional about a radiator leak, and you don’t get emotional about a ghoul trying to take your hand off. You just use a bigger wrench.

But Leo… that wasn’t “property.”

A routine job is predictable. You find the car, you hook the chains, you leave. But when I pried open that trunk in the Ninth Ward, I wasn’t looking at a high-value asset. I was looking at a terrified kid holding a piece of my own life I thought was buried in a cemetery years ago.

That’s the moment the professional detachment snaps. One second you’re a repo man calculating your overhead; the next, you’re looking at a ten-year-old boy holding your dead wife’s police badge. Suddenly, the “job” doesn’t matter. The paycheck doesn’t matter.

When a routine job turns into a rescue mission, you stop being a contractor and you start being a target. Because the kind of people who lock kids in trunks don’t just send a bill—they send a cleanup crew. And they quickly find out that I’m a lot harder to repossess than a ’67 Impala.

Joe
You talk about the ‘cold’ being better than the alternative. How much of your life is spent fighting your own nature just to stay human for the people who trust you?

Val
Every waking second.

You see me sitting here, talking like a man, but that’s just the mask I pull on every morning. Inside, there’s this… low-frequency hum. It’s the hunger. It’s not like being hungry for a meal; it’s a physical gravity pulling you toward the dark. The “cold” is what I call the suppressants—the stuff I have to inject into my veins just to keep my pulse slow and my eyes from changing. It’s like pouring ice water over a brushfire. It numbs the world, sure, but it keeps the beast in the basement.

Without the cold, I’m not the guy who helps Leo with his homework or the guy who argues with Socket about the winch tension. Without it, I’m just a predator with a very long memory and a very sharp set of teeth.

Fighting your nature isn’t some grand, cinematic struggle. It’s a million tiny choices. It’s choosing to feel the ache in my joints instead of the power that comes with letting go. It’s choosing to be tired, choosing to be weak, choosing to be mortal—all because the alternative means I’d eventually look at the people I love and see nothing but a heartbeat.

My life is a constant negotiation with a monster. I pay it in suppressants and willpower so it stays quiet. Why? Because the people who trust me—Leo, Natasha, the crew—they don’t need a monster. They need a man who’s willing to suffer a little cold so they can stay warm.

The day I stop fighting is the day they lose the only person looking out for them. And I’ve already lost enough people to the dark. I’m not adding them to the list.

Joe
You’ve seen the ‘Genesis Project’ and the way the Order treats children as ‘assets’ or ‘inventory.’ Is there any part of the old system left that isn’t rotted through?

Val
The short answer? No.

When you look at the Order of St. George from the outside, you see the cathedrals, the silver crosses, and the tactical teams that supposedly keep the “monsters” at bay. They wrap themselves in the language of the “old system”—duty, protection, and divine right. But once you’ve seen the inside of a Genesis Project lab, you realize those cathedrals are just gilded cages built over slaughterhouses.

The rot isn’t just a few bad apples; it’s the soil itself. They’ve stopped seeing the line between “saving humanity” and “engineering it.” When they look at kids like Leo or the hybrids they’ve got locked in those sterile, fluorescent bunkers, they don’t see souls. They see biological blueprints. They see “inventory” that can be weaponized, patented, and deployed.

The old system was supposed to be about balance—keeping the things that go bump in the night from swallowing the world whole. But the Order decided that the only way to beat the darkness was to own it. They’ve become the very thing they were founded to hunt, just with better funding and a government-sanctioned mandate.

Is there any part left that isn’t rotted? Maybe in the individuals. There are still people wearing the badge who think they’re doing the right thing. But they’re working for a machine that uses their idealism as fuel for an antiseptic underground operating theater. They’re protecting a status quo that treats a child’s life as a line item on a budget.

That’s why I don’t run for the “good guys” anymore. In my experience, the guys in the suits with the “holy” mission are usually more dangerous than the ghouls in the Ninth Ward. A ghoul is just hungry; the Order is ambitious. And there is nothing more terrifying than an organization that has convinced itself that its atrocities are for the “greater good.”

The system isn’t broken—it’s working exactly how they designed it. And the only way to fix it is to burn the blueprints.

Joe
This is a little personal but you recently discovered that your wife, Claire, didn’t just die—she made a calculation. How does that change the way you look at the ‘debt’ you’re still trying to pay?

Val
Personal? Yeah, well, it’s hard to talk about the leash without talking about who’s holding it.

For years, I told myself Claire was the collateral damage of my life. I carried her death like a stone in my pocket—a heavy, jagged reminder that being near me was a death sentence. I thought I owed a debt to her memory, a penance for being the monster that couldn’t protect the one person who saw me as a man.

But finding that badge in the trunk with Leo… it changed the math.

Claire didn’t just get caught in the crossfire. She saw the storm coming—the Order, the Genesis Project, all of it—and she made a move. She didn’t just die; she positioned herself. She knew that boy would need a way out, and she knew I was the only blunt instrument capable of carving it for him. She left me a trail of breadcrumbs that led straight into a war zone.

It’s a strange feeling, realizing the woman you loved played you like a card in a high-stakes hand. At first, it feels like a betrayal. You want to scream at the ghost of her for not just being safe, for not just being alive.

But then you realize what that “calculation” really was: it was the ultimate act of faith. She didn’t leave me a debt to pay for her soul; she left me a job to do for the living. She knew the “cold” I live in, and she decided I was the only one who could handle the heat of what’s coming.

The debt isn’t about the past anymore. It’s not about flowers on a grave or regret in a glass of bourbon. The debt is to the kid. It’s to Natasha. It’s to the world that the Order wants to turn into an “inventory.”

Claire didn’t die for a mistake. She died for a mission. And if I don’t finish it, then her calculation was wrong. I’ve spent my life repossessing things that don’t belong to people; now, I’m repossessing my own purpose. She gave me the badge back so I’d remember what it felt like to be on the right side of the fight.

So yeah, I’m still paying. But I’m not paying for a funeral anymore. I’m paying for a future.

And God help anyone who tries to collect before I’m done.

Joe
You’ve said that ‘family isn’t about blood.’ How does a dhampir, a ghoul, and a marked child become the only thing standing between the world and a global harvest?

Val
Because when the world decides you’re “inventory” or “monstrous,” the only people you can actually trust are the ones standing in the same shadow.

Look at us. You’ve got me—a repo man who’s more chemical suppressant than human most days. You’ve got Natasha, who’s dealing with a biological destabilization that would have killed anyone else, fighting to keep her soul while her DNA tries to rewrite itself. And you’ve got Leo, a “marked” kid who’s essentially a walking lighthouse for every predator from here to the Vatican.

We didn’t sit down and sign a contract. We became a family because we were the only ones who didn’t look at each other and see a weapon or a paycheck.

The Order and the networks, they operate on hierarchy and “assets.” They think power is something you brew in a lab or mandate from a throne. But they’re wrong. Power is having a mechanic like Socket who’ll hotwire a truck with witch-fire because he knows you’d do the same for him. It’s Natasha refusing to let the hunger take her because she knows Leo is watching.

We’re the only ones standing in the way because we’re the only ones who have nothing left to lose but each other. The “global harvest” the Order is planning—treating the world like a crop to be gathered and weaponized—it requires people to stay in their lanes. It requires the monsters to stay monstrous and the humans to stay afraid.

But a dhampir, a ghoul, and a child? We break the categories. We’re the glitch in their sterile little system. We don’t fight for a flag or a god or a “Greater Good” that sounds suspiciously like a body count. We fight for the person standing to our left.

Turns out, when you’re fighting for a person instead of an ideology, you’re a hell of a lot harder to kill.

The world is closing in, and Montreal’s weather is currently trying to file assault charges against us, but as long as we’re together, we’re the only thing the Order can’t account for. We’re the repossession they never saw coming.

Any other questions, or are we ready to go piss off a god? It’s a Tuesday, after all. We’re on a schedule.

Joe
Yes, just one more. Is there anything else you’d like to say before leaving?

Val
Just this: don’t mistake my survival for a success story.

Most people want to believe that if you fight hard enough, or love deep enough, you get to walk away clean. They want to believe there’s a version of this where the “Reluctant Monster” finally gets to stop being a monster and just be a man.

But the world doesn’t work like that—not the one I live in. Every time I save a life, I lose a piece of the person I used to be. Every time I choose to protect the kid, I have to let the beast move the needle a little further.

If you’re going to tell my story on your blog, don’t make it sound pretty. Tell them it’s loud, it’s cold, and it smells like ozone and stagnant floodwater. Tell them that being a hero isn’t about having a cape; it’s about being the one person willing to stand in the doorway when the devil comes to collect, even if you’ve got no soul left to bargain with.

And to anyone reading: if you see a tow truck with a winch that looks a little too heavy-duty for a Civic, or you hear a low hum that makes the hair on your neck stand up… keep walking. Don’t look for the “magic.” Don’t look for the monsters. Because once you see us, the Order starts seeing you, too.

Now, if you’re done, I’ve got a ham radio call to make and a doctor in Montreal who thinks he owns me. He’s about to find out that “possession” is a two-way street.

I’m out.