Akaterine's Inferno

[Akaterine (DELETED 6984)]

Akaterine walked down the musky rows of the seemingly abandoned library. Being an occasional volunteer to alphabetically order all the books for the store keeper before retiring to her little apartment above the small book shop was a nightly routine. The lady who ran the place was in her late sixties and often needed a lot of help with the store but refused to allow anyone she didn't trust to work there. Because of the unfortunate shortage of people who wanted to borrow books, the business had been struggling for years and therefore the store keeper could no afford to officially hire and pay a working staff. So it was just her and Akaterine. This was the terms of the agreement to live upstairs. A form of payment. A form of protection for the tiny shop.

The girl had turned the sign from "open" to "closed" nearly a half an hour ago and usually left the locking up until she was finished her job of making sure all the books were back in their correct places. Plus, she liked the idea that if ghosts came out to play, she would have a quick and clean get away. She couldn't exactly kick a ghost's ***. It didn't work that way. Kat felt her allergies start to bother her and stopped every once in a while to blow her noise or sneeze into the elbow of the soft gray cardigan she wore before continuing on with her business, humming on offbeat tune.

Kat had an uncanny ability to relish in the darkness of night. It was a natural thing for her. She enjoyed the cover it provided. Most were shocked, if they ever learned, that by day she was busy training in a million different ways to kill a man and by night, arranging books in a dusty little shop down a little darkened alleyway. The short girl took a sip of her blueberry tea, eyes closing ever so slightly. The embers in the fire place near the sitting area were still smoldering and offering some heat. Kat made her way to the large couch and sat down, staring through the window into the fire. Was this what hell looked like? No wonder Dante called it his Inferno.

[Cosimo Alessi (DELETED 6612)]

There was a book that Cosimo had recently read. Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill. It wasn’t one that he would have picked up if it hadn’t been left at his feet. Why had he read it, anyway? After the incident with Athena in the sewers she had left her belongings behind, including the book Cosimo assumed she had been reading when she fell asleep. Who the **** reads in the Mausoleum, with the Ancients and the Mooncalves shuffling around? Who the hell sleeps there?! Athena, obviously. That infuriating intriguing woman. Cosimo couldn’t pin her down. She could be happy one second and furious the next. And that fury? It was like something out of hell. He’d never seen anything like it before.

But it wasn’t as if she hasn’t opened up before. They’d had a good talk, not too long ago. They’d shared things. One tiny little touch, though—one that could not be helped—and a misunderstanding in regards to words and sympathy, and she might well have crushed him beneath her rage. Although he’d been tempted to point it out to who appeared to be Athena’s sire on the public Crownet, Cosimo had had more sense than that. He would see Athena, to return her book. And her bag. Maybe he would try to get her sire’s contact details. Surely there was someone else who cared. Surely there was someone else Athena talked to; someone who knew what it was that caused such … it was painful, that fury. Cosimo might not have been able to feel it, but he could see it. She was in pain. If she wouldn’t talk to him, he wanted to make sure that there was someone else.

In the meantime, he wanted some distractions. And he had forgotten about books. About the escapism that they offered. He wanted more of Joe Hill. He wanted more of … the same kind of thing. Maybe Stephen King? Except when he got to the library, it was closed. The sign hung like a dead weight.

But Cosimo went in anyway. He thought the lock wouldn’t be hard to break, but there was no lock. The door was open. He slipped inside, silent as the grave. He stood by the front door, waiting for his eyes to adjust. He narrowed those eyes, then, looking for the signs above the shelves. What was he looking for? Fiction, maybe. Were there sub-categories? He wandered in a little further, fingers trailing along the spines of the books, sticking close to the shadows and his ears pricked for sounds of company.

[Akaterine (DELETED 6984)]

Akaterine had dismantled the bell that attached above the door to sound whenever someone opened it nearly a week ago. It was an inconvenience due to rust. However, without it, she did not hear the man enter the darkened book shop. Kat sighed softly into her mug of coffee and shut her eyes to listen to the soft crackling of the dying embers, wondering if she should just restock the fire and sleep on the sofa tonight as the shop would be closed tomorrow because the owner was out of town for the day.

With a soft noise of protest from her body that ended in slight cracking, Akaterine set the mug down and then sprawled out on the sofa in a luxurious manner, her sheer leopard pattern night gown riding up her thighs dangerously. She didn't bother to shimmy the fabric down as she was supposedly the only person around. Humming softly, the girl closed those blue eyes once more and tried to drift off into light, her hands placed gently below her chest.

[Cosimo Alessi (DELETED 6612)]

It had been so long since Cosimo had been in a library. He felt out of place. But, of course he would feel out of place. He wasn't supposed to be there. The place was closed and the lights were dim. He was going to take books without paying, without hiring, without even asking. And he wasn't going to bring them back, either. Cosimo was a man with sketchy morals. A nice guy, but thieving was not something that ranked high on the list of things that caused him guilt. Guilt wasn't something that he felt too often; he was a water-under-the-bridge kind of guy. He tended to let things go. Small things, anyway. Big things? He bottled, shoved aside, tried to forget. He never learned his lesson when they festered, caused lesions to develop deep inside.

But he didn't think about any of that as he browsed the shelves. What he needed to do was find the section where Joe Hill was kept, and find similar books, of a similar genre. But... how were these things organised again? Alphabet? Decimal? And then it clicked. There had to be a computer somewhere. Cosimo wandered out from behind the shelves to find a machine that he could turn on. It couldn't be too hard to find the search engine.

He let his gaze slide over the interior of the dim library as he waited for the machine to boot up. His ears had pricked, see--above the whirring of the computer as it came to life, he felt like he could hear something else. Material sliding against material, a breath, a him, a shifting of molecules that indicated he was not alone. From where he was standing, he couldn't see anything. So he ignored it. Soon enough, the machine had booted up, and there weren't too many programs to choose from. He opened the one that looked most like a search engine and, once it was up and running, he typed in 'Joe Hill'. A list of books appeared, along with the section of the library they could be found in. Cosimo found a pen nearby and scribbled the numbers on his palm, before he wandered off to try to figure out what those numbers meant.

It was then that he discovered the source of the aforementioned sounds. Rounding the corner, he halted, suddenly, and tried to backtrack. Except he ran into one of the shelves, and a couple of books fell off, thumping heavily to the ground. Once, twice. Lo and behold, one of the books was Joe Hill. NOS4R2.

Cosimo reached down to collect the book, and whatever had fallen underneath it. He planned to make a run for it. It was just a girl, wasn't it? Sleeping at work. Hardly a danger.

[Akaterine (DELETED 6984)]

The female's dark eyes snapped open almost immediately as the boy had been rather noisy. Not to mention she was sort of trained in handling sneak attacks and being a light sleeper to catch even the quietest of attackers. That is what she thought it was in that moment. She lay still, her hand slowly moving below the couch for something. Akaterine always kept weapons around. In case something happened. With her line of work, you never knew what could pop out at you and smash you in the face. Then, within seconds, she rolled from the comfort of the sofa and crouched down, a dagger held out like a military knife, blade adjacent to her shoulder, knuckles wrapped around the hilt so that if she needed to punch him with that same hand, she could.

"What in the hell do you think you are doing?" she snarled her demand, watching his every little movement with intense eyes of a hunter. If she had to kill the man, it would be easy to explain to the cops. He entered her closed shop and tried to attack her so she defended herself the best way she could. A little fib never hurt someone - especially when it could come down to life and death. Her dark curls had rested along her shoulders - the attire she wore not exactly 'battle'-like. She truthfully looked hilarious.

No one would ever think a pretty face in a sheer night gown with a dagger - not a little *****-made weapon like a seven inch switchblade - an actual dagger, could harm someone. She continued to crouch, her muscles coiling in order for them to be taut enough if she had to pounce at him. She peeled back her lip in a form of an intimidation method which definitely didn't suit her features.

[Cosimo Alessi (DELETED 6612)]

Cosimo was starting to wonder whether he was somehow drawn to a particular type of the female variety. Those who liked to sleep in odd places. Those who liked to walk around in nightgowns or similarly flimsy outfits. A few of the women in his life could be excepted, of course, but quite a few of them…

Now was not the time, though, to be thinking about them. About that one in particular. She, too, liked to fall asleep at work. Under cars. Decidedly more dangerous than sleeping in a library, he supposed. Which made him wonder. Why was this girl sleeping here anyway? Did she have nowhere else to go, no home of her own? Did she own the place? She was quite young, but young people these days could be quite industrious, if they put their minds to it. Maybe her parents owned the place. Maybe her parents had bought it for her. Could libraries be owned by civilians, or were they all government run?

Again, not the time to be thinking about any of that. Thoughts fluttered around uselessly in the back of Cosimo’s head as he watched this seemingly innocent girl turn into a snarling creature in front of him. He lifted his hands in surrender, no weapons in sight. Was she so angry because he’d managed to startle her? To sneak up on her without actually intending to sneak up on her? She asked what he thought he was doing. He blinked, and cleared his throat. What was he doing?

”I… was trying to find a book…” he said, his Italian accent thick, though he spoke slowly and clearly.

[Akaterine (DELETED 6984)]

Akaterine's guard continued to stand tall as she carefully lifted her body back into a standing position in hopes not to show any of her body parts that needless to say, should continue to stay hidden from view. The girl lowered her dagger a fraction and scented the air - as if she could tell what he was by the smell of him. She had been trained that way. Of course she knew of vampires. Most she met often were pegged dull by her on the spot. She was lucky none had ever tried to drink from her. In that moment, she confirmed he was one of the them. He had that same vague scent of blood that not many people often could decipher.

"The sign says that the store is closed, vampire..." she murmured and then made her way past him to grab a long silken robe from the back of the computer chair, slipping it on. She was a modest woman and some of her hostility had died down for the time being. Tying the strings, she continued to grip the dagger by the hilt in case he tried anything stupid. She sat down and begun to read the screen, her brow lifting quizzically at the name he had searched.

"Joe Hill?" she inquired aloud obliviously, twirling the dagger on the desk, the sharp end creating a small hole as she bit down on her free hand's thumbnail. What a curious author. "A forty two year old comic book writer," she recalled and turned her attention back on Cosimo. "Isn't he the son of Stephen King?"

[Cosimo Alessi (DELETED 6612)]

Cosimo stiffened. Vampire, she said. How did she know? How could she know, just by looking at him? But she had relaxed, now moving toward the computer as if there wasn’t a problem at all. As curious as Cosimo might be, generally, and as much as he itched to ask the woman why she was sleeping in the store, and why her robe, of all things, should be hanging off the chair—did he break into a place that wasn’t actually public, but was instead someone’s home?—he didn’t think he should ask questions, here.

Maybe he could make her forget, though. If he was quick. He held up the book that he was holding. Distraction tactic, as he moved closer. It was a thick book. A brick, really. ”Si, son of Stephen King. But he is an author. A writer. I think, better than his father,” Cosimo said. He didn’t know about Hill’s history as a writer. Except for his lineage, of course. He was a newly discovered author, and one that he wanted to read more of.

Steadily, he moved closer to the girl and her flimsy attire. There was a nifty power that he had, which he had recently discovered. One that he had discovered too late, really. If he had known about it earlier, the whole situation with Esmeralda could have been avoided. But, he couldn’t say now that he regretted siring the girl. He could feed in complete secrecy, he had learned. Even in a crowd. Take a human by surprise, and take what he needed and part of their memory to boot, and leave them to their own devices afterwards. He had to just wait for the right moment.