Path of the Vampire forum

She ignored the stares that came along with the pale, exposed skin of her arms and neck where color stood out with startling contrast compared to the freckles that remained as she sat in the Moonlight Lotus Café, a pen in hand as she focused on the design on the notepad in front of her. A star had taken form, Swallows beginning to fly out of it only outlines at that point and the ginger still didn’t know quite yet if she liked it yet. Olive’s request had been simple enough, but Tate was relatively nitpicky. Her grandmother had always told her it wasn’t a bad thing though.

After work, she had returned to the Crypt to sleep for a few hours during the sunrise and then gone to her apartment in Beta Towers to shower. Routines were just one of the few friends that she kept, the others being her sire and grandsire, Olive and Cavanagh. While she had a computer in her apartment, Tate enjoyed just sitting and watching people. It didn’t involve talking to any one, it didn’t involve dealing with conflict or awkward conversations – usually.

Setting down her pen, she moved her attention back to the computer screen in front of her where her emails were open. Cav, her grandmother... she frowned at the ones from Alicia that she had yet to delete. Tate scrolled further down in search of tattoo designs she had sent to herself a year before. Nothing. She exhaled loudly and made a frustrated clicking sound with her fingertips against the keyboard, drawing the unwanted attention from a middle aged bald man and a beard.

He had been one of the ones staring at her earlier in the evening from the moment her jacket had been removed. “You know, it would be more beneficial to us both if you just took a damn picture.” She snapped, watching him flinch and immediately spin back to face his computer screen. Her hazel eyes caught sight of what looked to be Twilight, Tate’s lip curling afterwards in disgust as she logged out of her things before she shrugged back into her fleece jacket. The cold didn’t bother her too much, but it wouldn’t do to show that now would it?

Despite having fed earlier before she had gone to sleep, the familiar and constant urge remained in the back of her throat with a repetitive burning sensation and as Tate noticed the man staring at her once more, the desire to attack him was almost too tempting. She simply bared her teeth and gave a low growl, the chair once more returning to its former position. “You’re such an *** sometimes, Catty.” Alicia’s voice chuckled in her mind and Tate zipped her jacket up to chest level before grabbing her pen and notebook, heading out of the café and to the nearest bank.

On her way out, Tate paused and took notice of a few missing person posters, her lips pressing together in a thin line as she remembered seeing them in the hospital when she had been human. How many people were still in the city? It always made her curious. Had she not ran at the sight of the monster that she now knew was a fadebeast, would hers and Alicia’s faces have joined them? She thought of Melisande and felt her stomach drop. “We’ve probably got some up in our hometown.” Tate ignored the dead girl once more.

It was strange to wander these streets now. She wasn’t a stranger to Harper Rock at night but there was a certain energy, a pulse, that ran under her feet and through the air, making her cheeks redden with something other than the biting chill of the breeze. That was another thing that used to bother her and no longer did. She would huddle in her thick coats and underclothes and socks and boots, anything to ward off the cold that would seep into her very bones, turning her blood to ice in her veins.

And now she still wore at least her coat and a hat, scarf, boots, but not nearly so many layers of warmth. She didn’t feel the cold much, her blood not so much hers anymore but the result of her feedings—something she wasn’t particularly invested in. She sent them to sleep with some sort of vampiric ability, allowing her to take a pint of the liquid that steamed in the night air, and send them, dazed, on their way.

It was a change for her to not be out in the daytime either. Even when she had night shifts at the precinct she would still wake up before evening and spend time in the sun on her errands or just a slow walk around, getting the feel for a city that even after a few months was still strange. What she didn’t enjoy was having to freeze every time she heard something that sounded vaguely like police activity, knowing that her former coworkers were earnestly hunting for any scrap of information on her disappearance.

Her family had been on television, offering monetary rewards for any sighting. It was maddening and very difficult to keep a low profile. Former police with an unbearable family despite that they were what had driven her from Toronto to this sleepy town. She tried hard to resent them, but if they hadn’t done what they had she would still be there and not a vampire, not privy to the other side of the coin that was life in Harper Rock.

Her walk took her near a café, some place she had never seen before, even when on the job, and she looked inside with envy at their normality, their complete blissful ignorance to the world she had been thrust into. A tooth dug into the inside of her lower lip as she kept herself from standing to stare into their lives like a ghost. Instead she continued to walk to the bank, curious to see if there was another poster of her up.

Leah noticed the girl standing at the board and she carefully stepped around her to look, blue eyes scanning the faces on the paper until she found her likeness. Missing – Leah Bennett, Harper Rock police officer. It was a picture of her that no doubt her mother had sent and she didn’t hesitate in ripping it down from its pin and crumpling it between her hands with a scowl.

The city itself was full of mysteries that Tate had yet to even remotely uncover, not that she really did much digging past locating a job and spending most of her time off translating the fae letters the best that she could without bothering her sire. Although, she doubted it really even bothered the Necromancer; Tate had only seen him pissed off twice, the most recent being shortly after her return from the Shadow Realm and the attack from it. At least she had learned something new and in all honesty, she enjoyed summoning the demi-fae. Each ritual had it’s difficult points, but she enjoyed the challenge.

She was pulled out of her musings by the sound of ripping paper, her hazel eyes shifting to a soft shade of brown as they betrayed her amusement – Tate had seen it. “You know, the best way to vanish is to fake your death,” The ginger listened close for any sign of a heartbeat and smirked softly as she tucked her hand into the pocket of her jeans as she noticed an empty teller before speaking once more in a low voice, “which wouldn’t be too difficult with the lack of heartbeat.” With the loose waves falling over her shoulder, Tate greeted the man behind the counter with a nod of her head, making small talk about the weather as she removed her Tetris duct tape wallet from her pocket.

One of many (a collection of Mario Bros’ characters, Pacman, etc), Tate often rotated them per week – more often if she felt like it. She handed the man her ID first, her name clearly in view with the similar blank expression from the image replicated on her features as she dug out the two-hundred that she had made picking pockets earlier in the evening. It only reminded her further how much she needed to become friends with the ATM in the Mall. “Account number?” Reaching up to scratch at her nose, Tate wrote it down and waited for the transaction to end. “She was somewhat cute.” The voice in her head smirked and was ignored as she pulled the rest of her red hair out from underneath her jacket.

Her dead friend, however, didn’t take too kindly of that and continued to repeat herself until she got a response. One of a short fuse, she knew exactly how many times it would take before: ‘Shut up, Alicia.’ Tate pulled her hair out from underneath her jacket and tucked her wallet back into her pocket, her hazel eyes lifting to the clock nearby. She still had quite a bit of time, but there was no way she’d return to the café. As Tate headed in the direction of the door once more, pausing in her steps as it dawned on her while the blonde seemed so familiar.

A cop, and she had been one of the cops that Tate had seen at the station after she’d been discharged from the hospital. ‘I hope she realizes I wasn’t ******* crazy back then now.’ She smirked to herself only to roll her eyes inwardly at Alicia’s comment of, “Yes, you are.” The ginger responded with a 'bite me' and had to resist slapping herself in the forehead for arguing with a dead woman.

It startled her when the woman spoke, causing her to drop the now-tiny remnants of her missing persons poster. She bent to pick it up, holding it in her hands like it was some sort of comfort device—the irony didn’t escape her—while she turned her head to watch the redhead walk to the teller. A furrow appeared between her eyebrows as she considered just why she looked familiar. Not to mention that she isn’t bad looking.

Leah shushed her inner voice; being a vampire was not a dating service. If she hadn’t found anyone as a human then she most likely wouldn’t as a creature of the undead. How awkward would that be on a first date? ‘Oh you’re a lawyer? Well I used to be a cop until a girl on roller skates stuck her fangs in me.’ Smalltalk for the century.

“I suppose I ought to.” She murmured, more to herself than an answer to the woman. “However, I don’t think my coworkers would be happy to see glimpses of me in the shadows.”

It kept slipping from her grasp just what was familiar about her and the blonde wracked her brain for the answer. She even went so far as to bite her lip and tilt her head while she stared at her, taking in every detail and trying (mostly in vain) to ignore physical attractiveness and focus on the features. And then it hit her with a bang, or more likely a rushed plea of help and the elbow that had gone into her ribs ‘that one’s crazy’ one of the guys had said, twirling his index finger in a circle around his ear and shaking his head.

“I know you. You’re the girl…” The girl everyone in the precinct thought was crazy but now Leah was a vampire and had seen several extraordinary things and so could she really write off a story about dangerous, otherworldly beasts? “So you’re one too.”

That was a safer direction to take the conversation, she figured. More so than actually uttering the word ‘vampire’ in a bank with a human within earshot.

“My name is Leah.”

She listened to every heartbeat and sound in the room, still very aware of the urge to feed that remained at the back of her throat, sometimes it burned, other times it just throbbed. As the blonde murmured, Tate lifted her hand and rubbed at the skin to try and ease the sensation while she stood around, aware of her surroundings. Off to the right, there was a little girl asking her middle aged mother for a lollipop while nearby a man listened to the sound of a woman chewing him out on the phone about forgetting milk.

It always made her think about how the world continued to go on even as someone else’s life came to a screeching halt – Alicia’s death, Tate’s hospitalization, those events had only affected a small group and lightly she rubbed at the side of her neck once more before she realized the other woman was staring at her.

“Technically woman, I’m older than I look,” which was true, even without being a vampire, because of the fact she barely went over five-feet tall at twenty-two years old, and her eyebrow lifted as she then nodded her head in the direction of the door. “Tate. And it’s getting stuffy in here.” If the woman followed her, it’d be her decision and as Tate tucked her hands into her pockets, she headed outside away from the group of people.

She liked the outdoors, especially when it was cold outside; people didn’t seem too concerned to stand out in the cold for too long which made it ideal for conversations that wouldn’t be right for others to hear. It no longer surprised her to meet other vampires, granted she didn’t talk to many out of personal choice. There had been Axel, the man that locked her off her floor in Beta Towers, that Tate had grabbed by the collar and thrown him out to the other end of the building, and Olive, who she met during that Dead City raid.

Tate still needed to figure out how to get a zombified wolf home for Cai. She wondered if she could lure on back to the Crypt using one of her exes from high school... Dark? Yes. Twisted? It would depend on her mood. At that moment, however, she was very.

Leah blinked rapidly as the woman beat a hasty retreat outside and, naturally, the blonde followed her, hurrying to match her strides so they would be side by side in the cold. Gently, and really in a more unconscious motion than something that was thought out and planned, her arm brushed Tate’s shoulder. She had a good six inches on her, not including the height her boots gave her.

“Pleasure to meet you. I apologise if I offended you.” She said lightly, knowing she was treading unsteady ground that was lined with pitfalls and mines. It came back to her, now, seeing the glimpses of Tate, rattled and wounded, and how her coworkers had laughed at her, brushed off her concerns as being mentally ill. She didn’t know if she should apologise for that as well, knowing that Tate knew she had been a constant in the precinct. They had never interacted before now, but she wondered if the sight of her burned with old memories.

However, she didn’t, keeping her mouth closed just in case that was a trick turn, a false opening. Treading the waters in new relationships with people was always difficult, even for her though she pretended to be a social butterfly, at ease with every situation. She was much more comfortable in a patrol car, on the beat, in her uniform and freezing than she was as a vampire trying to make friends with a pretty woman who she had thought was crazy until she became ‘crazy’ too.

Unfortunately, that meant that she was now perpetually navigating treacherous waters because she could no longer put on the uniform hanging in her apartment and walk into the precinct with terrible coffee and the low hum of typing and pens and bootfalls and conversation. She would never again strap into a patrol car with her beat partner and sit for hours and watch, eating bad fast food and swapping stories.

A frown came unbidden to her face, expression and body language and overall mood falling into melancholy as she thought and wallowed in being ripped away from a life she had loved.

“I’m not offended.” She stated with a shake of her head, hunkering down into her jacket as she thought about the past. Alicia. Melisande. Two were dead. Tate remained. When would she go crazy – really crazy – and call it quits? As she pondered that, she knew she wouldn’t leave Cai in Harper Rock. The man had given her a home, taught her how to read the fae language and he’d given her another home. At the other woman’s touch, even if accidental, she had to resist the urge to recoil and hiss at her.

Tate didn’t particularly like people, in all reality she wasn’t quite fond of many even when she had been human. A few close friends, a few boys and girls she slept with every now and then; she had been okay with that. Relationships hadn’t been her strong suit, not that she had really ever cared. One person she’d date for a while, and then she’d sleep with others. Slutty? Most considered it, but only few understood it. She just didn’t like being restricted.

Rolling her shoulders idly, she looked at the people fleeing from the cold winter air and pulled her hat lower over her ears with a quiet exhale escaping past her lips. “So, Leah. Enjoying the undead?” She spoke quietly and stopped to look at her, taking advantage of the cold to speak without needing to be that concerned about who would overhear. That was her favorite part about winter. No one wanted to be outside all the time.

“And yes. I am one. Of many, too.” She could feel the thirst rising again and rubbed at her throat, making a note to ask either Cai or Elizabeth about the constant sensation at the back of her throat. Whatever it was, it was starting to piss her off.