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A man's footfalls, light for his size, and coming closer. Were she not dazed with hunger, this would be her sign to flee, to become once more one with the night, gone half a mile before he has so much as a chance at rounding this corner. This hunger is a frightening one, though, it cuts deep and for the first time since she herself was turned, Celeste fears what might come after. If she does not feed, what madness might befall her? If she is so close to losing her senses in the presence of her victim now, what will happen if she flees, if she means to last through another day, to hunt another night? Few are out past curfew these days, and fewer are inclined to invite strangers into their homes past sundown. The woman before her is her safest wager.

And not only because she has already fallen under her spell, having forgotten those pleas for aid and mercy she'd uttered at the first sight of her attacker's fangs. The woman is still now, stiff as a board, and though there is sentience yet flickering behind her eyes, she cannot fight a vampire's might. She almost pities her: it is not, she recalls, a pleasant feeling.

The steps come closer, though, and there is no time to search for humanity in her unbeating heart. Even in life, she would not have chosen it. This may no longer be a question of life and death, but she is seeing double, hearing echoes, and she cannot wait another night, cannot last another scalding day, if she does not do as her nature commands.

She leans forward, then, presses her victim bodily against the wall, buries her fangs in her neck and smells a man's scent so close as though –

She is grabbed, drawn back, and though her strength by far outdoes that of her opponent, her dazed state is enough to stop her. "This does not concern you," she murmurs, eyes half shut as she means to keep her victim under her control. The woman slides to the ground, rattled by the pain of the bite, and it is more difficult to keep her hypnotised when facing away from her. "Leave this place, good sir, or find yourself in trouble beyond your reckoning."

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He recoils a little, not at the implied warning against hunters, but at that other part. Most want the curse for themselves in return? Who, he wonders, could ever wish for such a thing? To wander half-human through the world, without hope of salvation; to kill to sustain one's own shadowed life; to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that nothing but damnation waits if you falter? It is a nightmare, and an unending one; and he pities anyone who would wish for such a thing; and in the same moment, wonders whether she did. Whether the woman she once was asked to become the demon she is now, and whether she would choose it again, knowing the cost.

But that is a thought for a later time; there is no space to linger on the philosophical. The question before him is a blunter one. He sees it take form between them, the shape of a choice, and if he had time, he would pray on it, but there is no time. That wildness in her allows no time. It is his own thoughts he must trust, and not wait for the guidance of some higher power; he can only hope that he is able to rise to the need.

"Two weeks." He says it softly, mostly to himself. "Would you spare others, if there were such an offer? If you need not kill to live?"

He is not, then, one enamoured with the idea of eternal life, and all by itself, that is a curious thing indeed. There are reasons aplenty to fear death, most of all for a man of faith, for the rules of faith are strict and relentless; Celeste remembers this well. Salvation had not been in the cards for her, well before she offered her blood, and drank deep of that of her maker in turn.

More curious is the offer, and his inclination is so clear that she already licks her lips. She must tread carefully now, but she is greedy by nature, and often unwilling to compromise on her multitude of desires.

"Killing takes a toll, good sir, even on my kind." She does not mean guilt and damnation, those she has grown immune to. Yet she has chosen to preserver her beauty eternally, and a budding pile of corpses in her wake tends to rob her of the admiration she craves. It is difficult to snake her way into the embrace of better society to begin with; it is all the more difficult when its members keep vanishing, only to turn up bloodless a little while later. Time and time again, she must leave a city, invent herself anew, start over, only to vanish again, a cycle as old as she is by now. It is an effort, she would rather stay a little longer. "I would take the offer, and be grateful for it."

So long as the blood is strong, this she does not say. He looks healthy, though, smells clean and good, and she remembers a mortal affection she once held for a man now dead for a good century, who had carried in him that same seriousness and that same devotion she has begun to see in him. "I am called Celeste," for it is pretty and French, and she had liked France, before the revolution had made it so grim a place to be of any sort of respectable blood.

It is madness. He is all too aware that it is madness to even consider such an offer, much less to actually make it. He damns himself, and does he not damn others, too? Will he bind himself in compact with a demon, for any reason at all? Place his life in her hands, give her such power in his comings and goings, turn from God to the Devil?

Killing takes a toll, she says, even on her kind; and she gives him her name, and makes of herself something a little closer to human in the process; and it is not easy, now, to turn away. Even if he could, even if she were not more than capable of killing him if he should try.

He closes his eyes, and his hand moves instinctively to cross himself, without immediately thinking of how this may affect her. It is not, in a sense, to protect himself from her. He would rather protect himself from his own fallibility, from the mistakes that he may make here, and the dangers they may pose; he would rather call on his faith for guidance, right now, than for material protection.

"Francis." He opens his eyes, and there is a harder edge to his expression, a determination behind it. "What is it that you need me to do?"

He crosses himself; it comes so natural to him, a habitual thing ingrained by what she presumes is a lifelong devotion to the faith. Once upon a time, so many years ago now that it seems entirely out of reach, though her memory does not fade in any mortal fashion, she and her family had visited the church on every Sunday, and every high holiday, and whenever else their presence was called for. And there had been true faith, once, when her mother was still alive, and reprimanding her quietly for whispering with her twin.

Now, there is no gentle reprimand: that jolt of discomfort brought by the gesture strikes immediately and with little warning, and she flinches with the force of it. By itself, it does little more than give her a painful moment's pause, but her eyes dart to his throat, his chest, searching for a thing far, far more uncomfortable than this.

"Are you, perchance, wearing a cross around your neck, Francis?" Even in light of the question, she cannot deny herself the pleasure of tasting his name on her tongue.

He is; of course he is; beneath his shirt is the same simple pewter crucifix he has worn for all his adult life. It is only now that it occurs to him anew that it must serve as some protection from her - now, that is, that he has resolved himself not to be protected.

Faith is, he recalls, a shield against such creatures. It shows in how she recoils, in that pain in her expression when she flinches back. One hand rises to his chest, to feel beneath the cheap linen of his shirt the small weight of the cross. It is not an expensive one, or a particularly fine one: it is what he could afford, and that has rarely been much. But it is important, nonetheless, and to put it aside seems to be a crossing of some line that may never be uncrossed. To put aside the cross, for the creature lost to God... there is a hideous poetry in the thought.

"I will take it off." Faith, he reminds himself, does not lie in the workings of some cheap metal, no more than it lies in the movement of a hand across the body. Faith is in the hard choices, and in trusting where they lead. "When you swear that you will not turn on another, that you will feed from me and be done; I will take it off, and you may have your fill."

For a moment she waits, as though she expects him to break into an ill-fitting burst of laughter at what comes closet at best to a humourless jest. The moment passes; his expression remains sincere. Of all the ways he thinks her doomed, he remains faithful to the idea that there is enough goodness left in her to make a vow she means to keep. Even in life, even in the days when she still held a shred of faith, her relations with oaths has been duplicitous at best.

It doesn't mean she minds them – she likes very much to be on the receiving end. There is just not a single one she has made and kept at all.

Even now, the weight of it is almost absurd: what if he perishes of any of those mortal diseases? What if there is already a taint to his blood that renders it sour on her tongue? However, she sees no ready way around it, and the breaking of the vow can wait until after the making of it. "Give me your hand, then." She extends her own, pale and cold.

He is resolved. He must be resolved; to hesitate will win nothing, at a time like this. He said that he would consent, if she would swear. If he does not give her the chance, or does not accept her promise, then all this fragile negotiation crumbles. It does not matter, either, that she may not keep her word. What matters is that, if she swears it, he has done all he can do; and if she forswears it, then he has every right to withdraw what he has sworn himself to. (How that might be done, if it can be done at all, is a trouble for another time.)

He reaches out, and, taking her icy hand in his, is acutely conscious of the heat that pulses beneath his own skin, the blood that rushes red and rich beneath the surface of his slender hand. The seal on the bargain, and the prize he offers, all at once. Does she slaver at it?

Has she, at any time since this began, ceased to slaver?

"I do not know what your kind can swear to. But so long as you hold to it, I will hold to my part, and let you feed as you require. Is that just?"

"I can swear on my mother's grave, and my father's, and my brother's, and my own empty one." And why not? There is nothing else to swear on but the dead, for they are real without doubt, and eternal in their own way. His hand is so warm, so living, and her smile holds the same promise it once had when her inappropriate flirtations did not so openly tease her own death.

"It is just." It is the first just thing that has come her way in some time, and teeth seem sharper now in the dim light, her eyes now wide like those of a predatory cat on the hunt. This is not the look of a lady about to make a wise choice, and this finally seems to occur to her, too, as a more human sentience creeps back into her expression. "The deal should not be sealed out in the open like this. I have been interrupted once on this night, and I cannot count on your fellows to be so humane."

There is little she could have sworn to that would convince him more, or solidify his resolve; for in that oath, she once again makes herself closer to human. She had a mother, and a father, and a brother; she was a woman once in truth; and if she is damned to Hell for what she has become, as she surely must be, then it is an act of Christian mercy to hold off her final end.

And he will not consider the other thoughts behind that; the weight of the smile she gives him, or the decidedly un-Christian stirring it awakens in him. He forces it back, and swallows, nodding.

"I have lodgings down the street." He is already damning himself in making this deal at all, and she will no doubt kill him in the end whatever he does; to allow her into the small apartment he rents will not make matters worse. More embarrassing, perhaps, if his landlady sees him return home with a woman; but despite his earlier ambitions, he is not a priest, and it is not against any law for him to bring a woman into his home. (It is against his own conscience, and the obvious implication is enough to bring a little colour to his cheeks, but that cannot be helped. None of this can be helped.) "That should be safe enough, I think."

Besides the large crucifix hanging above his bed, in any case. But that can be taken down, if he must.

With the thought of blood flooding her senses, how could she not notice that blush creeping into his cheeks? It takes nothing at all to figure what has him in such embarrassed straits: he is a man of all sorts of honour and morals, and she doubts those stretch to bringing women into his home. Of course, he is of an age where he is like to be married, with children well along the way, and so perhaps she is misjudging him, and his embarrassment comes from needing to explain his choices to the lady of the house.

Neither option matters when she can relish in her teasing. "It is always a pleasure to be invited into a handsome man's home." She offers him her arm for guiding, and perhaps to drive in deep the stake of her salacious tones.

He does not want to take her arm, does not want to accept that undeniably loaded invitation. He is also unwilling to accept what she is saying, the tone in which she says it - and, perhaps most of all, that part of him that stirs in response to it, whether he will or no.

But he is nothing if not dutiful, and nothing if not polite; and he cannot leave her holding her arm out in expectation, waiting. Red-faced and with his blood pounding in his ears, he takes her arm gingerly and begins to steer her towards the rented rooms that are, indeed, not all that far from here.

"You will need to be quiet." He is all too aware of the absurdity of scolding a creature of the night as though he has any means to enforce his demands. Then again, perhaps he does - he has something she wants, after all. "My landlady does not approve of guests at this time of night." Least of all female ones, although he doubts she would evict him for it - indeed, he has a suspicion that she worries about their lack. Still, he agreed when renting a bachelor's rooms that he would not bring loose women home, and he is, historically, more a man of his word than this.

All told, she prefers her men too caught in the bliss of having her in their rooms at all to still consider decency, landladies, wives, and God himself as factors in what is ultimately her equation. That he still thinks to ask – nay, order – silence of her seems to earnestly take her aback, and there is a flash of displeasure marring her otherwise so beautiful features. Even in life, she has not been a creature who oft heard the word 'no', or learned to hear it with any manner of grace and respect at all.

"I do seek to be invited again in the future, and so I shall keep your gentile request in mind." Still, he took her arm, and still, his cheeks are flush as the first red of morning, which seems to mellow the waves of her agitation just a tad. "Do you ever honour her wishes? In life, I would have given much to rent rooms of my own, far from prying eyes, to invite whoever I so please."

It's a teasing, lowly jest so obvious she cannot hold it back. "And whoever so pleases me."

Edited 2022-05-29 19:47 (UTC)

His flush does not darken, at least - though that may be because there is only so dark it can go. He will not, he decides, justify her lewdness with a response. He learned a long time ago, by instinct as much as experience, that sometimes the best shield against mockery and dishonesty is simply to take all things on their face; at times, he may seem simple for it, but he is not proud enough to mind. The same, he is sure, goes here: he need not acknowledge the undertones of what she says, no matter how unhidden, if he addresses what is explicit.

"I am not a wealthy man, and her rent is reasonable. I would be a fool to jeopardise my lodgings for the sake of fleeting pleasure."

And if she chooses to read deeper into that, to understand that it is not only the roof over his head that he will esteem more highly than carnality, then that is her choice. It is not dishonesty to tell more than one truth at a time.

Over the years, she has been made familiar with ideas such as rent and how a lack of funds can trouble lesser men and women, though frankly, the wealth that has been made hers by sheer virtue of outliving all her family has sustained her until this day. It won't do to dwell in the same region for too many decades at a time, and the risk of discovery has seen her rent on occasion, though she prefers whole purchases of lands and lodgings, for privacy's sake.

Still, she tilts her head to the side, watching him. "How odd. By the looks of you, I took you for a nobleman's son." The sort of man who never had to worry about upsetting a landlady, someone who only rented to have a space away from a nagging wife or other troublesome relation. A space not to live in, but to use and discard, away from the sort of prying eyes a manor might attract.

He lets out a low, wry laugh at that. There is something rather reassuring, he finds, in how wide of the mark she is: it is a comfort to know that, at the very least, she cannot read his mind, or know more about him than he tells her. Not that he means to hide or dissemble, now that he has come so far that he cannot turn back, but it is good to know that her power has clear limits.

"Hardly. I am no-one's son at all." A fact whose sting has long since faded into the background, after some thirty years of orphaned life. He wonders, of course, about his parents and what fate brought him to the sisters' doors; there will always be times when, in quiet moments, he finds himself in melancholy search of clues in the scattered remnants of his earliest memories; but in the end, he has come this far with no father but the Heavenly one, and no family but those who took him in. He lengthens his stride a little, but his tone is easy enough. "I hate to disappoint you, but I cannot offer noble blood to slake your thirst. You must settle for a poor clerk's, or else call an end to our agreement."

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