It was cold as it should have been in the frosty season of winter. The sky was painted in a mixture of a dark gray and an inky black, no stars kissed the night and there was no moonlight to shine light upon the monsters that lurked in the darkness. One monster, in particular, was walking through the winter wonderland at a sluggish pace, besides the sounds of his and numerous wandering footsteps crunching in the snow, the world was silent.

There was a touch of crimson splashed across dark blue that would have brought alarm if the light of day had been casting its halo of warmth throughout the town. However, it was the darkness turn to rule and the blackness it cast allowed such a shocking coloring to blend in with the blue the monster wore. This monster blended in rather well with the rest of the lingering humans that tread through the snow at such a godforsaken hour.

The streets lights that stood along the side of the concrete walkway flickered off and on whereas some had lost their life altogether and given into night. A loud, shrill laughter suddenly shattered the silence and obtained the monster's attention. It had him pause at a standstill and lift his head slightly so that his eye could focus on the young teens that stumbled down the path. Even from the several feet away from them, he could smell the disgusting intoxication on their breath and in their clothing. It was sad seeing what humanity has come to in the many years he's remained frozen in time.

He discreetly remained watchful of the passing humans, keeping as far off the path as the sidewalk would allow him without taking a step into the empty road at his back. Yet still somehow one of the three mortals managed to knock his shoulder against the monster slightly smaller frame and throwing off his balance. He quickly regained it before he could take a tumble in the road, the monster heard the sharp tone of the one who had bumped him.

"Watch it."

He had to channel his anger swelling inside him to keep from doing something reckless once again. Deep in his body there was no hesitation to make himself the one they feared. Fear is shackles, fear is a knife in the gut slowly twisted, fear is a constant hammer on the head. Fear is what made mortals hearts pound and blood quicken, fear is what eased the emptiness of his existence.

This monster refrained from causing fear, not because he wanted to but because he promised to. He had changed a lot since his damnation, but still, he remained a man of his word. Yet being stuck in a seventeen-year-old body has caused a strain on his emotional stability due to a male hormone called testosterone often resulting in him allowing anger to rule in his action over logic.

The same thing had happened earlier in the day when he came to face three more of humanity great creations and ended up put one in a coma and the others hospitalized. It often irked him to think that he missed being one of them, but like them he had taken his humanity for granted and now it was gone.

The monster quickly became ensnared within his own labyrinth of thoughts once again, cooling his rising temper like a bucket of cold water. He turned his body away from the humans as they went one way and he went the other way. The snow began to fall in thick fat flakes, lightly brush against pale cheeks and resting atop bluish-black hair. It was out of his peripheral vision and with his heighten senses did he notice her.

A porcelain doll. Her hair was the colour of the sun's beams and cascaded like a waterfall down her back, reaching well past her waist, but this was no more striking than her eyes which were like emerald set symmetrically into her almost colourless face, brimming, to the point of overflowing, with peace, wisdom, and interest. Her figure, slender and pale like a porcelain ornament and seemingly as fragile, also looked to be light as a feather.

Indeed she appeared to glide as she moved swiftly from her side to his side of the street, the hem of her black dress sweeping the snow as though she were floating an inch or so above the ground. Her eyes held a distant, dreamy look within them, yet seemed to scan her surroundings with purpose. As her eyes met fleetingly with his one rich blue they held within them an eerily knowing look as though she could see right into his mind and knew exactly what he was thinking.

She was gone, becoming a phantom as she moved into the alleyway on his left. It was not her beauty nor the way she did not leave footsteps in the snow, no it was who she reminded him of that had him pursuing her.

"Lizzy?!"

He moved rapidly going after her distant form into the darken alleyway. He wasn't sure how many steps he had taken nor how long he walked farther and deeper into the narrow path, but he hit a dead end without catching a glimpse of the phantom woman. The rich blue of the left eye gave away to a sinister vermillion with a thin diamond shaped pupil at the center.

These were one of the days where he felt like he was losing his mind. His first instinct was violent as he wanted to lash out at something, yet a low sound echoed against the brick walls and rung loudly within his ears. He automatically turned towards the sound and found the source in the form of a small feline. Beyond the odd eyes, the cat's figure was unseen completely blending in with the white of the snow surrounding them.

The feline's left eye was a silver and the right eye an orange, both eyes looked as if they had some sort of film over it, almost as if they were covered in fog or mist. Was it blind? His train of thought was derailed as he noticed the bright silver peeking from underneath the piling snow. It was directly underneath the mysterious cat. The monster wasn't sensing anything off or disturbing just yet and was naturally a curious one, so instead of turning away and heading home to Sebastian, as he should have, he investigated.

The cat got up and took a few steps backward as he drew closer to it. The animal did not hiss or look in the slightest frightened or intimated by him, it was just watching him which was a tad bit unnerving. The monster bend down with an inquisitive glint in his eye, sweeping a hand back and forth to brush away the snow that dusted the object. He found the silver to be metal, a link of an iron chain to be exact.

He saw the beginning of a cuff with a very large book clasped within it. The book was old and heavy, the leather felt soft and delicate as he ran his fingers over the faded red bindings. As his finger touched the cuff it suddenly unclasped itself and landed on the ground with a solid thump. He bypassed what happened too enthralled with the book. He fingered the gold lettering carefully before he opened the cover, paper rustled as he thumbed through the book.

The pages within are brittle and what remains of the book's original stitching is barely holding it together. What confused him the most was what laid within the book, there were no words nor was it any langue that he knew of. It was all written in glyphs. He could have remained crouched over the book, glyphs appeared and disappeared as his eye flitted across the pages, quickly picking out anything of importance from the jumble of markings that littered the world he had become immersed in.

He was forced to set the book down when a cat jumped onto the open pages and knocked it from his hands. As the book touched the ground it snapped itself shut and, as if magnetized, the cuff was drawn towards it and clasped itself shut and locked around the book. The monster was tempted to pick it up again but the cat shoved that thought out of his mind as it arched its back and hissed at him obviously upset with something.

The cat grabbed a chain link between its jaw and with an unnaturally amount of speed and strength it began dragging the book away from him. The monster was up and on his feet in a fraction of a second, quickly moving after the cat and the book. At the dead end, he found there was another passageway, unseen from the angle he had been at. It dipped down into a slimmer alleyway where sly glowing eyes stared at him from afar.

He could barely fit in it, rarely did he miss the days of having a scrawny thirteen-year-old body, but today was a day where he longed to have something he couldn't get back. The monster wasn't exactly large but it would be unwise to call him small either. His shoulders were broad enough that they brushed against the side of brick walls, the further in he went the smaller it seemed to get.

As he got closer to the cat, a strange aroma filled the air. The scent was followed by the faint thumping of a heartbeat, slower than the average humans. The only visible eye widen a tad when he peered deeper into the darkness, making out the cat as well as what the cat was sitting on. She looked paler than when he had spotted her earlier, that phantom woman. He had nearly forgotten his whole reasoning in walking into the alley in the first place.

She was sprawled on the ground with her back propped up against the back wall, her head was bent at an uncomfortable angle with her chin pressed against her chest. The black dressed was an uncommon sight in this modern era, it was a Victorian dress with white laces and frills. The hair looked more like a faded straw over the sun, her feet were bare and it was an astonishment to see that they weren't blue yet. He might have thought her dead if not for the way her body shook in a shiver every now and then, her breath came out in almost unseen waves of gray fog. She was alive but looked eerily dead.

He wanted to leave her here. She wasn't her, Lizzy wouldn't be caught dead in something so dreary. This female was also far to well-endowed and curvy to be Lizzy, how he could have mistaken her for Lizzy he didn't know, besides he knew she was gone. He knew it.

Yet the metal cuff that clasped her left arm, attaching the book to her, was something he couldn't leave alone. The monster liked to have an understand of everything if possible. It's been a very long time since he's had a case, even longer since anything of a challenge appeared to him. He would regret losing such a good case if he left her. So he closed the distance between himself and the unconscious female, lowering himself to inspect her closer.

When he reached out a hand to check her pulse he felt pain spike within his finger as the flesh was sliced open by long, sharp claws. He cast a glare at the odd-eyed cat who was watching him intently. The two stared at each other for several seconds before the cat turned its head away, finding this game boring, and jumped off the female to sit on top of that large book. It was clear the feline was expecting something for its eyes still remained solo upon him.

The monster continued scowling at the cat before maneuvering his body so that he could take the female's weight in his arm. She was not as light as she appeared, but weight meant little to his enhanced body.

He was careful as he hooked one arm underneath the knees and the other behind the middle of her back. Her face rested in the crook of his neck and her warm breath brushed against the skin making the monster shiver unintentionally. He wanted to fix her so that she wasn't leaning and breathing on him like that, but there was only so much room in here.

The white cat leaped up so that it was sitting on the female's lap, the book coming with it, making the female groan softly as solid object pressed against her stomach. The cat sat on top of the book while looking up at the monster, smug once again as if it knew something he did not. He really did not want to bring the cat with him, the girl and the book were enough, but it seemed like it was a package deal.

He could always toss it later. The muscles in his legs pushed off the ground sending him several feet into the air, he pushed off the incoming wall to leap higher. He reached the top building in seconds. The cold air hit him harder and felt the female press her body closer to his own, the monster blamed the cold for his reddening cheeks and ears. The female's...assets were rather hard to ignore.

As he began moving again, clearing a large gap in the rooftops, he swore that cat was laughing at him, it was that or hacking up a hairball. He would never understand what Sebastian saw in cats. He assumed his early transgressions would be forgiven or forgotten with this cat, how he was going to explain the female and the book he didn't know. He had time to think as he cleared rooftop after rooftop, heading home. Unaware of the eyes that watched his retreating figure with burning envy.

Let me know what you think with a review. The blonde woman is not Lizzy, she just looks like her. This AU is a blend of the Victorian Era and Modern.