Black Cat, White Moon

Prologue I
Nymphetamine Huntress

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Evanescent like the scent of decay
I was fading from the race
When in despair, my darkest days
Ran amok and forged his face

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He was near. She could smell him. It was a sweet, heartwarming scent: Old Spice aftershave, water, chalk dust, ink, the old smell of books, the sweet smell of roses. At first, it was only in her mind, pulling her towards her prey. Now that scent was merely a sweet brush against the inside of her nostrils, but the further along she went, the stronger the smell would become. And Razielle desperately wanted to find the source of that smell. Find him… she had hunted for him for so long. Why had it been so hard to find him? Months, to find a man who wasn't even trying to hide. Months, to find the FBI agent her master wanted dead.

Maybe she was getting old. Old and tired. She felt like mist, grey and evanescent, but this mist inside of her tasted of death, stank of decay. Not the decay of flesh into rotting meat like rancid beef, but the decay of what lay inside: the ever questing shadow of her Eternal Sigh, her deepest self, rotting like poisonous gas inside her. Maybe that was why it had taken so long, this venom in her soul. She had never felt so torn and tired, bruised, uncertain. The entire length of the hunt, she had longed to bring him down after this long, sweet chase, but at the same time… at the same time her pulse quickened with almost exquisite terror at the thought of killing him. This mark frightened her, but that inexplicable fear infuriated her and stirred the longing in her for a more violent chase and take down, the wind in her face, blowing her dark brown hair around her and the stars mirrored in her emerald cat eyes. with flesh torn beneath her nails and blood splattering her skin and soaking her clothes. That kind of chase, through concrete jungles of glass and metal and stone, out into the wilds, tracking her prey by the scent of his blood….

But even with that stirring to take down this mark, this FBI agent that Dragon wanted tormented, dead, and buried six feet deep, she felt so faded and worn, like the world just before a sun goes nova. These were such dark days for her, because the matching Sigh that was meant to touch and breathe with hers, the absence of that matching Eternal Sigh, that eternal life breath, created a vicious pang in her chest that echoed in the emptiness of herself. Murder sang in that emptiness, the thrill of the hunt and the taste of fear rolling off of that which she hunted, the marks. Darkness and despair threatened to swamp her. Only the violence of her kills beat the antagonizing shadows from her. Maybe this kill would banish them all. This angel's blood, maybe it would cut the bonds of eternity's burden from her.

Reaching into the pocket of her tight, black jeans, she pulled out the photograph of her mark. Dark hair, like dirty pale gold, almost flipping over one eye; eyes like dark, varnished wood, but full of haunting shadows and pain; flesh so pale as to be almost translucent, like a thin sheet of alabaster over muscle and bone. And at his back, if she looked at the photograph out of the corner of her eyes, a pair of tattered white wings unfurled to show matted blood, loose pinion feathers, dirt and grunge.

Her heart ached for those wings, battered and bruised as she was, but she walled her heart off with blocks of ice and focused her attention on the task that Dragon set her: kill her mark. Kill the man in the photo.

Kill Spencer Reid.

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Author's Note: I don't own anything copyrighted by anyone who isn't me. The lyrics at the beginning of this chapter are from the song Nymphetamine Overdose by the band Cradle of Filth. I loves them. However, the original line is "forged her face," but Reid's a guy, so I changed that part.

The title of this fanfic is inspired by the retold fairy tale anthologies by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling: Snow White, Blood Red; Ruby Slipper, Golden Tear; Silver Birch, Blood Moon; titles like that. This fanfic draws heavily on the tales from the Brothers' Grimm. The main inspiration is Puss In Boots and Beauty and the Beast.