scratch
iv. if you'll be my star
I push through the crowds, wishing desperately for a hood or a blanket or something to cover my face. The rain doesn't bother me, but the last thing I want is to draw any attention to myself. I let my hair fall in a thick curtain over my face, casting my eyes low and peering through the strands to try and avoid running into people on the now-crowded streets. I'm lucky for the rain -- everyone else is in just as much a rush as I am, and no one is taking the time to notice anyone around them.
I don't quite know what I'm looking for, but the hollow twisting in my gut leads me back to that seedy bar -- now closing up, a few half-conscious drunks stumbling away to sleep the day off -- and into the alleyway behind it, where the girl was.
The rain is washing away the blood splattered on the wall, erasing the details of the crime. I peer over it, drawing on what knowledge I've gleaned from years of Law and Order reruns and crime shows, and the few things I picked up from Charlie. The splatter is scattered over wide arcs, like the girl was struck with a few glancing blows. There's too much for the attack to have been by a blood-drinker; no vampire would leave all this blood behind. There are deep grooves left in the wall and cobblestones, although what could have made such marks I have no idea. No knife would be sharp enough to cut straight through stone like that, would it?
"You don't look like the police," a thickly accented voice from behind me says. I flinch in spite of myself, and curse my distraction. What is with this place? People shouldn't be able to sneak up on me, but for some reason my senses are dulled, whether by grief or something else, I don't know.
I clench my jaw and turn. A woman is leaning against the wall, a cigarette dangling lazily from her lips. She's dressed like a businesswoman, but she has no purse or briefcase or anything to suggest that she has any intention of doing any business, here or elsewhere. She takes a deep drag from the cigarette and blows the smoke up, into the rain.
"I'm not. I just... I saw the blood," I tell her.
"You're lying," the woman replies without looking at me, chewing on the butt of her cigarette unconcernedly. I glare.
"What makes you think that?"
"Because you're covered in the same blood that's all over the wall," she says calmly, and walks forward, flicking a hand at my shoulder and kneeling at the wall, peering at the blood. "Did you do this?"
"No," I say. "But I'm looking for who did." The words spill out of my mouth before I have a chance to rein them in, and I know they're true, even though the thought hadn't occurred to me before just right now. My plans for finding Edward are falling a little more and more to the wayside. I try to justify it -- Edward would want me to help the little girl find what justice she can. He wouldn't want me to leave this alone, would he?
He wouldn't want you to put yourself in danger over this, a tiny, honest voice in the back of my head murmurs, he would want you to come back to him.
The woman doesn't seem to notice my hesitation, or if she does, she doesn't mention it. "Why?" she asks disinterestedly. "You're no police officer."
I raise my chin. "I have my reasons."
She glances back at me, raising one eyebrow, and doesn't look impressed with what she sees. Finally, she sighs and stands, brushing off her skirt and crushing her cigarette beneath her heel. "Fair enough, nosferatu," she says ambiguously. My skin crawls. What did she just call me?
"What -- "
"Oh, please," she replies, "you thought you weren't obvious? I'm impressed at your restraint, though. All these people, all this blood, and you're, how do you say it? Cool as a cucumber." She smirks, and I catch sight of her eyes -- red. Oh.
I recoil slightly. "What are you looking for here?"
"Same thing you are," she says, walking forward purposefully and reaching out her hand. "My given name is Mercedes, but mostly people just call me Rouge."
I give her black hair an appraising look. "Why do they call you Red?"
She shoots me a nearly feral grin. "Because I remind them of the cavalier rouge," she says impishly. At my blank look, she clarifies, "The Red Horseman, of the Apocalypse. War."
I do not want to be around this woman.
"Oh?" I say lamely. "Why is that?"
"Because," she tells me airily, waving a hand uncaringly, "I have a nasty tendency to always be where the fights are."
"Which is why you're here, I assume?"
"Give a point to the American Vegetarian," she says, clapping slowly. I glower at her; the nickname she's given me is laced with light contempt. "Do you have a name, or shall I be forced to call you by a bevy of creative nicknames?"
"Bella," I tell her, through clenched teeth. "Just... Bella."
Red cocks an eyebrow. "Well, Bella," she says slowly, that same light contempt drenching her voice, "since we're after the same prey, I suggest we work together, yes? By the way," she asks suddenly, tapping at her chin, "what is an American Vegetarian doing in Dijon, hunting supernatural murderers?"
"I was looking for someone," I say shortly, "but the little girl... I found her."
She doesn't look convinced, but doesn't press the issue. Instead, she waves her hand at me, gesturing to follow. "Well, then Bella dear, let's get this murder solved so you can go back to finding whoever it is you're hunting. But first," she says, stretching, "we need to lay low until tonight."
"Is it wise to waste that much time?" I ask, desperate to assert some kind of control over this strange and unnerving woman. She shrugs.
"Whatever attacked the girl did it at night, so it won't come out until then. Besides, we can't very well wander around in the daylight, can we? It's not... befitting of our kind."
"It's raining," I protest, "and the clouds are thick. We'll be fine."
Red's eyes darken as she looks at me oddly. "I don't know what kind of people you live with across the pond, ma fille, but here, the people are suspicious, especially in these parts. They do not trust pale outsiders with strange eyes. We need to lay low." She casts me another disappointed look, "How did you expect to survive here, anyway? You know nothing about this city, do you?" She peers at me. "Do you even know French?"
"No," I hiss bitterly. Red scoffs, and I bite back the urge to lunge at her throat.
"Ma fille," she says, clapping a hand on my shoulder, "you're lucky I found you."
I don't feel lucky. In fact, I feel more angry, and lonelier than ever. Is this what the world is really like? I haven't missed much, have I? God, I just want to go back home, where there are no condescending French vampires and no scary supernatural things attacking poor little girls and no blood all over my favorite sweater, where I can curl up on the couch next to my husband and watch movies, where nothing -- and no one -- can hurt me or mock me or belittle me.
The flat that Red owns is not far from the seedy bar, up on the highest level of a dingy apartment complex with a glowering doorman and a creaky, dimly-lit elevator. I am, I admit, a little thrown off. What is going on? I had this image in my head that all vampires were at least somewhat wealthy, having unlimited time to earn money -- and I've seen nothing yet do shake this image. Until now.
Her room is at the far end of a very eerie hallway, and we have to step over a man slumped over in the hallway. Red barely even seems to see him, but I study him a bit. He's drooling, sprawled out like he got all the way to his apartment and just gave up on finding his keys. His clothes are dirty and ragged and I notice that the crook of his elbow is bruised and inflamed, and there are several small, dark puncture wounds in the very center of the blackened mass. A drug addict.
"You coming? Sean will be there all day, you can examine him later." I glance up, startled, at the fact that Red even knows this junkie's name. Distastefully, I step over his legs, and I'm startled when he suddenly catches my ankle and peers into my face intently.
"What are you -- " I begin, but he cuts me off.
"Elaine?" he says hoarsely, thickly, drool forming on his lips and dripping down his chin. I recoil, trying to escape his grasp without hurting him. He begins babbling in French, a strange kind of energy in his words that isn't spreading to his limbs. I can't even bring myself to pity the man. He's done this to himself, hasn't he?
Red comes over and kneels next to him, prying his hand off my ankle and murmuring soothingly to him in French. His eyes focus, briefly, on his face, and he reaches a hand up to caress her cheek, whispering the name Elaine over and over again. Red gently takes his hand and makes a soft shushing sound, petting his head like a mother and guiding him to his feet. She slips a hand into his pocket and takes his keys, unlocking his door and leading him inside, laying him down on a ragged couch -- like she's done this a million times before.
"All right then," she says shortly, once she's back in the hall, drawing the door shut behind her with a very final-sounding click. "Let's get out of here."
I follow numbly, unsure how to react to this new development. Red's apartment is sparsely furnished, but clean, with thick curtains over the windows and a number of lamps and sconces littering the room. There is, strangely enough, a large painting that looks like it wandered right out of the Middle Ages, depicting a woman floating in a river, surrounded by flowers -- Ophelia, I wonder? Something about the painting unnerves me.
"What was that," I ask distractedly, trying to focus anywhere but on the painting. Red busies herself in the kitchen area, cleaning the counter with an odd expression. "With the -- Sean, I think? You know him?"
She shrugs. "He's always stuck in the hall like that," she answers breezily, "too stoned to get into his own flat."
"Where does he come up with the money to fuel his addiction?" I wonder. Red gives me a strange look, like she's seeing me for the first time.
"Are you always this apathetic toward humans?"
This startles me. We're vampires, better than them in every way. Why does she think it's strange that I don't care about humans? "Yes," I reply uncaringly, "Why does that matter?"
Red scrutinizes me, that same strange look on her face, "But you're one of those stupid vegetarians. Why go through all the trouble if you don't care about them?"
I gape at her. "I don't want to hurt them. Just because I don't care doesn't mean I want to -- to eat them alive!"
"No," she says suddenly, her expression closed, "you don't care that much."
"What?"
She sighs. "You don't care enough to attack them, do you? To you, they're just... ants. Ants invading your happy little picnic of vampire life."
I don't know how to respond. She's not -- she's not wrong, I realize, while at the same time, she isn't precisely right, either. I do care about people, enough to protect them, but at the same time, their suffering is meaningless to me. Red seems to see that I'm not going to reply, and drops into a plush, overstuffed chair with a sigh.
"If we're going to be stuck here for twelve hours of the day, we may as well get to know each other," she says resignedly, like she'd love to do anything but speak to me.
"All right," I say and sit on the couch primly, obstinacy rising in me, "you go first."
She makes an annoyed noise at the back of her throat and snatches a pack of cigarettes off the table, wrenching one out of the pack and lighting it with a match. I wrinkle my nose.
"What does a vampire get out of cigarette smoking?" I muse aloud. Red snorts.
"The same thing humans do, I guess. Something to do with your hands, and a quick burst of calm, except I don't die from lung cancer," she mumbles around the cigarette, laying over the chair lazily, legs over one armrest and leaning against the other. "Win-win situation, yeah?"
"If you can handle the awful smell," I say distastefully.
"You get used to it, and then it starts to smell good," she replies without concern for my obvious discomfort, taking a deep drag and blowing it straight at me. "Oh, lighten up, America," she laughs, "you're so high-strung. You're young, aren't you? Only a young vampire would be so... prim."
"If sixty is young," I tell her delicately, trying to convey my utter dislike for Red.
She shrugs, "It's pretty young. Older than I thought, but hey, you're American, what do I know?"
"And how old are you?" I ask, more to fill the silence than because I actually care to know.
"About two hundred, give or take," she waves a hand thoughtlessly, "I don't really count anymore. I was born in the Paris slums during the Industrial Revolution."
So. She's older than I had expected, which is strange. Red seems to exude an odd kind of agelessness, as though she was born both ten years ago and a thousand years ago. Nothing about her screams either maturity or immaturity, even though her attitude has definite shades of teenage rebellion, it's tempered with a resigned knowledge -- like she's seen the whole world and found it lacking.
"So tell me," she says suddenly, breaking into my thoughts, "what are you really doing here? And don't give me that 'I'm looking for someone' connerie, because I can always tell when people are lying."
"Is that your power?" I ask, evading the question, partly because I'm offended at her off-hand dismissal of my excuse and partly because I'm no longer entirely sure of the answer.
"Yes, it is, and stop avoiding the question."
I sigh. "My husband... he disappeared. I went to Volterra to see if the Volturi knew anything, and they didn't, so I hopped the first train in the first direction that looked even a little promising, and decided to see what turned up."
Red raises an eyebrow. "You just threw everything to the wind and rushed out into the unfeeling depths of France to see if you could find a hint of your husband?" I nod defiantly, refusing to be made to feel like an idiot. She snorts. "You've got more balls than I thought, but less brains. What happened to your husband?"
"I told you," I hiss, angry, "he disappeared."
"And what makes you think he disappeared, and didn't just... leave you?"
I bite back a ferocious response, instead settling on a smoldering glare, and answer with as much control as I can muster, "Because he loves me."
Red snickers. "All right, cherie, whatever you say."
Her words send me into a spiral of doubt. What if... What if he really did just leave... What if -- No. I can't be thinking like this. Focus on one thing at a time, Bella, and right now that thing is not Edward's disappearance.
"What do you know about the thing that attacked the little girl?" I ask suddenly. Red crushes her cigarette against the carpeting uncaringly, and I flinch inwardly at the damage she's doing to her apartment.
"All right then, Bells, we can change the subject." I grimace at having been so easily read. "In a word? Nothing. I just know that something's very, very wrong about that bar, and that alley. Something out for adorable-human blood, and it's not one of us."
"Why do you care?"
She shoots me an incredulous look. "Did you hear me? It's not a vampire. Do you understand how bad this could be? What if it starts attacking us? Or what if those stupid, superstitious humans catch wind of this and attack us, thinking we did it? Or what if it takes all of the food? Didn't you ever learn biologie? Two species cannot occupy the same niche in a single habitat."
Her condescending tone is really starting to grate on my nerves. "Yes, but why do you care?"
There's a beat. Red's eyes grow shadowed. She rips another cigarette out of the pack and lights it furiously before answering, "Because no one else does."
