Then she was back, The pier below, the sea air, the ambulance. The body. She should run, she should definitely run. Then a smaller voice from inside said, Well, we should test if things turn out the same way. Maybe there's splitting points. That… Doesn't make sense. That one ended in a kiss so… Is that what we use our groundhog day for? Really? Gunshots ringing out pulled her attention back to the ambulance.
Test or new strategy? With a groan as she ran off, she decided to go for the test.
Down the pier, along the beach, light the cigarette, sit in the car… And…
"Hello, smart girl." Eleanora whispers from the backseat, no clear way she could have arrived, no reflection in the mirror.
You're supposed to be scared at this part. She wasn't, she couldn't be, she didn't die at the end of this, just went back to where she started. "Hello," She said back, trying to remember the phrasing, "I'm a photographer, names Katherine." She said to the back seat, not looking.
"No fear? Just…apprehension? A brave girl too, Katherine." A finger brushes against the aforementioned woman's arm, barely felt through the coat. "Do you know me?"
"A little, but not enough I think." Katherine responds, "I uh… You probably don't remember we kissed once."
"Did we?" She mumbles, "I'd have remembered la belle-fille like you." A compliment, the words rippling out of her with almost soporific intent.
"Ehhh… Probably not, I was a lot less brave that time," Katherine admitted, taking a deep breath. "Eleanor right?"
"That is how Americans say it, Katherine the…seer?" She questions, looking close, interested, less…murderous maybe?
She shakes her head, a little… Flushed at the attention, "Katherine the… Photographer. Maybe Katherine the Detective if you want to piss me off." Her foot bounces a bit a little… Giddy. She'd probably talk at the ambulance too.
"I prefer you smiling. Where do you want tonight to end?" The vampire asks, gently, as if after a date.
Katherine opens her mouth to speak, and says, "Ah…. eeeeh…" Trying to will the words, before muttering "See… Told you I'm not brave. How long can we talk before you have to go?"
She looks up at the night sky, thinking, "Sunrise is in five hours, would you like four?"
"Can I get five if we drive you somewhere? I have a quarter tank of gas." Katherine says calmly.
"Can you buy…comment s'appellent-ils…blackout curtains?" Eleanora asks Katherine from the backseat.
Her heart is racing through her chest, and she gets very very flustered, Katherine mumbles, "Uh… Yeah. I don't think I have to worry about rent if I d— Wait, let me cancel this thing with my cat." She pulls out her phone, quickly scrolling through, to the main coon breeder.
"It's a cat breeder, they'll repo them and put them down if you don't pay." She says before showing her the phone.
"I can take care of your cat." The vampire offers.
Katherine looks at her, "Alright, it's a promise?"
Smiling with bloody fangs, "Oui." Eleanora affirms, nodding.
----------------------------------------
Very quickly Katherine had pulled up a shopping app, as promised, and had someone run blackout curtains to the car from a twenty-four hour superstore. Then took Eleanora to her apartment. It had a single window, small, that overlooked a parking lot, and a few scattered trees that smelled strongly of… Something. Not something pleasant sometimes. Beaten up cars sat in tight rows over hand spray-painted spaces slightly tilting on the cracked uneven pavement. Just past the broken elevator, over someone passed out with a rubber band in his arm, and three doors down, they found an uneven little piece of metal that said "203."
Inside was a kitchen, a folding card table, and a mattress. Half of the apartment was taken by the kitchen, a faux hallway created by cubicle dividers that Katherine had put up, with some printed photos pinned with thumb-tacks. To the right was a door that led to the bathroom. Finally, there was a vodka bottle, a revolver, a pen, and a single piece of paper on the card table, though she quickly put that away embarrassed.
"You are a very interesting morsel." Eleanora compliments, looking at the bottle and gun. "Tell me about your life. What you love in it." She sits on a kitchen counter, staining it red.
The vodka bottle is thrown into a recycling bin, a clatter of it falling against about a dozen more. Katherine quickly pulled out two red solo cups, and another bottle from a cupboard. This seemed to be the sole purpose of that cupboard. She poured the two cups full, placing one on the counter next to Eleanora.
"Used to love my job?" Katherine said, not having spoken in a while to anyone, "I was good at it." She hadn't talked to anyone in two months? Besides clerks maybe. "I worked for LAPD, don't hate me," She quickly followed up to the vampire, "I know. I was a homicide detective. I thought you know, beat cops were shit, but being a detective, well that was different." With a bit of sourness in her voice, she said, "It wasn't. Then uh, I loved taking pictures and there's…"
"Would you like to take a picture with me?" She asks, listening intently to every word, an absolute, predatory focus.
"Yeah, you should factory reset the phone after though, just so you know. The location data from the pictures will put me at the ambulance." She pulls out the phone with a smile, re-attaching the expensive photographer lens to it.
"La-belle. I think I'll just keep it." Eleanora smiles, shifting over, still soaked in blood, to present a full body image, not blocked by anything.
Katherine isn't aware that's smiling when she takes the picture. Fiddling with settings on the phone to make sure the lighting is correct, there won't be glare from the flash, that the last photo she took was a good one. A quick vibration as it was taken, then she examined it. It was alright, definitely said something, what she wasn't sure about.
"If you take the phone, when they pull my phone records? They'll get the number, company will remote disable and wipe." She was mostly making noise, "Or they'll just pull the GPS data and find it if they give a shit…" Before quietly under her voice she muttered, "Don't worry, they won't."
"La cœur d'un artiste." Eleanora watches Katherine examine the photographs, and fret over her.
"Thanks, you're sweet." Katherine said, before handing her a digital photo frame from the desk, "You can put the chip in here? Then as long as this is charged, you'll have the pictures." She takes the phone back, and pops the sim tray to pullout a micro-sd card. Plugging it into an adapter in the frame. "No-one looked at my pictures, it's nice that someone wants to keep them."
"I promise, la-belle, I will keep them for eternity." She moves, tugging at Katherine's coat, helping her take it off in her own home. "A vessel for memory, photographs are. When all else fails, they bind memory." The coat is thrown over the back of a cheap chair.
"I like that," Katherine replies goosebumps now crawling over her skin with anticipation of… Something. "I like'em because they show what you want to remember… Two people crying at a funeral can smile, and when they look, it'll change how they think of that moment." She started plucking at a long sleeved striped over-shirt nervously. It was cheap, and tight fitting, just barely moving around her frame, which seemed to be a marble-cut statue, every part of her looked like it was straining at the buttons, some more than others.
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Eleanora helps, staining the shirt red with every touch as it comes off, smiling a fanged, vampiric smirk.
"Oh, uh, I've… I've never…I mean, in college once, but." Katherine was apologizing, trying not to offend.
"We have until sunrise." The vampire says, finally pulling the button-down open, raking her blue eyes over Katherine with a dual hunger, urges mixing into something new, fresh and sinful. The overshirt once unbuttoned revealed tight defined lines of muscle, and a sports bra that seemed to be stretched to it's max. Eleanors pressed her hands gently against Katherine's stomach, and the larger woman squeaked. A tiny noise of prey that sent tremors through Eleanor, an immediate sign of humanity.
Katherine couldn't help, but fall. Eleanora's hair smelled like lavender and pennies. She felt soft and smooth. Her skin was like silk against her, and the nipping fangs filled her with an internal flame that she couldn't snuff out. Soon, she found herself wanting, she soon figured out where she wanted her hands to be. Where she wanted her lips to be, where she wanted herself to be. All of them here. All of them under Eleanora.
The gentle kisses became more and more ragged, more and more rough, before Katherine started whispering small words of affirmation. Trying so hard not to say something stupid. Her breath catching when the kissing stopped and the now warmed lips moved downwards towards something more wanting. Towards something filled with need. Eleanora's hands were firm but silky, all encompassing grace that sent Katherine's mind into spasms. She nervously flexed with overwhelming joy before Eleanora had gotten anywhere near her destination
When the Vampire had reached between her legs, Katherine was almost crying. The gentle manipulations already threatening to toss her over the edge. Her tongue dragging across Katherine's lips turned the spasms of the mind into quivering of the heart and soul. She swore to herself quietly, and Eleanora continued with further and more effective grace. Katherine felt her breath hitch, her chest rise, her calves start to cramp, her hips occasionally buck. She realized that it didn't matter if she was quiet, and she finally let her voice be raised in joy as she reached closer, closer, closer to a moment of pure bliss. Then with a sudden startling leap
She was there.
She let out a long agonized moan and felt her body collapse. Blood, thick coursing, overwhelmingly empowered blood shook with tiny tremors around her buddy. Activating her neurons, activating her nerves, making every part of her feeling overwhelmingly pleased and alive as the crashing sensations began blasting and transforming her voice into a quivering tremble as the sensation made her yell again just moments later.
"La-belle." Eleanora whispers, "We have all night." As she climbs up and settles next to Katherine with a slow, languid series of motions. "Tell me…something about something." She asks.
Katherine gasps trying to catch her breath, before not even realizing she was doing so, pulled Eleanora in close who acquiesced into the gentle tug of being held. "I uh…" She's panting, "You're pretty." Was the first thing she thought to say, "You know that though uh… I've been watching TV a lot? I guess, it's not called TV anymore though is it, it's all streaming sites uh…" She looks at her, "If you're bored, I could pull up something on my laptop? I kind of just like holding you if this is like… A mercy thing." Katherine said quietly.
"It is a night of your choosing, Katerina." She whispers, "I am a passenger in your tale."
"Then yeah, just stay in my arms." Katherine said quietly, "Just for now, hold me. If that's okay I mean."
The vampire shifts, something pulsing in their body as pale skin acquires something like life through it, a heat coming from their interior and spreading through every inch. A nearer facsimile of human, a nearer replica of life. Her skin turns pinker, her lips warmer and more plump, everything acquires the life of a warm summer day. "I can be warm, just like you." She whispers again, turning to look at the laptop, not reflected in its as of yet black screen.
"You don't have to be, I just want to be held." Katherine whispers, holding her softly. "Right now I'm just doing a mental checklist of stuff I need to get done before I go. There's… A lot less than I'd had hoped actually. It was this and the cat." The Vampire becomes cold again like ice, and Katherine found it… Reminding her of someone. Another place. He mind gently wafting back to the department morgue and an examiner who left out potpourri.
Of Katherine being too scared to ask, wondering what could have happened.
Nothing, she realized. Nothing now.
It was comforting, knowing that her final moments were peaceful. That the end wouldn't have been violent. That someone wasn't going to have to clean brains off a wall.
The laptop shows are a treat, everything is new to Eleanora, every show a delight, every cinematographic trick likely her first. She chatters gently, a brook of soft noise, responding to, engaging with and answering Katherine as steadily as can be desired. An hour passes there, then two.
Three hours, Eleanora tosses a glance at the blackout curtains, making sure they're set properly. But doesn't say anything more, continuing on another episode, another delight.
As the kisses keep coming, she pulls away. Putting a hand up gently to touch her face and stop her. "Hey, wait, it's almost sunrise." Katherine stops her, "I don't know what you have to do to stay safe."
"Mon amour, this is your night. Until the sun rises, we do not worry for me." Eleanora whispers.
"Too late for that I think." Katherine admits. "Way too late, but alright." She leans in for another kiss.
Kisses pass the last hour, sun beams streaming through the very edges of the curtains, safely away from Eleanour, though attracting her attention for glances once or twice. She smiles, looking up at Katherine. "Katerina, are you ready?" Her hand gently rests on the opposite side of the larger woman's neck.
Katherine nuzzles in pulling her into a hug, "Yeah, go for it." She smiles, squeezing her. She thought she'd be scared at the end, that… Something inside her would feel like it lost something. Like there'd be fear, or there'd be something she was missing, but there wasn't. Just a kind of emptiness that had been filled, and knowledge she was at least of use.
"Une autre historie d'amour." She whispers, sinking her teeth in slowly until the starbursts start and the world fades into nothing but raw feeling, pulsing for long minutes of mind-blanking frenzy. Katherine's heartbeat is the pulse of pleasure, its drumming more fulfilling than anything, than anyone, than could ever be imagined.
The world goes dark, just one last thing heard before it all fades, "Ma Katerina."